Mariam the little Arab
Excerpts from her childhood, and something about her charisms
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1. A Child of Galilee
A tested family
The village of Abellin
Fioretti of Abellin
Her hunger for Jesus
The bloody nuptials
The nurse in azure clothing
2. Relays of the Spirit
The humble servant
The vigil at the Holy Sepulchre
The Beirut adventures
An Arab in Marseille
A postulant at the Capelette
3. Extraordinary charisms
Ecstasies
Levitations
The stigmata
1. A Child of Galilee
A young girl was playing in her uncle`s orchard with a cage of little birds that had been given to her. She wanted to clean them, so she gave them a bath: they died! Heart-broken, she was burying them, when suddenly, in the depths of her heart a very clear voice uttered these words: "This is how everything passes! If you will give me your heart, I shall always remain with you." She was never to forget this voice and her life became the dramatic illustration of these interior words.
Who then was this child?
What became of her?
A tested family
The family was Lebanese, originally from Damascus, and belonged to the Greek-Melkite Catholic rite. They lived in the hill country of Upper-Galilee, where persecution had forced them to take refuge. The mother, Mariam Chahyn, was from Tarshish; the father, Giries (George) Baouardy, lived in Horfesch: two Palestinian villages peopled with Arabs and Druses, Moslems and Christians. As his name indicates (Baouardy means a man of baroud, of powder), the father manufactured powder. He was poor, but hard-working and honest, devoted and patient. One day he was accused of a murder committed in the vicinity of Tarshish, arrested by the Ottoman police and thrown into the prison of Saint Jean d'Acre. He accepted the trial with Christian courage until at length he was found innocent and released.
An even greater sorrow weighed on this fine Christian couple: they had had twelve sons born to them, and all had diet in infancy. Their grief was immense. Broken-hearted, but not despairing, the mother had an inspiration that she confided to her husband: "Let us go to Bethlehem on foot, and ask the Blessed Virgin for a daughter. Let us promise Her that if our prayers are answered, we will name her Mariam and will offer for the service of God a quantity of wax equal to her weight when she is three years of age."
Full of confidence, the husband and wife left for Bethlehem, a trip of 170 kilometers. We can guess their anxiety and fervor as they prayed at the Grotto of the Nativity, where the Mother of God blessed them by grating their request. A little girl was born to them in Abellin where the couple resided after George`s false accusation of the murder and his imprisonment.
The village of Abellin
Abellin, named Ibilline by the Israelites, is situated on a height overlooking the road from Nazareth to Saint Jean d`Acre by way of Shefamar. Today it is a charming village where most of the houses have been rebuilt and the two parochial churches of the Byzantine rite have been enlarged. It would seem that in the past Abellin had been a city of some importance, for either the biblical city of Zabulon mentioned in the Book of Joshua (19, 27) or the Talmudic village of Abelim was located there. When I visited this little town for the first time, fifty years ago, it resembled the miserable village that Mariam knew, with even dirtier lanes, and houses still more dilapidated, into which some 600 inhabitants were crowded.
