al-maslub 7

In Marseille, one morning... 

when she was going up to Notre Dame de la Garde for Mass... 

she saw she was being followed by a man who was holding a child by the hand. This happened several times. Troubled by such persistence, Mariam approached the stranger and asked him to please stop following her. 

Surprisngly, the stranger answered with a beautiful smile and said: "I know that you want to enter the convent, and I will follow you until you are in the convent."

From that moment onward... 

Mariam felt herself called to the religious life. 

Who was this stranger? The young girl had no doubt, that it was St. Joseph. 

In her efforts to follow her vocation, Father Abdou was of great help to her. But, as always in her life, the stages were many and laborious. 

The young Palestinian went first to the Daughters of Charity and applied to enter. Forestalled [tegengehouden] by Madame Naggiar, who did not want at any price to be deprived of her cook, they refused under the pretext that she was a servant. 

Mariam then went to see the Poor Clares, whose style of poverty and silence appealed to her immediately. But her delicate health did not allow her to enter the cloister, she had been so greatly weakened by her fast, that she had been given the sacrament of the sick. 

But once again, rapidly and contrary to all expectations, she found herself cured. 

She made a fresh attempt, at the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, founded by Emily de Vialar. 

For was it not St Joseph who had appeared to her repeatedly in the street encouraging her to become a nun! The motherhouse and novitiate were located at "La Capelette" in the suburbs of Marseille. 

The little Palestinian could neither read nor write, and she spoke only Arabic. She was accepted, however, because the novitiate in fact had a few Palestinians among its numbers, and the Congregation had several communities in the East, especially in the Holy Land. 

Upon entering, she was familiarly called “Mariam the Arab”, or ”the little Arab”. She remained a postulant for two years. 

Thus the first part of the vocation that had been given to her by the Blessed Virgin had been realized, for she was now a daughter of St. Joseph.

[bron]