June 15 is a date marked on the calendar of the Adorers and the entire Adorers’ Family: we celebrate the feast of St. Maria Micaela, foundress of our Congregation. Today we especially remember the living legacy she left: Micaela LIVES!

Words of our Superior General, Sr. Pilar Casas

On the occasion of this feast, this year 2024, our Superior General, Sr. Pilar Casas, emphasizes that this “is a big day” in which:

“Celebrate the life of Micaela, that life that today we feel so close, so alive, so loving of her community and her girls, ‘today when I took communion, I told the Lord! «How you want them!» And I found out that he also loves them very much. With what pleasure I felt it! My daughters love you! And you tell me so! …and you love them!’ (Conf. Letter to Sister Caridad. May 11, 1859). It is the ability to know how to receive and to know how to give in life’s incessant game of living and acting. Micaela transmits to us that knowledge of being grateful at every moment that God loves us and has a plan for us to be happy, recognizing each of us in what we can contribute from what we each are.

We celebrate Micaela’s ability to recognize herself, to face the reality that she has to live in the HERE, AND NOW of her time ‘I doubt that there is a superior in the world that is neither more accused, nor more slandered, nor more reproached…Only I fear Him and it comforts me greatly to have Him as a witness of my clumsiness in business…’ (Conf. C. Sr. Caridad, May 22, 1859). Woman of hope, taking risks, prepared for the unforeseeable ‘You already have me here, despite the press that puts me in molds in Madrid…don’t be a coward, nervous things make things very stressful’ (Conf. to Mrs. Canedo, February 27, 1862), fighting, together with her sisters, for so many women, provoking others to continue in the mission, ‘not to faint for God and stop taking steps, no matter how many obstacles they face to present themselves’ (Conf. C. Don José Iglesias Martin Madrid January 7, 1864)

We celebrate Micaela, a woman who listens, who admires and adores the presence of God in her life, in a movement of love-action that leads her to feel and allow herself to be invaded by the Spirit, proclaiming, Blessed be God a thousand times! A woman of hope, her mission has spread throughout the world, consolidating itself in space and time.

We celebrate that her presence is still alive among lay people who have been adhering to the mission from different cultures and countries, inclusively delving deeper into the adoring charism and the response that we must give, in synodality, to the needs of the women to whom we serve. we accompany Micaela invites us TODAY, NOW, in SHARED MISSION, to open paths for the next generations in new forms of consecrated and lay life at the service of the Mission.

We celebrate this June 15 with Micaela, living with a Synodal approach, of Sorority (women and men on the road), loving, recognizing ourselves with all that we are, perceiving the clarity of the presence of God in our midst. Insisting on continuing to build a humble congregation, made up of open, warm, fraternal communities with a gospel flavour where sisters, lay men and women feel called to live the Mission in fraternity.

Acts of celebration

We invite our entire community to participate in the activities programmed for this day in the different places where there is an Adorer presence, which include the Eucharist in her honor and moments of Adoration and celebration.

Brief biography of Saint Maria Micaela

St. Maria Micaela of the Blessed Sacrament, known in her secular life as Micaela Desmaisières López de Dicastillo, was born in Madrid, Spain. Born on January 1, 1809 into a noble family, from a young age, Micaela felt a special calling to the underprivileged.

During a visit to the sick in the hospital of San Juan de Dios in Madrid (Spain), she discovered the problems of exploitation, loneliness and helplessness in which many young girls and women living in prostitution found themselves. The first idea was to open a house to welcome these young women when they left the hospital and help them to rebuild their lives with dignity.

In 1845, Micaela founded the first school-house at 8 Dos Amigos Street in Madrid.  From 1850, she assumed full management of the school, stayed with the girls and took the name of Mother Sacramento. She also sought the collaboration of teachers to help her in the education of the women.

The work of St. Maria Micaela soon spread to other cities in Spain: Zaragoza (1856), Valencia (1858), Barcelona (1861), Burgos (1863), Santander (1864) and Pinto (Madrid branch, 1864).

Other women (teachers of the College and young women of their social environment) joined Micaela, attracted by the way of living the love of Jesus in the Sacrament and the dedication to the service of women in prostitution. This would be the seed of the Congregation of the Adorers, Handmaids of the Blessed Sacrament and of Charity. In 1856, the first group met and, with ecclesiastical approval, began to live this new charism of Adoration and Liberation with their foundress.

In August 1865, upon learning that a cholera epidemic broke out in Valencia, Micaela decided to travel by train to help the nuns and women of that house during the epidemic. There she became irreversibly infected with the disease. She died in that city, a victim of charity, on August 25, 1865.

She was canonized by Pope Pius XI on March 4, 1934.