Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad, who was born to a poor Lutheran family in Sweden, immigrated to the United States in 1888 and enrolled in nursing school in New York City. There, among her patients, she encountered her first Catholics. An ardent Protestant, she was initially repelled by their devotion to Mary and the saints. But at the same time she felt a mysterious attraction. Later, on witnessing a Corpus Christi procession, she heard an inner voice say, “I am the one whom you seek.” In 1902 she asked to be received into the Catholic Church.
On a pilgrimage to Rome she visited the house where St. Bridget, Sweden’s great medieval patron, had lived. The house was occupied by Carmelites, and she asked to be admitted. Yet a greater dream propelled her: to reestablish St. Bridget’s order, the Brigittines, in Rome. In 1906, with the support of Pope Pius X, her dream was realized; she recited the ancient vows and was clothed in the old Brigittine habit. T he mission of the order would be “contemplation, adoration, and reparation.” During World War II she offered refuge to many Jews, an act for which she was later honored in Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.
Hesselblad died on April 24, 1957, and was canonized in 2016. Her feast is June 4.
“Dear Lord, I do not ask to see the path. . . . I will hang on tightly to your hand and I will close my eyes, so that you know how much trust I place in you, Spouse of my soul.”
—St. Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad
