DAY 2
Raphaela and her older sister, Dolores, grew up together. Though four years apart, they shared girlhood, adolescence and youth. Together they played, strolled, studied, served. Their bond was forged amid raucous noise, laughter, and shared joys as well as sorrow, pain and trials. They grew familiar with all the streets of their town of Pedro Abad, where they accompanied their mother on visits to the most vulnerable of their neighbors. In addition to compassion and generosity, they learned from her to pray and would go with her to the church and to the town hermitage.
When Raphaela was 14 years old, they spent part of the summer with their mother in Cádiz. It was the first time that Raphaela saw the sea… it spoke to her of the vastness of God and she gazed upon it with a deep sense of serenity and gratitude… she saw God in everything.
The following year they enjoyed Spring in Cordova. Around the Plaza of San Juan some member of the Porras family could always be found. On the morning of March 25th, Raphaela went to pray in the church of San Juan. It was there that she was moved to give her heart entirely and forever to God. It was the feast of the Incarnation of the Lord and she had just turned fifteen years old. She told no one of the vow she had made, but from then on, she would walk very close to her God. Her heart belonged to Him.
In Rome on March 25, 1907, Raphaela providentially received the paper on which was written the perpetual vow that she had made 24 years before, on January 1, 1882 in Madrid. She resigned it that day as she also remembered the vow of chastity she had made when she was 15.
“I made this vow […] and today I sign it in Rome, the day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin and Incarnation of the Son of God, in our house in the same city. Also, on this same day, in Cordova, 1865, in the parish of San Juan, which is now our church, I made my perpetual vow of chastity.”
The passing of time does not erase or blur what is experienced in the depths, what marks the heart. The deep experiences are recorded in the heart; they return from time to time to whisper their ways to us and they configure our frame of mind. That is how it was in Santa Raphaela.
“In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin promised to a man named Joseph […] Rejoice, favored one, the Lord is with you. […] Do not fear, Mary, you enjoy the favor of God […] The Holy Spirit will come upon you […] Here you have the handmaid of the Lord: may your word be fulfilled in me. (Lk 1:26 and following).
I remember my first encounter with God, that first time I felt God’s love. How is my heart now: does it belong entirely to the Lord? What part of it do I have to let fall in love with the Lord again?
