Feast day: March 23rd
She was named Boutrossieh at her baptism on July 7th, 1832, that being the feminine form of “Peter” in Arabic (because she had been born on the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul some 8 days before.) The word “butrus” is the Arabic word for rock, not so different from the Greek word, “petros” that we derive the name Peter from, and the endings “-ieh” is like our suffixes “-ite” or “-ian”/“-ine”, an ending that allows a word to used to name something. It does not work quite as well in English, but we do say “petrine” to connect something to Peter, and you could make up a word like “peterite” or “peterian” and we can kind of make sense of it. In any case, she was blessed as a little girl with parents who loved the Lord in many ways, including to the point of naming their only child after the feast day on which she was born.
Sadly, Boutrossieh lost her mother at the tender age of seven and only a few years later with her father experiencing financial difficulties, our young saint-in-the-making went to Damascus to work as a domestic servant. She was blossoming into a lovely and pleasant young lady and at the age of 15 came back home to find her father remarried, and her new step-mother and aunt proposing different men from their families as her future husband. She turned to God to solve the dilemma – as she would many times in the years to come, perhaps the single most important practice that led to her tremendous holiness – and found a tug in her heart towards a religious vocation. Traveling to the convent of Our Lady of Deliverance, she entered their chapel and placed this hope before the Lord. Immediately the quiet voice of God affirmed her – “You will become a nun” echoed in her heart – and His hand opened door after door and shielded her from the arguments from her family to come out and get married.
Our young postulant, while temporarily assigned to the Jesuit mission at Deir-el-Qamar (on mount Lebanon), saved the life of one of the children in her catechism class by hiding him under her skirts while soldiers massacred thousands in the nearby towns. Most of those early years were less eventful with her working various simple jobs and continuing her formation before receiving the habit and name, Sr. Anissa (Agnes) and taking her temporary vows in 1862. She continued to teach, eventually spending several years in Ma’ad to establish a school for girls.
It was there, in 1871 (she was now 10 years a sister, about 39 years old), that her own congregation, the “Mariamettes”, merged with another order to form the Order of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. It was a time of great upheaval for all the sisters, with the difficult choice before them of joining the new congregation, transferring to another order, or returning to the lay state. She, as always, turned to the Lord. The same voice returned from years before “You will remain a nun.” But where, and how? She again went deep into her own heart to discover what desire and longing was already there – part of her loved the idea of joining a more rigorous, more monastic order. And then the Lord began opening doors as always: the same benefactor who had helped finance the school offered to pay whatever would be necessary if she decided to take that road. Continuing to pray, she had a dream that very night of a bearded man, a solider, and an old man; the first one – she identified him later as St. Anthony of the Desert himself – speaking to her “Join the Lebanese Maronite Order.” Joy flooded her heart as she awoke, a joy undimmed by the challenge, at age 39, of returning to the status of postulant, and now in the arduous (and frigid) Monastery of St. Simon Al-Qarn. It had been founded in the 6th century, and is proximately perched on the horn (“al qarn”) of the mountains at Aito Lebanon.
There she received another name, Sr. Rafqa (Rebeccah) and began the arduous work of cultivating silkworms and sewing vestments amidst the life of prayer of a nun. Years rolled by and her sanctity increased. In 1885 she refrained from a time of recreation with her sisters to stay back and pray for them. She spontaneously begged the Lord “Why, O my God, have you distance yourself from me and have abandoned me. You have never visited me with sickness! Have you perhaps abandoned me?” It was the courageous prayer of someone who trusted God completely. Shortly thereafter pain erupted behind her eyes, and paralysis began to spread through her limbs. An American doctor was visiting down the mountain and attempted a surgery on one of her eyes (for which she refused anasthesia) and during which the eye was lost. Sr. Rafqa prayed “in communion with Christ’s passion.” She was eventually limited to knitting socks for her sisters, and joining for prayer, and later to just the knitting, on one occasion with her sisters unable to even carry her to the chapel, she received the miraculous grace to crawl there one final time. Another miracle was given her right before her death when her prayer was answered to see again for one more hour.
Most of the miracles given her by the Lord would come after her death though. She had received the Last Rites and Apostolic Pardon, and on March 23rd 1914 – just months before guns erupted across Europe that August – entered her heavenly reward. Many have been healed from her intercession, and many who are similarly limited in their final years have been inspired by her heroic example of suffering with Christ.
– Fr. Dominic