Vallenar (Chile), 09/19/2020, Aurelia Tapia Villegas, Missionary Community Presentation.- I will tell you that several years ago, when I went to my work, I always saw some nuns walking through the dusty streets of my town at that time, with hasty steps, always wearing the same black and white clothes. I wondered where they were going? What are they doing? I loved to watch them; they were attracting attention. I'll tell you a secret... when I was a girl, I dreamed of being a nun or a teacher, but due to life's circumstances it didn't happen.
With the passing of the years, on one occasion, I don't remember why, I was in a parish hall and I saw for the first time a mural in which a woman named Marie Poussepin was portrayed, I looked at her and she fixed her eyes on me. I see her so fragile, a look so sweet, I said to myself she is not Chilean, but it seems she knows me. From there I wanted to know who she was and great was my surprise to discover that she had been a woman with a great personality, very intelligent, organized, with a great spirit of work, sensitive to the sufferings of others and above all, a person of deep prayer. Discovering what "was right in the eyes of God and so she fulfilled it".
Following my curiosity, I discover the foundation of the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, founded to respond to the great needs of misery that was lived at that time. I had forgotten to tell you that it was in the year 1696 and that she was responsible for all this... Marie Poussepin herself in the painting!
I will tell you that she is the first sister of the Dominican family, of apostolic, contemplative life, attentive to the service of the needs of the neighbor through her prayer "She speaks of God and with God". She died on January 24, 1744 at the age of 90. On her tombstone one can read "Here rest the remains of the humble, pious and charitable Marie Poussepin". Summing up the life of this woman I wanted to meet, she tells us in her will: "Having kept nothing for myself, I possess nothing".
Now I understand many things, one of them is, the walk of those religious in those times in my town, discovering that they were a legacy of this great woman, announcing the gospel and attentive to the needs of others.
Today I am a woman full of joy, happy to have met her and accepted her invitation, being part of the Misioners Presentación community.
Today the roads of my population are not dusty, but I invite you to contemplate... in one of those roads comes an invitation like mine, which would change your life.