On July 25, 1884 , twin girls Pilar (Margarita) and Leonor were born in the Old Town of Bilbao (Bizkaia). Throughout their lives, they maintained a close relationship and deep communication. “Leonor and I were like two bodies in one soul,” she would later write. She grew up in the faith, nurtured by her family.

Her mother, trying to keep her away from a premature friendship with a young sailor, decided to send her to boarding school run by Mercedarian nuns in Bérriz, a small town in Bizkaia.

The Monastery of Bérriz was then a papal cloistered convent, in a picturesque corner far from the world, nestled among the mountains of Duranguesado, surrounded by beautiful nature and a deep silence; a silence that speaks to those who know how to listen.

Pilar arrived there, sad and grumpy, on a cold January day. But, with fortitude, she overcame her difficulties and opened herself up to friendship with her fellow students and religious teachers.

During her first Spiritual Exercises, while still a student at the school, Pilar felt the Lord’s call to follow Him. Determined and generous, she wished to follow her “vocation,” but once again her mother put a stop to her desire and asked Pilar to return home and wait two years to confirm her vocation.

During this time, Leonor and Pilar matured in their vocation to become nuns, and they decided to separate permanently. Given their deep bond and the love they shared, it was the greatest offering they could make to the Lord.

Thus, in 1903, both embarked on religious life. Pilar entered the Monastery of Bérriz on her 19th birthday, the age her mother had insisted upon. Days earlier, her sister Leonor had also entered the novitiate of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity in Vitoria.

That same year, Pilar took the novice’s habit at the Monastery and changed her name to Margarita María . A year later she took her vows and began working as a teacher at the boarding school.

As a woman with a big heart, she feels genuine affection for her students, to whom she dedicates her time and energy, with a profound educational vocation that made her feel “at home.” And her students will be the first to share the apostolic aspirations that God is awakening in her life.

Before following Margarita’s path as a “pilgrim of the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus” in the world, let’s take a look at her beautiful “inner pilgrimage” as a contemplative nun.

Margarita traveled that mysterious and admirable path to intimacy with God and to new horizons in her devotion. Friendship with her God was the source of her happiness, a deep and contagious happiness that she naturally shared with everyone who knew her, first with her students, and later with her fellow nuns.

She always shared: THE TREASURE OF HER LIFE IN GOD. Margarita was a woman who was easy to connect with, close, and sincere. Affectionate and communicative, she cultivated her relationship with God and her life of prayer as the privileged center from which everything else was filled with meaning.

That cultivated intimacy, sometimes with long periods of darkness, but always with trusting Love, was the source of the knowledge of Christ, which transformed her into Him, identifying her very specifically with the Mystery of His Redemption.

God’s constant calls always found her vigilant and ready to give a generous YES, like Mary of Nazareth. A humble, trusting, and courageous YES that led her down unexpected paths.

A CALL TO LIVE LOVE , Margarita had always been moved by the redemptive evangelical dynamism of the Order of Mercy, the liberation of captives at risk of losing their faith. This commitment to liberation was sealed by the Mercedarian friars and nuns with the promise of a fourth vow : “to give one’s life, if necessary, for them.” The vow to give one’s life to the very end.

Driven by this spirit, Margaret very soon felt a clear calling to live in love. And so she writes: “ One feels small, overwhelmed to love for so many who do not love Love …”

These profound experiences and longings to live love led her to a life of service to others. Margaret was a woman exquisite in charity. It was yet another trait she adopted from Christ.

CALL TO REDEMPTION-MISSION. In contemplating Christ the Redeemer, Margaret was so deeply moved by Jesus Christ Crucified, by the mystery of His love unto death, that she desired nothing more than to live to identify with Him, to give thanks for the Redemption, to “ carry the image of Jesus, obscured on the Cross,” and the cry of God’s love to humanity, “ to the ends of the earth.”

There, as she herself proclaims, was born: the “irresistible desire to become missionaries” so that “ Christ may be better known and loved.”

Her love for Jesus Christ led her to the “ mission ” of making Him known to the “ends of the earth.” In Margaret, the words foretold by the prophet Isaiah were fulfilled: “Something new is being born!” What heroism and self-sacrifice born of love! In the Monastery of Bérriz, a new life is being born.

HER RESPONSE IN FIDELITY . Margaret’s life was a path of generous fidelity to God’s calls. At one point she tells us: “There are moments in life of paramount importance, and it is then that God points us to a path to follow and then leaves the response to our will.”

And that path was marked – as always happens in people’s lives – by seemingly insignificant events, in which the God of History provokes, speaks, suggests and blesses new steps, projects of new routes in the giving….

Among these events were the visits of several missionaries to the Monastery and the College. They wished to share their mission and ask for help and prayers. In this way, contacts grew with missionaries committed to the renewed missionary zeal of the Church at that time.

A generous and communicative woman, Margarita always shared with everyone around her the light and gifts of God, the “work” that the Lord was doing in her.

Students and nuns, inspired by Margarita’s enthusiasm, began communicating with the missionaries and helping them from behind the lines. These steps would soon lead to more decisive actions. A new vocation for the Monastery within the Church was being born, encouraged by Margarita.

The burning fire of the missionary spirit soon filled the entire house, school, and convent. The ground was fertile, and the desire to become missionaries was born, to transform the Monastery of Bérriz into a Missionary Institute.

The reasons were profound; the “call” of God was palpable. This fostered trust and collaboration among everyone, and especially with the head of the Monastery at that time: Mother Nieves Urizar, who admirably supported Margarita’s initiatives.

It was not easy, in those times, for a community of consecrated women from papal cloister to transition to missionary life; but Margaret and her sisters were not willing to be confined to the molds in which they had served the Lord until then; it was He Himself who led them.

The prudent of this world criticized them for their audacity. Margaret and the entire convent felt the power of God and a growing enthusiasm. It was time to share the God they had “contemplated” for years.

The missionary impulse of Bérriz was not something improvised. It was a seed buried centuries ago in the contemplative life of the convent, which, fertilized by the embers of self-love from the 4th Mercedarian vow—even unto death—led to the illumination of new horizons of a life of missionary dedication.

In the light of Christ, Margaret discovered the new forms of captivity in her time. Those who do not know Jesus, nor have heard his Gospel, are the new slaves to whom God’s liberating love must reach.

And soon they began to take the necessary “steps”: with the Superiors of the Order of Mercy, with the Roman Curia, with the missionaries…

Unwavering faith in God, a firm will, and great courage in the face of the unknown are the tools and support needed to clear the missionary path and overcome the many difficulties that arise. In this way, they can leave the tranquil and peaceful sanctuary of the Monastery.

On September 19, 1926, the first expedition of Missionary Sisters of Bérriz departed for the mission in Wuhu, China. The “missionary exodus ” of these contemplative women had begun, sustained and encouraged at all times by the inspiration and drive of Margarita, by then the Superior of the Monastery.

This first expedition would be followed by those to Saipan (Mariana Islands), in 1927, Ponape (Caroline Islands), in 1927, and Tokyo, in 1928. Thus, in two years, the first four missions were opened.

Margarita herself traveled around the world twice, accompanying her sisters on mission trips and visiting them in their communities and workplaces.

She also devoted herself with great dedication to the formation of the nuns of the Monastery for that new service and missionary witness to which God was calling them.

The new paths of redemption were not easy. Difficulties, suffering, wars, and imprisonment arose… All were accepted with naturalness and fortitude; it was simply a matter of sharing in Jesus Christ’s death to give LIFE. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain .” They know with great inner comfort that they are fulfilling the fourth redemptive vow : “to remain in the mission, if the good of our brothers and sisters requires it, even at the risk of losing our lives .”

And finally, on May 23, 1930 , the Institute of Mercedarian Missionary Sisters of Bérriz was approved and blessed by the Church.

To this end, Rome had requested two things: letters of recommendation from the bishops in the dioceses where the Sisters were present, and, above all, a secret ballot by the nuns. The result could not have been more favorable: absolute unanimity, with not a single vote missing out of a possible 94.

At the height of her fifties, after a painful illness that did not keep her from her responsibilities leading the new Institute, nor from her life of love and missionary dedication, God called her definitively to enjoy Him; just as she had throughout her life, at that moment she felt “entirely in God’s hands.” She left this world on July 23, 1934 , savoring the “new joy of bringing Christ into the world in others,” the love of her life.

Her last words to her sisters : “I will help you from heaven: yes.”

Margaret, like the apostles on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration of the Lord, had encamped on the mountain of contemplation of the Mystery of Christ the Redeemer; she had tasted the intimacy of the Lord and had desired that He might always be loved…

…but he knew how to descend to the plains of this world, where the painful, difficult path of exclusion for so many people is found, where the crucified of the earth are today, the new forms of slavery, those who do not yet know him, and…

… there she left a large group of consecrated women, dedicated to proclaiming the God of Life, of new life in the Risen Christ, to give life and care for it.

Today, the Institute of Mercedarian Missionary Sisters of Bérriz, spread across five continents and enriched by members from its peoples, follows in their footsteps.

From our communities, we continue with enthusiasm and dedication to collaborate in the liberation of the victims of exclusion, proclaiming Jesus and his Good News of salvation for all.

In the present moment of our humanity, we, the Mercedarian Missionary Sisters of Bérriz, wish to faithfully maintain the contemplative spirit of Mother Margarita,

… his missionary spirit, profoundly human and humanizing.