After receiving her high school diploma, Sr. M. Xavier entered our Congregation in the Regina Apostolorum community, Pasay City, on 10 July 1957. She underwent her initial formation in this community and then was sent to Lipa to make her novitiate, which concluded with her first profession on 8 December 1963. Sr. M. Xavier was motivated by a profound yearning for holiness in complete correspondence to the grace of God at every moment of her life. On the occasion of her perpetual profession, she wrote to the Superior General: “After ten years of study and reflection, all I know is that the Lord has been very good to me. He wants me to become a good and holy religious, and on my part I want to correspond to the divine mercy he has poured out on me, a poor sinner….”
Happy at having been sent to take the Gospel to the people, Sr. M. Xavier dedicated herself to capillary and collective diffusion in the dioceses of Davao, Naga, Vigan, Olongapo and Cagayan de Oro. She also served as local superior of this last-mentioned community.
Afterward, in Zamboanga, Tuguegarao, Tacloban, Iloilo and Lipa, she continued the diffusion apostolate through her book center activities, visits to the families, and book displays in schools and parishes. Her contribution to the Local Church was known and appreciated everywhere. Sr. M. Xavier was a simple sister who carried out her activities responsibly. She interacted well with the people she met, patiently listening to them, offering them words of consolation and hope, and promising to remember them in prayer. This ease in establishing warm relations with others enabled her to extend the radius of her apostolate more broadly.
Transferred to the Regina Apostolorum community, Pasay, Sr. M. Xavier devoted herself for 10 consecutive years to visiting benefactors and gathering donations for the Pauline mission. A kind and friendly person, she carried in her heart the many people who helped to economically support the Institute’s apostolic initiatives, construction projects and also the needs of the community. Very attentive to praying for the deceased, she never tired of soliciting offerings so that Masses could be celebrated in suffrage of them.
For the last 8 years of her life, Sr. M. Xavier was a member of the Thecla Merlo sub-group of the Pasay community, where she was undergoing treatment for a serious shortage of potassium in her system. She bore her malady in silence, with great courage and faith, trusting in the help of the Lord and of the Virgin Mary, to whom she offered incessant rosaries.
This morning, Sr. M. Xavier was rushed to St. John of God Hospital, where she was immediately hospitalized and diagnosed as suffering from acute coronary syndrome (acute cardiac chest pain). At that point, her life was completely focused on the mystery of God and a subsequent heart attack opened her to communion with the light and love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who welcomed her into their loving embrace.