We have been dealing with saintly physicians in the past Blogs, now here is another profession, which I am sure needs a patron.
As a student, SERVANT of GOD MARIO HIRIART’s spirituality began to radically transform his life and nature. As an engineer and later as university professor, he felt called to live a radical Christian life and to unite work, faith, apostolic commitment, leisure, and prayer in an organic way. As promoter of a distinctive lay spirituality he decided to join the Institute of the Brothers of Mary. He wanted to commit all his time, energy, and talents to make God present and able to be experienced in the contemporary world marked by the rhythm and laws of industry, research, and technical enhancement.
In his lessons, in his apostolate among youth, and in his personal reflections he worked on an deeper understanding of and convincing response to the challenges imposed on Christian lay persons in a growingly secularized world.
At the same time he grew into a deep personal relationship with Jesus to whom he offered his life as a living sacrifice. At age 33, he accepted his terminal illness of cancer as a final possibility to give all for the Lord whom he desired to emulate.
Mario was born in Santiago , Chile
The year that he began his university studies at the School of Engineering
(The Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt was founded inGermany Germany
(The Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt was founded in
His great love for Mary deepened his relationship with Christ in the Eucharist, and ignited his dedication to others. He was a brilliant working for a top engineering firm, but decided to devote himself to the education of youth, so he could lead them to Christ.
Understanding with pain that the path of marriage was not for, he decided to follow the Lord's call to be a lay saint, to dedicate himself exclusively to serving Him, yet staying in the world, doing the ordinary extraordinarily.
He left his home, to do his novitiate at the Secular Institute of the Brothers of Mary. There he served young workers in a technical school and traveled, encouraging many young people and couples to make a radical choice to live their faith and to engage in the construction of a Christian order of society and in public service.
After his return to Chile , he began to do classes at the engineering school of the Catholic University
The Holy Spirit led him to a fullness of the Christian life according to the ideal he had assumed: to be " like Mary, living Chalice, bearer of Christ ". He knew suffering and loneliness. His bad health martyred him with permanent ailments, until a hidden cancer ended up totally undermining his physique.
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| With Father Joseph |
His remains rest after the Schoenstatt Shrine in Bellavista, La
He will become the first lay saint of