Mary helped her quit her wild lifestyle and find true happiness in God

Irasema Ángel, 43, exchanged a life of comfort for a life that now seeks to please God. Her testimony is proof of the importance of conversion in the lives of Christians.(...)

When she was only 14, Ángel adopted a rebellious lifestyle, marked by feminism, hedonism, and self-sufficiency. This superficiality led her to distance herself from everyone, including her family, but especially from God and the sacraments.

“I thought I was the master of my own life and that I didn’t have to answer to anyone,” she said.(...)

Thus the years went by: between bars and nightclubs, from Thursday to Sunday nonstop. Soon the parties became an occasion for drugs and lust.

“No one educated me and it was very easy not to control myself. That made me a slave to passions,” she said. “In my case, I didn’t know the difference between love and lust. I was without shame or modesty.”

This way of living, Ángel said, permeated all aspects of her reality with frivolity from her way of dressing to the way she spoke and behaved — a situation that after several years changed radically when the Mother of God intervened in her life.(...)

After a long personal process in which Ángel left her past life behind and began to be formed in the faith, she began to attend Mass at a parish in San Diego. There she “strived to fulfill the will of God,” but it was still difficult for her to overcome some situations that had been ingrained in her for a long time.

At that moment when her faith began to falter, a friend invited her to participate in a traditional dance in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. At each of the meetings, the dance group prayed the rosary before and after each rehearsal in preparation for the pilgrimage on Dec. 12, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

That day Ángel was just one of the pilgrims who venerated the Virgin. She commented that during the trip she didn’t feel anything in particular, but when she entered the church at the end of the procession, she was overcome with tears, which she still cannot explain. 

“I didn’t know what was happening. I had never asked the Virgin for anything directly, but I did ask God for my conversion every day. Then [Our Lady] came and rescued me from the clutches of Satan,” she recounted.

From that moment on, Ángel left behind the sins of her past life. 

“That’s how Mary came into my life and I made a clean break with mortal sin,” she said, adding that “I started to heal my wounds. God gave me another chance.”

Andrés Henríquez, February 23, 2024 

Adapted from https: Catholic News Agency