Welcome to our daily Rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the

son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to

pray for. I want to share the life of a saint that has probably become one of my favorite.

Her name is St. Maryam from Bethlehem. She was born in Ebelin, a small village between Nazareth and Haifa in

Palestine, which is now Israel, on 5th, 1846.

And even though her nickname was The Little Arab,

she is a Catholic Palestinian who was declared a saint in 2015.

And though our feast day is August 26th,

I want to share her life with you now because I think her motto,

if you will learn to live it, will transform your life.

Now, her parents died when she was just three years old,

leaving her and her brother Paul orphaned, and they were soon split up and given to different relatives.

Miriam went to live with her uncle's family, who moved shortly later to Alexandria, Egypt.

And as was the custom in the Middle East at the time,

a marriage was arranged for Mariam

when she was just 12 years old. But she refused, because from the time of five she had promised to give herself to Jesus to be his bride alone. So she begged her uncle, but he would not change his mind. So she

turned to the Blessed Virgin Mary. And Our lady inspired her to follow the example of Catherine of Siena, who, facing a similar situation,

cut off all her hair. So Meriam did the same and arrived at the engagement party completely bald.

Well, as you imagine, the boy rejected her and her uncle enraged, disowned her and made her one of the

servants of the family.

Longing, however, to be reunited with her brother, who still lived near Nazareth in Palestine,

she learned of a Muslim man who was going to Nazareth, so she went to ask him to carry a message to her brother.

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