ACI Prensa Staff, Feb 23, 2024 / 06:00 am
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.
From a very young age, Ángel — a Mexican national who resides in the United States — was involved in “a life full of luxuries,” a reality that she herself described as “a glass box full of lies,” where freedom and complete happiness did not exist.
Speaking with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Ángel shared that her relationship with her father was always distant, which marked her youth. “At a certain point my father was unfaithful to my mother, and that’s when my heart broke,” she said.
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.
Born in the Mexican state of Baja California, she commented that “it was very common” for American influence to be very strong there — especially Hollywood — and she recognized that it had a profound impact on her way of conceiving the world.
“Hollywood knew how to sell me movies, fashion, music, and pornography. This deforms your identity and dignity as a daughter of God,” Ángel said. In addition, she noted that at that time she only thought about “having a good time and having fun.”
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.
The Virgin Mary
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.
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“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.”
The Mexican woman has been “walking hand in hand with Christ” for 18 years now. For her, the only goal that a human being should aspire to is to achieve holiness. She calls on young people to “not settle for less” and for “their standards and expectations to always be high.”
“Aspire to holiness. It’s a path that’s not easy, but with Jesus and Mary it really is possible,” she said. “For me that is true success, not what the world offers you. This is true heroism.”
“The success you seek is God’s dream for your life because it protects you from false love, it makes you less selfish, more generous, it gives you back your personality, your identity, and your character,” Ángel explained.
To learn more about Irasema Ángel and her conversion story, you can follow her on Facebook and on X.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
