Under Angel Wings - Biography Of Sister Maria Antonia (Cecy Cony)

Under Angel Wings is the true story of a Brazilian girl named Cecy Cony (later Sr. Maria Antonia), who was born in 1900 and was led to high sanctity under the continual guidance, protection and inspiration of her Guardian Angel, whom she called her "New Friend." The autobiography of Sister Maria Antonia was first published in 1949 by the Franciscan Press of Petropolis, Brazil. This book became so popular that the first edition was soon exhausted, and a second edition was issued in 1950. Because of the extraordinary popularity of the book, numerous editions were again printed during the 1950's, and translated into various languages. including the current one from Tan Publishers in 2000.

The editor of her autobiography was Father John Baptist Reus, SJ., who had been Sister Maria Antonia's spiritual director during the last few years of her life. In his introduction Father Reus tells us how the autobiography came to be written:
“Obliged by obedience, Sister Maria Antonia wrote the recollections of her life with a certain repugnance, and after asking the special help of Our Lord. As she finished each of the six notebooks of which the autobiography consists, she handed them in to her religious superiors, and did not ask anything further about them…” It was only after she died that the notebooks were published.

Her spiritual director Father John Baptist Reus, SJ writes- “…Humble, singularly sincere and innocent, she never lied in her life, that is, she never offended her Divine Master deliberately ["por querer” ie- intentionally]. She was incapable of inventing mystical occurrences. Neither from books nor in any other ordinary way could she have become acquainted with the supernatural phenomena that she describes so clearly. When she learned toward the end of her life that there were souls who never experienced the sensible presence of Our Lord at Holy Communion, she asked with great astonishment: ’Not even on the day of their First Holy Communion?’ When she received an answer in the negative, she replied very sadly ‘Those souls never came to know of our Lord's Presence in this life.’ “
Sister Maria Antonia saw her Guardian Angel throughout most of her life, however there is a period beginning in 1935 where God permitted that she no longer see her “New Friend”, perhaps because God was leading her, and drawing her ever closer to Himself through the “night of the spirit”, which is often experienced by mystics and those having reached the higher realms of spirituality.