Her bilocation activity is said to have occurred between her cloistered monastery in rural Spain and the Jumano Indians of central New Mexico and West Texas, as well as Tucson, and inspired many Franciscan missionaries in the New World.

Mary of Jesus' biographer and contemporary, the bishop José Jiménez y Samaniego, was a longtime friend of the Coronel family, and wrote that even as a young girl, she had ecstasies and visions in which she felt that God was instructing her about the sinfulness of the world.

[2] At the age of four, she was confirmed by Bishop Diego de Yepes, the biographer and last confessor of Teresa of Avila, who was reportedly impressed with the child's spiritual acumen.

As her parents prepared to accompany her there, Catalina de Arana had a vision that she was to turn the family home into a monastery in which both she and her daughters were to commit their lives as nuns.

[4] Though rules required the abbess to be changed every three years, Mary remained effectively in charge of the monastery until her death, except for a three-year sabbatical in her fifties.

Like her countrywoman Teresa of Avila a generation earlier, these prayerful experiences led to religious ecstasies, including reported accounts of levitation.

At the same time, Fray Estéban de Perea brought Benavides an inquiry from Sor María's confessor in Spain asking whether there was any evidence that she had visited the Jumanos.

As reports of Mary's mystical excursions to the New World proliferated, the Inquisition took notice, although she was not proceeded against with severity, perhaps because of her long written relationship with the Spanish king.

[11] The Mystical City of God, the biography of Mary, is now frequently studied in college and university programs of Spanish language and culture, for its contribution to Baroque literature.

German philosopher and theologian Joseph Görres, while expressing his admiration for the wonderful depth of its speculations, finds that the style is in the bad taste of the period, pompous and strained, and very wearisome in the prolixity of the moral applications appended to each chapter.

[4] In addition to her 14 published works, Mary of Jesus also served as the spiritual (and sometimes political) advisor to King Philip IV of Spain, at his request and for more than 22 years.

[4] Spanish cardinal José Saenz d'Aguirre sought to have the censure annulled since he considered the judgment of the Sorbonne based on a faulty translation.

In 1748, Pope Benedict XIV, while conceding that the book had received the approbation of the Universities of Salamanca, Alcalá, Toulouse, and Louvain, asked the General of the Franciscans to investigate the authenticity of the writings, as it was alleged that her confessors had tampered with the text.

It was also suggested that those who followed the philosophical approach of Thomas Aquinas (mainly the Dominicans and Carmelites) objected to the views of those who followed Duns Scotus (mainly Franciscans) being presented as Divine revelation.

[13] The suspension of the Decree of Innocent XI, condemning the book, was made operative only in Spain, and although Charles II asked to have the permission, to read it extended to the whole of Christendom, Pope Alexander VIII not only refused the petition, but confirmed the Brief of his predecessor.

In 1989, a Spanish physician named Andreas Medina participated in another examination of the remains and told investigative journalist Javier Sierra in 1991: "What most surprised me about that case is that when we compared the state of the body, as it was described in the medical report from 1909, with how it appeared in 1989, we realized it had absolutely not deteriorated at all in the last eighty years.

After the 400th anniversary of her birth in 2002, several groups (including The Spanish Mariology Society, The Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, The Knights of Columbus, The American Council for the Mystical City of God and The Working Group for the Beatification of Sister Maria de Jesus de Agreda) renewed attempts to move her beatification process forward.

In his memoirs, the 18th-century Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova describes reading the Mystical City of God during his imprisonment in the Venetian prison I Piombi.