From Our Lady’s Blue Army:
It’s always refreshing to know that the saints or saintly people had a human side. Some, like St. Louis de Montfort and St. Damien of Molokai, both had angry temperaments that they had to conquer. Sister Lucia was known for her “rough” temperament and tendency towards impatience with others.
As a young Dorothean nun at Pontevedra (she was known then as Sister Maria das Dores), knowing the Rules for humility and docility regarding menial chores, she struggled with her temperament on more than one occasion. In one story as told by Father Robert Fox in his book The Intimate Life of Sister Lucia, Lucia was coming down the stairs carrying a mattress and a young novice asked if she needed help. Lucia replied curtly, “If you do not have anything to do, ask the Mistress of Novices for work.” The young novice was rightly upset and took it to the Mistress of Novices, who told her, “Sister, don’t consider Sr. Dores a saint just because Our Lady appeared to her. She has to work to be one.”