The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation Part 2

Our Lord, whose Spirit breatheth where He will, had chosen that little child to be in an especial manner all His own, and He desired to secure possession of her soul while yet it looked so lovely, all glistening with the baptismal dew in the morning light of its young purity. But as the gift of the heart, to be acceptable, must be voluntary, her concurrence in His designs of mercy had to be asked. Neither, however, to visible or invisible guardian angel would He intrust the invitation, which, to crown His infinite condescension, was to come from Himself in person. She has left us a touchingly simple description of the extraordinary favour referred to, which she always looked on as the first link in the chain of her vocation to the mystic life, and prized accordingly.

"I was only about seven years old," she says, "when one night in sleep, I seemed to myself to be in the courtyard of a country school with one of my young companions. My eyes were fixed on the heavens, when suddenly I saw them opened, and our Lord Jesus Christ descending towards me through the air. As His most adorable Majesty drew near, I felt my heart all on fire with His love, and eagerly stretched out my arms to Him. The most lovely above the sons of men, beautiful and attractive beyond description, lovingly embraced me, and then He asked, 'Wilt thou be mine?' I answered, 'yes,' and having thus received my consent, He re- ascended in our sight to heaven. When I awoke, my soul was so ravished with joy at this unspeakable favour, that in my childish simplicity, I detailed the wonderful particulars to all who would listen to me. The sweet words of our Blessed Lord remained ever indelibly engraven on my memory, and so completely did they absorb my attention, that although I saw His sacred Humanity, I afterwards retained no distinct impression concerning it."

It was an important crisis in the child's spiritual life, that heavenly vision, for on its results depended the bent and colouring of her future career. By her ready compliance with the invitation of divine grace, she subjected her whole will unreservedly and for ever to the dominion of her Lord, and thus left Him free to carry out His yet unrevealed designs for her personal sanctification, and the salvation of innumerable souls bound up with hers. Henceforth, His divine inspirations would find no impediment to their action in the docile heart of that little child.

According to St. Bernard, the embrace of G.o.d means His Holy Spirit. To embrace a soul, and to give her His Spirit, are then in G.o.d identical acts. By the embrace noted in the vision, the Holy Ghost took possession of the heart of His chosen Spouse in quality of her Director, and although unacquainted as yet with the secrets, and even the name of the interior life, she found herself guided along its paths by that divine Master, as steadily and securely as if she had been led by a visible hand. In her doubts, she consulted Him with great simplicity, and never failed to receive the light which she needed for her practical direction; light so clear and vivid, that it sometimes carried with it the force almost of demonstration. This supernatural guidance, commenced thus early, and continued through life, may be ranked among the most eminent of her great spiritual privileges. But although the first, it was not the only favour conferred on her by our Lord at His most gracious visit.

Other precious, practical effects of that visit were to disengage her heart from the amus.e.m.e.nts in general so eagerly sought by children of her age; to confirm her desire of virtue; to develop her love of retirement and prayer; to intensify her hatred of sin, and strengthen her resolution to guard with jealous care the holy treasure of her baptismal innocence.

The embrace vouchsafed her by our Lord, so embalmed her soul with sweetness, so inflamed her heart with love, that she ceased not thenceforth to "run after Him in the odour of His perfumes," and so readily did her thoughts and affections turn to Him, their Centre, that it would seem as if in vanishing from her sight in the vision just referred to, He had taken both back to heaven with Himself. Her delight was to resort to the most solitary places and the least frequented churches, that she might enjoy with less interruption the sweets of communion with Him. Struck by the humble and respectful att.i.tudes of pious persons whom she met in the church, and believing that G.o.d must certainly grant the pet.i.tions of those who prayed with so much reverence, she at once set about imitating them; and no doubt, even indifferent observers must have been impressed by the sight of a child between nine and ten years of age spending long hours on her knees before the tabernacle, her little hands devoutly joined, her soul absorbed as if in ecstasy, and her very countenance wearing a seraphic expression. She spoke of her childish wants, with simple confidence to our Lord and His Blessed Mother, and every day she asked that dear Mother that she might see her at least before death. From constant a.s.sociation with Him who is the joy of the angels, and the sweetness of the saints, her naturally bright disposition grew the brighter, and her engaging amiability and artless courtesy, the more striking and attractive.

She early manifested a singular reverence and love for religious instruction. Having heard that G.o.d speaks through the preachers of His word, she conceived so profound a veneration for their office and their person, that when she met one of them in the street, she would have followed him to kiss the traces of his steps, had she not been restrained by the fear of observation. Without understanding much of what was said in sermons, she still loved to listen to them, and on her return home, would repeat what she had retained, adding her own simple ideas and reflections. As she grew older, and therefore better able to take in their meaning, her heart, she says, seemed to her like a vessel into which the word of G.o.d poured in the manner of a liquid into a vase. Like the br.i.m.m.i.n.g vase, her soul so overflowed with heavenly emotions, that unable to contain their abundance, she was constrained to give them vent in prayer, or in humble efforts to impart some of her treasures to other souls. This early inclination for receiving and communicating religious instruction, was a pre-disposition for the grand work which the future reserved for her, and when, after the lapse of many years, her destiny had a.s.sociated her with the generous missionaries who bore the knowledge of the name of Christ to infidel lands, she recalled the aspirations of childhood's days, in which, as she says, her heart had followed the ministers of the Gospel to the scenes of their labours, and her mind had been more engrossed by their n.o.ble deeds, than by the events actually pa.s.sing around her.

Daily more intent on excluding from the solitude of her soul every distracting thought and care thus the better to dispose it for the permanent abode of the divine Guest who will have the heart to Himself, she withdrew more and more from all intercourse with creatures, except that required by charity and courtesy. Seeing in the recreative reading provided for her by her parents, an obstacle to recollection and a waste of time, she totally laid it aside, subst.i.tuting for books of mere amus.e.m.e.nt, those which treated of spiritual subjects.

As she advanced in years, the love of G.o.d which inflamed her soul sought a vent not only in her almost uninterrupted communications with the divine Object of her affections, but in exterior active works of charity towards her neighbour. The tabernacle and the poor were the two magnets that attracted her heart, and next to the hours spent before the altar, none yielded her such pure delight as those pa.s.sed among the lowly, suffering members of her dear Saviour. She found no company so congenial as theirs; no occupation so agreeable as the humble services which their desolate condition required. She fed, clothed and consoled them, and even sometimes partook of their poor fare, reserving for her own share their remnants and refuse. She would have been glad to suffer in their stead, and says, that but for the uprightness of her intention, she might sometimes have erred by excess of liberality towards them.

Going one day, as usual, on a mission of charity, she inadvertently pa.s.sed too near a cart which some workmen were in the act of loading. Not seeing her, they raised the vehicle so suddenly, that her sleeve was caught in the shaft, and after being lifted into the air, she was dashed back violently to the ground. The terrified spectators concluded that she must have been killed, but she had not received the least injury, a favour for which, as the Almighty revealed to her, she was indebted to her love for the poor.

After some years, we hear of the first notable imperfection of her childhood and youth, and nothing perhaps gives a more accurate idea of her innocence, than the gravity which that imperfection a.s.sumed in her estimation. The singular degree of supernatural light vouchsafed her, the sublimity of interior purity to which she was called, and the height of the virtue to which she had already attained, explain the reproaches of the Holy Spirit, and her own keen remorse for an infidelity which appears trivial to us because of our want of enlightenment in the ways of G.o.d.

In her childish recreations, it had been her favourite amus.e.m.e.nt to copy the devotional practices which she had witnessed at Church; to kneel, to prostrate, to clasp her hands, to raise her eyes to heaven, to strike her breast; in short, to repeat as a pastime what she had seen done at prayer. In ordinary children, a fancy for such diversions is often considered a happy presage of a future vocation to the ecclesiastical or religious state, but in her enlightened eyes, these childish follies seemed inconsistent with the gravity and reserve becoming one so favoured as she had been. Viewed in this aspect, they appeared to her, not as sins certainly, but as imperfections; light vapours, it is true, but vapours still, and therefore capable of intercepting to some extent the rays of the eternal Sun of justice. It was not until her sixteenth year that her early pastimes struck her as reprehensible, and then, with the new light, there came a second to the effect, that although deliberate sin alone forms necessary matter for confession, an imperfection like that recorded might lawfully find a place in the self-accusations of one, destined as she was, for an exceptional degree of purity of soul. No positive duty however, required the sacrifice of natural feeling involved in the latter course, therefore she hesitated for awhile to adopt it, thus for the first time balancing the repugnances of nature against the inspirations of grace. But the Spouse of souls will admit no reservation in those whom He has chosen to be all His own, and we learn from herself, that by this infidelity, she interrupted for a time the fulness of the flow of divine liberality in her regard, and checked the freedom and rapidity of her progress to G.o.d. To all but herself, however, that progress was very apparent, furnishing matter of wonder and admiration, no less than of edification.

Only two convents existed at that period in the city of Tours; one of Carmelites, quite recently founded; the other of Benedictines, governed just then by a near relative of her mother's. This latter monastery she frequently visited, and as might have been expected, the oftener she breathed its atmosphere of peace and prayer, the more she longed to make it the place of her rest for ever. Her inclination for the religious life gradually settled into a desire so strong and irrepressible, that even before she had reached her sixteenth year, with its renewed call to perfection, she had confided her wishes to her mother. While rejoicing at the intelligence, and giving the project every reasonable encouragement, that good mother suggested, that although the step was undeniably a holy and a happy one, it was very important too, consequently, that it would he better to delay it until time and reflection had more fully manifested its wisdom. Had the youthful Mary been at that time under regular spiritual direction, there can be no doubt that she would have been advised to follow her attraction for the cloister, but she knew nothing whatever about direction, imagining that spiritual communications even to a confessor were limited to the accusation of sins at confession. Being very timid, she did not venture to press the matter, so her mother, hearing nothing more of it, naturally concluded that her inclination for religion had been the result of some pa.s.sing fit of fervour, or perhaps only a childish fancy, forgotten as soon as formed, an idea apparently so much the more reasonable, as her natural gaiety of character seemed to dispose her rather for the world than for a convent. The seeming mistake was in reality a step to the development of the particular designs of G.o.d over His faithful servant, for although His general design is alike in all the saints, the especial destiny of each varies, and while the great outline of sanct.i.ty is universally the same, there are minute shades of difference in the characteristic virtues of individuals. The saints form the beautiful garden of the Church, redolent of every variety of sweetest fragrance, and enamelled with every shade of fairest tinting. The day was to come, when the Mother of the Incarnation would be bound to her Lord by the vows of religion, but before becoming a guide for His consecrated Spouses, she was to pa.s.s through married life and widowhood, that she might first furnish an example of perfection in both conditions, and thus serve as a model for woman in every state. Her ultimate destiny involved a species of apostolate among the savages of Canada, and for this, the novitiate awaiting her in the world would prove a more effectual preparation, than would the novitiate of the cloister. There she would have ample opportunities of practically learning the lesson of the cross, and at the same time of consolidating the virtues which were to be the distinguishing characteristics of her sanct.i.ty. Her zeal and charity would find a wider field, and her gentle patience reap a richer harvest, her union with G.o.d would be strengthened, while tested, by exposure to the distracting cares of life, and her purity of soul would shine out with brighter l.u.s.tre amidst hitherto unknown difficulties and dangers.

And so, when in after years, the voice of the Spouse would bid her arise, and leave her home and country, and follow Him to the distant land which He would show her, she would be prepared to answer, "My heart, O Lord, is ready; my heart is ready and my work is done!"

The first page of the history of her life,-which we are about to close, has not been without its practical teaching. It is the page of the young; happy those who study well the record! They will discover, that "it is good for a man when he hath borne the yoke from his youth." (Lam. iii.

27). They will learn to admire the heavenly beauty of a pure soul, and fascinated by its unearthly charms, they will resolve to close their own hearts against sin, excluding even the smallest, as a security against the entrance of the greater. They will learn to appreciate the happiness of knowing and loving our Lord, like the blessed child who found her sweetest joy before the altar, and they will surely ask her to beg for them a share in her love of Jesus and her spirit of prayer, courageously checking the propensity for idle talking and still idler reading which, are so great an obstacle to recollection. Studying her love of retirement, they will pray for grace to resist worldly influences, and following her to the miserable homes of the dest.i.tute, they will aspire to become, like her, angels of comfort to the desolate and sorrowing.

Thus will their childhood and youth be saintly, as, were those of the model now presented to them.

CHAPTER II.

HER MARRIED LIFE, WITH ITS TRIALS AND VIRTUES.

Mary Guyart was just entering on her seventeenth year, when her parents proposed to her a matrimonial alliance apparently calculated to insure her happiness. Such an engagement was utterly repugnant to her inclinations; it was inconsistent with the high hopes she had cherished of consecrating herself wholly to G.o.d in religion; its duties and solicitudes seemed a decided obstacle to the cultivation of that spirit of prayer and recollection which had become as her life-breath. Drawn daily more and more forcibly to an interior life in G.o.d, she shrank with her whole soul from a position which must necessarily immerse her in he distracting occupations and hara.s.sing cares of the world. But accustomed to look on her parents as the representatives of G.o.d, and therefore seeing only His will in the impending project, she submitted with the respectful docility habitual to her, and none but the interior witness of. the sacrifice to obedience, could have suspected the cost at which it was offered. She simply a.s.sured her mother of her readiness to obey, adding the, almost prophetic promise, that if G.o.d should bless her with a son, she would dedicate him to the Divine service, and that if He should ever restore her own liberty, she would consecrate it also to Him alone.

Her only object now became to prepare so fervently for the holy sacrament of marriage, that she might receive with it the abundant supply of grace needed for the due fulfilment of the difficult and responsible obligations soon to be hers.

Few indeed have ever brought to it more admirable dispositions than did that reluctant, yet in one sense, willing bride, therefore it followed, that although the absence of pomp and show may have divested the ceremonial of all charm for worldlings, the perfection: of her interior preparation rendered it one of rare beauty in the eyes of heaven. She wore no costly attire, it is true, but in compensation, her soul was arrayed in that fairest of garments, her white baptismal robe, free still from spot or wrinkle, as on the day when it was first a.s.sumed. She displayed no sparkling gems, but many a virtue shone instead with a glorious light, before whose l.u.s.tre that of flashing diamond and gilded coronet fades away, and as she thus stood before the altar in all the freshness of her innocence and the radiance of her spiritual beauty, must she not have won the smiles. of angels? Must she not have attracted the complacency of the angels' Lord?

The duties of her new state came to her marked with the sign of the cross, nevertheless she set about them with an energy and devotedness which clearly manifested the singleness of her views, the purity of her motives, and the enlightened character of her piety. Knowing that perfection is in the accomplishment of G.o.d's will, and believing that as long as she faithfully complied with the duties of her condition in life, she should walk in the sure, straight path of obedience to that holy will, she took immediate measures for the discharge of its fourfold obligations to G.o.d, her husband, her servants and herself. The spirit of prayer conferred on her at the early visit of our Lord, had been ever since developing itself more and more strongly, and her first precaution in arranging her role of life, was that no worldly interests should ever be permitted to interfere with her spiritual exercises, whence alone she could derive strength to fulfil her daily duties and courage to bear her daily crosses. Yet she never allowed them to encroach on domestic arrangements, her well-regulated piety having taught her, that when these latter required the sacrifice of her love of prayer and solitude she was doing G.o.d's will more perfectly in subst.i.tuting active work for the enjoyment of immediate communion with Himself. Prolonged meditations, holy Ma.s.s, the sacraments and the word of G.o.d,--these were the four sources whence she drew the waters of grace to refresh and invigorate her soul. The holy Communion was above all, her joy and her life. As she herself tells us, it replenished her with sweetness, enlivened her faith, fortified her inclination for virtue, strengthened her confidence in G.o.d, intensified her love of her neighbour, and supported her under the weight of the cross. In one of her letters of after years, she remarks that a single communion well made, is sufficient to sanctify a soul, since it unites, her to the Saint of Saints, adding, that the reason why it does not produce this result, is, that the soul after having given herself to our Lord, in return for His having given Himself to her, too soon revokes the offering in practice, nature shrinking from the total renunciation of self which the divine Sanctifier requires as a preliminary to His action.

It was not so, her son remarks, with the holy Mother. Bringing to the heavenly Banquet a disengaged heart, an almost annihilated will, and an entire abandonment to the Spirit of G.o.d, she not only co-operated with, but facilitated the operation of the sacramental grace, which meeting in her no obstacle to its freedom of action, bore her with marvellous rapidity along the path of solid virtue. Of such Communions it was, that she says, "The more frequently I received the sacraments, the more ardently I desired to receive them, because the more clearly I saw that they were to me the source of all spiritual blessings."

The love and reverence for G.o.d's word which she had manifested from earliest childhood, had but gained strength with years. To listen to it was still her delight, as it had been in her young days. She loved it for its own sake, irrespectively of the manner in which it might be announced, looking on every preacher as a herald of the great King, charged with the divine message of salvation. She says that her a.s.siduity in attending sermons was rewarded by a great abundance of light and love, an increase of attraction and facility for prayer, and a renewal of fervour in the practice of the virtues of her state. With the enlarged experience of the spiritual life acquired at a later date, she recognised that He who never tries His creatures beyond their strength, had imparted to her in these benedictions of His sweetness, the particular graces needed to support her under the crosses with which it had been His will to surround her in the troubled days of her married life.

Her veneration for the preachers of G.o.d's word extended to all the ceremonies of Divine worship. Enchanted with their beauty and grandeur, and at the same time supernaturally enlightened to understand their mysterious signification, she was filled with grat.i.tude to her eternal Benefactor for the signal favour of having been born of Catholic parents, and thus made a child of the one true Church long before she could appreciate, or even comprehend the blessing. She was always eager to be among the first to enter the church, that securing a place where no part of the sublime ceremonial could escape her, she might be free to meditate on, and enter into the spirit of all.

The uprightness of her motives, and the holiness of her dispositions in entering the marriage state, ought, we naturally imagine, to have secured her at least the average amount of its happiness. But for the purification of her soul and the perfecting of her virtue, G.o.d permitted that her garland of bridal flowers should soon be turned into a wreath of thorns, and thorns all the sharper, that they were pointed by the hand to which she might have expected to look as her shield against trouble. It is difficult to explain this singular phase of her diversified career.

Her husband is represented as eminently endowed with the richest gifts of mind and person; he fully appreciated the value of the treasure which he possessed in her, and did ample justice to her admirable qualities, impressed most of all, perhaps, by the calm patience which no annoyance could ruffle; the steady love which no trial could shake; the Christian heroism which gathered new courage from each new shock;--yet it is nevertheless quite certain that the bitter sufferings of her married life originated, though unintentionally, with him. They rendered her duty in his regard all the more arduous, yet it was not on that account the less perfectly fulfilled. In uniting her destiny with his, she believed that she was carrying out an arrangement of the admirable providence of G.o.d; hence from the first moment of their union, she looked on him as holding to her the place of G.o.d. In thus adopting the supernatural principles of faith as the guide of all her relations towards him, she cut off the thousand sources of trouble and temptation which are sure to arise whenever nature, and not grace, holds rule,--so it happened, that among the sorrows of her wedded life, domestic disunion, at least, never found a place, and it followed too, that her spiritualized affection stood tests, which purely human love would not have borne. She was never known to fail in the respect or obedience due to her husband; her constant study was to promote his comfort; her unceasing aim not only to defer to, but even to antic.i.p.ate his slightest wishes, and all was done with the winning sweetness and rare prudence which were among her characteristics.

Nature had indeed dealt bountifully with her, and grace developing, refining and spiritualizing the gifts of nature, had produced one of those dispositions, which, to include all praise in a single word, are sometimes termed angelic. Her temper was sweet and gentle, but it was a gentleness as much removed from languid apathy and insensibility, as from impulsive quickness and impetuosity. It was the serenity of a soul which, possessing G.o.d, is happy in Him, and has no desire beyond Him, and it excluded neither firmness in decision, nor courage and resolution in difficulty, nor prompt.i.tude and energy in action. Her nature was so placid and docile, that we never hear, even in her childhood, of the least of those ebullitions of anger or manifestations of self-will, usual in ordinary children. It was so enduring and forgiving, that while inoffensive herself, she was incapable of taking offence, and absolutely inaccessible to resentment. It was so kind and tender, that sympathy for the troubles of others, especially the poor, was among the very first of the features which her childish disposition revealed, and which, like all her great qualities, strengthened with time. There was nothing rigid in her piety, repulsive in her manner, austere in her ideas, or contracted in her mind. She served the Lord with joy, and so, her interior peace was reflected in an external cheerfulness, tempered ever by a sweet, modest gravity that imparted dignity to her demeanour and commanded universal respect. Her heart's history might be epitomized in one word,--self- sacrifice,--and truly it was the quality of which she had most need. Her charity has drawn an impenetrable veil over the precise nature, as well as the painful details of the trials which lasted all through her short union with Mr. Martin. Alluding to them in later life, in one of her confidential letters to her son, she says "The only comfort of my married life was that I was able to consecrate you to G.o.d before your birth, and that your father, who possessed a good heart, and had the fear of G.o.d, not only sanctioned, but even approved of my devotions. Regarding certain occurrences with which you are acquainted, and which are to be imputed to inadvertence, he regretted them most heartily, and often asked my pardon for them with tears,"--tears, she might have added, not only of self- reproach, but of admiration for the meek endurance of the gentle sufferer.

To the perfect fulfilment of her duty to her husband, she added the exact discharge of her obligations to her household. Mr. Martin was at the head of a silk manufactory which gave employment to a number of workmen, and these at once became the objects of the zeal and charity of their good mistress. Her first aim was to secure influence over them, that she might gain their hearts, and then bring their hearts so won, to G.o.d. For this end, she attended to their wants as carefully as if they had been her own children, devoting her chief solicitude to the concerns of the soul.

Dreading beyond all evils, an offence against the G.o.d whom she loved supremely, she induced them to go regularly to confession, that its protecting grace might be their preservative from sin. To animate them to virtue, she gave them occasional exhortations, repeating the instructions which she had heard in sermons, and adding her own reflections; but prudent in her zeal, she took care not to intrude her lessons at unseasonable times, generally selecting for them the hours of meals, and by this means at once feeding the souls of her hearers with the word of G.o.d, and cutting off frivolous, or perhaps sinful topics.

A living model of the virtues which she inculcated, she encouraged her dependents even more by example than by precept, to love and serve G.o.d faithfully. Always calm and self-possessed, affable and kind, she practically ill.u.s.trated the beauty of peace and union. Patient and self- controlled, she taught the heroism of Christian endurance. As solicitous for the interests and as intent on the happiness of others, as if her own heart had not been wrung with anguish, and oppressed with care, she exemplified the unselfishness of true charity. Enlightened and judicious in her views, orderly and systematic in her arrangements, active and energetic in the practical details of business, she taught by her conduct, more forcibly than by any words, that "piety is good for all things." It need not be added that she won the love of her domestics, who looking on her more as a gentle mother than as a mistress, sympathized in her sorrows as if they had been personal, and manifested on all occasions their compa.s.sion for her afflictions, their admiration of her fort.i.tude, and their reverence for her person. Knowing that well-ordered charity begins at home, she took care never to devote herself so entirely to the salvation of others, as to neglect her own soul. In order to secure time for the requirements of both, she avoided unnecessary visits and idle amus.e.m.e.nts, and having fully complied with her domestic duties, she retired to her oratory, there to find in prayer and spiritual reading repose from past fatigues, and courage for new labours.

Thus pa.s.sed her first probation in the world. The death of her husband brought it to a close at the end of only two years, but they were years so rich in every virtue of her condition, that the married woman who would lead a sanctified and useful life, is sure of attaining the holy end by following her example. She was indeed the model of a faultless wife; so a.s.siduous in prayer, that it would seem as if she considered prayer her only obligation; so devoted at the same time to the interests of all connected with her, that it would appear as if her domestic responsibilities were her absorbing concern, and through all, so utterly forgetful of self, that chance observers could never have suspected how those cheerfully discharged duties involved the living sacrifice of her bleeding heart.

In this second page of the life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation, we read a continuance of the work of grace in her soul. We meet the same virtues with which the opening page has made us familiar, but now expanded on a wider sphere, and strengthened by severer conflicts, and still, at every step, we note for our own instruction the action of the Spirit of G.o.d, and her docile correspondence, the two necessary and inseparable agents in the sanctification of man. In the biography which he has left us of his saintly mother, her son particularly directs attention to the solidity of the foundation which she prepared for the edifice of her future holiness. Guided by the Divine Director, who since early childhood had undertaken the formation of her soul, she adopted as the four fundamental principles of her spiritual life, fidelity to the duty of prayer, careful avoidance of every deliberate sin, the frequent reception of the holy sacraments, and punctual attendance at divine service, as well as at sermons, and all public observances and ceremonies of the Church. By thus steadying the foundation, she ensured the permanent stability of the building, and by similar means only will any one else secure the same end. Prayer and the sacraments purify the soul; purity of soul prepares for union with G.o.d; union with the Church at once forms and cements the bonds of union with G.o.d. Sanct.i.ty, as so often observed, is primarily the work of grace, but grace will come to us only through the appointed channels. If we cut off the channel, we cut off also the supply, deprived of which, far from advancing in the ways of G.o.d, we shall but languish and lose ground.

"Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."

(Ps. cxxvi. 1).

CHAPTER III.

WIDOWHOOD.--LIFE OF SOLITUDE AND PRAYER.

The young wife was but nineteen when a new scene in life's great drama was opened before her by the death of her husband. Although, through G.o.d's permission, he had caused her very bitter sorrows, her naturally warm heart was not the less grieved at the separation. She had fully appreciated his good qualities; had found excuses in her charity for his shortcomings, and had loved him with sincere affection, but as she had seen and accepted an arrangement of the divine will in the formation of the marriage tie, so did she recognise and adore a dispensation of the same Almighty will in the. breaking of the bond, and this one consideration sufficed to reconcile her to the trial, and to give rest to her soul. At the period of her widowhood, her prospects were no doubt cheerless enough. Her pecuniary affairs had been left in a state of great embarra.s.sment; she had an infant of six months old to provide for, and as she remarks, her comparative youth and inexperience seemed to unfit her for a struggle with the difficulties of her position, but here, as ever, her beautiful trust in G.o.d supported her, and with a firm, filial reliance on His promise to be with those who are in tribulation, she took up her new crosses with resignation and abandonment so perfect, that neither loss of fortune, nor antic.i.p.ation of absolute poverty, nor anxiety for the fate of her little child could disturb her serenity or shake her confidence.

The virtue and amiability which she had evinced during her first matrimonial engagement, soon procured her new and far more advantageous offers, while the capacity and integrity which had marked her business transactions, led to very promising proposals for re-embarking in commerce. Prudence seemed in favour of acceptance; natural inclination was opposed to it. In weighing the question, however, it was not to natural inclination that she appealed for a decision; this never had been her guide, nor should it now. If it were, the remembrance of the miseries of her married life would have been quite sufficient reason to deter her from risking a repet.i.tion of them, but faith had taught her to see in those past crosses, only valuable opportunities of practising virtue and acquiring merit, therefore she gave the apprehension of their renewal no place in her deliberations. The interior attraction which sweetly but irresistibly urged her to devote herself all to G.o.d,--this it was which determined her to embrace a life of entire seclusion in the world, as soon as her affairs should be arranged. In forming her plans, she can scarcely have refrained from casting a wistful glance at the attractive solitude of the cloister, but knowing that its entrance was for the present closed to her by her duty to her child, she resigned herself to wait for the promised land, until she should first have crossed the intervening desert. Referring to this period in one of her after letters to her son, she speaks of the transports of her grat.i.tude at finding herself free to follow her call to solitude, where without distraction or division she could think of and love her Lord, while she watched over the babe whom He had committed to her keeping. The death of her mother-in- law, in about a month after that of her husband, removed the last obstacle to the accomplishment of her project.

Connected with the early months of her widowhood, is a wondrous supernatural favour, granted her as if to confirm her late determination, and mark it with a sensible sign of heaven's approval. We shall record it in the words best suited to so sublime a subject,--her own. "On the eve,"

she says, "of the feast of the Incarnation, 1620, I was on my way to business, which I recommended to G.o.d by my ordinary aspiration, 'In thee, O Lord, I have hoped; let me never be confounded!'--when suddenly, my progress was unaccountably arrested, and while I stood motionless in body, the action of my mind was equally suspended, all recollection of the affairs I was engaged in vanishing instantaneously from my memory.

Then the eyes of my soul were wondrously opened in one moment, and all the sins, faults and imperfections of my life revealed to me in general and in particular, with indescribable distinctness. At the same time, I saw myself plunged in a bath of blood, and I knew that it was the blood of the Son of G.o.d which had been shed for the very sins now so clearly represented to me. If the Almighty in His great goodness had not sustained me, I think I should have died of terror, so horrible did even the smallest sin appear. Oh! what words can express the emotion of the soul at seeing the Lord of infinite goodness and incomprehensible sanct.i.ty insulted by a worm of the earth, and a Man-G.o.d shedding His most adorable blood to reconcile sinners to His Father! Above all, who can describe her feelings at finding herself personally stained with sin, and recognising that the Incarnate G.o.d would have done for the expiation of her individual guilt, what He has done for the atonement of the transgressions of all men in general! At that moment, my heart seemed wholly changed into love for Him who had shown me this signal mercy, and it was filled at the same time with indescribable, and even unimaginable sorrow for having offended Him. This feeling of loving sorrow was so overpowering, that I would willingly have thrown myself into flames, if thus I could have appeased it, and strangest of all, its force was full of gentleness. It sweetly bound my soul by its very charms, and led her on a willing captive. A strong interior impulse urged me to confess my sins, and on returning to my usual condition, I found myself standing opposite the little church of the Feuillants who had lately established themselves at Tours. I entered, and seeing one of the Fathers standing in the middle of the chapel as if he had been expecting my arrival, I on the spot confessed the sins which had just been discovered to me, too intent on making reparation to Him whom I had offended, to notice that I might easily have been overheard by a lady who had entered the church in the meantime. When I had finished, the Father gently told me to return the next day to his confessional, and I left without observing at the moment that I had not received absolution. This omission was supplied at my renewed confession next morning. During the first year that I remained under the direction of this Father, I confined myself entirely to the accusation of my sins, thinking that nothing else should be introduced at confession, but having heard a pious girl say that it was not right to practise corporal austerities without permission from the confessor, I applied for it to mine, and he then regulated the amount of these, as well as the number of my confessions and communions. I returned home, changed into another creature, and that so completely, that I no longer recognised myself. I discovered with unmistakable clearness the ignorance under cover of which I had hitherto thought myself very innocent, my conduct very harmless, and my whole spiritual condition blameless. After our Lord had opened my eyes, I saw myself as I was, and I had to own that my justice was but iniquity."

She always looked on this heavenly favour as one of the greatest she had ever received, and its date as synonymous with that of her perfect conversion to G.o.d. "It would be difficult," says her son, "to lead a more exemplary life than hers had been; by the word conversion, we are not then to understand, a transition from a state of sin to a state of grace, but a resolute determination to bid adieu wholly to the world, that she might give herself all to G.o.d and live only by His love." To mark her entire separation from the world, she a.s.sumed a peculiarly grave style of dress, dismissed her servants, gave up her house, and returned to her father's, where free from all care arid responsibility, she found herself as she desired, alone with G.o.d alone. She chose an apartment in the upper story as the most retired, and between this and the adjoining oratory, she pa.s.sed most of her time in prayer. She was never to be seen except at church or at home; paid no visits and received very few; spoke but rarely, and then concisely. She took her frugal meals at her father's table, then retired to her solitude, as she says herself, "like the dove to its nest." It was at this time, that in addition to her other most severe austerities, she gave up the use of linen, subst.i.tuting serge.

Knowing the danger of inaction, she occupied the intervals between prayer in embroidery, choosing this employment because it left the mind free to converse with her Lord. But although her life was thus hidden in G.o.d, it was no part of her piety to forget the interests of her neighbour. In her present straitened circ.u.mstances, she could no longer open her hand in alms as had been her wont in better days, but the sick poor retained their old place in her heart, and among these she still could always find ample exercise for her charity. Accordingly, she sought out the most revolting cases of disease, and made appointments with the sufferers to meet her at her home, where kneeling before them while they sat, she washed and dressed their loathsome sores, contriving to stoop closely over their ulcerated limbs, so that nature might be crucified in every sense, and crushed in every feeling. And as the soul's interests are more precious far than those of the miserable body, so was it her chief concern to instruct the ignorant, to encourage the weak, to rouse the sinful to repentance, and animate the good to higher virtue. Thus pa.s.sed the first year of her widowhood: at its close, the tenor of her life was altered, that in a new sphere, she might have the opportunity o practising new virtues.

CHAPTER IV.

PURITY OF SOUL.--LIFE OF HUMILIATION IN HER SISTER'S HOUSE.

It would seem as if the holy widow had now attained the very position for which her heart had so long sighed, a life of close and constant communion with G.o.d, and, at the same time, of active charity to her neighbour,--a life combining every facility for her own sanctification, with abundant opportunities of promoting the salvation of other souls also. But scarcely had she realized its advantages and tasted its sweetness, when at the end of one short year, she was called on to relinquish it, by a married sister, who, knowing her talent for business, begged her a.s.sistance in the management of a large commercial establishment of her own. The proposal was naturally most distasteful, but seeing in it a road to the suffering and humiliation for which her soul thirsted, as well as an opportunity of practising her favourite charity, she made the sacrifice in her spirit of habitual self- immolation, only stipulating for freedom in her spiritual exercises, and permission, to return home every evening. Our Lord was pleased to mark His approval of her decision, and to reward her generosity, by raising her to a higher degree of prayer.

This partial return to the world suggested the idea that she might now perhaps be induced to accede to the unanimous wish of her friends, and engage once more in married life. The subject was therefore before long renewed, and one day she was so hard pressed with a variety of arguments connected with the interests of her son, that she paused a little to consider whether the opinions of so many wise and disinterested advisers ought not to weigh somewhat against her own lights. The hesitation was only momentary, and yet on reflection, it seemed to her to have involved so serious an infidelity, that in subsequent general confessions of the greatest sins of her life, she ranked this first, as the one most deserving of her regret, and the possible cause of her severe interior sufferings. She knew that in its own nature, the fault in question was inconsiderable, but she understood equally well that its attendant circ.u.mstances gave it a certain degree of gravity for her, whom the Almighty had so favoured. Short as her hesitation had been, it appeared like disloyalty to Him whom she had promised to take for her only Spouse should the bonds of her earthly union be ever broken, and that with her capability of appreciating the sublimity of a vocation to a life with G.o.d alone, she should have deliberated for an instant between His invitation and that of the world, seemed to her a fitting subject of life-long sorrow and self-condemnation. The infidelity to grace was aggravated in her estimation by its accompanying ingrat.i.tude, and this in itself was a reproach, keenly painful to a heart so tender and loving as hers.

Here again, we are struck with wonder and admiration at her purity of conscience, and here again we breathe a prayer for light to see ourselves as G.o.d sees us; for grace to understand the malice of sin as the saints understand it. It is because their hearts are so pure, that the spiritual vision of the saints is so refined. "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they see G.o.d" and in the light of that eternal Sun of Justice, they discern minutest stains, invisible to souls obscured by the clouds of sin, or dimmed by the mists of self-love. Again, it is because the hearts of the saints are so pure, that their love of G.o.d is so sensitive.

"Blessed are the clean of heart," for they see the Divine attractions as clearly as is given to man in his mortality, and seeing them thus clearly, every slight infidelity to a G.o.d so beautiful and so good, a.s.sumes importance in their eyes, and excites a corresponding sorrow. The young widow's momentary irresolution left her only the more firmly determined to renounce the world at once and for ever, and in order to render that resolution irrevocable, she bound herself to, G.o.d by a vow of perpetual chast.i.ty, being then twenty-one years of age. About this time she was placed under the spiritual care of the Reverend Father Dom Raymond of St. Bernard, and to this enlightened master she was first indebted for the great blessing of regular direction in the paths of the interior life.