Produced by Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
This file was produced from images generously made available by the
Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.
THE LIFE OF THE VENERABLE MOTHER MARY OF THE INCARNATION
BY A RELIGIOUS OF THE URSULINE COMMUNITY
INTRODUCTION.
The materials for the following Biography have been gathered principally from "The Life of the Mother Mary of the Incarnation" by her son, and from "The History of the Ursuline Monastery at Quebec," by a member of that community, the former published in 1677; the latter in 1863.
The Life of the Venerable Mother by her son, is founded partly on her own communications regarding the graces with which she had been favoured, and partly on her correspondence with himself extending over the thirty years which she passed in Canada. With the genuine information thus received, he intersperses, under the name of "Additions," further details which had either come under his personal observation, or been gleaned from perfectly reliable sources. His work is therefore a sure and invaluable guide to the biographer.
The accounts of her inner life referred to, were written by the Venerable Mother at two different epochs, and each time in obedience to an imperative command from her confessors. The first written in 1633, the 34th year of her age, fell into the possession of the Ursulines of St. Denis, near Paris, who on hearing that Dom Claude Martin was engaged in writing his holy Mother's life, obligingly sent him the precious document. The second, written in 1654, was forwarded to him from Canada.
The Annals of the Quebec Ursulines also afford rich material to the historian of the Mother of the Incarnation, their pages containing constant references to and quotations from her letters both spiritual and historical, as well as from the Annual Reports of the Jesuit Missioners, and other contemporary documents of the highest authenticity and the deepest interest.
The historical statements in the introductory chapter, rest chiefly oh the authority of the Abbé Ferland in his "Cours d'Histoire du Canada," 1861, and of Bancroft in his "History of the United States," 1841. The historical facts incidentally introduced in the course of the work can be verified by reference to the Abbé Ferland or any other Canadian historian, or to the Letters of the Mother of the Incarnation.
It only remains to be noticed that the words "saint," "saintly," and others of similar import are used throughout solely in their popular acceptation, and not with any intention of anticipating the decision of the Church regarding the sanctity of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation or of any other of God's servants mentioned in these pages.
In like manner, the record of miraculous occurrences, visions, and other extraordinary supernatural favours, is understood to rest as yet only on human authority, and therefore to claim no more than the degree of credibility which attaches to any well authenticated human statement.
April 30th 1880.
208th Anniversary of the death of the Venerable Mother of the Incarnation.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. A Glance at Canada, as it was in the days of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation.
THE LIFE OF THE VENERABLE MOTHER. FIRST PERIOD, 1599 TO 1631. HER LIFE IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER I. Her infancy, childhood and youth—Early call to union with God.—Charity to the poor.—Purity of soul—Inclination for the Religious Life.
CHAPTER II. Her married life.—Rule of life.—Love of prayer—Perfect fulfilment of duty.—Patience under trial—Zeal for her household.—Influence.—Death of her Husband.
CHAPTER III. Her First year of Widowhood.—Life of solitude in the World.—Vision of the application of the Precious Blood to her soul.—Increased purity of conscience.—Charity to the sick poor.
CHAPTER IV. She quits her solitude.—New evidence of her purity of soul.—Humiliation and dependence in her Sister's house.
CHAPTER V. She is called to a high degree of Divine Union.—New invitation to the perfection of Interior Purity.—Infused knowledge of the nature of the works of God.—Austerities.—Love of contempt.—Active life.—Makes the vows of poverty and obedience.—Heavenly favour.—Temptations.
CHAPTER VI. Supernatural favours.—Lights on the mystery of the Incarnation.—Vision of the Most Adorable Trinity.—Submission to her Director.—Temptations renewed.—Lights on the Divine attributes.
CHAPTER VII. Second Vision of the Most Adorable Trinity.—She is elevated to a sublime degree of Divine Union.
CHAPTER VIII. She resolves to embrace the Religious Life.—Decides finally on the Ursuline Order.—Temptations.—Disappearance of her son.—His return.— Enters the Convent.
CHAPTER IX. Saint Angela, Foundress of the Ursulines.—Her Early sanctity.—Zeal for the instruction of the ignorant.—Lays the foundation of her great work at Dezenzano—Vision of the Mysterious Ladder.—Removes to Brescia.—Goes to the Holy Land.—To Rome.—To Cremona.—Returns to Brescia.—Founds her Order.—Her holy Death.—Parting Counsels.—Prediction of the stability of her work.—Diffusion of the Order.—Archconfraternity of St. Angela.
SECOND PERIOD, 1631 TO 1639. THE VENERABLE MOTHER'S RELIGIOUS LIFE IN FRANCE.
CHAPTER I. Her Novitiate.—Holy joy.—Virtue tested.—Love of common life.— Humility.—Obedience.—Trials from her son.—Offers herself as a victim for his salvation.—Third Vision of the Adorable Trinity.—Receives the Holy Habit.
CHAPTER II. Supernatural favours.—Infused knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and of the Latin language.—Facility for imparting Spiritual Instruction.— Temptations.—Loses her Director.—Interior desolation.—Fidelity.— Consolation.—Profession.—Renewed Trials.—Reassuring direction.—New difficulties about her son.
CHAPTER III. She is named Assistant-Mistress of Novices.—Prophetic Vision of her vocation to Canada.—Spiritual maxims and instructions.—Spirit of silence.—Forms many Saints.
CHAPTER IV. Increase of zeal for the salvation of souls.—Divinely directed to pray for their conversion through the Heart of Jesus.—Her vocation for Canada is revealed to her.
CHAPTER V. Madame de la Peltrie.—Early Piety.—Charity.—Desire for the Religious State.—Obliged to marry.—Loses her Husband.—Zeal for Souls.—Is inspired to devote herself to the Canadian Mission.—Her vocation confirmed in a dangerous illness.—Opposition.—Death of her Father.— Services of Monsieur de Bernières.—Goes to Paris.
CHAPTER VI. The Mother of the Incarnation declares her vocation for Canada.— Contradictions and Humiliations.—Her confidence in God.—Esteem for her vocation.—Submission to the Divine Will.
CHAPTER VII. Madame de la Peltrie invites the Mother of the Incarnation to accompany her to Canada.—The Venerable Mother's answer.—Madame de la Peltrie at Tours.—The Mothers of the Incarnation and St. Bernard selected for the Mission.—Opposition from relatives.—The Venerable Mother's vision of the trials awaiting her.—Monsieur de Bernières.—Farewell Letter.
THIRD PERIOD, 1639 TO 1672. THE VENERABLE MOTHER'S LIFE IN CANADA.
CHAPTER I. Embarkation.—Alarm from a Spanish Fleet.—Danger from an Iceberg.— Arrival at Tadoussac.—First night in Canada.—Reception at Quebec.— Visit to Sillery.—The "Louvre."
CHAPTER II. The Mother of the Incarnation recognises Canada to be the country shown her in her prophetic vision.—Opening of the Schools.—Study of the Indian languages.—Small-pox among the Pupils.—Arrival of two Sisters from Paris.—Union of Congregations.-Building of new Convent.
CHAPTER III Work at the "Louvre."—Progress of the Pupils.—Piety.—Lively Faith in the Real Presence.—Refinement of feeling.—Zeal.—Teresa the Huron.— Agnes.—Little Truants.—Banquets at the "Louvre,"
CHAPTER IV. Renewed Trials of the Venerable Mother.—Madame de la Peltrie removes to Montreal.—Great Poverty of the Ursulines.—Apprehensions.—The Venerable Mother's confidence in God.—Fidelity to grace.—Exactitude to duty.— Active Life.—First Elections.—Removal to the New Monastery.—Return of Madame de la Peltrie.
CHAPTER V. The Mother of the Incarnation a victim for the Conversion of her son and her niece.—Conversion of both, followed by the cessation of her interior sufferings.—Arrival of new subjects from France.—Mother St. Athanasius Superior.—First Profession at Quebec.—Destruction of the Hurons.— Charity of the Ursulines to the Survivors.
CHAPTER VI. The Monastery consumed.—Charity of the Hospital Sisters.—Sympathy of the Hurons.—Serenity of the Venerable Mother.—Lodgings in Madame de la Peltrie's House.—Poverty.—Monastery Rebuilt.—A Pretty Picture.— Removal to the New Monastery.
CHAPTER VII. Early Life of Mother St. Joseph.—Her zeal for the Indians.—Virtues.— Last Illness.—Happy Death.—Apparitions after Death.
CHAPTER VIII. The Seminary Re-opened.—The good work partially checked.—Geneviève and Catherine.—Appointment of Bishop Laval.—Threatened Invasion of the Iroquois.—Heroism of Daulac and his Companions.
CHAPTER IX. Trade in Intoxicating Liquors.—Awful Manifestation of Divine Anger.— Repentance.—Prosperity.—The Marquis of Tracy Viceroy.—Expedition against the Iroquois.—Advancement of the Colony.
CHAPTER X. New Sisters from France.—Illness of Mother of the Incarnation.—She is Re-elected Superior.—Lingers for Eight Years.—Illness and Death of Madame de la Peltrie.
CHAPTER XI. Last Illness of the Mother of the Incarnation.—Her Blessed Death.— Universal regret for her loss.—Her Virtues.
APPENDIX.
Evening Devotion of the Mother of the Incarnation in honour of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus.
Evening Devotion of the Venerable Mother in honour of the Immaculate
Heart of Mary.
A few Parting Words on the Old Monastery of Quebec.
A GLANCE AT CANADA IN THE DAYS OF THE VENERABLE MOTHER MARY OF THE INCARNATION.
Early in the sixteenth century, reports of the progress of discovery in America began to make their way to France, and, as a natural result, to arouse emulation. For no one had the stirring tales a greater charm than for the reigning Sovereign, Francis I., whose spirit of rivalry, thirst of glory, and love of adventure, they were especially calculated to stimulate. It would have been as repugnant to the nature, as it was inconsistent with the policy of the ambitious monarch, to permit the Kings of Spain [Footnote: In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the islands of the Western Hemisphere, and took possession in the name of the Spanish Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. At his third voyage, in 1498, he added to the first discovery, that of the Continent of South America.] and Portugal [Footnote: in 1500, Alvarez de Cabral, a Portuguese navigator, took possession of Brazil for his royal master, Emmanuel, King of Portugal. Amerigo Vespucci had discovered its coast in 1498.] to monopolize the glory and the advantages anticipated from possession of the western world; such an idea was not to be for a moment entertained. If their banners waved over its Southern Continent, that was no reason, he argued, why France should not unfurl her fair white lilies in the Northern. [Footnote: The mainland of North America was discovered in 1497 by the celebrated Italian adventurers, John Cabot and his sons, under a commission from Henry VII of England, who, however, did not avail of the discovery.] "I should like," he exclaimed with characteristic impetuosity and originality, "I should like to see the clause in Adam's will which authorizes these, my royal cousins, to divide the New World between them!" As there seemed, however, little chance of his being permitted to adjust the rival claims by a reference to our first father's last testament, he resolved, as a more practical solution of difficulties, to take the law into his own hands, and by getting possession of a share of the spoils to secure at least nine points of it in his favour.
In justice to his Most Christian Majesty, it must be admitted that although self-interested considerations had no doubt a large part in his decision, other and worthier views influenced him. perhaps even more strongly. If his proud title of eldest son of the Church was to be more than an empty name, it devolved on him, he felt, to take prompt measures for introducing Christianity into some part of the newly discovered idolatrous West. Spain and Portugal had anticipated him in one direction, it was true, but the world of Canada still presented a vast field for his zeal in another. The existence of that barbarous, heathen land was now an ascertained fact, What nobler use could he make of his royal resources than to introduce into it the two-fold light of faith and civilization? None, assuredly. Over far-off Canada, therefore, he determined that, fortune favouring, the banner of the Lily should ere long float.
And, truly, it was well worth the seeking, that fair, too long neglected gem in Nature's coronet, the distant land over the Western sea. Cultivation has no doubt done much for the Canada of Francis I., still even in the undeveloped beauty of those remote days, its natural features were strikingly fine. Prominent then, as now, was the noble river flowing through its midst—its own beautiful St. Lawrence, "the river of Canada," as the French sometimes styled it by pre-eminence; a recognised monarch [Footnote: "The St. Lawrence has a course of nearly three thousand miles, and varies in breadth from one mile to ninety miles. It annually discharges to the ocean about 4,277,880 millions of tons of fresh water, of which 2,112,120 millions of tons may be reckoned melted snow— the quantity discharged before the thaw comes on being 4,512 millions of tons per day for 240 days, and the quantity after the thaw begins being 25,560 millions per day for 125 days, the depths and velocity when in and out of flood being duly considered."—Martin's British Colonies.] in the world of waters, embracing in its wide-spread dominion, rapids and cataracts, and tributary streams, with vast lakes like seas, and a little world of islands like fairy realms, [Footnote: Among others, the Thousand Islands, happily described as "picturesque combinations of wood, rock, and water, such as imagination is apt to attach to the happy islands in the Vision of Mirza.">[ the whole enclosed within romantic shores, worthy to form the framing of so magnificent a picture.
Then, as now, the valley of the St. Lawrence was rich in every variety of natural beauty, but with this difference, that at the arrival of the French the superb panorama was more or less enveloped in an apparently interminable forest, to which the predominance of the pine imparted in some places an air of solemnity, and even gloom. Since then, the axe has done its work in the inhabited portions, opening up a landscape of singular loveliness in some parts; of stern, wild grandeur in others; nevertheless, enough of the lordly old woods still remains, to justify their claim to a place among the characteristics of Canadian scenery. Lovely in their summer garb of many-hued green, relieved by a carpeting of myriads of flowering plants, they are glorious beyond telling, when after a few frosty nights at the close of autumn, they assume every imaginable variety of shade, from glowing scarlet and soft violet, to rich brown and bright yellow.
Champlain, the founder of Quebec, describes the Canada of his day as beautiful, agreeable, and fertile; producing grain of every kind; abounding in valuable trees; yielding wild fruits of pleasant flavour, and well-stocked with fish and game. Later observation was to add to the catalogue of its natural riches, mines of iron, lead and copper. The early colonists, too, have recorded that the river banks were covered with a profusion of vines so productive, that it seemed difficult to trace all their luxuriance to the unaided hand of nature.
As a partial counterpoise to its many advantages, Canada is exposed to extremes of temperature, alternating between heat nearly tropical, and cold approaching polar. Owing to the clearing of the forests, and other causes, the winter is now somewhat less harsh than in the days of the first settlers; it is, however, still a very severe one. And yet, even under its stern reign, Canada is not without natural charms,—its giant river fast bound in icy chains; every stream, and lake and rivulet in the land a sheet of sparkling crystal; every trunk, and branch, and twig glittering in the sun as if sprinkled with diamond dust; every valley, hill and woodland, every mountain slope and far-stretching plain wrapped in a soft mantle of spotless snow.
Yet, with all its gifts and resources, Canada had reposed for long ages in lonely grandeur. The chronicles of the Old World told of many a generation gone by. They traced the rise and fall of many empires, and the succession of many dynasties. They recorded the advance of art and science. They contained long lists of names inscribed, some in the annals of human greatness, some on the pages of the Book of Life. They spoke of the glorious triumphs of the Church, and enumerated the nations gathered within her fold, and still, on that fair land of the West, no step had trodden but that of the Red Man; on its broad, deep river no boat had ever bounded but his own light canoe; through its length and breadth no Deity's name had resounded, save that of some senseless pagan idol. Truly it was time, as Francis I. concluded, that the ray of faith and civilization should beam on it at last.
In 1523, he sent out his first expedition, under the command of Verrazani, a Florentine, who, sailing along the coast from 28 degrees to 50 degrees north latitude, formally took possession of the whole region in the name of his royal patron, and called it "La Nouvelle France." But while France was thus adding to her glory in the New World, her arms received a severe check in the Old. When Verrazani returned in 1525, he found the nation mourning the disastrous results of the battle of Pavia, and too much absorbed by grave interests at home, to be disposed to concern itself about lesser ones abroad. Deprived of the support of his royal protector, then a prisoner at Madrid, he could neither utilize nor follow up his first observations, and for ten years more we hear nothing of Canada, except that mariners from France, and other European nations, carried on a successful fishery on its coasts, where as many as fifty ships from Europe might sometimes be seen together. The French called the country the newly found lands, an appellation which survives in that of the largest island. It is stated on the authority of certain old chroniclers, that the islands off the mainland had been known more than a century before the era of Columbus and Cabot to sailors from the Basque Provinces, who named them "Bacallos," their term for cod-fish. The name "Canada" seems to have been vaguely applied at this period sometimes to a part, sometimes to the whole of the region watered by the St. Lawrence. One derivation of it supposes the arrival of the French to have been preceded by a visit from the Spaniards, who, searching for precious metals, and finding none, expressed their disappointment by the frequent repetition of the words "aca nada," "nothing here." According to a more probable etymology, the term may be traced to the Iroquois word "Kanata," a village, or assembly of huts, which word the early European discoverers mistook for the name of the country.
Nothing daunted by the failure of his first attempt at colonisation, Francis authorized a new expedition in 1534, and intrusted the command of it to Jacques Cartier, a well-known navigator of St. Malo. In addition to his experience as a seaman, Cartier possessed a profoundly religious spirit, and in risking the long voyage, with its certain dangers and uncertain, success, he seems to have been wholly influenced by zeal for the conversion of the savages. He has given us an insight into his ideas in his own quaint style: "Considering," he says, "the varied benefits of God to man, I note among others how the sun pours his genial rays on every part of the globe in succession, excluding none from their beneficent influence, and my simple mode of reasoning leads me to infer that our great Creator intends for all his creatures a share in the illumination of faith, no less than in the cheering light of the orb of day. The sun comes to us from the East, as did our holy faith; may we not conclude, that as he passes thence to the West, the beams of the Gospel are meant to follow in his track, and pour their brightness in that direction too."
Cartier set sail on the 20th of April, 1534; reached Newfoundland in safety on the 10th of May, and sailing along the coast as far as the Bay of Gaspé, planted near its entrance a lofty cross bearing a shield with the lilies of France, and a suitable inscription. The chief result of this first voyage was the discovery of the great river of Canada, and the opening of communication with the natives. The season being somewhat too advanced for farther exploration, Cartier returned to France in the month of August, accompanied by two young Indians, destined as a future interpreter to their countrymen.
Re-entering the river on the 10th of August of the following year, he named it the St. Lawrence, in honour of the saint whose feast the Church celebrates on that day. The island at its mouth, now called Anticosti, he named the isle of the Assumption. He finally anchored off Stadacona, where Quebec now stands, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin in the next month, the Holy Sacrifice was for the first time offered on the Canadian shores. Cartier next visited the Indian settlement of Hochelaga, situated on an island formed by the St. Lawrence and a branch of the Ottawa. The discovery of this vaunted hamlet, with its picturesque surroundings, had been among the most cherished of his day dreams, nor was the reality unworthy of the dream. From the summit of an isolated mountain at the extremity of the island; his view embraced in front a wide expanse of fertile land; around him stretched forests of oak, with here and there a waving field of silken-tufted Indian corn; at his feet lay the hamlet, built in the form of a circle, and fortified in Indian fashion by three graduated rows of palisades, and to crown the whole, girding the island like a broad silver belt, as far as the eye could reach, shone the sunlit river. Enchanted with the beauty of the scene, and delighted too with the courteous greeting of the savages, their simplicity, their generosity and their ardour for instruction, he breathed a prayer, that a land so fair and a people so gentle might be marked ere long as the heritage of France,—above all, as a portion of the Kingdom of God. In his enthusiasm, he called the mountain on which he stood, Mount Royal, whence the name "Montreal." [Footnote: Nearly three centuries and a half have gone by since Jacques Cartier surveyed Hochelaga and its environs for the first time from the heights of Mount Royal. Could he view the same locality from the same stand point to-day, how great would be his wonder at its transformation! The mountain itself is now covered, both base and acclivities, with flourishing corn fields, fruitful orchards, and handsome residences, above which, to the very summit, trees grow in luxuriant variety. On the site of the Indian hamlet of the olden time, is a large, wealthy city; its streets and squares adorned with remarkably fine buildings; its busy ways thronged with an active, industrious, thriving population; its port crowded with shipping and bordered with commodious quays; its vast river spanned by the great tubular bridge, and traversed through its length and breadth by vessels of every build. The environs are in keeping with the city, combining natural beauty with the refinements of art and the improvements of industry. Nestling among rich woodlands, are gay villages, rural churches and pleasant villas, while thickly interspersed through fertile, well cultivated grounds, are pretty cottages, substantial farms and happy peasant homes. The living picture acquires additional animation from the constant movement of long rows of railway carriages, ever sending up light streams of transparent vapour which curl among the bright foliage, with a grace of their own, then fade away heavenwards. Could Jacques Cartier see it all, he might well wonder at time's changes!] At Stadacona where he spent the winter, he had the consolation of instructing the natives in the holy faith, by the aid of the two Indian youths, who, as already noticed, had accompanied him to France on his first return voyage, and spent the interval between that and his second expedition in learning the French tongue. So eager were these simple people to receive the truth, that he had to promise to take measures for their admission to the Sacrament of regeneration at his nest voyage.
The extreme rigour of this first winter rendered it a season of terrible suffering to the French; sickness, broke out amongst them and death thinned their ranks. Cartier had therefore no alternative but to conduct the discouraged survivors back to France early in spring. He determined to bring with him also some specimens of the natives whom he wished to present to the King. The practice of the time seemed to give a tacit sanction to the act, but it is much to be regretted that in carrying out his object, Cartier should have had recourse to stratagem. Donacona, one of the chiefs, was decoyed on board the French ship, with nine other savages, and borne away from his home in the wilds, which poor though it might be, was more precious to him than all the grandeur of the French King's capital. To pacify his people, he promised them before sailing away, that he would return after twelve moons, but save in dreams, he saw his beloved woods no more. With the exception of one little girl, all the exiles died in France, where, however, they were well treated, and had the happiness of being instructed in the faith and received into the Church.
On returning to Canada for the third time in 1540, Cartier found it difficult to resume his former intercourse with the natives, whom the disappearance of their chief had rendered distrustful and suspicious. Besides, he occupied only a subordinate position in this new expedition, the principal direction of which had been committed to the Lord of Roberval. The division of authority seems to have worked badly. Cartier had spent a year of inactivity in Canada before the Viceroy was prepared to join him, so seeing no prospect of success, he left for France, just as Roberval reached Canada. Without the co-operation of his lieutenant, the leader could accomplish little; his expedition may indeed be said to have resulted only in corroborating the reality of the discoveries reported by the navigator of St. Malo. The purport of Cartier's fourth and last voyage, was to bring back to France the miserable remnant of the adventurers who had accompanied Roberval.
Though an apparent disappointment, the failure of the first attempt to colonize Canada was in reality a blessing. A few persons of good position had, it is true, joined Roberval's expedition, but it is equally certain that a considerable proportion of his recruits had been drawn from among the convicts of the French jails. Had the colony been then established, the mixture of such an element must have tainted its very source, and exercised an utterly demoralizing influence on its future. But God had designs of special mercy on Canada, so the day of her visitation was deferred, only that it might rise at a later period with a steadier, a clearer, and a more enduring light. Although Jacques Cartier failed in his immediate object, he succeeded in exploring a considerable part of the country, and as the first to open a way for missionaries to the hitherto unknown region, his claim to the gratitude of Catholic hearts should ever be recognised. He died at his peaceful home of Limoilou in Brittany, leaving the wilds of the West once more in undisputed possession of the native tribes.
During the next sixty years, the French took no active steps for the colonization of Canada. Their attempts under Henry II and Charles IX, to form settlements in Brazil and Florida, seem to have diverted their attention from New France, but they never quite forgot it, nor utterly relinquished the hope of one day founding a State on the St. Lawrence. Merchants from Dieppe and St. Malo continued to visit its shores, and from time to time, slight, ineffectual attempts at settlement were made. It was not, however, until 1608, that an expedition of any importance was organized. Monsieur des Monts, a Calvinist of wealth and rank, then received from Henry IV, the authority necessary for the purpose, and as an indemnity for consequent expenses, he also obtained the monopoly of the fur trade for one year. A company of merchants was immediately formed, and the command of the expedition given to the illustrious Samuel Champlain. Quebec, the Stadacona of Cartier, was decided on as the most advantageous site for the projected settlement, the destined cradle of the Canadian nation. There accordingly, Champlain unfurled the white Banner on the 3rd of July, 1608. In the Algonquin tongue, "Kebec" signifies a strait, the St. Lawrence flowing at this point in a narrow channel between two high banks. The intended capital [Footnote: Quebec is now considered the military capital of Canada, Montreal ranking as the commercial metropolis, and Ottawa as the legislative.] of Canada could not have been more judiciously located. It possesses a magnificent harbour, navigable for the largest vessels, and capable of containing the most numerous fleet. The great river at its base forms a commodious highway of communication with the very heart of the continent, while in consequence of the narrowing of the waters in its immediate vicinity, the citadel commands the passage. Quebec is thus the key of the great valley of the St. Lawrence, "the advanced guard," as the Abbé Ferland calls it in his History of Canada, of the vast French empire, which, according to the project of Louis XIV., was to extend from the Straits of Belle Isle to the Gulf of Mexico. The colony was not, however, to be established on a firm basis, until it had passed through much tribulation. Its early annals were to record an ordeal of trials, sickness, privation, hardship, destitution, alarms from the terrible Iroquois, molestation from the English, and finally, all but total extinction. They were to tell how the growth of the young nation had been checked, and its very existence threatened, by the bad faith of self-interested companies; worse than all, how, destined as it was for a bright star in the firmament of the Church, and a beacon light to the benighted heathen, its grand end had been temporarily frustrated by the frequent appointment of Calvinists for its patrons, and a mingling of the same sectarians among its small population. Then the page of triumph would come, and on it would be inscribed, how, like its own flower-enamelled meadows, bursting into bloom and beauty from beneath their pall of snow, Canada had emerged from its long moral winter, neither paralysed by the chill, nor depressed by the gloom, but glowing to its inmost heart with warm young life, and throbbing in every pulse with irrepressible energy and vigour.
Happily for the result of the undertaking Champlain, its guiding spirit, was eminently qualified for his position. Wise, as energetic; persevering, as enterprising; brave in reverse, as unassuming in. success, he laid his plans with consummate prudence and carried them out with unwavering constancy. Disinterested, honourable and patriotic, he suffered no secret view of personal advantage to narrow his mind or mar his usefulness. Looking on his work as the work of God, and therefore believing implicitly in its final success, he threw his whole heart into it, devoting to it time, talents, wealth and life, and pursuing it with a courage that never quailed and a heroism of self-sacrifice that never faltered. Profoundly religious, his great aim was to establish it on the solid foundation of faith and piety. For this end, he looked carefully from the beginning to the moral elements of the little society, and as far as his control extended, admitted among the early colonists only persons of irreproachable character. As soon as affairs appeared sufficiently promising, he invited missioners to the spiritually destitute land. Four Franciscans answered the appeal, and on the 25th of June; 1615, to the great joy of the Catholic inhabitants, Mass was celebrated in Quebec for the first time since the days of Cartier and Roberval. In 1624, St. Joseph was solemnly chosen Patron of Canada, which from its birth has claimed devotion to the Holy Family and to St. Anne, as its devotion by excellence. The following year, the Recollet Fathers were joined by a little band of Jesuits, who came to fertilize the soil with martyrs' blood and win for themselves the martyrs' palm. Their arrival gradually prepared the way for the realization of the pious governor's first and dearest wish, the establishment of missions throughout the country. On these we shall touch in a future page.
Indefatigable in his zeal for the colony, Champlain made frequent voyages to France in its interests, undeterred by the inconveniences and even positive dangers then often attendant on travelling, and although he was subjected to constant petty annoyances from the selfishness and parsimony of the Company, the jealousy and rivalry of the traders, and the coolness and indifference of noble patrons, he never relaxed in his exertions, because ever sustained by trust in God and faith in his work. At great personal risk, and with incredible fatigue, he explored the country in all directions, observing, and afterwards describing its physical features, as well as the character and customs of the savages. From time to time, we even find him in arms against the dreaded Iroquois, but notwithstanding his superhuman efforts, the colony could make but little progress while its destinies remained in the hands of mercenary agents, who were utterly regardless of its interests, and intent only on enriching themselves at its cost. After Quebec had been founded fourteen years, it still contained only fifty-five inhabitants, and its growth in all other respects had been proportionally tardy. Hope, however, began to brighten, when in 1627, the Canada Company was superseded by that of the Hundred Partners, with Richelieu at its head. This association was to hold Canada, as a feudal seigniory under the King, and with the right of soil, was to possess a monopoly of trade. In return for these privileges, it contracted the obligation of amply supplying the country with colonists, including a sufficient number of artisans and labourers. It was also bound to provide for the support of a specified number of missioners, and in general, to promote the welfare of the colony. Unfortunately, five years elapsed before it was ready to enter on the government of the province, which meantime was brought to the very verge of ruin, partly by famine, and partly by foreign invasion.
Much about the time of the transfer of Canada to the new Company, the Huguenots raised the standard of civil war in France, and being aided by England and Holland, their revolt soon assumed a formidable aspect. To complicate the difficulties of the mother country, a band of French Calvinists in the service of England determined to seize the favourable opportunity of invading her possessions in America. These were headed by Sir David Kerkt and his brothers, who procured the command of a small fleet of English vessels, and after devastating the coasts in the vicinity of Quebec, sent a summons to the Governor to surrender the town itself. Not having received supplies from France for three years, its resources were nearly exhausted, nevertheless, as Champlain. was in. hourly expectation of succour, he bravely determined to resist the summons and maintain his ground to the last. Before long, the people were reduced to a daily allowance of five ounces of bread; a little later, they were compelled to subsist on roots and herbs, yet still, even after hearing that the vessels containing the much needed supplies had been intercepted by the English, the resolute Commander never faltered. He encouraged his companions in misfortune by word and example; exhorted them, to patience; cheerfully shared their privations, and strained every nerve to improve their condition. But although they struggled through the trying winter and spring, it was but too evident that without relief they could not hold out much longer; when therefore the last hope was blighted by the wreck of two ships laden with provisions, the Governor, recognising the inutility of further resistance, accepted the only alternative left him, and at the second demand, surrendered the heroic little town, which amidst almost incredible difficulties had withstood the invaders an entire year. It was on the 20th of July, 1629, that the English took possession, and the following month, Champlain and his people embarked for England, whence, according to the terms of surrender, they were to be conveyed to France. One French family alone consented to remain in Quebec, and that only until after the next harvest. Thus it would seem as if a single step had brought us from Canada's cradle to her grave, for in what light can we look on those vessels bearing Champlain and the colonists from her shores, but as the tomb of the hopes lately so bright and buoyant? It happened however that when Kerkt seized Quebec, he was ignorant of the triumph of Richelieu at La Rochelle; unconscious therefore that the French Calvinist party was utterly crushed, and the long protracted civil war at an end. On landing at Plymouth in the following October, he learned to his dismay that peace had been concluded between England and France two months before the seizure of Quebec, the restitution of which had now become, simply an obligation of justice. But although its restoration was at once decided on, the measure was, not carried out until 1632, when by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, France secured a formal recognition of her right to Canada, including Nova, Scotia and Cape Breton Island, or as they were then called, Acadia and Isle Royal. As it was evident that the interests of the country could not be in better hands than those of the great and good Champlain, happily for its future destiny, the government of the province was once more confided to him.
It was hard to have to begin his work anew, but he set about repairing the wreck around him with all his old energy and devotedness. While intent as ever on the material interests of the colony, those of religion were still his first concern. Fortunately, there was no longer a dominant Calvinist party in the country, to thwart his zealous projects, and molest the Catholics in the discharge of their duty to God. The era of Calvinist rule had passed; that of Catholic triumph had dawned. One of the Governor's first acts was to build a church which was dedicated to our Blessed Lady in honour of her Immaculate Conception. The facility thus afforded for the practice of religion was eagerly availed of by the new band of exclusively Catholic colonists. All approached the Sacraments at fixed intervals; morning and evening prayers were said in common in private families; the precepts of God and the Church were strictly observed. Stimulated by good example some who had been careless about religion in France devoted themselves earnestly to it in Canada. So admirable was the order which Champlain established that some years later a missionary wrote:—"Murder, robbery, usury, injustice, and similar crimes are heard of here only once a year, when, on the arrival of the ships from France, a newspaper account of them accidentally finds its way among us." And, again, "Our churches are too small to contain the congregation; we have the consolation of seeing them filled to overflowing. By the grace of God, virtue walks here with head erect; it is in honour; vice alone in disrepute." The infant Church of Canada seemed, indeed, to have revived the golden age of the Church of the Apostles. Under the direction of the Governor, the Fort was in some respects not unlike a monastery. The soldiers approached the Sacraments regularly; instructive books were read aloud at meals; duty was punctually discharged, and the well spent day was closed by night prayers said in common, and presided over by the Governor. He it was who introduced the custom, ever since religiously observed, of ringing the Angelus three times a day. He watched so carefully over the public and private interests of both French and Indians, that all looked on him as a father, and although continually appealed to for decisions between rival claimants, his integrity was never called in question. Uniting in his own person the functions and the authority of Governor, Legislator, and Judge, his power was necessarily great, but never was he known to abuse it. It was his maxim that the salvation of one single soul is of more importance than the subjugation of an Empire, and that the only object which kings should have in view in the conquest of idolatrous nations, is to lay them as trophies at the feet of their Saviour Jesus Christ. This maxim is the key-note to his life; its practical influence was manifested in his zeal for the conversion of the Indians, and for the diffusion of a solidly religious spirit among the French population, and assuredly it is not the least of his claims to the gratitude of posterity, that the Canada of his formation has ever clung to her faith with so tenacious a grasp, that still she wears as her crown of highest honour, and proclaims as her proudest boast, the glorious title of Catholic Canada. The writers of his time are unanimous in ascribing to Champlain all the qualifications suited to the founder of a colony, and when, after a connection of thirty-two years with the country, he was summoned to his reward, on the 25th of December, 1635, he was followed to the grave, as well he might be, by the heartfelt regret of the whole colony, who looked on his death as the greatest of all calamities. After his demise, his widow founded the Ursuline Convent at Meaux, and there made her religious profession. During her residence in Canada, she had endeared herself both to French and Indians by her unvarying kindness and affability. Seeing their faces reflected in a small mirror which, according to the fashion of the day, she wore at her girdle, the poor savages were much delighted to find that she carried them all, as they said, in her heart. She learned the Algonquin tongue that she might teach the children their Catechism, and to the end of life retained a lively interest in the Canadian Mission.
Champlain was succeeded in the government of Quebec by Monsieur Charles de Montmagny, a man distinguished alike for courage, ability, piety, and zeal. His first act on landing was to kneel at the foot of a cross erected on the road to the town, and there invoke the blessing and protection of heaven on the colony intrusted to his charge; thence he proceeded to the church to assist at the Te Deum. His second act on the same morning was to visit an Indian wigwam, and stand sponsor for an invalid who desired baptism, the greatest honour and sweetest consolation, he said, which he could have desired at his arrival in New France. His great aim from the beginning was to walk in the steps of his predecessor, and thus develop and consolidate the work so happily commenced. He maintained the moral and religious tone of society, by following up Champlain's plan of excluding disreputable and vicious characters. One of his first concerns was to build a Seminary for the education of the Huron youth, an object which he knew to have been very dear to the heart of the late Governor. He also constructed a stone fort, strengthened the fortifications at Three Rivers, and traced a correct plan of the city, which as yet, it must be owned, existed only among the visions of hope. The Quebec of the Mother of the Incarnation was, indeed, widely different from that for which in after years, England and France contended, and Wolfe and Montcalm bled and died. At the time of which we write, it consisted of little more than a few rudely-constructed huts, and contained scarcely two hundred and fifty inhabitants, but we have dwelt thus long on its origin and early history because of its connection with the life and labours of the Venerable Mother, which give interest to every least detail concerning it. We have now reached the date of its annals when Heaven was pleased to bless it with her presence; but before entering on her biography, a glance at the Indian portion of the population will be necessary to the completion of our little sketch of Canada as it was in her days.
All the tribes dispersed over the territory comprised in the basin of the St. Lawrence, were at this period divided into two groups, the Algonquin and Huron-Iroquois, classified according to their respective languages. To each of these mother tongues belonged dialects more or less numerous, according to the sub-divisions of the tribes who spoke them. The Algonquins were scattered under various names over perhaps more than a half of the territory south of the St. Lawrence and east of the Mississippi. Several branches of the same widely-extended family were also to be found wandering in Canada to the north of the St. Lawrence. The five confederate tribes of the Hurons inhabited the peninsula included between Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario. The Iroquois stretched from the borders of Vermont to Western New York, and from the lakes, to the head waters of the Ohio, Susquehanna, and Delaware. They, too, formed a confederation of five tribes, and are commonly known as the Five Nations. The Hurons and the Iroquois are said to have received their names from the French—the former in allusion to the French word hure, a head of hair, these savages being distinguished by a singular mode of dressing theirs; the latter from their frequent repetition of the word "hiro," "I have said it," the ordinary termination of the warriors' harangues.
When the early missionaries began to study the Indian dialects, they were much astonished to find them characterized by remarkable richness and variety of expression, as well as regularity of construction. Notwithstanding gradual alterations, they still retain much of their traditionary character, being, in fact, less liable to change than written language, because of the ridicule with which the Indian visits any attempt at innovation on the point. One peculiarity of the American tongues is their singular power of extending the primitive signification of words by the addition of new syllables to the original term. Taking the verb for his starting point, the Indian is enabled, by prefixing, inserting, and adding syllables, to form at last some word which will not only express the action in question, but include at once, subject, object, time, place, and modifying circumstances. If he is shown an article with which he is unacquainted, he will ask its use, and then adding word to word at pleasure, he will at last give it a name comprising perhaps an entire definition. For sake of sound, the chain of words is sometimes linked by syllables of no particular significance. Strictly speaking, the Indian tongues consist only of the verb, which may be said to absorb all the other parts of speech. Declensions, articles, and cases are deficient; the adjective has a verbal termination; the idea expressed by the noun takes a verbal form; every thing is conjugated, nothing declined. The conjugation changes with every slight variation in the action spoken of. For instance, the same word will not express two similar actions performed, the one on the water, the other on the land; or two similar actions, the one referring to a living; the other to an inanimate object; there must be a separate conjugation for each. The forms of the verb thus vary to infinity, and hence arose the immense difficulty to the missioners of learning the languages.
A second peculiarity of the Indian dialects, is the abundant use which they allow of figurative language, a result of their total want of terms expressive of abstract, and purely spiritual ideas. To clothe these in words, they must have recourse to figures, chiefly metaphor and allegory, hence arises so much of what an American writer calls "the picturesque brilliancy" of the savage tongues. To express the term "prosperity," for example, the Indian will employ the image of a bright sun, a cloudless sky, or a calm river. "To make peace," will be "to smooth the forest path, to level the mountain," or "to bury the tomahawk." "To console the bereaved by the offering of presents," will be "to cover the graves of the departed." Unconsciously, the Indian habitually speaks poetry. He knows nothing of written characters, so his method of writing is by hieroglyphics, or rude pictures traced on a stone or a piece of bark. In the Huron and Iroquois, the words are almost entirely composed of vowels, both languages being deficient in consonants, and totally wanting in labials. The Algonquin is also deficient in several letters, among others the consonants f, l, v, x, z. In the Indian tongues, many of the sounds are merely guttural, and produced without any movement of the lips. Ou, as sounded in you, is of this description; to distinguish it from the articulated sounds, the early missioners marked it by the figure 8.
The religion of the native tribes of North America was a species of pantheism. They believed that in every visible object dwelt good or evil spirits, who exercised a certain influence over human events, and they tried to propitiate them by sacrifices and prayers. Faith in dreams constituted the foundation of almost all their superstitions. The dream was to them an irrevocable decree which it was never allowable to slight. It, therefore, formed the starting point of their deliberations, and the basis of their decisions. Rather than reject the warning of a dream, they would have consigned to the flames or the waves the produce of a successful hunting or fishing expedition, or of a rich harvest. The most intelligent held as a theory that dreams are the speech of the soul, which through them manifests her innate desires, these desires remaining for ever unknown, unless thus revealed. To carry out the dream was, therefore, to satisfy the soul's cravings; to slight it was to excite her desires afresh.
They believed that after death the soul wandered for a time in the vicinity of the body which it had quitted, and then departed on a long journey to a village in the direction of the setting sun. The country of the dead differed but little in their imagination, from the land of the living, and accordingly, looking on death merely as a passage from one region to another nearly similar, they met the summons with indifference. The deceased warrior was placed outside his wigwam in a sitting posture, to show that although life was over, the principle of existence still survived, and in that position he was buried, together with his pipe, manitou, tomahawk, quiver, and bent bow, and a supply of maize and venison for his travels to the paradise of his ancestors. The mourning for near relatives lasted two years.
Among the Huron-Iroquois and Algonquins, liberty was uncontrolled. Each hamlet was independent; so was the head of each family in the hamlet; so was each child in the family. This mass of independent wills could be ruled only by persuasion and promises of reward, and of these the chief was lavish. Sometimes there were many. rulers, or "captains," as they were called, in one hamlet, especially the larger ones; sometimes the government of the village was committed to a single chief. Among the principal tribes, the latter office was in general hereditary, though occasionally conferred by election. Public affairs were discussed in council with great formality, and votes taken by straws or small reeds, the majority theoretically deciding the question, but the conclusion was not carried out unless all agreed. The rebellious were generally won over by presents or flattery.
The savage tribes were divided into several great familes, each distinguished by the name of some animal chosen by the chief as his totum or distinctive mark. Among the Iroquois, for instance, the highest family was that of the Tortoise; the second of the Beaver, and the third of the Wolf. In battle, the totum was borne as the standard. The criminal code was not elaborate, yet it sufficed to maintain order in the small republics. Murder, robbery treason and sorcery were the crimes understood to entail its penalties. Instead of being punished by death, murder was expiated by a very large number of presents, to provide which, not only the assassin, but every family in the village was laid under contribution. The punishment of the criminal was thus multiplied by the reproaches and sarcasms of all the unwilling sharers in the atonement. Among the Algonquins, stealing was of rare occurrence; the Hurons, on the contrary, prided themselves on their feats in that line. They stole for the mere pleasure of stealing, and so accomplished were they in the art, that they could purloin an article under the very eye of the owner, using the foot for the purpose, quite as dexterously as the hand. If the thief could be identified, the person robbed might despoil him of everything he possessed, supposing always he was not strong enough to defend himself. If he belonged to another village, goods to the value of those lost might be taken from any one in his village, and kept until the robber had made restitution. Traitors and sorcerers, as objects of special dread, were always liable to heavy penalties.
According to the savage code of honour, war was the only road to glory; it was in consequence frequent, and once begun, lasted for years, national hatred descending as a legacy from generation to generation. Stealth and cunning entered largely into the tactics of the Indians; to lie in ambush was their delight; to surprise the enemy, their grand triumph. The assailants advanced in single file, the last carefully strewing leaves on the footprints of those who had preceded. When they had discovered the enemy, they crept on all-fours until near enough for the attack, then suddenly bounding up, and yelling fearfully, they rushed forward to the onslaught. If the enemy were on his guard, they withdrew noiselessly; if retreat were impossible, they fought with desperation. The number of foes overcome, was marked by that of the scalps hanging as trophies of bloody triumph from the girdles of the savage victors. Their arms were a species of javelin, a bow and arrow, the latter tipped with a sharp bone or flint, and the dreaded tomahawk or head-breaker. But more important to the warrior than all besides was his manitou, or the symbol of his familiar spirit,—some fantastic object represented in a dream, or selected according to his peculiar taste; a bird's head, it might have been, a beaver's tooth, or the knot of a tree; whatever, it was, the warrior would as little have thought of going to battle without arms, as without it. They treated their prisoners with great cruelty, partly it is said from the superstitious belief that the manes of their fallen companions were soothed by the sufferings of the captives. The prisoners who were not sacrificed, were adopted into the tribes in place of the slain, and treated thenceforth as members of the family.
The savages of North America were well formed and finely proportioned. They considered painting the face and tattooing the person, so great an addition to their personal charms, that jealous of the adornment, they denied it to the women. The skins of beasts formed their ordinary attire; their shoes were of the same material, but prepared for the purpose by a particular process. The women were likewise clad in skins, which on festive occasions they ornamented elaborately. They often displayed much taste and skill in embroidering ornamental works on bark or skin.
The dwelling was the wigwam, easily constructed and easily removed. Long poles fixed in the ground and bent inwards at the upper end, were covered outside with bark, and inside with mats; a loose skin was attached for the door, an opening left at the top for the chimney, and the house was built. In the larger hamlets, such as that of Hochelaga, described by Cartier, the dwellings ran along a sort of gallery, sometimes nearly two hundred feet long and thirty wide; in these several families could be accommodated. A raised platform was introduced into some, as a kind of upper story, serving for sleeping apartments.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the savages were subject to but few maladies, and these they cured by natural remedies, the indigenous medicinal plants, abstemious diet, and vapour baths of their own invention forming the basis of all prescriptions. Of persons skilled in the medical art, there was no scarcity, every cabin generally containing several. But not always satisfied with natural remedies, the patients had frequent recourse to the juggler or "medicine man," to discover the magical source of their illness, and avert evil consequences. The medicine man was likewise consulted on the issue of future events, and his mysterious predictions were received as so many oracles, his wondrous spells looked on as so many talismans.
The husband's duty was to hunt and fish, leaving his venison at the cabin door, and his fish at the water's edge, to be thence removed by his wife. He had also to construct and repair the canoe, and provide wood and bark for building the hut,—that was all. Most of his time was passed in listless lounging, or in games of hazard at which he often staked his whole possessions. His wife was mistress of the wigwam, and on her it devolved to draw the water, hew the wood, dress the food, prepare the ground to receive the grain, sow and gather in the harvest, weave the mats, make the rude garments of the family, and in their frequent journeys, to bear the house on her shoulders, not figuratively, but very literally. Her lord was supposed to carry nothing but his arms; if particularly condescending, he might of his own accord deviate from the rule without compromise of dignity.
Among the North American Indians in general, woman was considered a being of an inferior order, created only to obey the caprices of man, yet by a strange contradiction, the children belonged to the mother, and recognising only her authority, looked on their father merely in the light of a guest permitted to occupy a place in the cabin. In return, the squaw loved her offspring with passionate fondness, not manifested perhaps by demonstrative caresses, but not on that account the less tender, vigilant, or enduring. At home or abroad, she never parted from her nursling. When she travelled, she lifted her black-eyed babe to her shoulders, gaily-decked cradle and all, and so they journeyed on happily together, her great love divesting the burden of all weight. When she worked in the fields, she laid it at her feet among the sweet wild flowers, or she swung it from the bough of some pleasant shady tree close by, but never under any circumstances did she entrust it to other care than her own. Parental love indeed often degenerated into weakness among the Indians, and proved one of the great obstacles to the formation of schools by the missionaries. Unable to bear separation from their little ones, the parents soon recalled them home. As the children grew, they were left to do pretty much as they pleased. They received no moral instruction, but in order to excite their emulation, they were duly initiated in the illustrious deeds of their ancestors, in whose footsteps they were supposed to follow. For the correction of their faults, the mother employed prayers and tears, but never threats or punishment; these, their independent spirits would not have brooked. The severest chastisement ever inflicted was a dash of cold water in the face. The naturally unexcitable temperament of the Indians served as an antidote to the defects of their rearing. Reason early taught them the necessity of self-control, and so it happened, that at the age when the character is formed, they presented a strange combination of good and bad qualities.
First among the virtues of the savages was fortitude. Fitted by their stern nature and their early habits to support privation and pain, they would exhibit the very stoicism of endurance under the extreme of both. Without a word of complaint they would bear the pangs of hunger for ten or fifteen days, sometimes in compliance with a superstition, but very frequently from necessity too. They would glory in dying without a groan amidst inconceivable agonies. They seemed insensible to cold, heat, fatigue, sickness, and every other species of physical suffering. To inure themselves early to the torture of fire, boys and girls of ten and twelve would place a live coal on their joined arms, the palm of courage being, of course, for the one who bore the pain longest without letting the coal fall.
Hospitality they exercised in the style of the patriarchs. By day and by night, the guest, whether stranger or friend, was welcome to the best place in the wigwam, and to the choicest portion of the family stores. If a stranger, he was visited by all the notabilities of the village, and at the subsequent entertainments given in his honour, was treated with marked distinction. The Indians were ever ready to divide their possessions with those in greater need, and especially prompt to relieve the widow and the orphan. "Their life is so void of care," remarked an old writer, "and they are so loving also, that they make use of those things which they enjoy as common goods, and are therein so compassionate, that rather than one should starve, all would starve." With a courtesy of which they might have been supposed incapable, they paid visits of condolence, as a matter of course, to all in affliction. When they offered their sympathy on the occasion of death, the departed was never named, lest so direct an allusion might wound the sensitive feelings of the bereaved; he was spoken of only as "the one who has left us." They were remarkable for their reverence for the sepulchres of their kindred, and would travel miles to visit some tomb in the woods, where, according to their traditions, the bones of their ancestors had been deposited. When the graves were within reach, it was a practice of some of the tribes to keep them in the neatest order, the grass closely mown, and the weeds and brambles carefully removed. The Hurons honoured their dead by a special festival, celebrated every ten or twelve years at some hamlet decided on in general council. On this occasion, each family brought to the place appointed the bones of the relatives who had died since the last celebration. These remains of mortality had been previously washed, then wrapped in beaver skins ornamented with shell work or embroidery. A common grave was ready to receive them, and on its preparation, no pains had been spared. It was lined throughout with rich furs, and partially filled with various presents, including articles both of ornament and of use. The venerated remains were respectfully laid on these; then followed, layer after layer, another supply of presents, a store of provisions, and finally, a covering of bark, the whole surmounted by a mound of earth. Over all a roof was raised, to protect the precious deposit from the cold and snow of winter, and the rain and heat of summer.
So greatly did the Indians prize domestic peace and harmony, that to maintain it in their little communities, they often carried forbearance and self-control to the last extreme.
So many good qualities combined assuredly prove the accuracy of the remark of Washington Irving that "although there seems but little soil in the Indian's heart for the growth of the kindly virtues, if we would penetrate through the proud stoicism and habitual taciturnity which hide his character from casual observers, we should find him linked to his fellow-men of civilized life by more of those sympathies and affections than are usually ascribed to him." Much in the same spirit, Father Smet writes—"The Indians are in general little known in the civilized world. People judge by those whom they see on the frontiers, the mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes. Among these the 'fire-water' and the degrading vices of the whites have wrought sad ruin. The farther one penetrates into the desert, the better he finds the aborigines, and the more worthy and desirous to receive religious instruction."
Among the evil impulses of the Red Man's nature, pride and revenge were predominant. Fostered and strengthened by indulgence, as well as by the peculiar nature of early training, these passions finally acquired so great a dominion, that to gratify either, the savages would have sacrificed all they held most dear. They were fond of praise too, and although they declared themselves indifferent to general opinion, their constant fear of provoking an unfavourable one, rendered them, in truth, its slaves. In their dealings with the whites, they were often found false, treacherous, and regardless of promises and treaties, although in domestic intercourse they were not in general deceitful. In extenuation, it must be remembered that from their earliest years, they were not only initiated in stratagem by the necessity of self-defence, but taught to look on every exhibition of craft and cunning as a triumph of skill and a worthy subject of admiration. And again, it is but too true that the example of the more enlightened Europeans was not always calculated to inspire them with respect for truth. Another ground of accusation against the Indians was their barbarity to the vanquished. This originated partly in policy and superstition, but from the era of European aggression, savage cruelty needed no other stimulus than the desire of revenge.
In the long journeys of the Indians, whether for war or the chase, the sun, moon, and stars answered the purpose of time-piece and compass. Distant periods they calculated by the solar year, but for short intervals they reckoned by lunations. They had observed and even given names to the principal constellations. Among the Iroquois, the Pleiades were called the "Dancers;" the Milky Way, "the Path of Souls;" the Great Bear had a name corresponding with that which we give it; the Polar Star was designated as "the star that never sets;" it served to guide them in their long marches through the forests and across the great prairies of the west. When the sky was clouded, they were led through the woods by certain infallible signs—indeed by a species of instinct—besides which, their memory of places was so wonderful that, after once visiting any locality, they ever after retained a perfectly distinct recollection of it. They preferred water to land travelling, possessing thorough command of their light bark canoe, which they could direct with ease and security amidst the most formidable rapids. If they came to an absolutely impassable spot, they raised the slight vessel on their shoulders and carried it until they reached the next navigable point.
Christianity produced a wonderful change in these wild children of the woods, developing all that was good in their nature, correcting what was evil, and softening down much of what was harsh, but when the Mother of the Incarnation arrived in Canada, it had made but little progress. As early as 1615, it is true, Père Caron, a Recollet, had penetrated to the Huron land, and, during the succeeding years, he and his religious brethren had laboured at intervals for the conversion of its inhabitants, but although their zeal was ardent, their success had been only very partial. Unlike the tribes of whom Jacques Cartier speaks, these manifested so strong an opposition to the dogmas of the Catholic faith, that it was evident many years must elapse before they would be disposed to embrace it. Although the most intelligent of all the North American tribes, and the most susceptible of ordinary instruction, the Hurons appeared absolutely inaccessible to religious teaching.
The plan of the missioners in the northern continent was to try and gain access to some Indian village, and, this point attained, to build a cabin and as soon as opportunity offered, announce the Word of God to all who would receive it. Gradually a little congregation was formed around them, but the tie between the converts and their heathen relatives was not severed, both continuing to associate; neither was the original name of the village changed; it merely received in addition that of the particularly saint who had been chosen as its patron. In South America, on the contrary, it was the practice of the missioners to prepare settlements, or "reductions," as they were called, to which they attracted their neophytes, whom they induced to live in community.
In the year 1634, the three Jesuit Fathers, Bréboeuf, Daniel, and Davost, succeeded in establishing themselves in the village of Ihonhatiria, in the land of the Hurons, and there, in a very poor little chapel dedicated to St. Joseph, they planted the seed of that interesting portion of the early Canadian Church, the Huron Mission. In a year after, they were joined by Père Jogues. When the Venerable Mother arrived, five years had passed over that precious seed, and it had given scarcely a sign of life, nor did it for long afterwards. The efforts of the Fathers were everywhere thwarted—prejudice, superstition, ignorance, and vice all rose in arms against them. They were accounted sorcerers; the breaking out of the dreaded small-pox was attributed to their magic arts, and they once owed their escape from a sentence of death only to the intervention of a friendly Indian. But the blood of a martyr was to fertilize the seed of Christianity in the New World, as in primitive times it had so often done in the Old. Père Jogues was seized by the Iroquois, and after enduring torments which only the ingenuity of savage barbarity could have invented, he wonderfully escaped alive from their hands. In 1646 he was sent to found a mission in the heart of the Iroquois land itself—a mission which was to be dedicated to, and appropriately named after, the holy Martyrs. "I shall go," he said, on receiving the order; "I shall go, but I shall not return." The words were prophetic; his own blood was the first to water the mission of the holy martyrs, and, as might have been anticipated, its eloquent voice pierced the heavens. It had scarcely sent up its pleadings, when the work of conversion among the Hurons began in earnest. Missionary stations multiplied rapidly. The Christianized villages of St. Joseph, St. Louis, St. Ignatius, and St. John smiled in the desert like green spots amidst the barren sands. At the central station of St. Mary's alone, three thousand Indians received hospitality in the course of one year. Undeterred by the certainty of privation and suffering, new missioners continued to swell the ranks and aid the work. With indefatigable zeal and unwearied patience, they catechised, exhorted, consoled, encouraged. The morning hours, from four until eight, were reserved for their private devotions; the remainder of the day belonged to the neophytes. Like St. Francis Xavier, Père Bréboeuf would walk through the villages and their environs, ringing a bell to summon the warriors to a conference. Seated round the good Father under the pleasant shade of their own ancient forest trees, they would drink in his words and joyfully accept his doctrines. "When I escaped some particular danger," a brave would remark, "I said to myself, 'A powerful spirit watches over me.' Now I know that my Protector was the great God of whom you tell us." The first desire and aim of the converts was to bring as many of their nation as possible to the faith; and so wondrously rapid was its diffusion, that within two years after the martyrdom of Père Jogues, the whole Huron nation was converted.
The harvest had taken long to ripen, but in compensation it was so rich, that only the golden garners seemed fit to receive it, and to these, accordingly, the Almighty Master of the vineyard was pleased speedily to transfer it. The Iroquois had long maintained a deadly enmity to the Hurons, and frequent bloodshed had necessarily been its consequence; but, no longer satisfied with partial vengeance, they resolved in the year 1648 on carrying on a war of absolute extermination into the Huron territory itself. They chose for their incursion the season when all the Huron warriors were absent on the chase, and no one left in the hamlets but women, children, and aged men. The village of St. Joseph, with its venerable pastor, Father Daniel, at once fell a prey to their terrible fury. The following year the villages of St. Louis and St. Ignatius shared the same fate, and all the inhabitants, men, women, and children, were slain. Fathers Bréboeuf and Lalemant were included in the general massacre, but their deaths were marked by an exceptional refinement of barbarity. In explanation of the bitter hatred of the Iroquois to the French, we learn that about a year after his arrival in Canada, Champlain had provoked their hostility by entering into an alliance with the Algonquins and Hurons, their traditional foes. The step was taken in choice of the lesser of two evils, for unless conciliated, it seemed but natural to expect that the Algonquins, as the nearest neighbours, would prove the most dangerous enemies. Wise as may have been the motive, the act led to disastrous results.
After the almost total annihilation of their nation, a part of the surviving Hurons descended the St. Lawrence to Quebec, in the environs of which their posterity is still to be seen; another portion was adopted into the nation of the conquerors on equal terms, and the rest dispersed. Many of those admitted into the enemy's tribe were Christians, and not only did they preserve their faith in exile, but they were the happy means of drawing to it many of their new allies. Several years after, missioners were amazed and charmed at finding a little band of fervent Christians in the very centre of heathen vice and barbarism. The exiled Hurons who sought an asylum in Quebec were located in the Isle of Orleans, to which they gave the name of St. Mary's, in memory of their old and still dearly-cherished home. Our limits do not permit us to dwell on the heroism of the missioners in the daily, hourly sacrifices of their crucified lives, ending for very many among them in death by a cruel martyrdom. The record fills one among the many beautiful pages in the annals of the sons of St. Ignatius. Commenting on their glorious work, the historian, Bancroft, remarks that "the history of their labours is connected with the origin of every celebrated town within the limits of French Canada. Not a cape was turned," he says, "not a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." This, however, is but secondary merit; their true glory is in having led the way to heaven for innumerable souls who will for ever bless their charity, and sing praise to Him who inspired it.
Before the arrival of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation, missions for the converted Indians had sprung up under their direction in and about Quebec and along the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The most remarkable of the former was that called St. Joseph of Sillery, in honour of the patron of Canada, to whom it was dedicated, and of Monsieur de Sillery, [Footnote: After having been Ambassador for France at the Spanish and Papal Courts, Monsieur de Sillery was appointed Prime Minister of Louis XIII. He finally renounced the world, and embraced the ecclesiastical state.] its munificent founder. A few savage families lived happily in this peaceful hamlet, fervently discharging their duty as Christians, and insensibly falling into the spirit and usages of civilized life. These converts were chiefly from among the Algonquins proper, and the kindred tribe of the Montagnais. As the desire for the conversion of the Indians strengthened, so did the conviction that the work must begin with the systematic religious training of the children. Thanks to the zeal and charity of the lamented Champlain, a step had been taken in this direction for the benefit of the Indian boys;—that a similar advantage might be extended to the girls, had long been the prayer of all who sighed for the coming of the Kingdom of God among the heathens of Canada. And God heard the prayer, and in his own time He sent His mercy and His blessing to the heathen land in the person of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation, whose wondrous call, and faithful co-operation will engage our attention in the following pages, a tribute of filial love and reverence to her saintly memory.
THE LIFE OF THE VENERABLE MOTHER MARY OF THE INCARNATION
FIRST PERIOD, 1599-1631.
HER LIFE IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER I
HER BIRTH, PARENTAGE, INFANCY, CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.
The world of nature is no doubt very beautiful in itself, and very wonderful in its works, yet infinitely surpassing it, both in intrinsic loveliness and in magnificence of production, is the world of grace. It is in that world that the saints are formed, and compared with the grandeur of the work of grace in the sanctification of a soul, all the splendours of this material universe fade to nothing. When grace forms a saint, it restores the beauty, and renews the purity which were the dowry of the soul before the fall. For this end, it has to transform man from a terrestrial into a heavenly being, elevating what is low in his fallen nature, correcting what is evil, spiritualizing what is earthly, improving what is good;—re-forming, re-moulding, and in a manner re- creating.
Considering the subjects on which divine grace has to act, and the opposition which it has to encounter, this, its work in the saints, may well be called the most wonderful of all works, and its triumph the grandest of all triumphs. Unseen and unheeded though it may be, that divine work is ever silently but surely and steadily progressing in the spiritual world over which grace rules. We can see it in its development, if not in its actual operation, and if so minded, can estimate its magnitude by examining its results in the annals of the saints.
Those annals are of a singularly diversified character. They comprise the history of once rebellious souls won by the sweet attractions of grace from every part of the empire of Satan, and by a strange contrast, they at the same time record that of faithful souls, who, upheld by its strength, never swerved from their allegiance to God. They tell of saintly penitents, dating their first correspondence with its inspirations from the eleventh hour, and of docile hearts, obedient from earliest childhood to its voice. They show us, side by side, profaned temples re-consecrated, and holy sanctuaries never sullied; scentless flowers restored to fragrance, and garlands of purity from which not a blossom or even a leaf had ever fallen. In different ways both manifest the magnificence of the riches of divine grace. In different ways, both prove that whether grace changes a sinner into a saint, or preserves a saint from sin, it is pre-eminently the worker of wonders. If the catalogue of holy penitents forms a dazzling page in its record, so does that of the privileged few who never lost their baptismal innocence. While the one is traced in characters of mercy, the other is written in letters of light. While the one reveals the grandeur, and the other the sweetness of the work of grace, both concur in proclaiming the triumph of its omnipotence.
In obdurate wills subdued, the conquests of grace are often hard to win. In the docile souls of the early sanctified, its task is easy. Into these, its inspirations sink as the soft dew into good soil; and with the same result. Finding in them no impediment to its action, no check to its liberality, it is free to pour out the wealth of its exhaustless treasury, and so it leads them from virtue to virtue, from height to height, even to the sublimity of perfection and the consummation of divine union, when, resplendent with heavenly light, and dazzling with interior beauty, they excite the admiration, nay, perhaps even the wonder of the angels.
To this bright page of the annals of the work of grace belongs the name of the Mother Mary of the Incarnation, whose history is about to engage us.
As we follow the progress of the great work of God in her soul, noting, on the one hand, the rich abundance of heavenly inspiration, and, on the other, the perfection of her fidelity, let us not be satisfied with simply admiring the one, but let us set ourselves in earnest to imitate the other, according to our measure and degree.
She was born in the historic city of Tours on the 28th of October 1599. With the very gift of life itself, she received an accompanying protecting grace in the blessing of good, religious parents. Her father, Florence Guyart, was noted among his fellow-citizens for piety, integrity, and uprightness, but although richly endowed with the treasures of virtue, he was but indifferently provided with those of fortune, his business as a silk-mercer supplying him barely with a competency. Her mother, Jeanne Michelet, was of the noble house of Babou de la Bourdaisière, to which France was once indebted for some of her eminent ecclesiastics and statesmen, but at the period of the birth of her holy child, she ranked—like the royally descended Virgin of Juda at the birth of Christ—only among other obscure individuals of the middle class.
The predestined infant received baptism on the day after her birth, in the church of St. Saturninus, and with it the name of Mary, a happy presage, as one of her biographers remarks, of her life-long, most tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin, as well as of the singular favours which that generous Mother reserved for her well-loved child. It was her happiness to be surrounded from earliest infancy with none but holy influences, and to breathe from her very cradle an atmosphere of purity. The first words which she heard, the first she tried to lisp, were the sweet names of Jesus and Mary. The first bent she received was an inclination to virtue; the first and only examples she witnessed were examples of piety. Thus passed the years preceding the dawn of reason, her beautiful soul expanding under the combined action of the baptismal grace, and of favourable external influences, like a bud of rich promise in the bright spring sunshine; then the clouds of infancy cleared away, and the light of reason shone. Her good mother seized the all-important moment to direct the child's opening mind to the knowledge of God, and her fresh, pure heart to His love, a grace for which the Venerable Mother returned Him very earnest thanks in after life, remarking that early impressions of religion are a most precious favour, and a strong predisposition to future sanctity. Truly it was a picture to delight the angels, that Christian mother so carefully directing the first feeble steps of her little child along the road that leads to God, and that docile child eagerly watching the guardian hand, and steadily treading the path to which it pointed,—the sure and blessed path of holiness, from which throughout life's long journey, she was never even once to swerve.
The crowning grace of this privileged infancy was, however, yet to come. 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 God means His Holy Spirit. To embrace a soul, and to give her His Spirit, are then in God 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 amusements 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 attitudes of pious persons whom she met in the church, and believing that God must certainly grant the petitions 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 association 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 God 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 God poured in the manner of a liquid into a vase. Like the brimming 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 associated 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 noble deeds, than by the events actually passing 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, substituting for books of mere amusement, those which treated of spiritual subjects.
As she advanced in years, the love of God 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 passed 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 passed 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 assumed 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 God.
In her childish recreations, it had been her favourite amusement 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 God. 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 passing 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 God 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 sanctity 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 pass 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 sanctity. Her zeal and charity would find a wider field, and her gentle patience reap a richer harvest, her union with God would be strengthened, while tested, by exposure to the distracting cares of life, and her purity of soul would shine out with brighter lustre 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 destitute, 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 God 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 God, she shrank with her whole soul from a position which must necessarily immerse her in he distracting occupations and harassing cares of the world. But accustomed to look on her parents as the representatives of God, 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 assured her mother of her readiness to obey, adding the, almost prophetic promise, that if God 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 assumed. She displayed no sparkling gems, but many a virtue shone instead with a glorious light, before whose lustre 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 God'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 God, 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 God's will more perfectly in substituting active work for the enjoyment of immediate communion with Himself. Prolonged meditations, holy Mass, the sacraments and the word of God,—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 God, 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 God, 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 God'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 assiduity 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 God'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 gratitude 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, God 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 God; hence from the first moment of their union, she looked on him as holding to her the place of God. 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 anticipate 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 God, is happy in Him, and has no desire beyond Him, and it excluded neither firmness in decision, nor courage and resolution in difficulty, nor promptitude 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 God before your birth, and that your father, who possessed a good heart, and had the fear of God, 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 God. 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 God 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 God, 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 God faithfully. Always calm and self-possessed, affable and kind, she practically illustrated 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 compassion for her afflictions, their admiration of her fortitude, 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 amusements, 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 passed 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 assiduous 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 God, 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 God; union with the Church at once forms and cements the bonds of union with God. Sanctity, 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 God, 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 God'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 embarrassment; 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 God 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 anticipation 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 repetition 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 God,—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 gratitude 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 God 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 God 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 sanctity insulted by a worm of the earth, and a Man-God 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 God 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 God. "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 God and live only by His love." To mark her entire separation from the world, she assumed 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 God alone. She chose an apartment in the upper story as the most retired, and between this and the adjoining oratory, she passed 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, substituting 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 God, it was no part of her piety to forget the interests of her neighbour. In her present straitened circumstances, 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 passed 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 God, 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 assistance 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 circumstances 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 God 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 ingratitude, 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 God 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 God" 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 God 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 God so beautiful and so good, assumes 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, God by a vow of perpetual chastity, 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.
Her position in her sister's house was unaccountably strange. She had been invited there, because her clear intellect, sound judgment, and natural aptitude for business promised to render her an invaluable assistant in the management of a large concern, and yet, instead of being at once placed in her own sphere at the head of the family, she was permitted without question or remonstrance to establish her quarters in the kitchen, as if considered suited only for menial work;—treated meantime in the most imperious manner, not only by the master and mistress of the house, but by the very servants; looked down on by all, as if she had been not even a stranger or a hireling, but an outcast. The Spirit of God inspired her, she says, to conceal her natural abilities, that she might pass for an ignorant woman, fit only to wait on the servants, and this lowly condition had such powerful charms for her humble heart, that she actually feared excess in her attachment to it. In proposing this apprehension as a conscientious doubt to her director, her great fear was that he would oblige her to emerge from her abject position, and assume her rightful place in the family.
Her insatiable desire of crosses and humiliations was not satisfied even with the ingratitude of her brother and sister, nor with the insolent behaviour of the domestics; she sought for new sufferings, and among others, contrived to burn herself while employed in cooking. She attended the servants in sickness, reserving the whole care of them to herself, and voluntarily rendering them the lowest services. Among other instances of the kind, she at one time dressed the infected wound of a workman whose foot had been nearly severed in two by a terrible accident, and whose deplorable condition rendered him absolutely unapproachable to all but herself. Although gangrene threatened, and amputation seemed inevitable, she persevered in her work of mercy and self-denial, until she bad effected a cure. Her brother and sister, she looked on as her best benefactors, accepting their unkindness as the greatest of favours, and obeying their directions with scrupulous exactitude, and this life she led, and this death to self she practised, not for a week, or a month, but for three or four successive years. Oh! how richly traced in heaven's own colouring, must have been the daily record of those years kept by her faithful guardian spirit! How mighty the change wrought in her spiritual condition, as one after another they passed away, each leaving behind an accumulation of grace made fruitful; each marked by new, and always more wondrous supernatural favours! It is not, however, by her supernatural favours that we are to estimate her sanctity, but by her practice of solid virtue, nor are we to forget that if by an exceptional vocation, she was led into the higher paths of the mystic life, she walked long, steadily and to the end in the common road, to which, as Christians, we are called no less than she was. Nevertheless, that singular favours should have been granted her, is exactly what we should have been, led to expect from our acquaintance with the history of the saints, which has taught us that it is ever God's way to be liberal with His creatures, in proportion as they are liberal with him. There had been no rapine in the holocaust of this, His faithful servant. She had never refused Him one gift He craved; withheld one sacrifice He asked; was He to be outdone in generosity? Oh, far from it! In presence of the magnificence of His gifts to her chosen soul, we have but to bow down as we bend before the sun when its ray dazzles us. The reverential wonder which they inspire, is, after all, but a homage to the great Giver, and if while we admire and venerate her exceptional privileges, we at the same time study and try to copy the imitable portions of her example, we shall reap profit from both passages of her life.
CHAPTER V.
PREPARATION FOR A HIGHER DEGREE OF DIVINE. UNION.—ACTIVE LIFE.—INTERIOR TRIALS.
We cannot have studied the lives of the saints without observing, that while infinitely generous of His graces to all His faithful servants, their almighty Lord from time to time chooses certain individuals among them as recipients of a more than ordinary measure of His liberality. We read of a privileged few, to whom He is lavish of what may be termed exceptional marks of His love. These chosen souls, He inundates with celestial gifts,—revealing glimpses of His glory and beauty, transforming them into Himself, so as in a manner to divinize them, and even sometimes imparting visible external marks of their sublime spiritual exaltation. It would seem as if He desired to manifest to men in their persons, the immensity of His goodness, the infinitude of His condescension, and the magnificence of His riches. They are the specially favoured among the favoured: they form a class apart, in which God, wonderful in all His saints, is wonderful surpassingly.
In that exceptional class, suited as it would seem to us rather for angels than for mortals, a place was destined in the divine designs for the subject of our history, Marie Guyart, but before those all-gracious designs could be realized, certain preliminaries were needed. To the thoroughly purified soul alone it belongs to fly without impediment to God, as the needle flies to the magnet, and admirable, nay wonderful as was the interior purity to which this-singularly favoured being had attained; it had yet to undergo further processes of refinement before she should be disposed for the privilege awaiting her. Our Lord continued therefore to draw her more and more forcibly to the perfection of the virtue, revealing to her in the meantime, that when it had reached the required degree, a great, but as yet unspecified grace would be her reward. To stimulate her zeal, He gave her a vision, of a soul free from even the slightest shadow of defect, and the sight was one so entrancing, so enrapturing, that she said, if men could only see it, they would willingly renounce all things for the bare enjoyment of the glorious spectacle. Charmed with the celestial beauty of such a soul, and thirsting ever more to share its happy privilege of flying to God without hindrance or delay, she was carefully on her guard against the most trivial imperfection, and when betrayed into one, never desisted, until by sighs and prayers she had obtained forgiveness, which she knew by the cessation of reproach of conscience.
The sanctity of God was represented to her under the semblance of a vast sea, with whose limpid waters no defilement however small was allowed to mingle, all such being instantaneously rejected. Overwhelmed at—sight of the disproportion between the purity of the human, soul, and the holiness of the great God with whom she aspires to be united, she could only exclaim again and again, in the depths of her self-annihilation, "O Purity! O Purity! Hide, absorb me in Thee, O mighty Ocean of Purity!" At another time, the same Divine attribute was shown her as a spotless mirror, reflected on which, the least of her infidelities seemed magnified into a mountain. The profound impression of the Sanctity of God thus imparted, so greatly increased her delicacy of conscience, that she reproached herself for her smallest failure, as if it had been a fault of magnitude. She says that her union with God was never interrupted by necessary conversation, even though it might have lasted the whole day, but that if she spoke a useless word, or yielded to a distracting thought, she at once found the interior bond weakened, and received a reproach from conscience. Once, after she had committed an imperfection, an interior voice whispered to her, "If an artist had painted a fine picture, would he be well pleased to see it soiled and stained?" Another time, the same interior monitor asked, "If you had a costly pearl or diamond, would you like to have it thrown into the mud?" The words seemed to give her a new insight into the sanctity of God, and they filled her with unutterable confusion. So profoundly did the love of interior purity strike root in her innocent soul, that she accepted, and even desired the most vigorous punishment for the slightest fault, never admitting the idea that there could be a disproportion.
Her view of the divine presence had now become so habitual, that by a marvellous privilege, it was never interrupted. If duty obliged her to speak with her neighbour, her communication with God was not in consequence suspended. If she wrote, her mind was equally intent on her subject and on her Lord, and as often as she paused to renew the ink in her pen, her heart profited of the momentary interruption, to say a loving word to Him. If the whole world had been present, she says, nothing in it could have distracted her soul. She had received an infused knowledge of the nature of the works of God, their relations with their Maker, and the end of their creation; all therefore served to unite her to, instead of distracting her attention from Him.
To make reparation to the outraged sanctity of God, and to honour the Passion of her Lord, as well as with the specific intention of disposing her soul for the yet unrevealed favour awaiting her, she redoubled the austerities already so rigorous. She allowed herself only as much sleep as was necessary for existence, taking that on the ground, with no covering but a hair-cloth. After a while, the bare floor appeared too luxurious a couch, so she spread a hair-cloth over it, and on that she stretched her weary limbs for a short part of the night. This mortification she looked on as the severest she had ever endured, the weight of the body and the hardness of the boards combining to press the sharp surface into the flesh, so that constant pain permitted only short and broken sleep. A considerable portion of the night was divided between prayer and corporal mortifications. She was familiar with instruments of penance of every kind, and used them with an unsparing hand. Ingenious in devising means of crucifying her senses, she mixed wormwood with her food, and between meals, kept the bitter herb a long time in her mouth, until forbidden, through regard for her health, to continue so mortifying a practice. She succeeded however in so completely destroying the sense of taste, as to be finally unable to distinguish one description of food from another. Many years after she went to Canada, this fact was decidedly ascertained by an unmistakable test. Yet she says she was never ill, but on the contrary, always vigorous, always cheerful, always ready for new mortifications, and so impressed with their value, that she would have counted the day lost, on which she had suffered nothing. In daily Communion, she renewed the strength so severely taxed by her appalling austerities and her fatiguing labours for her neighbour.
That humiliation of mind might keep pace with subjection of the flesh, she one day brought her director a written confession of the sins and imperfections of her whole life with her name affixed, beseeching him after he had read, to attach it to the church door, that all might know the extent of her infidelity to God. Repeated rebuffs from her confessor served only to manifest the sincerity of her humility; she received them with her habitual love of contempt, and although the paper was burned, instead of being exhibited as she desired, her fidelity to inspiration was rewarded by a new flood of graces. Among the rest, she learned by revelation the exact nature of the celestial favour previously promised only in general terms, our Lord condescending to intimate to her explicitly, that she was destined for that highest degree of divine union, accorded, as we have just seen, only to a privileged few even of the saints. Although the wondrous promise was not to be realized for the present, the prospect of its accomplishment at a future day, filled her with holy joy, nerving her at the same time to new efforts for the removal of every obstacle to the consummation of her hopes.
After she had spent three or four years in the house of her brother-in- law in the manner already noticed, Divine Providence permitted that he should open his eyes to her capabilities and his own injustice. By a tardy concession to her merits, he asked her at last, to undertake the management of his affairs, foreseeing that they could not but prosper in her hands. Besides holding the rank of an artillery officer, he was charged with the commissariat of the whole kingdom, and under favour of these two appointments, he embarked in a variety of enterprises which obliged him to maintain a very large establishment; including numerous servants and vehicles. His charitable sister, in undertaking her new duties, still retained the old, from which her heart refused to part, because of their attendant humiliations. She got through all, and satisfied everybody; meantime so perfectly maintaining her union with God, that she seemed like one of those celestial Spirits of whom our Lord declared that "they ever behold the face of the Father in heaven." She tells us that she spent the greater part of the day in a stable which served as a store, and that sometimes she was still on the quay at midnight, sending off, or receiving goods; that her ordinary companions were carters, porters and other workmen; that she had to look after fifty or sixty horses; that during the frequent absences of her brother and sister, she had their personal affairs to attend to in addition to the rest, and still, that as this multiplicity of occupations had been undertaken only from a motive of charity, God permitted that instead of proving an obstacle to the spirit of recollection, it tended on the contrary to nourish and strengthen it. She says that when she found herself so overwhelmed with business as scarcely to know where to begin, she besought our Lord's help, reminding Him that without it, all must remain undone, and the appeal was never made in vain. Looking back in later life to this period, she remarks that the trials and hardships which she had to encounter during her residence with her brother-in-law, were especially arranged by Divine Providence as a most suitable preparation for her future work in Canada.
Sighing for the consummation of the divine union promised her, and ever seeking for some new gem with which to adorn her soul, she resolved to bind herself by vow to the evangelical counsels, adopting as an obligation, what had hitherto been only a voluntary practice, and thus in a manner anticipating the time when she should realize the dearest wish of her heart, by consecrating herself to God in religion. Her vow of obedience regarded her director, her sister, and her brother-in-law, and in its connection with the two last, was attended with difficulties known only to God. As to poverty, she possessed nothing but what was given her by her sister, contenting herself with bare necessaries. The interests of her son, she abandoned to divine Providence, aspiring with her whole heart to that perfect poverty of spirit which desires but God, and is content with Him alone. In recompense of this new proof of love, her generous Master granted her the precious gift of His own divine peace, and to enhance the treasure, He brought it to her Himself, as on another memorable occasion, He had brought it to His apostles. It was not that her soul had hitherto been a stranger to God's peace; on the contrary, in writing many years later of the favour now conferred, she says she had not supposed it possible to enjoy here below a more perfect interior peace than she habitually possessed, but that after our Lord had whispered to her heart, "Peace be to this house,"—so profound, so imperturbable, so transcendent a peace was imparted, that she never for a moment lost it, although her multiplied afflictions might well have shaken it, had it not been steadily anchored on loving conformity to the will of Him who had established His empire in her soul.
The gold of her virtue had been well tried in the crucible of tribulation, but as yet, it had not been subjected to the fiery ordeal of temptation; through this, for its more entire refinement it was now to pass. All at once her ordinary enjoyment of her spiritual exercises was succeeded by utter disinclination. The sweetness and patience which had scarcely cost her an effort in her intercourse with her neighbour, gave place to a sensitiveness and irritability which would have caused her many faults if she had not been closely and constantly on her guard. Her childlike submission to her director appear intolerable yoke; her dependence on her sister a positive degradation. The humiliations so freely embraced, and so long and dearly prized, seemed in her altered views, inconsistent with self-respect. The corporal penances hitherto lightened and sweetened by the unction of Divine love, now assumed their worst sharpness, and excited her strongest repugnance. Importunate scruples were added to temptation, and while thus violently assailed on many sides, she seemed not to receive light or comfort from any. Her only support in these terrible interior trials was in the remembrance of God's promise "to be with those who are in tribulation" (Ps. xc. 15), and truly He was with hers in hers, and by His almighty grace brought her so triumphantly through them, that amidst her complicated sufferings, she never failed in her fidelity to her Lord; never omitted the smallest duty or fell into the slightest impatience. He who does not permit His creatures to be tried beyond their strength, granted her relief when she least expected it. In the restored light, she clearly saw that the object of the tempter had been to lure her from the path of perfection to which God had called her, and on which, as we have seen, she had already made gigantic strides; and she discovered with equal distinctness that the ordeal through which she had passed was a necessary preparation for the higher graces to come. By her example on this occasion, as well as by her subsequent instructions, she teaches that however strong may be the pressure of temptation, however impenetrable the darkness of aridity, the afflicted soul should not omit any of her accustomed exercises, whether of obligation or of mere devotion, or lose her trust in that divine grace which never deserts her in her conflicts, but powerfully, though perhaps imperceptibly supports her in every difficulty.
CHAPTER VI.
SUPERNATURAL FAVOURS—VISION OF THE MOST ADORABLE TRINITY.—RENEWED INTERIOR TRIALS.—NEW HEAVENLY FAVOURS.
As the released torrent rushes on with increased impetuosity after a temporary restraint, so did the emancipated soul of the holy Mother bound to God with ten-fold ardour, now that the pressure of temptation, and the darkness of doubt had been removed. As a reward for her fidelity in her late trials, our Blessed Lord one day showed her His Heart and her own so entirely united, so completely fused, that they seemed to form but one. After this grace, her love of God appeared to change its character, and to become altogether divine. Her heart was no longer her own, for it had been made the possession of the Heart of Jesus. Absorbed in transports and ecstasies of holy love, she grieved that even the short time which she allowed to sleep, should interrupt the recollection of the only Desired of her soul: She aspired with ever increasing ardour to the mystic union so long promised and so long delayed. It was to be, as it were, the culminating point of the Divine favours;—meantime she was permitted, if not to reach the summit, at least to ascend to mysterious heights on the holy mountain, and there behold wonders not destined for sight of mortal eyes;—wonders which she herself confesses to be inexplicable by human words. Miraculously strengthened to bear the overwhelming flood of splendour, her soul was elevated even, to the vision, of the most august and adorable Trinity. She saw the relations between the Three Divine Persons; their unity, their distinction, their operations within and outside themselves. She saw their operations also in the nine choirs of angels, and understood how the human soul is created to the image of God. It took but a moment, she says, to receive the impression of all these wonders, whereas the effort to describe them requires time, for human language cannot express in a word, what the mind can grasp in an instant. The ecstasy lasted five hours, at the end of which she found herself still kneeling exactly in the spot of the church where it had commenced. She describes herself during that time as absolutely lost in those unfathomable splendours; capable only of passively receiving the impression of the purely intellectual vision unfolded to her with indescribable clearness and singleness of view. Writing of this great favour towards the end of life, she says that it was then as vividly present to her in all its circumstances as at the time of its occurrence, adding in her own simple way, that "great things like this are never forgotten." It has been observed that the terms in which she speaks of the most abstruse mysteries of faith, are too clear, top precise, too strictly in accordance with the teaching of theology, to have come within the natural lights of a woman of ordinary education; therefore while the style of the narrative has excited the admiration of the learned, it has left them without a doubt as to the Divine source of her inspiration. For a long time after the vision, her soul was so completely concentrated in the most adorable Trinity, that she had no power to detach her thoughts from the ineffable mystery.
We might anticipate that the wonderful favour just recorded, would be the last prelude to the elevation of God's chosen servant to the promised high degree of Divine union, but such is the incomprehensible purity of the all-holy God, that even after so many delays, so many trials, so much fidelity, so much love and devotedness, He did not yet find her sufficiently free from the dust of the earth, sufficiently disengaged from every creature, sufficiently detached even from His own sensible gifts, to be worthy of that mysterious union which requires the purity of an angel. The work of preparation was accordingly to go on; the arduous work of self-annihilation, of interior crucifixion, of total sacrifice of every feeling, and absolute death to every inclination. Our Lord showed her her soul as it would appear when adorned with the required degree of holiness, and she confessed that He did her but justice in still deferring the hour for which she sighed.
It is the remark of her son in the Life of his holy Mother, that temptation is among the most efficacious means employed by the Almighty for the purification of His creatures, for as in that state, the soul is pursued by a vivid and constant apprehension of committing sin, she lives in an habitual hatred of, and watchfulness against it, which are but too apt to relax when the presence of evil is less apparent, and the necessity for combating it less urgent. Through this grievous, suffering, the servant of God had once more to pass. It appeared to her, she said as if she had suddenly fallen from paradise into purgatory. She found herself not only deprived of all consolation, but filled with alarm at the remembrance of past favours, which seemed to her to have been unreal and delusive. The thought of God was, as usual, ever present to her mind, but it brought no comfort, for with it came an afflicting doubt of the sincerity of her love for Him. Far down in the depths of her soul, it is true, reposed the solid peace founded on submission to His will, but it was a matter of difficulty to realize the existence of that submission. Nature had once more asserted its sensitiveness to humiliation and contradiction. In short, so profound was her anguish of soul that she could scarcely support herself. This sore affliction, lasted for some months, then gradually abated, and as it did, she learned to realize the sweet use of sorrow. Trial, seconded by her own fidelity, had done its work. Faith had triumphed over sense. Like "a two-edged sword reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit" (Heb. iv. 12), it had cut away the last remnant of natural life, and left behind only the supernatural. Long disengaged in mind and heart from all things on earth, she was now so detached even from the consolations of heaven, so singly centred in God alone, that she could rejoice in her spiritual poverty, and thank the Lord for seeming to have withdrawn, the favours which in her humility, she considered exposed to defilement in passing through her heart. The Almighty who delights in manifesting Himself to the humble, was pleased to reward her fidelity by a lively impression of His adorable attributes, and a clear knowledge of the mysteries contained in the first chapter of St. John. "During a holy week," she says, "our Lord granted me new lights regarding His Divine attributes. I contemplated the Unity of God, and in the Unity, I beheld His Eternity without beginning or end; His immense Greatness; His adorable Infinitude; and in an ecstasy of admiration, I could only exclaim, 'Goodness! O Immensity! O Eternity!' I understood how all things have their origin in God, from whom emanates whatever is beautiful and good, and I cried, 'O more than Good! more than Beautiful! more than Adorable! Thou art God! Thou art the great God!' Sinking into the very depths of my lowliness, feeling in His mighty presence as if I had been the veriest worm, still I could not refrain from telling Him of my love; still I could not but rejoice that my God is so great; still I exulted that He is All, and that I am nothing, for if I had been anything, then He would not have been All. O Breadth! O Length! O height! O Depth! immense, adorable, incomprehensible to all but Thyself! my Centre! my Beginning! my End! my Beatitude! my All!" Unable to satisfy her desire to die,—if that were possible, in order to render homage to the perfections of her God, she substituted the slow martyrdom of still more rigorous austerities than she had yet practised, and, after this new sacrifice, her mind, she says, was so filled with light as to be in a manner dazzled, and as it were blinded by the grandeur of the Majesty of the Most High. Thus purified by trial, sanctified by grace, adorned with virtue, resplendent with Divine love, elevated above earth and self and all their influences, her happy soul presented no farther, obstacle to the designs of her all- gracious Lord: it was ready for the ardently, desired union with Him,— and now, at last, the promise so long made, and the expectations so long cherished, were about to be realized.
CHAPTER VII.
SECOND VISION OF THE MOST ADORABLE TRINITY.—REALIZATION OF THE DIVINE PROMISE.
A second vision of the most august Trinity was granted to Marie Guyart, just two years after she had been favoured with the first. She was then in her twenty-seventh year, and seven years had elapsed since the memorable vision of the application of the precious blood of Jesus to her soul. In this second vision, the will was more strongly affected than the intellect; the heart absolutely consumed with the burning fire of love; the mind, as before, inundated with floods of light. This grace gave, as it were, the finishing touch to the beauty of her soul, seeming to supply what had hitherto been wanting to its perfection. While her spirit was absorbed, and in a manner annihilated in the contemplation of the three most adorable Persons of the Trinity, the Eternal Word, according to His promise, united her to Himself in close, mysterious bonds which there are no human words to describe. [Footnote: The lives of St. Francis of Assisium, St. Teresa, St Catherine of Sienna, St. Gertrude, and some other saints furnish instances of supernatural favours similar to that now granted to the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation.] "He that is joined to the Lord, is one spirit" (1 Cor. v. 17).
Often had she sighed for this hour, and with the Spouse in the Canticles besought the Lord to show her His face, and to let her hear His voice— that face so comely, and that voice so sweet. Now at last, possession had replaced hope, so now she might entone the canticle of triumph, "I found him whom my soul loveth: I hold him: and I will not let him go. My beloved to me, and I to him who feedeth among the lilies. Till the "glorious dawn of eternity" break, and the shadows of time retire," (Cant. iii. 4, ii., 17.) "when I shall see Him as He is, face to face, and know Him even as I am known" (l Cor, xiii. 12). She seemed to have passed into a new state of being. Ardent as her love of God had been before, it now rose to heights hitherto unknown. Her whole soul appeared to be transformed into love. Her life became one unbroken act, one uninterrupted hymn of ecstatic love. In the busy streets, in distracting business, amidst household cares and duties, at all times and in all places, she gave vent to her irrepressible transports in the sweet song of ceaseless praise, silently entoned within her own heart, and audible only to her heavenly Spouse and His angels. Even in sleep, she could scarcely be said to discontinue it, for while she slept, her heart watched, and at each interruption to her short repose, it resumed the strain, returning to the actual exercise of love with the first moment of full awakening consciousness. Sometimes fearing that her emotions might betray themselves exteriorly, she relieved their uncontrollable impetuosity by committing them to writing, afterwards burning these effusions. A few of them, however, by chance escaped destruction, and have happily reached us. From these, as well as from the account of her manner of prayer written at the command of one of her confessors, we learn something of the holy ardour which consumed her. "O Love!" she cried, "how sweet Thou art! how captivating are Thy charms! how light Thy bonds! Sometimes Thou woundest, sometimes Thou enslavest, but still art Thou ever sweet. As I am all Thine, so art Thou all mine, mine for ever, O my most desirable Life! And what do I desire of Thee, O my All? I desire Thy love, and Thy love alone. O Love! O great Love! Thou art all, and I am nothing, but it is enough that the mighty All should love the poor nothing, and that the miserable nothing should love the great All! O great God! mayest Thou be blessed by every tongue and love by every heart!"
The impossibility of satisfying her holy eagerness to be inseparably united to her God, caused her inexplicable suffering. It was death to her that she could not die. "I long, O Lord," she would say, "to be free from the prison of the body, that I may fly to Thee, and behold Thee in all Thy beauty and Divine attractions. O Love! when shall I embrace Thee! When shall I see Thee without cloud or veil! Knowest Thou not that I love but Thee? Come then, that I may expire in Thy sacred arms. To a soul which loves Thee, it is a martyrdom to be separated from Thee, and meantime to see Thee offended by so many of The creatures who are insensible to Thy goodness, and indifferent to Thyself. Oh! take me from this scene of sin and misery where there is nothing but sorrow and affliction of spirit. My heart sighs for Thy eternal mansions; for Thy incomparable beauty; for the consummation of that blissful union, of whose sweetness Thou grantest us a foretaste here below. While the sensible sweetness lasts, we are happy in Thee, our Treasure, our Life, our Love, but no sooner are we left to ourselves, than we feel once more the full force of our poverty and misery. Who will grant to my soul to burst its prison bars and ascend to Thee! May I be all Thine, as Thou art all mine! O Sacred Heart of Jesus! be Thou the Altar of sacrifice on which my heart shall be immolated! O Furnace of charity! enkindle in it that celestial flame in which I desire to be consumed. Can it rest on an Altar of fire and not be set on fire?" But notwithstanding her desire to be dissolved, that she might be with Christ, she loved her Lord's will too purely to wish for death or life except in conformity to it, therefore she offered herself to bear the burden of existence until the day of judgment, if God could be thus more glorified,—satisfied if meantime she accomplished nothing more than to teach some simple soul to know and love our Blessed Lady. Her chief relief and support was still, as ever, in daily Communion, which uniting her really, though invisibly to her Lord and Treasure, consoled her in some degree for the delay to the eternal union for which she languished. She says of this most adorable Sacrament, "that it is a fathomless and shoreless abyss of grace, and that eternity's light alone will reveal the ineffable wonders which God discovered to her soul at the time of her sacramental union with him."
We know from the testimony of the saints who have endured the martyrdom of Divine love, that the greatest of its pains proceeds from the inability of the soul to lore God with an ardour proportioned either to her own desire to love Him, or to the extent of His claims on her love. This suffering the Venerable Mother experienced in its fullest intensity. From, her insatiable desire of a more perfect love, sprang a fixed impression of her utter powerlessness to do any thing for, or give any thing to the great and generous God who had given her Himself, and with Himself all things. "Thou hast made me for Thyself, O God!" she would say; "for Thyself who art Love; why then should I not speak of love? But alas! what can I say of it? I cannot speak of it on earth. The saints who see Thee in heaven, silently adore Thee, and their silence speaks. Why, O Lord, cannot we burn like them with silent love? If Thou art their love, Thou art also ours. They see Thee as Thou art, and in this are more favoured than we on earth, but when we are released from this prison, we shall behold Thee like them; we shall praise, embrace, possess Thee like them; we shall be absorbed in Thee as they are,—in Thee who art my Love, my only Love, my great and glorious God, my mercy and my All!" While her soul was thus rapt in a continual ecstasy of love, her bodily strength wasted away under the action of the consuming fire. In one of the many phases of the martyrdom of love which it was her privilege to pass through, it pleased her Lord that the body should suffer more than the soul, enduring in its turn a real agony, and that so violent, that she says she must have died if it had lasted a few days.
While these miracles of grace were being wrought in the soul of this admirable woman, no external sign gave indications of the work going on within, for she took care to enfold her treasures under the mantle of humility. Always devoted, laborious and active, she seemed altogether intent on her harassing duties, yet, multiplied and fatiguing as these were, she found time to attend to the spiritual interests of her brother's numerous workmen, sometimes calling them round her to teach them the Christian doctrine, sometimes profiting of conversation at table to speak to them of God and the concerns of their souls. Reverencing her as a saint, they submitted to her like docile children, gave her an account of their conduct, adopted her advice, bore her reproofs, and carried obedience so far as to rise from bed to say their night prayers, if by accident she discovered that any one had retired without complying with the duty. Solicitous for their temporal, as for their eternal welfare, she interceded for them with her brother-in-law when they had incurred his displeasure, and attended them in sickness with truly maternal devotedness. Although her close attention to the presence of God never interfered with the fulfilment of her duties, it incapacitated her from following up the thread of any conversation unconnected with them. Her brother-in-law perceiving this, sometimes amused himself by asking her a question referring to something that had been said, but her confusion on these occasions was so evident, that in order not to increase it, the subject was quickly changed.
Finally, these vehement transports and exhausting languishings of divine love were succeeded by a profound and permanent calm. Her soul sweetly reposed in God, its Centre—that Centre was within herself, and there she enjoyed a peace surpassing all understanding. In the account written by her confessor's command of the special favours she had received from God, she observes in reference to this highest degree of divine union, that "the soul elevated to it, enjoys as far as possible here below, the felicity of the blessed. Storms," she says, "may sweep over her inferior part, but they do not reach the interior temple where the Spouse reigns, and she rests tranquilly in His presence. It is alike to her whether she is immersed in embarrassing cares, or buried in most profound solitude. Amidst the turmoil of life and the distraction of business, she is alone with God in her heart, enjoying His sweet company, conversing with Him familiarly, transformed as it were into a paradise, of which His smile is the light and the bliss. Vainly would she endeavour to explain what passes in that interior heaven, for the subject is too sublime to come within the reach of weak, defective human language. She is so elevated above the world, that all its combined splendours appear to her but as a contemptible atom of dust. Thus does the Almighty 'raise the needy from the earth, to place them with the princes of his people,' and in doing so, He only exalts His own glory, and shows forth His magnificence."
The intimate union with God, here described, became henceforth the Venerable Mother's habitual condition. It must however be noted that she does not speak of this privileged state as excluding temptation and suffering, but only says, that violent and frequent as may be their assaults, they do not disturb the inner region of the soul where God has established His Kingdom in peace. The superior part remains tranquil, although the inferior may be troubled and agitated, just as the ocean depths repose in peaceful calm while its surface is lashed by the angry tempest. By noticing this distinction, it will become easy to reconcile the apparently contradictory statements which attribute to the Mother of the Incarnation uninterrupted interior peace, with intense and almost continuous interior suffering.
CHAPTER VIII.
ENTRANCE TO THE URSULINE NOVITIATE AT TOURS.
From her early years, the desires of the Venerable Mother had turned to the cloister, as we have already seen. Her engagement in married life had seemed at first to oppose an insuperable obstacle to their fulfilment, but God who had destined her for religion, removed the impediment, leaving her free by the death of her husband to follow her first impulse, as soon as duty should allow her to separate from her little son. That time had now come; the child had attained his twelfth year, and could dispense with her immediate care. So far, she had faithfully fulfilled her obligations towards him, watching over his infancy and childhood with tender solicitude, training him in the ways of God as she had been trained herself; forming his tender heart to piety, and giving his first habits the right bent. The impression of her holy instructions and example was never effaced, and when in advanced years he referred to the period of their early companionship, it was in terms of most profound veneration for her virtues, and boundless admiration of her truly celestial life.
Like the storm-tost mariner nearing the haven, or the weary traveller approaching home, she sighed with redoubled ardour for the end of her pilgrimage, now that the end was 'nigh. It was but natural. Lovely as the tabernacles of the Lord had looked in the distance, their beauty was immeasurably magnified by the closer view. If then she had felt even in the days of her exile, that those are blessed who dwell in the house of God, can we wonder that she should have absolutely longed. and fainted for His courts, now that their portals were about to be thrown open for her admission? But although the hour of emancipation had come, she was yet ignorant of the particular Order to which God called her. The perusal of the works of St. Teresa had inspired her with a strong attraction for the Carmelites, whose particular profession of prayer and recollection exactly harmonized with her own inclination and practice. On the other hand, the General of the Feuillants, anxious to secure so precious a treasure for his own Order, offered in the most flattering manner to receive her, promising to relieve her of all future anxiety regarding the education of her son. This latter condition was of such vital importance, that the proposal filled her with joy and gratitude. Besides, to the Carmelite spirit of prayer and solitude, the Feuillantine Sisters added the practice of great austerities, thus presenting a two-fold attraction to the holy widow. Yet it was not to either of these Orders that God called her, nor was it indeed to a purely contemplative life that her own thoughts had originally turned. On the contrary, her earliest inclination had been for the Ursulines, although strangely enough, she had no acquaintance whatever with them, and could not even have told where they were to be found. She merely knew in a general way, that the special object of their institute is the salvation of souls, and that its mixed life of action and prayer closely resembles the public life of our Lord on earth. These two considerations had always strongly influenced her in its favour, nevertheless, the more austere Orders had not lost their charms, so, as God had not yet clearly manifested His will, she waited calmly until circumstances should reveal it beyond a doubt. At length Divine Providence interposed. About this very period, it happened that the Ursulines established themselves at Tours, and as if to facilitate her introduction to them, it further chanced that after a short time they removed from the house they had first inhabited, to one quite near the residence of her brother. Some secret attraction seemed to draw her in the direction of the new convent, which she never passed without experiencing an indescribable emotion, and a strong impulse to linger round the precincts. In this monastery there lived a saintly religious, who had been led to exalted virtue through much the same paths as those which she had herself trodden. These two souls, alike privileged by grace, were destined as mutual helps to perfection, and for the furtherance of this great design, the wondrous providence of God had so arranged events, that without premeditation on either side, both should be associated in community life. Their acquaintance originated in a visit which the holy widow had occasion to pay at the convent. At the first interview, each felt that she was understood by the other, yet although, their intimacy soon ripened into a saintly friendship, Marie Guy art could never prevail on herself to speak of her perplexities to Mother Francis of St. Bernard, wishing as ever to leave herself altogether in the hands of God. Meantime Mother St. Bernard was elected Superior of the new monastery, and no sooner had she taken office than she felt inspired to make overtures to her friend to join the community. Having obtained the necessary permissions, she sent for her, and in a few kind words offered her a place among the sisters. The generous proposal did not take the holy woman by surprise, for as she was entering the house, a strong presentiment had seized her as to the direct purport of the visit. Full of joy and thankfulness, she humbly expressed her gratitude, and asked leave, before replying, to consult God and her director. The latter was a man eminently versed, as already noticed, in the science of guiding souls. The better to try her vocation, he received the application with apparent coldness, and seemed for a while to have given up all idea of her quitting the world, so her state of indecision continued. But one day, while she was in prayer, all doubts as to her future course were suddenly and completely removed. Her temporary inclination for the more austere Orders instantaneously vanished, giving place to an ardent, fixed desire to join the Ursulines, and that as speedily as could be accomplished. Her director recognised the voice of God in the urgent inspiration, and exhorted her to obey it without hesitation or delay.
But it was not to be expected that Satan would relinquish the prize without yet another struggle. The career of the future Ursuline was to bring great glory to God through the salvation of many souls; clearly, then, his interest demanded a last strong effort to deter her from the life to which her Master called her. The artifice employed was so much the more dangerous, as it wore the semblance of good. The tempter represented her flight from the world as a violation of her duty to her little son, suggesting that so unnatural a neglect of her sacred maternal obligations could not but compromise her own salvation, as. well as the highest and dearest interests of her child. To the stratagems of Satan were added the persuasive entreaties of some of her friends, and the violent opposition of others. The two-fold conflict was a hard one, but, aided by divine grace, she conquered nature once again, as she had so often done before, and God was pleased to reward her fidelity by so effectually changing the views of her sister and her brother-in-law, that in the end they not only consented to her departure, but even promised to take care of her child.
One more ordeal remained, and it was, indeed, a severe one. She had not yet acquainted her son with her intention, but he seemed to have an instinctive presentiment of some event of more than ordinary consequence to him. He noticed that he had all at once become a general object of silent sympathy. The compassion which he read on every face communicated its saddening influence to his little heart; the low tone in which people spoke in his presence, excited his suspicions. Oppressed by the sense of some painful mystery, he took refuge at first in solitude and tears, and before, long, unable to bear up against the weight of melancholy, he made up his mind to go away altogether from the scene of his troubles. A fortnight before the time appointed for his mother's entrance to the convent, he managed to escape unobserved from the school where he was then a boarder. The discovery of his flight, seemed a signal for general censure of his mother. The world declared that she alone was to be blamed for the disaster—she alone to be held accountable for its consequences. It was difficult to bear, and that, too, at a time when her whole soul was rent with anguish, when every feeling of nature re-echoed, while every instinct of grace obliged her to resist the mighty pleadings of maternal love. The terrible interior combat was immeasurably aggravated by her efforts to maintain external composure. In her great sorrow she turned for comfort to her friend at the Ursulines, and had scarcely concluded her sad account when her director, Dom Raymond, happened also to call at the monastery. From the habitual charity of this good religious, she naturally expected his especial sympathy at this trying moment. Great, then, was her dismay to find that far from attempting to assuage, he seemed determined, on the contrary, to irritate the wound. Well convinced by experience of the solidity of her virtue, he seized the present apparently inopportune occasion of testing it anew. Assuming great sternness of voice and manner, he told her it was easy to see that her virtue was only superficial, since she manifested so great a want of submission to God's will, and of faith in His providence, adding that her excessive attachment to a creature clearly indicated the ascendancy which nature still retained over her. Kneeling before her censor, the humble mother listened to the harsh reproof in profound silence, but a sigh escaped her, and this Dom Raymond declared to be a distinct confirmation of his late assertions, ordering her to depart at once from the house of God, which was not meant to harbour souls so imperfect as she was. She immediately rose, and, with a low inclination to her director, left the convent. Perfectly amazed at the heroism of her virtue, the Reverend Father and the Mother Superior returned thanks to God for having permitted them to witness so wonderful an example, and, without informing her of it, sent messengers at their own expense to seek her son, those whom she had herself employed not having discovered any trace of him.
By a singular coincidence, the flight of her boy occurred during the octave of the Epiphany, when the Church reads the history of the loss of Jesus in the temple, and it also happened that he, like the Divine Child, was twelve years of age at the time of his disappearance. These circumstances greatly consoled the poor mother in her bereavement: she united her desolation with that of the Mother of Sorrows, and hoped that, like her, she would recover her son at the end of three days, and so it actually happened. Precisely at that time he was brought back by a person who had accidentally met him at Blois. He then owned that he had planned to go to Paris, where he hoped to be received by a partner of his uncle's, resident in that city. The child's return removed the last obstacle to her departure; and now the day was fixed irrevocably, notwithstanding the renewed entreaties of her relatives; notwithstanding the tears of her father; notwithstanding the agony of her own soul at the parting from her only child whom she loved most tenderly. She recalled the declaration of our Lord that "he who loves father or mother, son or daughter more than Him is not worthy of Him" (St. Matt. x. 37), and the words inspired her with invincible courage. No sooner was her final decision taken than uncertainty and perplexity vanished utterly.
For the preceding ten years it had been her aim indirectly to prepare the little Claude for the separation which she knew must one day come. Believing that the less she had accustomed him to external demonstrations of affection, the less also he would miss her presence and feel her loss, she had made it a rule from the time he was two years old, never to fondle or embrace him, carrying self-denial in this particular so far as to discourage even his, own childish caresses and endearments. Yet though grave, he found her ever kind and gentle; though reserved, sweet-tempered and inaccessible to caprice; though undemonstrative, solidly devoted to his interests and tenderly alive to his wants; so it happened after all that he loved her fondly, and all the more so, perhaps, that unknown to himself, his love was founded on reverence.
How shall the mother summon courage to bid him adieu? Where find words to say that although he should ever dwell in her heart, her home and his could be one no longer? That, already deprived by death of one parent, he was now by her own voluntary act to lose the second too? Poor mother! great is thy sorrow, yet not as that of another Martyr-Mother, whose story of anguish thou knowest well. It was at the foot of the cross that she bade adieu to her Son; there, too, must thou bravely stand by her side to say farewell to thine. The virtue of the cross will strengthen thee as it strengthened her; and when thy sacrifice is accomplished, thou wilt find a balm for thy wounded heart by uniting it to the broken heart of Jesus on the cross, and of Mary standing in its shade.
Summoning the boy to her side, she said, "My son, I have a great secret to tell you. I have hitherto concealed it, because you were not old enough to understand its importance, but now that you are becoming more sensible, and that I am on the point of taking the step to which this great secret refers, I can no longer hesitate to confide it to you. When your father was taken from us, God immediately inspired me with the resolution of forsaking the world and embracing the religious life. I could not carry out this intention at once, for you were too young to dispense with my care, but now that this is no longer the case, I must follow the call of God without farther delay. I might have gone away without forewarning you, for when salvation is in question, as in the present instance, God's command must absolutely be obeyed, but to spare you a painful shock, I determined to tell you my plans, and ask your consent to their accomplishment. God wishes this parting, my son, and if we love Him we must wish it too. If this separation afflicts you, think of the great honour which the Almighty does me in calling me to His service. Remember too what a happiness it will be for you to know henceforth that your mother is occupied day and night in praying for your salvation. This being so, will you not give me leave to obey God, who commands me to go away?"
Awed and bewildered by the solemnity of the address, the child could only say, "But I shall never see you again?"
"Not so, my son," replied the courageous mother; "on the contrary, you will see me whenever you like; I am only going to the Ursulines, who you know live quite close, and you can come to me there as often as you please."
"In that case," he said, "I am satisfied."
An oppressive weight seemed to have been taken from the mother's heart; now she could breathe freely. "I should have found it very hard to part from you, my child," she said, "if you had refused, because I do not like to give you pain, but as you are contented, I shall leave you tranquilly in the hands of God. I bequeath to you no worldly wealth, for as the Lord is my inheritance, so do I desire that He should be yours. If you fear and love Him, you will be rich enough. I entrust you to a heavenly Mother who will amply make up to you for my loss, for her power to serve you is far greater than mine. Love that dear Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary; be faithful to her; call on her as your Mother; turn to her in all your wants, reminding her that you are her child, and that she is bound to take care of your interests, and be sure that she will never forsake you. I have placed you in the charge of my sister, who has promised me to love you and watch over you. Show her always the same affection and respect as you have shown me. Serve God faithfully; keep his commandments; love Him, and He will love you and provide for you in whatever position you may be placed. Adieu, my son." Then she directed him to kneel at her feet, and repressing every appearance of emotion, calmly made the sign of the cross on his forehead, and gave him her solemn blessing. It was the last caress and the last farewell of this heroic woman to her only child; henceforth he was to be the child of providence, and she was to be as if his mother no more. God, jealous of her undivided love, would admit no rival in her heart; over that, He designed to reign sole Sovereign.
This most painful scene over, the remaining trials seemed easy to bear. She bade adieu to her weeping relatives, and even to her aged father, without betraying a symptom of the agony which rent her soul, and then, on the 25th of January, the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, in the year 1631, she left her sister's house, accompanied by numerous friends. The little procession was headed by her niece whom she had asked to precede her with a crucifix, the standard which she had ever so faithfully followed, and to which she was now proving the truth of her allegiance by the severing of every human tie, and the sacrifice of every human feeling. At her side walked her little son, silent and tearful, but quiet and resigned. She alone of the whole party manifested no agitation; her step was firm; her demeanour calm, her countenance beaming as if with light from heaven. Yet the superhuman victory was not achieved without mortal anguish; every tear of the weeping child at her side made her heart bleed afresh; every sob seemed to lacerate her soul, but she says, in alluding afterwards to her emotions on the occasion, "Much as I loved my son, I loved my God far more."
At the door of the monastery, she smilingly repeated her farewell to the child and the rest of the party, and a moment after, was joyfully and lovingly welcomed by the Mother Superior of the Ursuline Convent.
CHAPTER IX.
SAINT ANGELA AND THE URSULINES.
It was in the sixteenth century that the Ursuline Order took its rise. The epoch was one peculiarly disastrous in the Church's history. Luther's heresy was working evil on a gigantic scale. It had spread from nation to nation with the rapidity of a pestilential contagion, blighting with its deadly venom all it touched, and everywhere marking its progress by a wide track of spiritual ruin and desolation, as well as of political anarchy and social disorganization. Each new success of its unholy work, necessarily inflicted a new pang on the heart of the sorrowing Spouse of Christ. Day after day, she had to weep afresh over some new profanation of her sanctuaries, some new desertion of her faithless children, some aggravated treason against her God. Nor was it only the ravages of heresy that she had to lament, but perhaps still more, the disloyalty of too many among her still nominal adherents. While a vast number of her disciples revolted openly against her authority, others who recognised it in words, rejected it in practice. Where the light of faith had not been utterly extinguished, the fire of charity had but too often cooled. The lower classes were ignorant, the better instructed careless; both more or less indifferent. Worse than all, the very guardians of the fold had in too many instances proved false to their sacred trust, so intent on the advancement of their own worldly interests, as to concern themselves very little for the protection of their perishing flocks. The ever spreading torrent of corruption and infidelity, looked, as though in its fully gathered strength, it might one day inundate the world. Where could an efficacious barrier be found to its farther progress? The question was a momentous one, involving the honour even of Him who had given His life- blood to purchase the very souls of whom Satan was thus making an easy prey. All unknown to each other, two faithful children of the mourning Mother were just then occupied in studying the grand problem, and both succeeded in discovering the solution. Yet a few years, and they would give the world the practical result of their researches in the institution of their respective Orders, the Jesuits and the Ursulines. With the latter, the name of the Mother Mary of the Incarnation is so closely interwoven, that a few words on the rise and progress of the Order, naturally find a place in her biography.
Saint Angela Merici, the Foundress of the Ursulines, was born on the 2lst of March, 1474, therefore was considerably advanced in life when Luther took up arms against the Church. Dezenzano, her birth-place, stands on the south-west bank of the picturesque Lago di Garda in the Venetian States, about seventeen miles from Brescia. It is ever the saints whom God employs to do His work, and in the present instance, neither the work nor the instrument was to be an exception to the rule. Angela entered on the path of sanctity almost at the same time as on the path of life, and as she advanced in years, kept ever redoubling her pace, until at last she may be said to have flown, rather than walked along the blessed way. From her earliest days she evinced a dread of sin, a love of prayer and solitude, and an inclination for the severities of penance, very unusual in children. Ever cherishing a supreme, absorbing desire to live for God alone, she perpetually added fuel to the heavenly fire by frequent communion, prolonged prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and similar holy practices, unhappily at that time but little observed. After her admission to the Third Order of St. Francis, she placed so little limit to her austerities, that she might with strict truth have been called a living victim of perpetual penance. Her life became one almost unbroken fast, and she was often known to pass a week at a time without any other food than the heavenly manna of daily communion. To such perfection did she carry her spirit of poverty, that after making the simple vow in the Third Order, she would live only on alms, taking her rest on a mat or a bundle of faggots, with a stone for her pillow. Thus, as years went on, her ever increasing beauty of Soul, seemed even more than her remarkable external attractions, to give literal significance to her name,—Angela, the Angel.
But her personal sanctification, although her first, was not her only aim. God had called her to work for other souls as well as her own, and her apostolic vocation began early to assert itself. The deplorable decay of faith and piety among nominal Christians of her day, weighed heavily on her heart. Not content with simply lamenting the growing evil, she longed for the power to check it. But how could she? How could a feeble woman arrest an impetuous torrent? Again and again she asked herself the question, and again and again, clearer than the heaven's light, came the answer;—if the vices of the adult generation were traceable in a great degree to the want of early Christian training—as who could doubt?—was it not manifest that the only check to the transmission of its irreligious spirit, was the careful education of the young? Yes; let the ignorant be taught, and little by little God's work would be done. Success might at first be small, but it would be certain. Each mind enlightened, would be a heart converted, and even one was worth labouring for. The single child trained to piety, would at a future day become a religious mother, capable of imparting to her own family the holy impressions which she had herself received; the circle of good would go on extending for ever, and only God could see its final limits. Thus Angela reasoned, and without delay she determined to carry out her conclusions.
It was about her twenty-first year that she began her labour of zeal and love, by assembling the little children of Dezenzano for catechism, and instructing a vast number of adults in the Christian doctrine. Her assistants were four in number, and like herself members of the Third Order of St. Francis. It was but a diminutive plant that sprang at first from the seed then deposited in the garden of God, but the blessing of the Most High rested on the feeble seedling, and in that divine sunshine it throve and grew, until at last it expanded into a great tree, of which the historian Time can tell no tale, save that although ages and storms have passed over it, its heart is fresh, its growth is steady, and its roots are firm to-day, as in the early years, when sown by the hand, and fostered by the care of Angela, it gave its young promise of luxuriance and stability. Though she did not live to witness the full realization of that promise, she was permitted to foresee its accomplishment in a celestial vision granted her much about the period of the opening of her apostolate at Dezenzano. One day, while praying with great earnestness for Divine guidance, a high ladder, like that shown to Jacob, suddenly appeared before her. One end of it rested on the ground, the other touched the heavens. Down this ladder, a resplendent band of virgins slowly descended, moving two and two with perfectly regularity, and accompanied by angels. Their number was very great; their garments were rich; their crowns were studded with gems of wondrous beauty, and they sang a sweet canticle, to which their angelic guardians responded in choir. Overwhelmed with astonishment, she looked and listened, utterly unable to comprehend the mystery. At last she recognised in the procession a beloved companion recently deceased, who told her to take courage, for that she was the instrument chosen by the Almighty to establish at Brescia a society of virgins similar to those she then beheld. The revelation was too convincing to leave room for doubt, yet so profound was the saint's humility, so deep her sense of her own unworthiness and incapacity, that she permitted full forty year to pass without taking any decided measures for its accomplishment. The vision, however, served to add new fire to her zeal for the Divine honour, and to intensify her already ardent love for her neighbour. She became absolutely indefatigable in her efforts for the diffusion of religious instruction, the reconciliation of enemies, the consolation of the afflicted, and the conversion of sinners, sparing neither time, fatigue, nor even frequent journeys in furtherance of these and similar objects of charity; working among the poor from preference, but never refusing her help to those also of the better class who sought it. But holy and profitable as was the work at Dezenzano, she knew all along that it was only preparatory to the greater work at Brescia. "Take courage, Angela," said the prophecy, "for thou shall found a company of virgins such as these at Brescia." The prediction was explicit as to her future destiny, but vague as to the period of fulfilment. To that there might be still, as there had already been, a long delay, but she believed that in His own time, the Almighty would provide for its accomplishment, and for that time she waited tranquilly, devoting herself meanwhile to her humble labours at Dezenzano as entirely as if she had not known full well that Dezenzano was not her ultimate destination. And in His own time God did interpose. By means apparently the most simple and natural, his ever- watchful Providence prepared the way at last for her removal to Brescia, using as its instruments, two distinguished inhabitants of that city, whose names her historians have handed down to us, Jerom Patengola and his virtuous consort Catherine. It happened that this pious couple had some years before become acquainted with Saint Angela, in one of their annual visits to their large estates near Dezenzano, and finding the intimacy highly conducive to their spiritual interests, they had cultivated it assiduously. In 1516, it pleased God to deprive them in rapid succession of their only children, two daughters, in whom their hearts and earthly hopes were centred. In the excess of their anguish, they turned for comfort to their saintly friend, beseeching her to come to them without delay. They had been kind benefactors to her little society, gratitude therefore, as well as charity, pleaded their cause with her sisters and her spiritual advisers, who all agreed that such claims were irresistible. Looking on the decision as a manifestation of the Divine will, she accordingly left Dezenzano where for twenty years she had pursued her mission of love, and proceeded to Brescia, the city of the promise, having first secured that the work at Dezenzano should be continued by her sisters whom she intended to rejoin as soon as possible.
Her visit to Brescia proved a source not only of immense consolation to her sorrowing friends, but of spiritual benefit to the whole city. To win all to God by prayer, instruction, and example, was still as ever, the aim of her life. Attracted by the reputation of her sanctity, as well as of her natural abilities and supernatural enlightenment, persons of every rank came to her for advice, and all withdrew benefited by her counsels, filled with admiration of her wisdom, and edified by her equally striking charity, sweetness and humility. It was about this period that she received an infused knowledge of Latin, which she could understand, speak and translate without having learned it; also of the holy Scriptures, on the most difficult passages of which she could comment with wonderful ease and unction.
Her original intention had been, as we have seen, to return to Dezenzano, as soon as her work of charity in Brescia was completed; she had not however been long in the latter city, when she became convinced that God willed her to remain there. The memorable vision of bygone years had assuredly never at any time faded from her memory; it must on the contrary have formed the constant subject of her communications with God, but after her removal to Brescia, it pursued her with an almost painful persistence. Not once only, but continuously, uninterruptedly, it stood before her in all the distinctness of its first vivid colouring, and all the minuteness of its smallest details, so that whatever her occupations, alone or conversing with others, in the church and in her room, at all times and in all places, she seemed ever to see the mysterious ladder with its glorious throng of gem-crowned virgins and dazzling angels; she seemed ever to hear the words of the yet unrealized promise, "Take courage, Angela, for thou shalt found a company of virgins like to these at Brescia." Concluding at last that this almost importunate voice from the past, must be intended as a warning to guide her movements in the present, she prayed with all the earnestness of her soul that the Almighty would manifest His designs, and enable her by His grace to carry them out most perfectly. In answer to her prayer she clearly understood that God willed her to remain at Brescia, and she accordingly established herself in a retired lodging in the town, there to continue her career of zeal and usefulness;—but many years more were to elapse before the foundation of her Order.
Pilgrimages to consecrated spots seem to have been one of her favourite practices of piety. Two years after her arrival at Brescia, she made one to the tomb of the Venerable Mother Hosanna Andreassi, a religious of the Order of St. Dominick; who had lately died at Mantua in the odour of sanctity. Six years later, in 1524, her ardent love of our Divine Redeemer prompted her to undertake a journey of devotion to the Holy Land. On the way, God was pleased to test her love of the cross by a most severe affliction. Just as the vessel touched the port of Canea in the island of Candia, which she was the first to discern, she was in one instant struck with total blindness, to the inexpressible sorrow and consternation of her companions. The trial was a peculiarly painful one, and it served to display the heroism of her virtue in a clearer light than ever. She accepted it in the spirit of the saints, and refusing the kind offers of her friends to accompany her back to Italy, she completed the journey to Palestine, now attended with so much additional difficulty. In the Holy Land, she redoubled her habitual most rigorous fasts and other austerities, and as if to compensate for being denied a sight of the blessed places which she had come so far to see, she poured out her heart's love over them with a seraphic fervour which sensibly affected the spectators. On her journey homewards, her patient submission was rewarded by the recovery of her sight at the very place where she had lost it. This favour was granted her while she prayed with great devotion before a celebrated image of the Crucifixion, exposed to public veneration in one of the churches of the town. After a narrow escape from shipwreck, she reached Venice, and so strong was the impression of her sanctity produced in that city by the reports of her companion pilgrims, that she was earnestly entreated to fix her abode there, and take charge of some of its institutions of charity. Tempting as was the offer, she resolutely declined it, for she knew that God's will called her to Brescia, where after an absence of six months, she returned, to the great joy of the inhabitants.
But before again settling down to her old manner of life in this home of her adoption, she had yet another journey of devotion to accomplish. Next to the consecrated land of Palestine, Catholic Rome had ever presented the strongest attractions to her faith and piety. She longed to pray at the shrine of the Princes of the Apostles; to kiss the soil, bedewed with their blood, and as a faithful daughter of the Church, to kneel at the feet of God's visible representative, and beg his blessing on her projected work. The publication of the great Jubilee of 1525, by Pope Clement VII., supplied a fitting opportunity of carrying out her pious wishes. In company with one of the numerous bands of pilgrims who thronged the ways, she proceeded to the holy City, and here, not only had she the consolation of receiving the benediction of his Holiness, but she was honoured by an invitation from him to remain permanently at Rome, and accept the superintendence of some of the public institutions for the sick poor. This offer she humbly declined like that at Venice, and for the same reasons, and returning once more to Brescia, resumed her life of retirement, mortification and charity. At the end of nearly four years, she was unexpectedly compelled to leave the city once again. The Duchy of Milan was at this time passing through a severe political crisis. It had long been the theatre of a disastrous struggle originating in the pretensions of the French Kings, Louis XII. and Francis I., to the reversion of its crown, and as a portion of the Duchy, Brescia had been more or less involved in the troubles of the times. In 1529, the date which we have reached, the war had lasted for many years, and with varied success; Louis and Francis had each in turn won and lost the prize. One Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, had died a prisoner in France; another, Maximilian, had resigned his claim; a third, Francis, had fled from his dominions. In 1525, Francis I. of France had been totally defeated at Pavia by the confederate princes, at the head of whom was the Emperor Charles V., but this event had not pacified the distracted country, as might have been hoped. The victorious imperial troops continued to overrun the north of Italy, and serious apprehensions were entertained, that in the flush of success, they would lay siege to Brescia. Rather than risk a renewal of the horrors of the first siege in 1512, many of the inhabitants determined to abandon the city without delay. Among others, Angela was induced to accompany a family of her acquaintance to the neighbouring town of Cremona. Here she was visited as usual by numbers of persons of all conditions seeking advice or consolation, and among others by the fugitive Duke of Milan, Francis Sforza, who in his reverses had sought an asylum at Brescia, and thence followed the refugees to Cremona. He had already met the saint during his stay at Brescia, and her gentle counsels had materially helped him to meet his afflictions in the spirit of Christian resignation. Angela was happily instrumental to many signal conversions at Cremona, but her active career was suddenly arrested by an illness which brought her apparently to the gates of death. There seemed little human probability that so utterly exhausted a frame could resist so violent a malady, but she had yet a work to do, and ardently as she sighed for her heavenly country, her exile was to be prolonged until that work had been accomplished. Contrary to expectation, she recovered under circumstances deemed miraculous, and in thanksgiving for her wondrous restoration, made a pilgrimage in company with other devout persons to a renowned sanctuary of our Blessed Lady in the environs. On the conclusion of peace in 1530, she returned to Brescia after six months' absence.
Although in her humility and self-distrust she still shrank as much as ever from the responsibility of founding a religious Order, she could not conceal from herself that the time had come, when, for various reasons, decisive measures should no longer be deferred. Urged onwards by the counsels of her director, as well as by the voice of inspiration, she therefore determined at last to take the definite, though only preparatory step, of assembling a few companions whom she could gradually initiate in her views and form to the intended institute. Accordingly, about the end of the year 1533, she proposed to twelve pious ladies of the town to associate themselves with her in a life of prayer and good works, to which they readily agreed. She then explained to them the nature and object of the future foundation in which they would one day be expected to co-operate with her, at the same time suggesting the necessity of a certain course of preliminary training under her personal direction. With one accord they placed themselves wholly at the disposal of the saintly Mother, who devoted herself with all the ardour of her zeal to imbue them thoroughly with the true spirit of the holy state to which they aspired. She allowed them to reside with their families as before, but required that they should assemble every day in a common oratory for prayer and instruction, and employ their time in the particular works of charity appointed at the daily meetings. These were held at first in a room given to the saint by the Canons of the Church of St. Afra; it adjoined the church, which enabled her to spend a considerable portion of the night in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Being soon found too small for a general oratory, a more commodious one was substituted through the generosity of a pious widow.
For two years more, no farther progress was made. Angela was sixty-one, and the prophetic vision of full forty years before, was but a vision still. When would it become a reality? Soon now, for our Lord Himself was about to interpose, and by mingled reproach and reproof, to conquer the irresolution of His humble servant. Condescending to appear to her in person, He reprimanded her for her hesitation, thus at once overwhelming her with regret and confusion, and dispelling every lingering shadow of doubt as to His designs. A moment's hesitation after this would have seemed too long; she commenced her preparations at once, and on the feast of St. Catherine, November 25th, 1535, just one year after the establishment of the Society of Jesus, she inaugurated the infant institute at Brescia. On the same day, she was joined by fifteen additional members, making with the original twelve, the twenty-seven pillars on which the edifice was to rest, she being herself the foundation stone. Too humble to attach her own name to the Congregation, she decided on. giving it that of the Holy Virgin and Martyr St. Ursula, who had previously appeared to her in a celestial vision, and encouraged her to carry out her inspiration.
In the design of Saint Angela, the life of the Ursuline was to be a union of prayer and action. She was to employ nearly as much time in the functions of Mary as if belonging to the contemplative orders, and to devote herself besides to the instruction of the ignorant, and first, and before all, to the education of the young. With these, the duties forming her specific end, she was to combine the special practices now attached to the Sisters of Charity.
Considering the spiritual apathy then so generally prevalent, it was not to be expected that persons needing instruction would go far to seek it, therefore, to adapt her work to the exigencies of the ages Saint Angela decided that instead of retiring within convent walls, the members of the Society should continue to live in their own homes, whence they could more easily go in pursuit of the ignorant, and where too they would have wider opportunities of, doing good by the silent influence of example. "In these critical times," said the holy Foundress, "let us place models of virtue in the midst of the corrupt world itself, and oppose living barriers to the ravages of heresy and the inroads of vice." The Sisters were to continue to meet at their oratory for spiritual exercises, conferences, and necessary business arrangements; their dress was to be dark in colour and plain in texture, but no particular form was made obligatory. Foreseeing the social changes which time would effect, St. Angela with her characteristic prudence empowered the Sisters to modify the manner of life now adopted, as future circumstances might render it desirable. She arranged in detail the internal organization of the Society, and her regulations bore ample evidence to her wisdom, intelligence and heavenly enlightenment. The Rule drawn up by the holy Foundress, and accepted by the Sisters, received the unqualified approval of the Bishop of Brescia, and on the 18th of March, 1537, she was unanimously elected first Superior of the Society, notwithstanding her earnest petition to be allowed to labour until death in the lowest rank, which she said was the only one suited to her. It is a tradition among the Ursulines, that on the eve of the election, the glorious St. Ursula again appeared to her during one of her frequent ecstasies, and consoled her by the assurance that she had taken the institution under her special patronage, that it was agreeable to God, and that it would be perpetuated from age to age, even to the end of the world. In little more than a month after its foundation, the number of the members had increased from twenty-seven to seventy-two, all filled with the spirit of their holy Mother; all inflamed with liveliest zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of their neighbour. They were to be seen teaching the ignorant, relieving the poor, visiting the prisons and hospitals, and diffusing all around the good odour of Jesus Christ, and so great was the veneration which the Society inspired, that it was usually designated as the holy Company. Far from opposing, the authorities both civil and ecclesiastical favoured its progress, and the highest dignitaries of the city gladly assisted at the spiritual instructions given on certain days in the oratory of Saint Angela and her Sisters.
The first great aim of the new Superior was to train her fervent novices to perfection, inspiring them with thorough detachment from the world, an ardent desire of God's glory, and a tender charity for their neighbour. Her second object was to procure the solemn approbation of the Holy See for the Society; but this she did not live to receive, having survived the foundation only three years. In the spring of 1539 she gradually sank into a state of utter physical exhaustion, which she correctly interpreted as a certain, though not, perhaps, an immediate, forerunner of dissolution. She lingered until the commencement of the following year, when, increased debility warning her that the end could not be far distant, she summoned the leading members of the Society to receive her last counsels. Happily the golden words had been previously committed to writing, and thus the treasure has descended to her spiritual daughters of all generations. She concluded her impressive advice to the Directresses by making them the bearers of her final farewell to all the Sisters. "Tell them," she said, "that I shall ever be in the midst of them, and that I shall know them better, and help them more efficaciously, after my departure, than when on earth. Tell them not to grieve at our temporary separation, but to look forward to our meeting in heaven, where Jesus reigns. Let them raise their hearts and hopes to that blessed home, high above this passing world, seeking their Treasure and their Friend in Jesus alone, who sits at the right hand of the Father in the kingdom of eternal peace." Her "Last Testament," as it was called, was addressed to the Sisters in general, and reserved by her own direction to be read to them after her death. As a compendium of her lessons of holiness, and an effusion of her sweet spirit of charity, it may well be considered a legacy worthy of such a Mother. It concludes by the consoling declaration that "the Society is assuredly the work of the hand of the Most High, who will never abandon that work while time endures."
And now the earthly task of the dying saint was accomplished. After lingering yet a few days among her sorrowing children, she received the last rites of the Church in presence of the whole Ursuline family, numbering one hundred and fifty members, and, after the solemn ceremony, exhorted them to charity, obedience, humility, observance of rule and love of God. "O Jesus!" she said in conclusion, "bless this company of virgins irrevocably consecrated to Thy service. Grant that as they increase in numbers, they may also grow in grace, in fervour and in wisdom before Thee and before Thy servants." At her own desire she had been clothed in the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis, and that she might die in the practice of her beloved poverty, she had herself removed, tradition says, from the poor bed she had occupied in her illness, to the rush mat on the ground which had formed her ordinary resting-place in health. Her dying words were fervent acts of the theological virtues, but she seemed to dwell, by preference, on the act of charity, returning to it continually. "Yes, my God, I love Thee!" she said. "Why cannot I love Thee infinitely? Holy Virgin! Blessed Spirits: lend me your hearts to love Jesus. How long shall I be banished from Thy presence, O Lord? Who will give me wings to fly to Thee, the only Object of my love? Break the chains of my captivity. Receive the soul which languishes for Thee; which can no longer live without Thee." Then, with Jesus on the cross, she exclaimed, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!" They were her last words, no sooner spoken than she gave up her soul to God—"peacefully," says her historian, "as a child composing itself to sleep in its mother's arms." She died on the 27th of January, 1540, at half-past nine in the evening, aged sixty-six or sixty-seven.
Her precious remains repose in the Church of St. Afra, at Brescia, and are in a state of wonderful preservation. They are clothed in the brown habit of St. Francis, with its white cord. The apartment in which she breathed her last has been kept with religious veneration in exactly the same condition as when she occupied it during life, except for the introduction of a few engravings representing the principal events of her history. On the wall, opposite the window, is an inscription, in gilt letters, to the following effect:—"This poor room was the resort of the most learned theologians and the most gifted ecclesiastics, who departed from their conferences with St. Angela, amazed at the lights which she had communicated to them." Her portrait, preserved at Brescia, and said to be a true likeness, is of great beauty; it was taken after death. Her statue at St. Peter's occupies the first niche on the upper row at the left of the Confession of St. Peter. Although of colossal dimensions, its elevated position apparently reduces it to life-size. It is a common tribute of love and veneration from all her children throughout the world. The name of Angela was enrolled on the catalogue of the saints in 1807 by Pope Pius VII. In the foregoing outline of her history, no attempt has been made to portray the beauty of that inner life, which is to the saint what the perfume is to the rose. Many elaborate works have already done justice to the subject, which does not enter into a passing notice like the present, intended only to trace to its origin the Order illustrated by the virtues of the Mother of the Incarnation, as well as of its holy Foundress.
On the 9th of June, 1544, Pope Paul III. granted a Bull approving and confirming the Institution of St. Angela, but, as already noticed, she had then been called to her reward. After her death, the institute spread rapidly through many towns of Italy. Among the first to adopt it was Dezenzano, the scene of her early labours. In Milan, especially, it found an efficacious patron and protector in the great St. Charles Borromeo, to whose zeal it is immensely indebted. In 1568 he introduced it into his diocese, where it spread so wonderfully that, in the capital alone, it counted eighteen houses and six hundred sisters.
We have seen that the saintly Foundress gave an anticipated sanction, for such modifications of the primitive Rule as might be found necessary in the practical development of the great work which she had lived to establish, but not to perfect. The first modification was introduced by St. Charles. Anxious to consolidate a work whose utility to the Church he clearly foresaw, he procured from Pope Gregory XIII. a Bull renewing and ratifying the first approval of the Rule, authorizing Ursulines to make the three simple vows after a probation of one or two years, and permitting them to live in community. He also organized the schools, and introduced a mitigated form of cloister, the Sisters not being allowed to leave the house without a particular permission. This branch of the Society is known as the Congregation of Milan.
But although the Ursuline Order took its rise in Italy, its perfect development is to be sought in France, a country connected with the name of its glorious Patroness, St. Ursula, as Italy is identified with that of its blessed Foundress, St. Angela. It was to the French shores that the royal maiden was steering her course when she and her retinue fell into the hands of the savage Huns, and, in defending the crown of their virginity, won, in addition, the diadem of martyrs. Here, then, we naturally expect to find a numerous company rallying round the standard of St. Ursula and St. Angela; nor are we disappointed. Before the great Revolution, France numbered fully three hundred and sixty houses of the Order; many of those then suppressed, have not been restored, yet she still counts at least one hundred and thirty, and it is her especial boast that, while in other lands the Ursuline has lived and laboured for her Master's cause, here she has not only lived and laboured, but died a martyr's death for it.
The first house of French Ursulines was established at Avignon in 1594 by two ladies named De Bermond. This branch of the Society, known as the Congregation of Avignon, adopted the Rules of the Congregation of Milan, and quickly spread through other parts of Provence. A few years later, the Institute of St. Angela was introduced into Paris by Madame Acarie, now venerated as the saintly Carmelite, Blessed Mary of the Incarnation. Though not the second foundation in order of date, the Paris house occupies a prominent position in the annals of the Ursulines, as their first monastery. As we have already more than once observed, the Sisters were not originally cloistered, bound by vows or monastic observances, or even irrevocably consecrated to their manner of life, but the time was come when by the adoption of these essential obligations, the Society, as St. Angela herself had called it, would receive its full development by being converted into a regular monastic Order. This alteration in the form, changed nothing in the substance of the Saint's original institution. Whether a member of a simple confraternity, or of a religious order in the restricted meaning of the word, the Ursuline was at all times equally bound to devote her life to the instruction of the young, and to work out her own sanctification by the practice of the evangelical counsels. The instrument of the great work in question was Madame St. Beuve, a pious and wealthy widow, who at the request of her relative, Madame Acarie, consented to accept the title and responsibilities of Foundress of the house at Paris, on the express understanding that it should in due time be formed into a monastery. In this object she finally succeeded to her entire satisfaction. The reigning Pontiff, Paul V., approved the design, and on the 16th of June, 1612, issued a Bull converting the Congregation into a Monastery, under the patronage of St. Ursula and the rule of St. Augustine. His Holiness, moreover, ordained that for the greater stability of the order, the religious should add to the three ordinary solemn vows, a fourth of the instruction of the young. The Bull of Pope Paul V. was confirmed in 1626 by Urban VIII. The convent in Paris, so interesting to Ursulines from its associations, "le grand couvent de St. Jacques," as it was called from its locality, was among those destroyed in the first Revolution, but, by an inscrutable permission of Divine Providence, it is not among those restored. Still, even in its ruins, it not only lives in the hearts of Ursulines, but may be said actually to survive in its numerous foundations and their offshoots. Between its establishment in 1612, and the death of its venerated Foundress in 1630, eleven houses of the Congregation had sprung up in the north of France. Its subsequent diffusion was equally satisfactory.
Congregations of Ursulines were established at Bordeaux and Lyons, under the respective dates 1605 and 1611, and, within a few years after their foundation, were erected into Monastic Orders by Pope Paul V.; from these, numerous filiations have also sprung. There are other Congregations of Ursulines, but the three named are the most numerous. Although the spirit and the essential end of Ursulines are in all cases the same, the various Congregations differ more or less on certain points, and each retains the name which distinguishes it from the others.
Notwithstanding the suppression of numbers of its houses, the Order of St. Angela now registers about three hundred, the greater portion in Europe, some in Oceanica, and a large number in America. The history of the Mother of the Incarnation will shortly introduce us to the first in the New World. Of late years, the old tree seems to have renewed its vitality, so vigorously is it putting forth fresh branches. In Belgium alone, thirty houses have been founded by one priest in our own times; and although, unhappily, the work of suppression has been steady in Germany, the dispossessed communities have not perished, but only removed to other countries.
The increase of devotion to St. Angela keeps pace in our day with the extension of her Order. Pope Pius IX., of revered and cherished memory, gave a considerable impetus to this devotion, by raising the saint's festival to a higher ritual rank, permitting the universal celebration of her office, and proclaiming her the "Patroness of Christian mothers, and the Protectress of young girls." The establishment of the arch- confraternity which bears her name, has greatly contributed to the same end. It was commenced at Blois in 1863 by the Abbé Richaudeau, a zealous patron of the Order, and is widely spread wherever Ursulines are to be found. Its objects are the honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the triumph of the Church, the deliverance of the suffering souls in purgatory, and the extension of the work of St. Angela by word and example, or the apostolate of woman. It is enriched with indulgences, and the holy sacrifice of the Mass is offered on the first Tuesday of every month for the associates.
During the three and a half centuries of its existence, the Ursuline Order is calculated to have given to the Church more than one hundred thousand religious, by whom multitudes of young girls of every grade have been trained to piety. Only the angels have kept the record of the multitude of saints whom it has given to heaven, some bearing the palm branches of victorious martyrs, all clad in virgin robes, and swelling the celestial canticle which only the Spouses of the Lamb are privileged to sing.
SECOND PERIOD, 1631-1639.
HER RELIGIOUS LIFE IN FRANCE.
CHAPTER I.
SISTER MARY OF THE INCARNATION, AN URSULINE NOVICE.—VIRTUES AND TRIALS OF HER NOVITIATE.—THIRD VISION OF THE BLESSED TRINITY.—HER CLOTHING.
Marie Guyart was in her thirty-first year when she commenced her career as an Ursuline. Even without her own testimony, we could easily have understood, that after her long and severe probation. in the world, the novitiate of religion must have appeared to her like a very heaven of peace. She compared her entrance into the sanctuary to the opening of the gate of a terrestrial paradise, and dwelt with holy joy on the happiness of having exchanged a life of embarrassment, responsibility, and care, for the blessed condition of a simple novice, whose only affair is to sanctify her soul by the observance of her rule.
It was not long before her superiors had an opportunity of testing her virtue, and satisfying themselves that it was genuine. She had been for years accustomed, as we have seen, to the severest rigours of corporal mortification, but, having now embraced community life, in which singularities even in devotion are inadmissible, it had become necessary to restrict her penances to those in ordinary practice. To persons unacquainted with her spirit, the question may naturally have occurred, whether it would cost her much thus to alter the whole tenor of her external life, and submit unconditionally to the rule in the matter of austerities, as of all else. But those who knew her well could have predicted, that as attachment to her own will and judgment had never mingled, however slightly, with her penitential works, she would renounce them, in compliance with the Divine will, as readily as she had embraced them from the same motive—and so it was.
Knowing that the sacrifice of obedience is more acceptable to God than the sacrifice of victims, she at once submitted, not only without a remonstrance or a hesitation, but even without a thought or a feeling contrary to the will of her superiors, thus early establishing her religious perfection on the solid virtues of humility and obedience, its only secure foundation. A great love for common life became henceforth one of the marked characteristics of her spirit as a religious, and, except either by the actual direction, or with the immediate sanction of authority, she never to the end of life departed from its rules. In her later instructions, she remarks, that in good works of our own selection, there is generally a mingling of the human spirit, and, therefore, a proportionate deficiency of the Spirit of God, whereas in the observance of the established ordinances of religious life, there is no room for the intrusion of the human spirit, seeing that the will is not free to choose between them, but must simply submit to each and all without distinction.
Although in every respect so superior to her sister novices, she took her place among them with a sweet, child-like simplicity that charmed and edified all who witnessed it. Forgetting her age, her talents, her experience, her profound knowledge of the spiritual life, and her extraordinary communications with God, she conversed with, and accommodated herself to the youngest sisters as if she had really been the least, and the most ignorant of them all. It was her delight to apply to them for information regarding the practices and ceremonies of religion; she was always pleased and grateful when they taught her something new, and ever ready to admit her ignorance and apologise for her mistakes. It was but natural that her mature years and her reputation for sanctity should have elicited a certain degree of deference from her youthful companions, but nothing confused her more than any external manifestation of the feeling. The more her sisters would have distinguished her, the more she tried to pass unnoticed in the crowd, and far from considering herself an example to the others, she was never tired of admiring their spirit of self-denial and exactitude to regular observance, which she looked on as a lesson to herself. She made it her especial study to carry out even the least direction public or private, of her mistress of novices, the perfection of the accompanying interior spirit elevating these trivial acts to the height of sublime virtue. While her external life exhibited in every feature a living model of that beautiful work of grace, a perfect novice, her heart was filled with so deep a joy, that it almost seemed to her as if no trouble could reach her more; no storm ever break on the peaceful haven to which the hand of God had at last guided her. But it was not so; the cross was her portion, and even now, its shadow flung itself across the sunbeams.
It happened that after giving her up so bravely, her little son repented of his heroism, instigated to rebellion by various persons who persuaded him that he had done a very foolish thing in permitting his mother to become a nun, and that he ought to go boldly to the monastery, and demand her restoration, an advice which he was not slow to adopt. The new building being at that time in progress, his plan was much facilitated, for the doors were left open for the workmen, and thus he easily managed to enter the otherwise inaccessible inclosure, making his way, now to the choir, now to the refectory, now to the parlour grate, and everywhere announcing his presence by the plaintive cry, "Give me back my mother! Give me back my mother!" She tried to appease his childish grief by little presents given her for the purpose, but the tempest was allayed for the moment, only to burst out afresh with renewed vigour. Once a relative of hers wrote some pathetic verses on the desolate condition of the forsaken child, and gave them to him to present to his mother; she read them with exterior composure, but every word pierced her heart. His companions, who loved and pitied him, determined at last to take the law into their own hands. "It is because you have no mother," they said, "that you are deprived of the indulgences and gratifications which we enjoy, but come with us to the convent, and we shall make such a terrible noise, that they will be forced to give you back yours. We shall insist on getting her, even if we have to break down the doors." Forthwith the self-constituted champions formed in battle array, and armed, some with sticks and some with stones, they proceeded to besiege the monastery, if not strictly according to the rules of war, at least with resolute hearts determined never to yield until the fortress had surrendered. Many of the spectators laughed as the belligerents passed along; many more looked grave and applauded the children's spirit. Great was the clamour when the little army reached the monastery, but the inmates were not left long in ignorance of the object of the invasion, for high above the din and uproar rose the familiar cry of a now well-known voice, "Give me back my mother!" For once, that much tried mother's courage almost faltered. Immovable in her own resolution to make her sacrifice to God at the expense of every feeling of nature, she feared that the forbearance of the sisters must be by this time exhausted, and that rather than submit to continual disturbance from her son, they would recommend her to return to the world, and resume the care of him, which she says would have been very reasonable on their part, but an inexpressible trial to her. We are not told by what arguments the doughty warriors were induced to abandon the siege; all we know is that the fortress surrendered neither itself nor its saintly inmate, whom our Lord Himself soon after consoled and fortified by an interior assurance that notwithstanding all obstacles, she would make her religions profession in this house.
Her troubles about the child were not yet, however, at an end. Before her entrance to the convent he had been remarkably good and docile, but now, so completely had his temper been soured by the irritating remarks of injudicious advisers, that he had grown idle, self-willed and absolutely reckless. This was the worst pang of all; she dreaded more than any other misfortune, that of his offending God; the news of his death would have been a light sorrow in comparison. To avert this greatest of evils, she offered herself as a victim to the Almighty, consenting to endure any suffering it might please Him to inflict, provided only her boy were preserved from sin. The contract was ratified in heaven, and it bore its fruits on earth; fruits of sorrow to the mother, of future sanctification to the son. Some time after, at the request of the Archbishop of Tours the Jesuits agreed to take charge of the child, and removed him to their College at Rennes. Those who had most severely censured his mother, now altered their opinion, and declared that in the step she had taken, she had but obeyed the voice of God.
About two months after her entrance to the novitiate, Marie Guyart was admitted to another of those supernatural communications, which the Almighty seemed to delight in imparting to her pure and humble soul. It was a third vision of the most adorable Trinity, differing from the two preceding in this, that while in the first, she had been illuminated as to the nature of the mystery and in the second, closely united in heart to the Word, in this, her soul was chosen as the abode and possession of the three Divine Persons, in highest fulfilment of the promise of Christ, "If any man love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him" (St. John xiv. 23). It was the greatest favour she had yet received, as our Lord was pleased to signify to her. While it elevated her to new heights of love for a God of such infinite condescension, it lowered her, as did all similar graces to deeper depths of self-contempt and interior annihilation, with an increased desire to prove her love for her Divine Benefactor by suffering for Him ever more and more. A few days after this ecstasy, she received the holy habit, and with it, the now well-known and widely revered name of Mary of the Incarnation.
CHAPTER II.
INFUSED KNOWLEDGE OF SCRIPTURE.—INTERIOR SUFFERINGS.—RELIGIOUS PROFESSION.—NEW TRIALS FROM HER SON.
So great was the joy of the fervent novice at finding herself clad in the livery of her Divine Master, that she tells us she at first sometimes instinctively touched her veil to make sure that her happiness was no delusive dream. Proportioned to her gratitude, was her fidelity to her heavenly Spouse. The only change observable in her after she had received the habit, was a daily progress in the perfection of which she was destined to be so bright a model to religious persons. Her virtues she could not conceal for they betrayed themselves by their own sweet fragrance. Neither could her humility altogether hide certain supernatural privileges, granted her perhaps as much for the benefit and comfort of others, as for her own advantage. Among these were an infused knowledge of Holy Scripture, the capability of understanding it in Latin without previous study of the language, and a singular facility for speaking on spiritual subjects. So familiar was she with the Scripture, that its words of life seemed to occur to her quite naturally on all occasions. Whether her object was to lighten the burden of the suffering, or to brighten the joy of the happy, she was never at a loss for some appropriate sentence whereby to recall the thought of Him who is the only true Comforter of our sorrows, as well as the only unfailing Source of our bliss. It was in prayer, not by study, that she acquired her truly wonderful acquaintance with the Sacred Writings. In the fulness of the light imparted by the Divine Instructor, she was enabled to penetrate so far beyond the literal meaning, alone apparent to ordinary readers of the inspired words, that she sometimes feared lest the abundance of knowledge should lead to curious speculations of the understanding, and that her union with God in simplicity of soul, might in consequence be even slightly impeded,—but the dread of such a danger was necessarily a security against it. She had a very particular devotion to the Divine Office, and in her trials of interior desolation, sometimes found in the chanting of the Psalms, a relief and consolation which no other exercise could impart. Very truly might she have exclaimed with the Psalmist, "How sweet are Thy words to my palate! more than honey to my mouth. O how have I loved Thy law, O Lord!" (cxviii. 103, 97).
A sister novice once asked her to explain the passage of the Canticles, "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," which she had happened to meet in her prayer-book. Their mistress was present, and to mortify her, as she declared, ordered her to take a chair and proceed. No sooner had she commenced, as desired, than her subject transported her as it were out of herself. A torrent of sacred eloquence flowed from her heart to her lips. She spoke with a fluency than amazed her hearers, and at the same time, with an unction that penetrated, and a charm that fascinated them. Suddenly she stopped, as if the remainder of the effusion were meant to be reserved for the ear of her Lord alone. Her sisters dared not interrupt the colloquy, which only the angels were privileged to hear.
But this ray from Thabor, served as usual but to light her back to her ordinary abiding place on Calvary. Again her soul was plunged into an apparently fathomless abyss of desolation, and inundated as by a deluge of temptations; temptations to despair and blasphemy; temptations to pride and vanity; temptations against faith, against charity, against obedience, and against the angelic virtue,—sometimes assailing her one by one, sometimes overwhelming her all at once. She was in constant apprehension of having consented to the enemy's most extravagant and most impious suggestions. The passing comfort which she derived from her director's counsels, was counteracted by the after dread of having deceived him. Even this, her only sensible succour, was taken from her when she seemed to need it most, Dom Raymond of St. Bernard, who had helped her through so many difficulties; being appointed Superior of his Order, and obliged in consequence to change his residence. The spiritual guide into whose hands she nest fell, increased her perplexities by assuring her that she had hitherto been ill-advised, and pronouncing her heavenly favours delusions. Finally, as the climax to her trials, she seemed to have lost trust in the superintendence of Providence, that strong anchor of the troubled soul. It was the most painful form in which despair had yet assailed her, and as an apparent encroachment on one of the attributes of God, the supreme Object of her love, it caused her intense affliction.
If she could but have bathed her soul in the dew of Divine consolation at prayer, how much it would have refreshed her! But she seemed to feel only a loathing for the things of God; meditation, in particular, had become her torture, for it appeared as if there especially, the torrent of temptation was let loose. Her understanding was obscured, her memory for spiritual things weakened, her imagination troubled, her heart sad. From the constant strain on. her mind, and the unceasing struggle to do violence to nature, she contracted an habitual headache which added to the difficulty of her external duties, yet through all her multiplied troubles, she never lost either the view of God's presence, or her interior peace; she never formed a desire for the diminution of her crosses, nor ever omitted any observance of rule, and so admirable was her self-control, that only the Mother Superior and her director were aware of her state of mental anguish. Her one only aim was to maintain her patience; to avoid every deliberate imperfection, and to conform to the will of God even without the sensible support of knowing that she did so. The terrible interior trial lasted for more than two years almost without intermission, and then the Divine Consoler of the afflicted came Himself to her aid. As she prayed before the Blessed Sacrament with entire abandonment of her will to the will of God, she seemed interiorly to hear the words, "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy" (Ps. cxxv. 5). She had never before, she says, understood the whole import of those words, although in the daily habit of repeating them in choir, bat now they struck her with their full force, revealing to her for the first time, hitherto hidden springs of encouragement and consolation.
The cross was not removed, it is true, but a great increase of esteem and love for it was imparted to her. Thus strengthened, she embraced it with her whole heart, satisfied to bear it to the last moment of existence, if thus she could at last attain the eternal joy to which those blessed words pointed, as to a star of hope illumining the close of life's long path of tears. The cross was not removed, but it was so far lightened by her love for it, that in her renewed courage she could say with heart, as with lips, "Thy yoke, O Lord, is sweet, and Thy burden light!" "I am not tired of suffering, my God! I am not tired of suffering!"
As the time for pronouncing her vows drew near, she fully expected that her sisters would reject her, on account of her numerous imaginary disqualifications, but conscious only of possessing in her a treasure of virtue, and a precious gift from heaven, they gladly admitted her to holy Profession on the 25th of January, 1633: she was then in the thirty-third year of her age. On the eve, her interior sufferings vanished as if by magic, giving place to indescribable raptures of Divine love and heavenly sweetness. After the ceremony, she retired to her cell to give vent unobserved to the ecstasies of her joy and gratitude, and there it was revealed to her, that henceforth she must incessantly fly in God's presence on the six wings of her three vows, and of the virtues of faith, hope and love. This respite from the cross is compared by one of the writers of her life, to the clearing of the sky between two storms; it lasted but eight days, and then the tempest burst forth afresh and with redoubled violence. She might perhaps have doubted the reality of her vanished joy, had it not left a substantial trace in her renewed ardour for the cross, and her heightened aspiration after the perfection of utter detachment from self and every creature.
The sermons of the following Lent were preached in the cathedral of Tours by a Jesuit of great eminence, Father George de la Haye, with whose saintly and enlightened spirit the Ursulines were well acquainted, from his frequent exhortations to themselves. Full of compassion, for the prolonged sufferings of Sister Mary of the Incarnation, the Mother Superior was inspired by her own charity to procure her an opportunity of conferring with this experienced director. Before forming a conclusive judgment on her state, he required to see a written account of the graces she had received through life, and of the manner of her correspondence with them. The humble servant of God consented to prepare it, on condition that she should at the same time be allowed to write a confession of all her sins and imperfections. Such was the origin of the first account of her life by herself, so frequently referred to in these pages. After mature consideration of the document, and fervent prayer for the light of heaven, the Father assured her unhesitatingly that her method of prayer had been inspired by God, and that she had all along been guided by His Spirit alone, a decision which filled her soul with indescribable peace. Shortly afterwards, her interior trials were instantaneously and totally removed.
Summing up the advantages of these at a later period, she says that they are a source of self-knowledge and a stimulus to self-correction;—that in the abundance of spiritual consolation, the soul is carried on by an ardour which she mistakes for virtue, whereas, when the inferior part is deprived of all sensible succour, she discovers that she is full of human life and feeling, which she must begin at last in real earnest to mortify and crush. Viewing interior suffering in this light, she conceived so great a love for it, that if permitted to choose between spiritual enjoyment, and her multiplied most bitter crosses, she tells us she would have selected the cross.
Shortly before her Profession, she had the great grief of hearing that in consequence of her son's recent insubordination, his removal from the college at Rennes had become inevitable. One of his aunts accordingly brought him back to Tours, where removed from the influence which had led him astray, he quickly reformed. To complete his mother's obligations to Father de la Haye, that good religious charged himself with the boy's future education, and with that object took him to Orleans, where under his own immediate direction the child continued his studies up to the class of rhetoric. This he was sent to follow at Tours in a Jesuit college lately founded, and then Father de la Haye recalled him once more to Orleans for the completion of his course of philosophy.
CHAPTER III.
MOTHER MARY OF THE INCARNATION IS APPOINTED ASSISTANT MISTRESS OF NOVICES—PROPHETIC VISION OF HER VOCATION TO CANADA—SPIRITUAL MAXIMS AND INSTRUCTIONS.
In the second year after her profession, Mother Mary of the Incarnation was appointed assistant Mistress of novices, a striking proof of the high estimation in which she was held by her superiors. Much about the same time, she had the remarkable vision of her vocation for Canada, which she thus describes. "One night, after conversing familiarly with our Lord; as usual, before falling asleep, I seemed as in a dream to see a strange lady in a secular dress standing near me. Her presence surprised me extremely, as I could not imagine how she had come to my room. Taking her by the hand, I led her from the house in great haste, through a very rugged, fatiguing road, without knowing in the least where it was that I wanted to conduct her, or of course the way to our destination. We advanced steadily through multiplied obstacles, until at last we came to an inclosed space, at the entrance of which stood a venerable looking man clothed in white, and resembling the ordinary representations of the Apostles. He was the guardian of the place, and motioned to us to enter, signifying by a gesture that we had no alternative but to pass through, this being the only road on our way. It was an enchanting spot; the pavement appeared to be composed of squares of white marble or alabaster, united by richly coloured bands of brilliant red; its only roof was the canopy of heaven; its greatest ornament and charm the stillness which reigned around. To the left, at some distance, was a beautiful little white marble church, with a seat on the top occupied by the Blessed Virgin holding her Divine Infant. From the eminence on which we stood, we could see a vast region beneath, thickly interspersed with mountains and valleys, and covered with a heavy mist in every part except one, the site of a small church. The Mother of God was gazing fixedly at this desolate land to which there was access only through one rough narrow path; she looked as immovable as the marble on which she was seated. I relinquished the hand of my companion to hasten to her, stretching out my arms eagerly towards her. Her back was to me, but I could see that as I approached, she bent to her Divine Child, to whom, without speaking, she communicated something important. I felt as if she were directing his attention to this poor, forsaken country and to me, and I longed to attract her notice. Then with ravishing grace, she turned to me, and sweetly smiling, embraced me in silence. A second and a third time, she repeated the same movements, filling my soul at each new embrace with an unction which no words can describe. She looked about sixteen years of age. I could never depict the enchanting beauty and sweetness of her countenance. My companion was standing at the distance of two or three steps, as if preparing to descend to the forlorn-looking land, and from where she stood, she had a side view of the Blessed Virgin. I awoke with an impression of extraordinary peace which lasted some days, but the vision was yet a mystery whose meaning I could not divine."
A grand work of zeal lay before the Mother, but until it should please God to reveal His future designs, her aim was to acquit herself perfectly of the duties assigned her by providence in the present moment. The most important of these was to form the novices to religious life by conferences on its spirit and its obligations, and at the same time to prepare them for the special function of the Ursuline institute, by instructions on the Christian doctrine. She had a natural facility for expressing her thoughts on every subject, but when spiritual things were her theme, she surpassed herself, her abundant and most appropriate quotations from Scripture adding immeasurably to the weight of her words. Her talent for writing on pious subjects equalled her facility for speaking of them. It was while second Mistress of novices, that she composed her catechism, one of the most complete works of its kind, combining, with admirable dogmatic instructions, equally valuable practical lessons of conduct.
Habitually, the Mother of the Incarnation spoke little, and when obliged to break silence, never used many words. This habit which she had contracted in the world, she retained all her life, perfecting it more and more as she advanced in sanctity. Her words, though few in number, were comprehensive in meaning, as may be seen in the following specimens of the maxims which she most frequently inculcated.
"A soul," she said, "which would follow her call to the perfection of the spiritual life, must prepare first to pass, gradually through spiritual death with all its varied and prolonged agonies. Those who have not endured the ordeal, can scarcely calculate the degree of interior crucifixion, or, the amount of self-abandonment required."
"Many desire, and would gladly accept the gift of prayer, but few aim at, and labour for the spirit of humility and self-abnegation, without which there can be no true spirit of prayer or recollection. Devotion unsustained by mortification is of a doubtful character."
"Mortification and prayer cannot be separated. They have a close connection, and are a mutual support."
"The gift of prayer and fervent devotion is not for the great talker; it is impossible that the heart and lips should be uselessly occupied with creatures, and at the same time employed with God."
"Interior purity is an essential condition for Divine union. As the sea casts out corrupted matter, so God, the infinite Ocean of perfection, rejects souls dead in sin, uniting Himself only to those who live by grace and resemble Him in purity."
"There is no greater obstacle to the progress of the soul than curious speculations in prayer, and the desire to know more than God intends. We may exceed in the desire of knowledge, but never in the desire of love."
"The most sublime life is that which combines the external practice of the virtues of the Gospel, with interior familiarity with God."
"We make God our debtor, if I may say so, when we cast ourselves into His arms with child-like confidence. We should lose ourselves lovingly in Him, for although it is true that we are nothing, while He is all, we shall for that reason be more easily and more happily lost in Him."
"The Eternal Father has made known to a certain soul that whatever she asks of Him through the most Sacred Heart of His Son, He will grant her."
Every day we must begin anew to love God, persuaded that the day before we did not love Him truly; seeing only defects in the past, and work to do in the present and future."
"I cannot imagine," she would sometimes say, "how a soul can seek her pleasure in intercourse with creatures, when she can at all times converse with the ever-present Creator. I wonder," she remarked on other occasions, "how, having God for our Father, we are not always perfectly contented. The reason is that we are too much occupied about ourselves."
"Even to the end of life the holiest souls experience the assaults, of corrupt nature, which furnish a constant occasion of interior humiliation."
"The practical experience of our weakness is the true teacher of contempt of self and compassion for others."
"The nearer the soul approaches to God, the more clearly she sees her nothingness."
"I cannot understand," she said, "how a religious soul who desires to love God and to be loved by Him, can fail in obedience or find a difficulty in it, knowing as she does that it is the certain means of fulfilling the will of God."
"There is no shorter road to the perfection of the interior life, than the universal retrenchment of all reflections, not only on annoying subjects, but even on such as do not lead to God and the practice of virtue."
"The effect of over-eagerness to finish one action, in order to hasten to another, is that both are done imperfectly."
"Our afflictions are not chance accidents, but graces from God, to detach us from creatures, and unite us to Himself."
"It seems strange that we rebel against trials, since everything that God sends is good and desirable?"
"Resignation in suffering is a mark that the soul is near to God and His mercies."
"Peace reigns in the heart, which, through holy self-hatred, endeavours to destroy the very last vestiges of corrupt nature."
She had a hatred of all vices, but especially of deceit, and was accustomed to say that "when the mouth opens to a falsehood, the heart closes to God."
Another of her sayings was, that her temptations had been to her useful practical lessons, teaching her how to govern others, by having taught her first to command herself. She often inculcated that "to suffer and pray is the only means by which, in the present life, we can honour the Church Triumphant, and help the Churches Militant and Suffering."
From these few examples we can form an idea at least of the solidity of her lessons, which she never intruded, always maintaining a strict reserve unless pressed to speak by charity or obedience. Not only the novices, but even many of the elder religious delighted in listening to her spiritual instructions. Among other matters, she explained the Psalms and the Canticle of Canticles in a style at once so sublime and so clear, that both beginners and proficients derived profit from her words. Among the numerous novices formed to the interior life by her example and counsels, some became eminent for holiness. As her son remarks, the beauty of the copies is the highest tribute to the perfection of the original, and the solid virtue of the disciples, the best proof of the excellence of the teacher.
CHAPTER IV.
INCREASED ZEAL OF THE MOTHER OF THE INCARNATION.—REVELATION OF THE DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS, AND OF HER CALL TO THE CANADIAN MISSION.
From her first years, zeal for the salvation of souls had been a special characteristic of the Mother Mary of the Incarnation. Her early delight had been, as we know, to travel in spirit over infidel lands with the holy missioners, and unite in heart and intention with their labours. Now that the dream of her childhood was about to become a grand reality, the holy fire acquired a ten-fold vehemence, as if her Divine Master would thus predispose her for the revelation of His designs. She seemed actually to burn with desire that the only Object of her love should be known and adored by every creature, and, unable to endure the thought of the triumph of Satan over Jesus, she gathered the poor perishing souls of all unbelievers into her heart, and, presenting them to the Eternal Father, reminded Him that He had promised the dominion of the nations to His Son, who ought no longer to be deprived of the inheritance purchased at the dear price of His own most precious blood. "The zeal of God's house absolutely consuming her" (Ps. lxviii. 101), she continued to traverse heathen lands in spirit, praying for a voice strong enough to proclaim to the extremity of the earth that her heavenly Spouse is worthy of the love and homage of every human heart. The worst torments of the martyrs would have seemed light to her if by them she could have gained these straying souls to her Lord. She besought God to inflict on her the last excess of pain, and that until the Day of Judgment, if thus she could extend the Kingdom of Christ. She might literally have said with the Psalmist, "My zeal hath made me pine away" (Ps. cxviii. 139), for, the inflamed ardour of her soul reacting on her bodily strength, she was reduced to such great exhaustion, that it was feared she would have died. Still the prayer seemed unheeded, though still it went on redoubling in earnestness, until at last the Eternal Father made known to her that if she would obtain her petition, she must present it through the Heart of His Divine Son. Thus was the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus made known to the Mother Mary of the Incarnation long before it was revealed to the world through another of its fervent clients. All through her remaining life, she cherished a most ardent devotion to that ever- adorable Heart. She offered nothing to God, she asked nothing of Him, except through it. She made it her refuge in difficulty and her consolation in suffering; her repose in weariness, her treasure in poverty, her all, for love of which she despised herself and renounced all things created.
At the time of her vision, her director had remarked that the country shown her might perhaps have been Canada, which was then exciting some attention. It was a new light; she had never before heard of Canada; neither had she for a moment imagined that God intended her to labour for souls otherwise than by the interior practices of zeal and charity to which she was accustomed. All doubt was removed when, in a repetition of the vision, God revealed to her that it was indeed Canada which she had seen, distinctly telling her at the same time that she was the instrument chosen to build a house there for Jesus and Mary. Now, at last, she knew her destiny. "Oh, my great God!" she exclaimed, "Thou art omnipotent, and I am all weakness; if Thou wilt assist me I am ready. Do in me and by me Thy most adorable will."
In every phase of her vocation to Canada, we are struck by the visible intervention of the wonder-working, ever-watchful Providence of God. Thus it happened that at this very crisis, she received for the first time a "Report" of the affairs of the Church in the infant colony. It was the one for 1635, the year following the regular establishment of the Huron Mission, and was sent her by Father Poncet, a Jesuit. Without having the least idea that their destinations were similar, he informed her of his own vocation for that mission, sent her a miniature pilgrim's staff which he had brought from Loretto, and invited her to join the great work. As she knew that the good Father was absolutely ignorant of her spiritual state, the whole affair greatly surprised her. How would her wonder have increased had she been aware that the same Report of 1635 was to be the means under God of deciding another vocation, on which hung the success of the Ursuline Mission to Canada! She could answer the Father's invitation only in general terms, unwilling, on the one hand, to speak of the supernatural revelation granted her, and ignorant, on the other, of the means by which the Almighty intended to execute His will in her regard. The enterprise was one demanding not only superhuman courage, but also pecuniary resources; in proportion as the Mother of the Incarnation abounded in the one, so was she destitute of the other, but her future was in the hands of Him to whom it is as easy to dispense the treasures of earth, as the riches of heaven. While she tranquilly abandoned herself as a passive instrument to His designs, His Almighty Providence was employed in preparing for her a co-operatrix endowed at once with the zeal and the wealth, each indispensable in its way,—Madame de la Peltrie, to whom the next chapter will introduce us.
CHAPTER V.
MADAME DE LA PELTRIE, FOUNDRESS OF THE URSULINES IN CANADA.
Marie Madeleine de Chauvigny, better known as Madame de la Peltrie, was born in 1603, at Alençon, a town in Normandy. Through both her parents she claimed connection with the noblest families of the province, and from both also she derived a far more precious inheritance than exalted birth, the imperishable heritage of piety. The virtues which reflected so bright a lustre on her name, both in her own land and in the New World, were, under God, the fruit of their teaching; but it must be owned that her natural docility and amiability of disposition rendered her early training an easy task. Compassion for the poor seemed so identified with her nature, that she could not see a want without trying, according to her opportunity, to relieve it, and when the power to do this failed, she endeavoured to make up for the disappointment by an ever-ready and most tender sympathy. She seemed to have no taste for the toys and sports of children, preferring for her recreation the exercises of devotion, which she had learned by observing them in others. In admiration of her early piety, her parents loved to fancy that heaven must surely have some singularly blessed destiny in store for her.
Under her mother's guidance, she received an education suitable to her high social position and brilliant prospects, and when she had attained her seventeenth year, she was informed that being of course intended for married life, she would do well to accept a very excellent proposal which had just offered. Most cordially despising the world with its pomps and vanities, and desiring with her whole heart to have no spouse but a Heavenly One, she was utterly overcome by the announcement. She had never had a thought but of consecrating herself to God in religion, and had refrained from speaking of her intentions merely because she believed that the favourable time for doing so had not yet arrived. In the present unexpected disappointment of her dearest hopes, she fancied that if she were but once secure within the walls of a convent, her parents might not, perhaps, carry their authority so far as to oblige her to leave it; accordingly she went in all haste to a neighbouring abbey and asked admittance for a few days to make a retreat. This step exceedingly irritated her father, who at once insisted on her return home, and, as no persuasion could induce him to alter his determination respecting her future destiny, her spiritual guides finally decided that the will of God in her regard was manifested by that of her parents, and that no alternative remained but to submit. After much prayer for the light of heaven, she consented to espouse the husband of their selection.
Monsieur de la Peltrie, her partner, was in every respect worthy of her, and their union was one of such unbroken peace, that he often expressed a hope of living long, in order to benefit by her holy influence, and to enjoy the Christian happiness of which she was to him the ministering angel. But God had decreed otherwise; five years after their marriage he died in the very vigour of manhood. Their only child had passed at once from earth to heaven.
Her worldly ties thus broken at the early age of twenty-two, the young widow deliberated how she could most profitably dispose of herself and her possessions for the glory of God. A hundred and a hundred times a day she repeated, "Do with me, O Lord! as it shall please Thee; my heart, my life, my riches, all are Thine!" She had not lost her first inclination for the religious life, but the doubt arose whether, with her great wealth, she might not, perhaps, promote the Divine honour more effectually in the world than in a life of voluntary poverty. An ardent zeal for the salvation of souls lighted up her heart, and, like the Mother of the Incarnation, she flew in thought to the homes of the heathens, there to aid, at least by her prayers and desires, the labours of the missionaries. She panted to lend active succour to the work, bat could not yet see how this was to be brought about. Meantime the Providence of God was working out her destiny in its own sweet and wondrous way. After years of incertitude and indecision, she accidentally met with one of the Reports of the progress of the Canadian Mission. It was a copy of the same which had been sent to the Mother of the Incarnation by Father Poncet, bearing, as may be remembered, the date 1635. In burning accents of holy zeal, the writer asked whether no Christian heroine could be found willing te co-operate with the designs of Jesus by devoting herself to teach the Indian children the name of their unknown God, and the value of the precious blood which had redeemed them. The stirring appeal was an instantaneous answer to the doubts of years; it revealed her vocation as plainly as if an angel's voice had spoken. In a moment she saw that God destined her for the Canadian Mission, and with equal promptitude she resolved to obey the call. Soon after this first inspiration, God was pleased to confirm her resolution, by distinctly revealing to her that it was His will she should go to Canada, and there labour for the conversion of the Indian girls, promising that He would bestow great graces on her in recompense. "O Lord!" she exclaimed, "surely favours like these are not for a worthless, sinful creature as I." And out Lord answered, "You speak truly; but the more unworthy the object of My favours, the more is My liberality exalted in bestowing them. I desire to employ you as the instrument of My mercies to Canada, and, notwithstanding all obstacles, you will go there, and there, too, you will end your days." Unmistakably as the project appeared to be marked with the will of God, she would take ho measures for its execution until competent judges had examined it in all its bearings, pronounced it the work of the Holy Spirit, and decided that she ought to carry it out without delay. Her vocation received its final confirmation in a dangerous illness which brought her to the very verge of the tomb. When the last hope had vanished, and her soul seemed on the very point of hearing the great summons to eternity, she felt inspired to vow that if her life were spared, she would build a church in Canada in honour of St. Joseph, and devote herself and her wealth, under his patronage, to the service of young Indian females. No sooner had she made the promise than she fell into a sweet refreshing sleep, from which she awoke in restored health. The amazement of the physicians was something wonderful. "What has become of your illness, Madam?" they asked. "It seems to have gone to Canada." Greatly surprised at the remark, she smilingly answered, "Yes, sir, as you say, it is gone to Canada."
Thus miraculously snatched from the arms of death, she thought only of fulfilling her vow as quickly as possible, but nearly four years were to pass before she could realize her pious wishes. As might have been expected, the enemy of all good set every engine at work to frustrate the design. Her father insisted that she should marry again, and after exhausting arguments and entreaties, he had recourse to threats, declaring that he would disinherit her if she persevered in opposing his washes, and that if she persisted in going to Canada, it would cost him his life. As time passed, obstacles seemed only to multiply, and her perplexity in consequence to increase, but before matters had finally come to a crisis, it pleased God to call her father out of life after a severe but short illness. This event, in removing one difficulty, created another. Some of her relatives who had long had designs on her property, eagerly seized the opportunity of securing the prize. With this object, they declared her incompetent to manage her own affairs, in consequence of her extravagance, as they termed her liberality to the poor and to the Church. They had recourse to law proceedings to prove the statement, and actually managed to procure a verdict in their favour. Just when her case seemed hopeless, she was extricated from the difficulty by following the advice of a kind friend, Monsieur de Bernières. At his suggestion she appealed to the Parliament of Rouen, and obtained a reversal of the first decision, with a full recognition of her rights. This great victory she attributed to the intercession of St. Joseph, in whose hands she had placed her cause, at the same time renewing her vow to build a church in Canada under his invocation, and devote her remaining life to the service of the Indians.
Her affairs no longer requiring her presence at home, she proceeded to Paris to complete her preparations for the voyage. She profited of the opportunity to submit her plans to two of the great lights of the age, Père Condren, General of the Oratorians, and St. Vincent of Paul, who both consoled her by the assurance that her vocation was genuine, and her work the work of God. Even here her relatives continued to disquiet her. Unwilling to relinquish their prey, some of them actually followed her to the capital with the intention of seizing her person, and so closely did they watch her movements, that, to baffle pursuit, she had to disguise herself in the dress of her maid when obliged to go out on business. Once more she had recourse to Monsieur de Bernières, and at his appearance, the conspirators dispersed.
This good friend of Madame de la Peltrie and the Ursulines, was the scion of an illustrious house in Normandy, and resided at Caen where he occupied a high official position. Fearing that the distraction of worldly business might divert his attention from the one thing necessary, he had early assembled around him a little community of ecclesiastics and pious laymen, who, united by the bonds of faith, charity, and prayer, served as mutual helps in the pursuit of a common end—Christian perfection This association, called "The Hermitage," once numbered among its members Monseigneur de Laval, the first Bishop of Canada. A faithful picture of the angelic soul of Monsieur de Bernières can be found in his own work entitled "The Interior Christian," which is in fact the history of his inner life written by the direction of his confessor. His ardent zeal for the Divine honour inspired him with the liveliest interest in the Canadian mission, to which he continued until death a devoted and efficient friend. To Madame de la Peltrie in particular, he preyed himself an invaluable assistant just at the time when she most needed counsel and support. Her contradictions were not yet at an end; one indeed seemed removed only to stake way for another. So it ever is with the work of God, for the. sign by which that work conquers is the sign of the cross. It was now the month of November, 1638. On applying for a passage to Canada for the following spring, she was told that all the vessels for the ensuing season would be fully freighted, so that no alternative remained but to defer her departure for another year. Nothing daunted, she declared that if necessary, she would charter a vessel at her own expense, and when the time of departure came, so she actually did.
CHAPTER VI.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOTHER OF THE INCARNATION'S VOCATION FOR CANADA.
While the Almighty was thus slowly preparing the way for the accomplishment of his designs, the Mother Mary of the Incarnation was still calmly awaiting the manifestation of His will, in utter unconsciousness of the progress of events. At the date to which we have brought the history of Madame de la Peltrie, more than two years had passed since she and the Venerable Mother almost simultaneously learned by Divine revelation, that the Canadian mission was to be the scene of their future labours. Having followed the progress of the destined Foundress' vocation during those years, we shall now retrace our steps to consider the development of the Venerable Mother's in the same interval.
The great work in prospect was to be the work of God alone, and nothing of the creature was to be permitted to mingle with it, therefore, before the time for carrying it into effect arrived, the Almighty signified to his faithful servant, that even in the execution of the command which He had himself imposed, her own will was to have no share. As once He had assumed the dominion of her heart, He on this occasion assumed the dominion of her will,—the heart of the soul,—not depriving her of the faculty, but uniting it so closely to His own will, that hers became absolutely absorbed and lost in His. It was, she says, as if while she endeavoured to bend His will to hers, by her ardent prayers for the extension of the Kingdom of His Son, He on the contrary triumphed over hers so completely, that now she could will only as He willed. Thenceforth, she waited in silence and peace for the further manifestation of His designs, and deeply as she prized her vocation, she constantly prayed that if He willed her to work for Him in another sphere and another way, He would raise insuperable obstacles to her ever going to Canada. The secret of her future destiny she buried in her heart, until at the end of a year, the Almighty Himself commanded her to divulge it. When she did so, the communication entailed on her only mortification and humiliation. Her director rebuked her for indulging silly fancies; the Mother Superior asserted that if God granted her request, it would be only as a punishment for her presumption; others, whose judgment she equally deferred to, pronounced the project visionary and delusive, yet her great courage never failed, for it was founded on a perfect confidence that in His own time, God would do His own work, using her as his instrument, all unworthy though she was. In two letters, she fully explained her position to her former spiritual guide, Dom Raymond of St. Bernard, who like herself, aspired at this time to the Canadian mission, though as the event proved, unsuccessfully. In one of these, she says, "God is stronger than man; He commands the winds and calms the waves. If He will have us in New France, He will surely conduct us thither in defiance of all the obstacles which look like mountains in human eyes, but before Him are only as straws and spiders' webs. When I consider my great misery, I cannot help feeling that it may in the end divert His choice to some worthier instrument, but if such should be His will, I bless Him in anticipation for the selection; whatever it may be, coming from Him, it must necessarily be all-wise." The humility, the trust in God, the total absence of all attachment to her own will and judgment which marked her communications, convinced this enlightened director that her vocation was genuine, and he therefore promised to promote its success to the best of his power. As God had decreed that she should concur in the great enterprise by something more than mere passive acquiescence, He again inspired and even urged her to repeat the information which by His order she had already given on the subject to her Superiors. This time, she addressed herself to Father de la Haye, who approved of the undertaking, encouraged her to pursue it, and expressed a hope that the time of its accomplishment was near at hand. An important link was added to the chain of Providence by the communication just referred to. Father de la Haye confided it to Father Poncet, who was a good deal concerned in the affairs of the Canadian mission, and thus was the Mother's cause placed in the direct road of success. Some time more was, however, to pass, before the mysterious chain of Providence should be perfected.
Although careful to avoid unnecessary allusion to her own especial vocation, she spoke in such glowing terms of the happiness of labouring for the salvation Of the infidels, that she effectually communicated her apostolic spirit to her community, who all joined her in prayer and works of penance for the conversion of heathen nations. The reputation of her zeal had even reached New France, whence she received urgent petitions from the missioners to hasten, to the aid of their dear converts. These appeals, some of them traced on bark by saintly men who soon were to water with their blood, the land blessed by their labours, she kissed reverentially and bedewed with her tears.
All her letters from Canada were not, however, of this description. Soon after the revelation of her vocation, she received two from Father le Jeune, mortifying enough to have discouraged any soul less humble than hers. As Superior of the missions in New France, he thought it advisable to try her spirit before she was permitted to follow her call; accordingly, he twice addressed her in the most humbling terms, dwelling particularly on her intolerable presumption in aspiring to functions far above her capacity, and aiming at a position in every way beyond her sphere. She read and re-read the painful words with singular satisfaction, and in showing them to her director, she merely said, "Is he not a good Father to treat me so? If I ever fall under his authority, I am sure of finding a true friend in him." When she learned later that he was using his best efforts to procure nuns for Canada, and that he especially desired to secure her services, she understood even better than before, that sharp as were the arrows, they had indeed been guided by a friendly hand.
Lest self-love or natural ardour should imperceptibly mingle with her desire for the Canadian mission, she represented herself its most alarming features, the danger of perishing of cold or hunger; the chance of being led into captivity and perhaps cruelly tortured by the savages; the immeasurable privations, the hardships, disappointments and varied sufferings which without any doubt would he her daily portion, yet the terrible anticipation rather strengthened than diminished her love for her great vocation. "No creature," she said in a letter to her confessor, "could be worthy of one so exalted. It is so grand, so sublime, so glorious, that only God's gratuitous goodness could inspire Him to bestow it. Gladly," she continued, "would I purchase it at the price of a thousand lives if that were possible. Reflecting that 'Christ died for all' (2 Cor. v. 15), I grieve to think that all do not yet live for Him, and although confounded at my own presumption, I feel pressed by the desire to bring unbelievers to the knowledge and love of Him who is the true Life."
She continued to pray that she might be enabled at last to execute the command imposed on her of building a house in Canada for Jesus and Mary, adding a petition that it might be also in honour of St. Joseph, whom she firmly believed to be the guardian of that country shown her in the vision. There seemed, however, little present prospect of her accomplishing her task, for, independently of other obstacles, more than one promise of the necessary pecuniary aid had ended in disappointment. Nothing then remained but to submit to the arrangements of Divine Providence, and this she did so perfectly, that it was difficult to decide whether most to admire her readiness to go to Canada, or her equal willingness to give up the idea. "An enterprise undertaken for God, should be renounced for God," she said, "when He withholds the means of carrying it into execution." But the thought of Canada continued to be as usual ever present to her heart, and although there seemed no human likelihood of her going there, she could not divest herself of a strong presentiment that the time of departure was approaching.
CHAPTER VII.
MADAME DE LA PELTRIE AT TOURS.—SELECTION OF THE MISSIONERS.—DEPARTURE FOR PARIS.—THENCE FOR DIEPPE.
We left Madame de la Peltrie in Paris, preparing for her departure. All her arrangements were made at last, except one, but that was all- important. The projected work could not go on without the help of religious Sisters, and none had been engaged; where were they to be sought? Many voices were raised in favour of the Ursulines of Paris, but God had chosen His own instrument, and in His own way He would manifest the selection. Father Poncet was known to be closely connected with the affairs of the mission, so he was appealed to for advice. His answer was prompt and satisfactory. "The Mother of the Incarnation had a marked vocation for New France; she possessed all needful qualifications, would fly to the ends of earth at the call of God, was to be found at the Ursuline Convent of at Tours." Following up the welcome hint, Madame de la Peltrie wrote at once to the Mother Superior of that monastery to secure the co-operation of so invaluable an assistant, and the letter was accompanied by one from Father Poncet. It is easy to imagine the effect of these letters on the two persons most concerned. Recognising in them the almost visible trace of the hand of Providence, the Mother Superior could only bow down and adore: equally lost in admiration of the wondrous ways of God, the Mother of the Incarnation could but exclaim, "Lord, here I am; send me!"
Thinking herself called on to second this manifest intervention of Providence, the Mother resolved to communicate personally to Madame de la Peltrie her wishes and sentiments on the subject of the mission. This letter gives so beautiful an insight to her mind that a few sentences from it will probably be read with interest and pleasure:—
"Can it be true, Madam," she asks, "that our Divine Master really calls you to the terrestrial paradise of New France? Are you, indeed, happily chosen to spread in that far-off region the heavenly flame of His love? Icicles abound there, it is true; brambles and thorns grow in profusion; but the fire of His Holy Spirit can dissolve the one and consume the other. His almighty power can strengthen weak creatures to endure all trials, and sacrifice all enjoyments for the salvation of God's children. O favoured spouse of Jesus! yours is the blessed certainty that you love Him truly, since you are about to give the strongest proof of love by renouncing self and all things for His dear sake . . . . Since in His infinite goodness He has granted me sentiments like your own, I feel that our hearts are now one in the Heart of Jesus, and that, so united, they embrace all the heathen children of Canada, whom, as we hope, it will soon be our privilege to impress with the love of their infinitely amiable God. Some years have passed since our Lord inspired me with the desire of labouring for their salvation. Hitherto I could only tranquilly wait until it should please His Providence to summon me to my work; now it seems as if the welcome call had come at last through you. Will you, then, accept me as the companion of your voyage and a co-operatrix in your future labours? As I could explain myself more fully and satisfactorily in a personal interview, I venture to promise that if you can give me the opportunity, our Lord will indemnify you Himself for the fatigue of the journey. You will meet here many affectionate sisters ready to welcome you as a messenger from heaven, and I, although the most unworthy of all, presume to ask a share in your prayers." This letter, so full of the spirit of God, confirmed Madame de la Peltrie's first favourable impression of the writer, and strengthened her desire to secure her as the foundation stone of her projected edifice.
The interview so humbly requested was cordially granted. Accompanied by Monsieur de Bernières, the Angel Raphael of her travels, Madame de la Peltrie arrived at the Convent of Tours on the 19th of February, 1639, having previously communicated the object of her visit to the Archbishop, and received his unqualified sanction. She was met by the whole community and conducted with due ceremonial to the choir, where the Veni Creator and the Te Deum were chanted. At first sight, the Mother Mary of the Incarnation recognised in Madame de la Peltrie the well-remembered features of the lady who had been represented in her vision as her companion to the unknown land; and their hearts were drawn towards each other irresistibly and for ever. The prayer of the Forty Hours was offered to obtain the direction of Heaven in the choice of the missioners, and on its conclusion, the selection commenced. The will of God had been so clearly marked in regard of the Mother of the Incarnation, that much deliberation would, in her case, have been superfluous. The Mother Superior must have felt that in acceding to the request of Madame de la Peltrie by granting her this rich treasure, she was but concurring in a Divine appointment, which she was not at liberty to oppose. The sanction of human authority was now formally. attached to the Venerable Mother's call to Canada; in addition to the stamp of heavenly revelation which it had so long borne, so she was free at last to enter on the course which stretched before her. clear, direct and well-defined, and while her soul magnified the Lord, and her spirit exulted in God, her generous heart breathed the one aspiration, that she might prove her gratitude for His mercies by pursuing that blessed course even to its final term, with a love that would never cool and a fidelity that would never tire.
As it was understood that one Sister was to accompany the Mother of the Incarnation, many were the candidates who volunteered their services; it was remarkable, however, that the one whom God had chosen was the only one who kept aloof. Sister St. Bernard was full of holy ardour for the salvation of souls, especially the Indians—an ardour fanned by the perusal of the yearly Reports of the progress of the faith in Canada—but her humility persuading her that youth and other disqualifications unfitted her for the great work, she dared not present herself to Madame de la Peltrie. She would not even enter her apartment with the others, but hovered about outside, offering herself to God as a perpetual holocaust for the conversion of the savages, and promising St. Joseph that if he obtained for her the favour of joining the missioners, she would change her present name for his, as a mark of her undying gratitude. Her private petition to the Mother Superior to be sent on the Mission had been rejected; the Mother Mary of the Incarnation, Madame de la Peltrie, and Monsieur de Bernières had all begged for her, and been likewise refused. Yet, when the community assembled to decide the question, it was singular that some difficulty or objection arose about every candidate except herself. This circumstance appearing to the Mother Superior an indication of the will of God, she feared to persist in her first indention, much as she regretted the loss of a subject whom she looked on as a future pillar of the house. Sister St. Bernard's parents threatened opposition, but He who holds in His hands the hearts of men, soon changed theirs so completely, that they gave her not only the desired permission, but their full approval and cordial benediction. Full of joy and gratitude, she changed her name as she had promised, and henceforth we know her as Mother St. Joseph. In the world she had been called Marie de la Troche, and her family was one of the highest in Anjou.
The aged Archbishop at once ratified the selection of the community, and warmly blessed the two candidates for the Mission, or, as he called them, the two foundation stones of the temple about to be erected in the New World for the glory of God. He prayed that the monastery at Quebec might be a home of grace, peace and benediction; that the efforts of hell might never prevail against it; and that the Lord might dwell there as the Father and Spouse not only of these its first inmates, but of all who should join or succeed them to the end of ages. He then appointed the Mother of the Incarnation Superior.
When all the preliminaries seemed satisfactorily concluded, it was found that an intimate friend of Madame de la Peltrie's had, at the last moment, revoked a promise to accompany her, alarmed, it would seem, at the perils of the voyage and the anticipated hardships of life in Canada. The circumstance was embarrassing, as little time now remained to seek a substitute, but the difficulty was removed in a manner as satisfactory as it was unexpected. There was just then in Tours a young person of respectable position and great piety, who, for the previous six years, had been determined on consecrating herself to the service of God and her neighbour in religion, but had deferred the execution of her design, merely because uncertainty as to the particular Order she was destined for. By the arrangement of Providence, her confessor, a Jesuit, happened likewise to be at Tours precisely at the moment of the nuns' perplexity, and, hearing of it, he suggested to them that the lady in question would very probably answer their purpose. She was at once presented to the missioners, and, on being asked by Madame de la Peltrie, whether she would consent to go to Canada as her personal companion, she promptly replied that her intention had been to become a nun, but that, since the Almighty was pleased to offer her so glorious an opportunity of sacrificing her life for Him, she would accept it with joy and gratitude. Her family name of Charlotte Barre she exchanged later for that of Mother St. Ignatius, under which we know her as the first sister professed at the Ursuline Convent of Quebec.
Another attempt was still to be made by the enemy of souls to frustrate the design of the Mother of the Incarnation, and her natural affections were again the arms which he tried to turn against her. Intensely grieved at the news of her intended departure, her sister employed every imaginable argument to prevent it, and, finding all else fail, appealed once more to her love for her son. She declared that if his mother forsook him, so would every one else, beginning with herself. Threats producing no impression, she went to the length of actually revoking the small pension which she had agreed to settle on the boy, as a kind of compensation to his mother for her services. But all was in vain: nothing could shake her courageous soul. One last effort remained: it was to apprise Claude Martin of his mother's intention, and inform him at the same time, that she was to pass through Orleans, where he was then studying, so that if he pleased he could have an opportunity of seeing her and working on her feelings. The hint was not lost on him, as we shall presently see.
On the 22nd of February, 1639, Mother Mary of the Incarnation bade a last farewell to the convent at Tours. It is easy to picture the grief of the Sisters at losing the beloved Mother whose example had been to all a perpetual stimulus to perfection, and whose counsels had encouraged so many to tread bravely the narrow path that leads to sanctity. The regret of the pupils for their saintly teacher, was the highest tribute to the gentleness and charity which, had so greatly endeared her to them. As to herself, she seems all through to have had a presentiment that she was in the monastery only as a deposit, to be one day reclaimed by the Heavenly Master. Her only ties were those which bound her to Himself; when, therefore, He demanded His own, her disengaged soul was free to hasten on the wings of love, even to the farthest boundaries of the globe.
Before her departure, she had a vision in which the church of her adopted country was represented to her as formed, not of stones, like ordinary buildings, but of human beings, fastened each to a cross. She was shown her destined place among the crucified, and made to understand the weight of her especial cross. She saw, not only in general, but in detail, all the afflictions that awaited her;—the agonies of interior desolation, the bitterness of external trials—all were vividly depicted; and it was intimated to her that henceforth she must serve the Lord at her own cost, and prove her gratitude for great favours, by great generosity in self- sacrifice. It was not long before she entered on the dolorous way which was to be henceforward her path here below. Faithful to his aunt's directions, her son watched for her arrival in Orleans, and at once presented himself before her. Feigning ignorance of her project, he inquired with well-assumed surprise, where she could possibly be travelling.