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.