The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation

by Anonymous

Her humility, she had early established on the fundamental principles, that God is all, and the creature nothing. From these two truths, as from two great fountain heads, came the one absorbing desire of her life, that the All should engulph the nothing; that God should be exalted and she herself annihilated; hence, there was no height to which she would not have soared to promote honour to God, and no depth to which she would not have descended to procure her own abasement. The generosity of her humility inspired her equally to undertake great things for her Divine Master, when His service required them, and to remain contentedly in inaction when this was more agreeable to Him. Far from attaching any importance to the benefits which she had conferred on the monastery, she looked on herself as useless, sincerely believing that she was tolerated in the house of God only through charity. "I know nothing," she wrote; "I do nothing in comparison with my Sisters; although I teach others, I am the most ignorant of all." That these were no mere empty words was proved by her insatiable thirst for humiliation, to which her humble soul was drawn by the consideration of God's greatness and her own nothingness, as a stone to its centre by its natural weight. In reading of the success which crowned her labours, and the universal love and reverence which her great qualities inspired, we are tempted to imagine, that whatever may have been her interior crosses, she must at least have been a stranger to the mortifications which come to us from others. But it was not so. She loved humiliation in her heart of hearts, as the appropriate homage of the nothing to the All, and God loved her too much to spare it, therefore all through life, in youth as in mature age, in Canada as in France, in religion as in the world, it followed her like a shadow. "I am destined for the cross," she wrote to one of the Mothers at Tours; "trials are my lot, and in them is my peace; help me to return thanks to Him who provides for me so generously." She was contradicted and slighted; she was suspected, misjudged and misrepresented, sometimes to test her virtue, sometimes from more questionable motives, but the possibility that she could he wronged or unjustly depreciated, never for a moment seemed to occur to her. Considering herself the last, the lowest, the most sinful of God's creatures, she confessed that any amount of humiliation was inadequate to her deserts, while at the same time firmly impressed that the unfavourable opinions expressed of her were the correct ones, she was incapable of resentment. The Sisters who knew how discourteously she was often treated, once asked her how she bad been able to restrain her irritation under some particular insult; "I have guarded against that," she replied, "by forgetting all about it." "You admired our Mother's humility under her last annoyance," one Sister remarked to another; "yet this was a trivial one compared with those to which she is accustomed; still nobody ever hears her speak of them." Nevertheless she owned that the persecutions which she endured thus silently, were more trying than even her terrible temptations, for that while the one caused her only personal suffering, the other checked the work of God. Her imperturbable equanimity under humiliations sometimes led to a doubt of her having noticed them at all; she had, and that very clearly too, but because she loved the contempt which she believed her due, she received each new evidence of it with an interior joy, and an exterior calmness, which deceived superficial observers. While incapable of taking offence herself, if she thought that she had inadvertently given even apparent cause of it to others, she never hesitated to ask pardon in the most humble manner even of the youngest Sister. No trace of self-reliance or self-esteem was ever seen in her. She was always ready to receive the suggestions and profit of the opinions even of those far inferior to her in every respect. It is recorded that when, consummated in virtue and experience, she was nearing the end of life, a novice who was at work with her, took the liberty of remarking that she was doing hers wrong. "Show me, my child, how it should be done," the humble Mother gently answered, and while the novice had the simplicity to teach her mistress, the mistress had the humility to take the directions, although she knew them to be incorrect, saying that it matters little whether a piece of work be done in one way or in another, but very much that we practise child-like humility, so as to deserve a place among the little ones of whom our Lord declared is the kingdom of heaven. Sinking ever lower and deeper into her nothingness, she found there a resting-place for her soul, a security against illusion, a safeguard for her virtue, and an antidote for self-complacent thoughts, if by a rare chance, imagination ever suggested one.

The extraordinary graces with which God favoured her, far from exalting, served only to lower her in her own estimation. She fully recognised the magnificence of those graces, but wholly separating the great Giver from the lowly recipient, she viewed them in Him, not in herself; they were His always, hers never, and provided they redounded to His glory, she asked no more. "I am overwhelmed with astonishment," she writes, "that a God who is loved purely by myriads of millions of souls, should cast His eyes on me, the last of His creatures, and condescend to grant me a share in His love." And again, "If a soul is beautiful, good, or holy, it is with the beauty, the goodness and the holiness of God. Knowing that these attributes belong wholly to Him, she desires that He alone should have the honour of them, wishing no honour or praise for herself from any creature. Her only fear is lest vain complacency should open the door of the inner temple to the enemy, who would soon despoil her of her gifts." "Tremble for me," she said to her son, "when you hear of the favours which the Almighty has conferred on me, for He has placed His treasures in the very frailest of earthen vessels: the vessel may at any moment be broken and the contents lost." This humble distrust of human weakness never left her heart. "O my great God!" she would say, "grant me humility, and help me to serve Thee as Thou commandest, in fear and trembling." "I am now near my end," she wrote two years before her death, "and I have yet done nothing worthy of a soul soon to appear before God. Our Lord has ever led me by the spirit of love and confidence, never by that of fear, but when I consider that through the frailty of my fallen nature, I may at any moment lose the Divine friendship, I am seized with dread, and overwhelmed with humiliation. I could not exist if I retained this apprehension of separation from God,—that all-good God from whom I have received more graces and favours than there are grains of sand in the ocean bed. But my firm confidence in His mercy dispels alarm, and rejecting doubts and fears, I cast myself trustingly into His arms, there to repose in peace." Her superior intelligence and eminent virtue would have rendered her a very desirable acquisition to the Jansenists, who used their best efforts to allure her to their ranks, but her humility was her safeguard, and to manifest her horror of their innovations, she would not even reply to their letters.

Flowing from her humility was her spirit of obedience, a virtue of which she so clearly recognised the imperative necessity for all who aim at perfection, that she would do nothing but under its guidance. Even the revelations with which God had favoured her, she never thought of acting on, until she had submitted them to the examination of her director, and so persuaded was she that this course was in accordance with the established order of Providence, that she would have thought herself deluded had she acted otherwise. She was perfectly free from the least attachment to her own lights, natural and supernatural, and never had a difficulty in subjecting her conduct and judgment to the guidance of superiors; this she esteemed a most special grace. It may be remembered that in the years of her servitude in her brother-in-law's house, she made a vow of obedience to him and her sister. Knowing nothing of it, they were lost in astonishment at her wonderful submission, which they could only attribute to her affection for themselves, and consequent zeal for their interests. After she entered religion, obedience was still among her favourite virtues; she almost flew to execute the most trivial order of superiors, or rather she recognised none as trivial, viewing all as emanating from God. In the position of Superior which she held for eighteen years, she still found means of exercising her beloved virtue, and when in the intervals, she resumed her place among the Sisters, her submission to the new Superior was that of a simple child. Obedience had become so natural to her from habit, that she was a stranger even to a repugnance to obey. She strongly inculcated the importance of obedience to spiritual direction, saying that it is the source of that true simplicity which forms the saints.

A soul so humble could not but be meek, and so it was notorious, that although while she was engaged in the world her business had been of a most harassing kind, and that in Canada her varied duties brought her into continual contact with persons of all classes and all humours, she was never seen out of patience. Even when most severely pressed at the time of her great interior trials by temptations to antipathy and irritability, the closest observer could scarcely ever have detected that vanquished nature had made an effort to rebel. If perchance an almost imperceptible reflection of her pains of soul ever passed over her accustomed sweetness of demeanour, she reproached herself for it as for a fault. After her death, when her virtues formed the favourite topic of conversation in her bereaved community, one who had known her for thirty years, observed that "the Mother of the Incarnation always showed the courage of the lion in confronting difficulties and dangers, and the gentleness of the lamb in her intercourse with her neighbour." And this latter remark applied not only to the meekness which is easily maintained because it is not tried, but much more to that which bears the test of sharp and continuous contradictions, and is never found to fail. A person who had occasioned her very great annoyance, finally pronounced as his conclusive opinion, that her patience was made of iron. She was, indeed, so thoroughly inured to mortifications, that injuries had ceased to be injuries, and enemies were enemies no more. Those who had treated her worst, might, for that reason, count securely on special evidences of her sweetness and kindness. For the sake of peace, she was ever ready to yield her judgment, when this could be doue without compromise of duty.

It once happened that in an important matter submitted to the decision of the community, she held a different opinion from most of the Sisters. Finding herself in the minority, she at once yielded the point without a remonstrance or even a remark. A Sister who took her view of the case, a little disappointed at such ready acquiescence, observed, "Well, Mother, one would thank that you had made a vow to obey those people, and do just as they wish." "No," replied the Mother, with her own gentle smile, "I have not vowed to obey them or consult their wishes, but I have promised to please God, and for His love to do all in my power to maintain peace with my neighbour." Perfect, however, as was the meekness of the Venerable Mother, her firmness could equal it when occasion required, and never, perhaps, were the two qualities more admirably balanced in any character than in hers.

Compassion for all in want or trouble seemed like an instinct of her nature. It showed itself, as we have seen, from her earliest childhood, and gained strength with every breath of her life. To see her fellow- creatures in distress, and not make an effort to relieve them, was at all times an impossibility to her kind heart. Known in the world as the mother and advocate of the poor, in religion she maintained, and, if possible, strengthened her claim to the beautiful title. She would have considered that a lost day on which she had not exercised the works of mercy, so during her prolonged tenure of authority as Superior, it was remarked that she never passed one without giving alms of one kind or another. Among the distressed French families whom she thus relieved were persons of respectable condition, who she knew would have shrunk from manifesting their poverty, therefore she took care to spare them the necessity of an appeal for charity, managing also to have her gifts conveyed so cautiously, that they should be unable to trace them to their source, or to consider them in the light of alms. When nothing more remained to her for the destitute, she called on the resources of the rich, and when these, too, were exhausted, she had recourse to God, who never failed to send her help in her emergencies.

If she was the refuge of the French in their wants, still more was she the resource of the Indians, to whom her generous heart and her hospitable monastery were ever open. Vain would be the attempt to tell of all she did and all she endured to procure means of providing for them in their necessities, and helping them through their difficulties. But if their temporal welfare was a subject of deepest concern to her, infinitely more lively was her zeal for their spiritual interests; to these she had devoted her labours; to these she had consecrated her energies and her life; for these were her first, her last, her ceaseless prayers. So well did she succeed in communicating her own ardour to the rest of the community, that from the very commencement of the house the Sisters bound themselves to receive the Holy Communion and recite the Rosary once every month in honour of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, observing a fast on the eve of the festival, all in order to obtain the conversion of the savages. This beautiful devotion is perpetuated in the monastery to the present day.

Another practice of the first Mothers was to draw by lot the names of the different Indian tribes, each offering her prayers, labours, and merits for the conversion of that which had fallen to her. The Venerable Mother had her particular nation like the rest, but her great heart embraced all others at the same time, for nothing less than all could satisfy zeal which, like hers, embraced the universe. As her history has shown us, her whole life in Canada was but one prolonged act of charity to the forlorn race, and when that life was about to close, she bequeathed her love for them to her community, as the most precious legacy she had to bestow.

As well-ordered charity begins at home, her Sisters were naturally the first objects of hers. From the commencement of her religious career, her delight had been to oblige and serve them at the cost of any amount of personal fatigue or inconvenience, and, when Superior, it was her practice to do a considerable portion of their work in addition to her own, thus to procure them a little more rest. That all might be enabled to retire sooner after their weary day, she took for her especial charge to remain up the last at night, and see all the fires extinguished—no easy task when wood was the only fuel, the huge, red-hot logs requiring much time and caution in the cooling. She has been known to leave herself without bed-clothes in the intense cold of winter nights, that she might add a little to the comfort of her shivering novices, her own chilled frame meantime depending for warmth, as Père Charlevoix remarks, "only on the fire of her love;" and this was but one small instance of the compassionate charity which she was ever practising.

She had peculiar tact in reconciling enemies, and a wondrous gift for consoling the afflicted, especially those tried by temptations and interior pains. Many were the sufferers who came to her sorrowful and discouraged, and left her presence consoled and strengthened. Once a person under great trial sought her help, but experienced insuperable difficulty in communicating the subject of her pains. "Let us pray, my child," the Mother said, "that God may enlighten me." Leaning her head on her hand, she prayed for the space of a Pater and Ave; then looking up gently, she asked, "What hesitation could you have had in telling me such and such a thing?"—specifying the causes of trouble. "Should you not have known me better?" Having directed the person what course to pursue, and exhorted her to courage, fidelity, and abandonment to God, she foretold her that her troubles were not at an end, but consoled her by the assurance that they would tend to the Divine honour. The wise counsels not only imparted immediate peace to the suffering soul, but, moreover, helped to sustain her through the remainder of the conflict, which, as the event proved, was not yet over. The good Mother was ever at the command of all who sought her help, ready at all times to lay aside her most pressing occupations the moment any one expressed a desire to speak to her, giving her visitors ample opportunity of unburdening their minds fully, and dismissing all satisfied and consoled. She could not endure to hear an unkind remark, and so perfect was her own practice of charity in speech, that she was never known to utter a word to the disadvantage of any one, even those who had treated her worst. Such was the tenderness of her compassion for the erring, that, as she was accustomed to say, she would have wished to hide them in her heart.