Sometimes I would stand and look around that small enclosure and think, “Shall I never in this life go farther than this garden surrounded with trees?” Often my brain seemed to turn at the very thought. If only I could have seen a great space, or a great sea, it would be better; but there were those trees in a flat country, and nothing beyond (a true type indeed). But then I would come back to my text, as above quoted, and think that as God is pleased with me, nothing else is of consequence. So I went on year after year, anything but happy, yet not daring to let myself think of turning back. Often did I LONG to speak of mother and of the dear ones at home, but I could not without breaking the rule, “never to speak of our earthly relations except to God in prayer.” If we broke this rule, we had to confess it the same day, and perform the prescribed penance of losing the hour’s recreation, do some menial work, and keep silence during the only hour we had set apart for conversation.
At the end of my first year my mother wrote to Father Ignatius demanding me back. She wrote to me at the same time, telling me she was coming to fetch me; but the Father gave me no advice on the subject, and I could have gone back as far as consent from my superiors went. At that time they gave me my mother’s letter, which of course they had read (all letters are read by the Mother first); but what about the teaching and instruction that had gone before? What about the awful words I had heard that, “should I ever even look back, I should then be unmeet for the kingdom of God”? What about the example of Lot’s wife, so often set before us? She only looked back, and how terrible the immediate result! What would happen (I thought) to one espoused to Christ, if she not only looked back, but deliberately turned from the “path that leads to life,” as we were instructed? Not even for one second did I dare to allow myself to think it. I would not go back, and did not.
My mother waited another year, and came this time to the convent without writing, so that I might not be influenced beforehand. Oh! mothers, little do you know the influence that is always at work: and yet your children dare not even wish to tell you, for it would be a terrible sin to tell even you anything about that influence,—it would be a grave scandal to do so. But it is equally a great sin to hide anything from our Superior; we are distinctly told never to conceal anything, not even our most secret thoughts, from our Superior. Should we have a great temptation to leave the life we had entered on, or any great temptation to rebel against convent rules, we were expressly told to make it known at once, that we might have the benefit of our Superior’s advice. Remember, too, that self-examination comes three times a day!
One morning, at the Communion, the Father suddenly turned round, saying:
“If any sister in this chapel has one single unfaithful thought of going back to the world, I dare her to come to this altar, and touch with her lips the sacred Body and Blood of her God. ‘Woe be to him through whom the offence cometh!’”
We were all startled, and I said,“Lord, is it I?” But it was not me, for I would rather have suffered torture than commit so great a sin. A certain lay-sister stayed behind at that time, and I asked her, when the next opportunity offered itself to me, if she had thoughts of looking back? She replied:
“I told the reverend Father last night, I thought I ought to go home to my father to keep house for him, as my mother was dead.”
The reader will perceive that though we were not shut in by literal bolts and bars, we were bound by something very, very much more effectual—even by the nameless and unexplainable fear of being guilty of the terrible sin of going back to the world. How fearfully real and effectual is this feeling!
My mother and sister then came to fetch me, and I was sent alone into the parlour, that they might see how little I was apparently influenced by any outside pressure, and that I might tell them that I had a wish of my own free will to remain in the convent. At this interview, some one, unknown to my mother, was, of course, within earshot, according to rule; but I did not fear that, for I had no intention of going back, and thus losing the virgin’s crown in heaven, which I so much coveted, and which could only be obtained, as I then supposed, by remaining true to my holy calling. My sister was evidently exercising great self-restraint at this interview, and could scarcely refrain from weeping; my own mother sobbed, and my heart was wrung, and yet I dared not think of going home. Almost choking with emotion, and stretching out my arms and folding them around my mother’s neck, I gasped: