I feel I have much to be thankful for that God should have led me to see my mistake in life. It was His work, for, in spite of the treatment I received, I still clung to the convent life. My motive for leaving it was mainly to get away from being misunderstood and misrepresented, and from the endurance of cruel penances. But since then my eyes have been further opened, so that I now totally disagree with the whole system, and I thank God for having so providentially taken me by the hand. He and He alone has delivered me from so many Satanic delusions, and He and He alone has made known to me the “truth as it is in Jesus,” and not in Romish rites and ceremonies. I can and do indeed rejoice in the liberty wherewith Christ has made me free; I am free to serve Him “without fear,” and I am free to let my light shine that others may learn thereby to glorify my heavenly Father.
I thank Him especially for not letting me remain in the convent any longer, wasting time and precious opportunities of doing good and helping others. And I do pray that He will ever keep me in a listening and waiting attitude of mind upon Himself, so that I may “hear what the Lord will speak: for He will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints.” And may He so speak to me that I may never “turn again to folly.”
That God may use these poor efforts of mine to open the eyes of many, is the prayer of her who, with the man whose eyes the Lord once opened, can say, “Once I was blind, now I see.”
DEVOTIONAL BOOKS USED BY SISTER MARY AGNES, O.S.B.
APPENDIX A.
“Manual of Devotions to our Holy Father, St. Benedict, Abbot and Patriarch of the Western Monks; to his Sister, St. Scholastica, Virgin and Abbess; and to all Saints of his Order.” (London: Catholic Publishing and Bookselling Co. Limited.)