The heart of St. Augustine was so full of the love of God and the sense of what is his due, that he is always represented holding it all aflame in his hands. Old legends tell us how an angel bore it away to a sanctuary, where it will still tremble in its crystal case if an unbeliever enters the church where it is exposed. So tremulously alive to the honor and glory of God should be the hearts that are gathered together in the cloister. How many souls fly thither to make up, as it were, to God what is wanting on the part of their sinful brethren! Apropos, I must tell you about one of our nuns, who is full of holy fervor. In the late retreat, the director asked her the subject of her particular examen. "Self-abnegation," was the reply. "Do you find many occasions for practising it?" inquired the père. "Not as many as I could wish." "What is the virtue which you particularly ask of our Lord in your devotions, and by the actions of each day?" "I ask for no virtue, mon père." "With what intention, then, do you offer them?" "For the conversion of sinners, and the greater glory of God."
Is not this admirable? I am sure many Protestants could hardly comprehend a piety so disinterested as to lose sight, in a measure, of one's own profit in zeal for God's cause.
The facilities are also great in the cloister for the frequent reception of the sacraments, which quicken the moral circulation. The pulsations of the soul are more healthful after the infusion of divine grace through them. I went to holy communion this morning. The Divine Host seemed to me a burning coal from off the altar of God, and the priest, the angel who placed it on my lips. "Our God is a consuming fire." I prayed that he might consume every affection in my heart that was not centred in him; and, as I felt the torrent of divine flame circulating in my veins, every earthly desire, every human passion, seemed to die away within me. For a moment, at least, I felt the signification of the words of the great apostle of the Gentiles, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who liveth in me." Might such moments be perpetuated! But it is of faith that those who have partaken of Christ's body and blood remain in him, and he in them, as long as they are in a state of grace. It is this interior presence of the divinity which animated the saints to the sacrifice, and made even this world, amid all their privations and austerities, a very foretaste of heaven. What sweet solemnity and thoughtfulness reign in the heart sensible of this divine presence! In its light the soul,
"Like the stained web that whitens in the sun,
Grows pure by being purely shone upon."
As you say, a great deal does depend upon the influences that surround us, especially with weak souls like me. I envy those men who are as gods, in spite of temperament, or clime, or any outward influence; who go on unchecked from one degree of glory to another, to the very heights of sanctity. I am always drifting along, awaiting the impulse of the sacraments, or the helping hand of some stronger friend, too glad if I do not recede. Ah! solitude brings us face to face with ourselves, and reveals to us our moral littleness. Nothing is more humbling than this revelation. Nothing makes us more distrustful of ourselves, and more willing to accept the appointed means of perfection. The life our director thinks the safest is a common life, lived in an uncommon manner; that is, while we do the same things as those around us, it is with motives so holy that each action is rendered in a degree supernatural. This is the great secret of the hidden and interior life, which the saints of all ages have loved and of which St. Joseph is the type.
I have been reading Fioretti; or, the Little Flowers of St. Francis d'Assisi—a collection of the sayings of the first Franciscans, with a rare bloom on them. These mediæval flowers, so long shut up in a foreign tongue, have a delicious fragrance, and while I inhaled their odor I forgot that I belonged to an incredulous age. There is a simplicity truly poetical in this collection, which is admirable. One little remark of Friar Egide struck me: "La voie la plus directe pour nous sauver, c'est de nous perdre." This loss, this annihilation of self, on the ruins of which must be built up the great edifice of our perfection, is what I daily sigh after, and what I ask for you. The Père Milley, a Jesuit, speaks much of "le pays des âmes perdues"—a country to which all my desires tend. It is a promised land which I see afar off; another Canaan, which I hardly dare hope to enter, though I look wistfully on those who are lost in God—that ocean without limit, where our littleness is swallowed up in immensity, and we almost forget our fears and our frailties; we know not whether we suffer or are consoled; conscious only of the divine atmosphere—conscious only that we love!...
Our novitiate is a large apartment with five immense windows in it. (When you are taxed for windows, you may as well have large ones, and the French love the air and live in it.) No matter how cold it is, the windows are always open—and when I say open, I mean the whole window; for, as I have already remarked, they swing open like folding doors. On cold days a few mottes are burning in the fireplace, around which a folding screen is drawn. These mottes are mostly of tan, pressed into flat round cakes like a small cheese. They give out strong heat. Wood is very scarce here, and consequently dear, and I have never seen coal. As for lights, we burn linseed-oil, which gives a clear yellow light, and the odor is not offensive like whale-oil. Each sister has a little coil of yellow wax-taper to light when she wishes to go about the monastery in the evening.
The floor is paved with square red tiles, as in all the houses here, but we have little mats to protect our feet from the chill. Each novice has her table and writing-desk, at which she studies or sews. At one end of the room is an altar, and the walls are adorned with engravings of a religious character. Leading from the novitiate is the chambrette of the mistress of novices, in which is the novices' library. It is always open to us, and we like an excuse for entering it.
Our manner of spending the day is nearly unvaried. We rise at half-past four, and, after completing our toilettes, (for even nuns have toilettes; one's garments must be put together somehow,) we descend to the chapel. The choir is impenetrably dark most of the year at this early hour. Only the little lamp is twinkling near the tabernacle! One by one the nuns come noiselessly in, like so many shadows. This hour of morning meditation is delicious. The perfect stillness, in which you can hear your own heart beat, disposes you to reflection. The soul becomes steeped in the spirit of the place and the hour passes too quickly away. Then we say the hours. The morning sacrifice follows with its awful mysteries, which are ever fresh and wonderful.