December 15.—Owing to the antiquity of our chapel, long since dedicated to the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, the archbishop permitted us, as a particular favor, to celebrate the octave of this great festival of Mary with a sermon and benediction every evening. The whole chapel was daily illuminated, and the effect was magical when it was lighted up. Imagine arches of light, pillars wreathed in flame, altar covered with flowers and brilliant with immense wax candles; while in the midst gleamed the Virgin in a perfect bower of pure white lilies. And, just as the imagination is fired with so much brilliancy and taste, Kyrie eleison! floats up with the incense in the most plaintive, heart-rending tones—a very tear of the heart dropped at the feet of Mary! It is the commencement of the litany of Maria Immaculata, chanted by the nuns in choir, and responded to by the crowds that fill the chapel without. Light and music are the two ideas of which Dante's Paradise is composed; and I felt with what true poetic instinct, when kneeling before that shrine of light, my ears listened to harmonies approaching those that swell for ever before the throne of God! This struck me from the first; and I have since found my thoughts expressed by another far better than I could express them. Leigh Hunt says: "It is impossible to see this profusion of lights, especially when one knows their symbolical meaning, without being struck with the source from which Dante took his idea of the beatified spirits. His heaven, filled with lights, and lights, too, arranged in figures, which glow with lustre in proportion to the beatitude of the souls within them, is the sublimation of a Catholic church. And so far it is heavenly indeed; for nothing escapes the look of materiality like fire. It is so airy, joyous, and divine a thing, when separated from the idea of pain and an ill purpose, that the language of happiness naturally adopts its terms, and can tell of nothing more rapturous than burning bosoms and sparkling eyes. The seraph of the Hebrew theology was a fire."
Christmas.—Yesterday was spent in retreat, by way of preparing our hearts for the solemnities of the nativity; and I have kept a real old-fashioned vigil—a vigil of the middle ages. I wish you could have heard the joyful ring of all the bells of the city as midnight approached. At the cathedral, the clear tones of the smaller bells, like the voices of nuns in choir, and the great Bourdon among them, "like the chanting of a friar," as Longfellow says; the carillon, too, from St. Pierre; and then all the convent bells sounding from Carmel, the Oratory, the Filles de Marie, and La Miséricorde, and those of the Hospital, Le Grand Séminaire, etc., etc., are infinitely impressive in the stillness of the night—the prelude of a great joy, breaking in upon our meditation on the birth of Christ. When the bells were all hushed, the priest stood at the foot of the blazing altar; all the rest of the chapel was in darkness—not a taper in the choir. There was not a sound but the night wind. The saints on the walls, half revealed in their dim recesses, looked like the spirits of the old monks come forth at this mystic hour to guard the chapel their hands once raised.
It was the second time I ever communicated at midnight mass, and I imagined my heart the manger in which the Infant Jesus came to repose. I thought, as I returned from the holy table to my prie-dieu, of the first tears of the Divine Babe, and that he bewailed my continued imperfections. "Ah! why should not thy tears," I exclaimed, "wash away my sins, that thou be not forced to shed also thy most precious blood! I, too, weep. I, who deserve to weep, join my tears to thine. O Virgin Mother! take back thy child! His presence makes me an object of horror to myself. His tears scald my very heart. His caresses are like arrows that pierce my soul. Thou alone canst console him; only clean hands and a pure heart should embrace spotless innocence. My spiritual vision is too weak to bear the Orient from on high. Yes, Mary, thou alone canst console him; for thou art immaculate. Embrace him for me—those hands and feet which will be pierced for me; and wipe away the tears that have commenced to flow but too soon."
"Oh! blissful and calm was the wondrous rest
That thou gavest thy God in thy virginal breast.
For the heaven he left he found heaven in thee;
And he shone in thy shining, sweet Star of the sea!"
After hearing three masses, we went to visit the manger. A kind of tent had been erected in the upper choir. In it was a statue of St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin, an ox, an ass, and in the centre on the straw lay the new-born Infant with its little arms outstretched. Above hovered the angels. Though rudely cast, their effect was good in the dim light. We knelt around, and the novices sang out joyfully a Christmas carol, the chorus of which was "Jésus est né!"—Christ is born! All this gave a certain vividness to the festival which it never had before; and I enjoyed it much. True, our manger is too homely to bear the criticisms of the scoffer. St. Joseph, for a carpenter, is rather gaudily dressed out in a scarlet robe, purple mantle, ruffle-bosomed shirt, with a breast-pin; and the Virgin hardly does credit to her reputation for beauty and grace; but the eye of faith looks beyond and reads only the lesson of child-like simplicity and humility—nowhere so well learned as at Bethlehem.
"I adore thee, O Infant Jesus! naked, weeping, and lying in the manger. Thy childhood and poverty are become my delight. Oh! that I could be thus poor, thus a child like thee. O eternal wisdom! reduced to the condition of a little babe, take from me the vanity and presumptuousness of human wisdom! Make me a child with thee. Be silent, ye teachers and sages of the earth! I wish to know nothing but to be resigned, to be willing to suffer, to lose and forsake all, to be all faith! The Word made Flesh! now is silent, now has an imperfect utterance, now weeps as a child! And shall I set up for being wise? Shall I take a complacency in my own schemes and systems? Shall I be afraid lest the world should not have an opinion high enough of my capacity? No, no; all my pleasure shall be to decrease—to become little and obscure, to live in silence, to bear the reproach of Jesus crucified, and to add thereto the helplessness and imperfect utterance of Jesus, a child."[22]
The manger remains till Epiphany. It is gotten up by the scholars, who delight in it, especially the younger ones, who go to present the Infant Jesus with fruit, nuts, bonbons, money, and whatever their childish hearts suggest. These things are for the Holy Infant in the person of poor children among whom they are distributed, that they too may have some pleasure at Christmas-tide. I find it a pretty custom, as well as beneficial; for piety should not all evaporate in sentiment, but, even in children, ought to be embodied in some good deed, or prompt to some act of self-denial. The children of France take much pleasure in making little sacrifices of pocket-money (not in the spirit of Mrs. Pardiggle's unfortunate children!) for the association of the Sainte Enfance, the funds of which are destined to rescue hundreds of little children, who are exposed to death in China by their parents, and even to buy those who are exposed for sale, that they may be reared as Christians. Last year, four hundred thousand children were thus baptized—an angelic work, worthy of young and pure hearts. Our scholars embroider collars and do a variety of fancy work for a fair among themselves, by which they amass quite a sum in the course of the year. The French children are exceedingly volatile, but there is a great deal of piety among them. During Passion-time a little girl of nine or ten, belonging to the poor scholars, undertook to meditate fifteen minutes a day, for a certain number of days, on the sufferings of Christ. One of the nuns asked her how she employed the time, so long for a child. She replied, naïvement, "I thought each thorn that pierced the head of Christ was one of my sins!"
After our nocturnal devotions, we novices returned to the novitiate, where the Yule log was blazing. By way of a rarity, we all had coffee to refresh us after our vigil, and we sat around the fire chatting in a home-like manner, and repeating Christmas carols.
"He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall;
He neither shall be rocked
In silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden cradle
That rocks upon the mould."