Mary described the material life of La Trappe as in every sense delightful; the digging, pealing potatoes, and so forth, as most recreative and not at all fatiguing. After her first Lent, she wrote me that it had passed so quickly, she "hardly knew it had begun when Easter came."
Her only complaint was that it had been too easy, that the austerities, "which were at all times very mild," had not been more increased during the penitential season.
My third letter was on her receiving the holy habit.
"I wish you could see me in it," she said. "I felt rather odd at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it, and now it is so light and pleasant. I am so happy in my vocation I cannot help being almost sure that I have found the will of God."
This was the burden of her song for evermore: to find the will of God! And so in prayer and expectation she kept her watch upon the tower, her hands uplifted, her ears and her eyes straining night and day for every sign and symbol of that blessed manifestation. She kept her watch, faithful, ardent, never weary of watching, rising higher and higher in love, sinking lower and lower in humility. She had set her soul like a ladder against the sky, and the angels were for ever passing up and down the rungs, carrying up the incense of the prayer, which, as soon as it reached the throne of the Lamb, dissolved in graces, and sent the angels flying down earthward again.
The world went on; the wheel went round; pleasure and folly and sin kept up their whirl with unabating force. All things were the same as when Mary Benedicta, hearkening to the bell from the sanctuary, turned her back upon the vain delusion, and gave up the gauds of time for the imperishable treasures of eternity. Nothing was changed. Was it so indeed? To our eyes it was. We could not see what changes were to come of it. We could not see the work her sacrifice was doing, nor measure the magnitude of the glory it was bringing to God. Poor fools! it is always so with us. We see with the blind eyes of our body the things that are of the body. What do we see of the travail of humanity in God's creation? The darkness and the pain. Little else. We see a wicked man or a miserable man, and we are filled with horror or with pity. We think the world irretrievably darkened and saddened by the sin and the misery that we see, forgetting the counterpart that we do not see—the sanctity and the beauty born of repentance and compassion. We see the bad publican flaunting his evil ways in the face of heaven, brawling in the streets and the market-place; we do not see the good publican who goes up to the temple striking his breast, and standing afar off, and sobbing out the prayer that justifies. We forget that fifty such climbing up to heaven make less noise than one sinner tearing down to hell. So with pain. When sorrow crushes a man, turning his heart bitter and his wine sour, we find it hard to believe that so much gall can yield any honey, so much dark let in any light. We cannot see—oh! how it would startle us if we did—how many acts of kindness, how many thoughts and deeds of love, are evoked by the sight of his distress. They may not be addressed to him, and he may never know of them, though he has called them into life; they may all be spent upon other men, strangers perhaps, to whom he has brought comfort because of the kindliness his sorrow had stirred in many hearts. Some miser has been touched in hearing the tale of his distress, and straightway opened his purse to help the Lazarus at his own door. A selfish woman of the world has foregone some bauble of vanity and given the price to a charity to silence the twinge that pursued her after witnessing his patient courage in adversity. There is no end to the small change that one golden coin of love, one act of heroic faith, one chastened attitude of Christian sorrow, will send current through the world. It would be easier to number the stars than to count it all up. But the bright little silver pieces pass through our fingers unnoticed. We do not watch for them, neither do we hear them chime and ring as they drop all round us. We do not listen for them. We listen rather to the wailing and the hissing, hearkening not at all to the rustle of angels' wings floating above the din, nor to the sound of their crystal tears falling through the brine of human woe and lamentation.
One more virgin heart is given up to the Crucified—one more victory won over nature and the kingdom of this world. One more life is being lived away to God in the silence of the sanctuary. Who heeds it? Who sees the great things that are coming of it?—the graces obtained, the blessings granted, the temptations conquered, the miracle of compassion won for some life-long sinner, at whose death-bed, cut off from priest or sacrament, the midnight watcher before the tabernacle has been wrestling in spirit, miles away, with mountains and seas between them. Only when the seven seals are broken of the Book in which the secrets of many hearts are written shall these things be made manifest, and the wonders of sacrifice revealed.
Mary Benedicta was drawing to the close of her novitiate. So far her health had stood the test bravely. She had passed the winters without a cough, a thing that had not happened to her for years. The pain in her spine that had constantly annoyed her at home had entirely disappeared.
Every day convinced her more thoroughly that she had found her true vocation, and that she was "doing the will of God." Her profession was fixed for the month of December. She wrote to me a few lines, telling me of her approaching happiness, and begging me to get all the prayers I could for her. Her joy seemed too great for words. It was, indeed, the joy that passes human understanding. I did not hear from her again, nor of her, till one evening I received a letter from Ireland announcing to me her death.
Till within a few days of the date fixed for her vows, she had been to all appearance in perfect health. She followed the rule in its unmitigated rigor, never asking nor seemingly needing any dispensation. She attended choir during the seven hours' prayer, mental and vocal, every day. There were no premonitory symptoms of any kind to herald in the messenger that was at hand. Quite suddenly, one morning, at the first matins, she fainted away at her place in the choir. They carried her to the infirmary, and laid her on a bed. She recovered consciousness after a short time, but on attempting to rise fell back exhausted. The infirmarian, in great alarm, asked if she was suffering much. Mary smiled and shook her head. Presently she whispered a few words to the abbess, who had accompanied her from the choir, and never left her side for a moment. It was to ask that she might be allowed to pronounce her vows at once.