As we have said before, her charity [pg 816] was essentially catholic, universal in every sense. She was ready to pity everybody's troubles, and, with Amélie, to pity meant to help. The poor widow toiling broken-hearted for her children in the courts and alleys of the big town; the father struggling with adversity in another sphere, trying to educate his sons and marry his daughters and pay the inexorable debt of decency that society exacts from a gentleman; the poor, lone girl battling with poverty, or perhaps writhing in agonized shame at having fallen in the battle; the rich mother weeping over the wanderings of a son; the poor orphan without bread or friends; the rich orphan pursued by designing relations, or in danger of falling into the hands of a worthless husband; high and low, rich and poor alike, all came to Amélie for sympathy and counsel, and no one was ever repulsed. Even those difficulties which are the result of culpable weakness, and which meet generally with small mercy, not to say indulgence, from pious people, found Amélie full of indulgent pity and a ready will to help. An officer on one occasion was drawn inadvertently into contracting a debt of honor which he had no means of paying. In his despair he thought of Amélie, and, half maddened with shame and remorse, he came to her to ask for pity and advice. The sum in question was two thousand francs. Amélie happened to have it at the moment, and, touched by the distress of the man of the world, she gave it to him at once. There was no spirit of criticism, no censoriousness in her piety, no fastidious condemnation of things innocent in themselves, however apt to be dangerous in their abuse. She loved to see young people happy and amused, and would listen with real interest and pleasure to an account of some fête where they had enjoyed themselves after the manner of their age. This simplicity and liberty of spirit enabled her often to take advantage of opportunities for doing good that never would occur to a person whose piety turned in a narrower groove; she was wont to exclaim regretfully against good people for being so overnice in the choice of opportunities, and thus cramping their own power and means of usefulness. With regard to the choice of tools in the same way, she would often deprecate the fastidiousness of certain pious people, urging that, when there was a work to do, an aim to accomplish, an obstacle to overcome, we should take up whatever tools Providence put in our way, not quarrelling with their shape or quality, but doing the best we can with them, profiting by a knave's villany or a fool's folly to further a just purpose, or a noble scheme, or a kind action, making, as far as honesty and truth can do it, evil accomplish the work of good.
Faithfully bearing in mind that we may do no evil that good may come of it, Amélie had withal an ingenious gift of turning to good account the evil that was done by others; but she was slow to see the evil, and, when it was forced upon her, she had always more pity than censure for it. Her lamp was always lighted, and she was ever ready to help the foolish ones who go about this world of ours crying out to the wise ones: “Give me of your oil!” For it is not only when the Bridegroom comes that we need to have our lamp lighted, we want it all along the road, for others as well as for ourselves; we must even adapt it to the necessities of the road by changing the color of its light. This we can do by changing the oil. We must use the oil of faith when we want a strong, bright blaze to keep our feet [pg 817] straight amidst the ruts and snares and pools of muddy water that abound at every step; we must burn the oil of hope to frighten away despondency and cheer us when our hearts are heavy and our courage ebbing; but we must be chiefly prodigal of the rich and salutary oil of charity, for the flame it sends out is often more helpful to others than to ourselves. Sometimes, when our lamp is so low that it hardly shows the ground clear under our own feet, it is shedding—thanks to this marvellous oil of charity—a heavenly radiance on the path of those journeying behind us; its flame is luminous as a star and soft as moonlight; people on whom we turn its roseate glow rejoice in it as in sunshine: it softens them, it heals them, it takes the sting out of their worst wounds. The lamp fed with this incomparable oil is, moreover, often brightest when we ourselves are sick at heart, and when it costs us an effort to pour in the oil and set the wick in order. We do not realize it, but we can believe it by recalling the effect of kindness on our own souls in some well-remembered hour, when it came from one in great sorrow, and who we knew was setting aside her own grief to enter into ours. Let us be brave, then, to hold up our lamp arm-high to the pilgrims who are toiling foot-sore and faint up the steep and rugged path of life along with us; its flame soars on to heaven, and shines more brightly before God than the fairest and loveliest of his stars.
We mentioned already that Amélie, on her father's death, made a vow of personal poverty. She observed this vow with the utmost rigor as far as was consistent with decorum and the absence of anything approaching to a display of holiness—a thing of which she was almost morbidly afraid. Her usual dress was a black woollen gown and a shawl of the same material; her appearance in the street was that of a respectable housekeeper, but no one who saw the outward decency of her attire suspected the sordid poverty that often lay beneath it. She limited herself to a pittance for her clothes, and she would submit to the most painful inconvenience rather than exceed it. Once she gave away her strong boots and a warm winter petticoat to a poor person at the beginning of the winter, and, though the cold set in suddenly with great severity, she bore it rather than replace either of them till her allowance fell due. How her health bore the amount of labor and austerities that she underwent it is difficult to explain without using the word miraculous.
When, under the pious auspices of Monseigneur de Mazenod, the devotion of the Perpetual Adoration was established at Marseilles, Amélie at once had herself enrolled in the confraternity; unable to spare time from her multiform works of mercy during the day, she entrenched upon her nights, and used to spend hours in adoration before the Tabernacle. Fatigue and bodily suffering were no obstacle to the ardor of her soul; her spirit seemed to thrive in proportion as her body wasted. After a day of arduous labor, constantly on her feet, going and coming amongst the poor and the sick, breathing the foul air of hospital wards, and dingy cellars, and garrets, fasting as rigorously as any Carmelite, and grudging her body all but the bare necessaries of life, she was able to pass an entire night on her knees before the Blessed Sacrament, and be apparently none the worse for it. Such wonderful things are those who love God strengthened to do for him. Yet this woman was made of the same flesh and blood as ourselves; she had the same natural [pg 818] shrinkings and antipathies; her body was not made of different clay from ours, or supernaturally fashioned to defy the attacks of the devil and the repugnances of nature, to endure hunger, and pain, and fatigue without feeling them; she had the same temptations to fight against, the same corrupt inclinations to overcome, and the same weapons of defence against her enemies that we have—faith and prayer and the sacraments. What, then, is the difference between us? Only this, she was generous and brave, and we are mean and cowardly. We bargain and hang back, whereas she made no reserves, but strove to serve God with all her heart and all her strength, and he did the rest. He always does it for those who trust him and hearken unconditionally to that hard saying: “Take up thy cross and follow me!” For them he changes all bitter things into sweet, all weakness into strength; for the old Adam that they cast aside he clothes them with the new, thus rendering them invincible against their enemies, and repaying a hundred-fold, even in this life, the miserable rags that we call sacrifices; he fills the hungry with good things, and in exchange for creatures and the perishable delights which they have renounced for his sake he gives them himself and a foretaste of the bliss of Paradise.
During her solitary vigils before the altar, the thought of the ingratitude of men and their cruel neglect of our Saviour in his Eucharistic prison sank deeply into Amélie's heart, and filled it with grief and an ardent desire to make some reparation to his outraged love. We have all read the wonderful chapter on Thanksgiving in that wonderful book, All for Jesus. Most of us have felt our hearts stirred to sorrowful indignation at the sad picture it reveals of our own unkindness to God, and the tender sensitiveness of the Sacred Heart to our ingratitude, and his meek acceptance of any crumb of thanksgiving that we deign once in a way to throw to him; we have felt our tepid pulses quicken to a momentary impulse of generosity and passionate desire to call after the nine ungrateful lepers, and constrain them to return and thank him; we watch them going their way unmindful, and we cast ourselves in spirit at the feet of Jesus, gazing after them in sad surprise, and we pour out our souls in apologies—so bold does the passing touch of love make the meanest of us in consolations to him for the unkindness of his creatures. Alas! with most of us it ends there. Next time he tries us we follow the nine selfish lepers, and leave him wondering and sorrowing again over our ingratitude. But with Amélie it was different. No inspiration of divine grace ever found her deaf to its voice; her love knew no such things as barren sighs and idle mystic sentimentalities. Her whole heart was stirred by that touching and powerful appeal of Father Faber's, and she began to consider at once what she could do to respond to it. The idea occurred to her of instituting a community, to be called Sœurs Réparatrices, whose mission should be to give thanks and to console our divine Lord for the ingratitude of the world by perpetual adoration before the Tabernacle, and at the same time of getting up a regular service of thanksgiving among the faithful at large, to have short prayers appointed and recommended by the church to their constant use, for the sole and express purpose of thanking God for his countless mercies to us all, but more especially to those among us who never thank him on their own account. Both suggestions were [pg 819] warmly approved of by many pious souls to whom she mentioned them.
In order, however, to carry them out effectively, it was deemed advisable that Amélie should go to Rome and obtain the authorization and blessing of the Holy Father. She had never been to Rome, but it was the desire of her life to go there; it drew her as the magnet draws the needle; Rome, to her filial Catholic heart, was the outer gate of heaven; it held the Father of Christendom, the Vicar of Christ; it held the tombs of the martyrs, its soil was saturated with their blood, all things within its walls were stamped with the seal of Christianity, and told of the wonders that it had wrought. Amélie, glad of the necessity which compelled her to fulfil her long-cherished desire, set out for the Eternal City. She received the most affectionate welcome from the Holy Father, who had been long acquainted with her by name, and knew the apostolic manner of life she led. With regard to the community which she desired to found, and of which she was to become a member, but not superioress, His Holiness approved of it, but beyond this, of what passed between him and Amélie on the subject, no details have transpired. She said that the Holy Father encouraged her to carry out the design and gave her his blessing on it, and promised her his fatherly countenance and protection; but whether she submitted any rule to him at this period we have not been able to ascertain. As to the scheme of general thanksgiving that she proposed to inaugurate, he gave her abundant blessings on it, and indulgenced several prayers that she submitted to his inspection. Unfortunately, we have not been able to procure a copy of the little book which contained them all; this is the more to be regretted, that some of them were drawn up by Amélie herself and full of the spirit of her own tender piety; they were also preceded by a preface in which she appealed very lovingly to the children of Mary and the members of the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, and begged their zealous co-operation in the service of thanksgiving. We may mention, however, that she was in the habit, during the few remaining years of her life, of constantly recommending to her friends the use of the Gloria Patri and the ejaculation Deo Gratias! as having been particularly commended to her devotion by the Holy Father himself.
An incident occurred to Amélie during her stay in Rome which she often narrated as a proof of the extreme need we have of a service of thanksgiving. She went one morning to an audience at the house of a cardinal, and while she was waiting for her turn she got into conversation with the Superior of the Redemptorist Fathers in France. Always on the watch to gain an ally to the cause, she told him the motive of her journey to Rome, and begged that he would use his influence in his own wide sphere to forward its success amongst souls.
“Ah! madame!” exclaimed the Redemptorist, “it was a good thought to try and stir up men's hearts to a spirit of thanksgiving, for there is nothing more wanted in the world. The story of the nine lepers is going on just the same these eighteen hundred years. I have been forty years a priest, and during that time I have been asked to say Masses for every sort of intention, but only once have I been asked to say a Mass of thanksgiving!”
Yes, truly the story of the nine lepers is being enacted now as in [pg 820] the old days when Jesus exclaimed sorrowfully, “Is there no one but this stranger found to return and give thanks?”
But for all her clear-sighted sensitiveness to the sins and shortcomings of her day, Amélie was full of hope in it; nothing annoyed her more than to see good people lapse into that lugubrious way so common to them of always crying anathema on their age and despairing of it; she used to say that she mistrusted the love and the logic of such; that those who love God and their fellow-creatures for his sake never despair of them, but work for them, trusting in God's help and in the ultimate triumph of good over evil; that despair was a sign of stupidity and cowardice. And was she not right? Surely every age has in its ugliness some counterbalancing beauty, some redeeming grace of comeliness, in the tattered raiment that hangs about its ulcers and its nakedness. God never leaves himself at any time without witnesses on the earth, and it is our fault, not his, if we do not see them. There are always bright spots in humanity, and those who cannot discern them should blame their own dull vision, not their fellow-men. As poets who have the mystic eye see beauties of hue and color in the material world where common men see nothing but ruin and decay, so do the saints and the saint-like, with the keen vision of faith and hope, alone penetrate the external darkness and decay of humanity, and discover in the midst of gloom and evil much that is promising and fair; they see elemental wines boiling up in the cauldron of travail and suffering, and they know that their bitterness is salutary and their fire invigorating unto life.