She did not, however, propose the step either to her director or to the superior of the convent, with whom she soon formed a holy friendship; but one day, visiting the convent to felicitate Mother Mary of St. Bernard on her re-election as superior, it came into her mind that her friend would offer her admission into the community, and she had no sooner congratulated her than the superior exclaimed: “I know well of what you are thinking: you believe that I am going to offer you a place in our community. I do indeed, and it depends on yourself to become one of our number.” Her director, however, showed no favor to the project until the divine call became so distinct and irresistible that he could not oppose it.
The Archbishop of Tours authorized the convent to receive her without a dowry; her sister assumed the education and future care of her son, and, giving him her last instructions, she parted with him and her aged father. Then, with the blessing of the archbishop, she entered the convent, expecting to commence her novitiate as a lay sister, but to her confusion was placed among the choir nuns.
She had reached the haven for which she had so long prepared herself by prayer and mortification; but a storm soon arose. Her son, excited by some who disapproved of her course, made his way into the convent, and by cries and complaints and boyish threats so interfered with the order of the community that it seemed impossible to retain the novice. A Jesuit Father, however, becoming acquainted with her great virtues and the difficulty of her position, took charge of young Martin’s education and placed him in a college of his order.
Thus freed from the last care, Mme. Martin took the white veil of a novice, and assumed in religion the name of Mother Mary of the Incarnation. In the sacred abode of piety new lights seemed to be given her. A knowledge of Latin was imparted to her without study, and an infused understanding of the Scriptures. Her fellow-novices listened to her eloquent and solid expositions with breathless wonder. But in a moment darkness overspread her soul, and she was assailed by the most horrible temptations. All her spiritual life seemed an error and an illusion; a self-deceit and a deceit in her director. Unfortunately her wise and experienced spiritual guide was removed about this critical time, and was replaced by one who regarded her as an ill-directed visionary. Her devotions in behalf of the obsessed sisters of Laudun made her the object of terrible visitations. Her son, after a brilliant opening at college, was led astray, and tidings came that he was threatened with expulsion. Everything seemed to thwart the vocation of the servant of God; but for two years amid all these trials she persevered in her novitiate, and when her superior directed her to prepare for her profession she obeyed, and pronounced her vows on the 25th of January, 1633, rewarded for a brief period with the highest spiritual consolation, only to be followed by a fresh season of trial.
At last a new and experienced director enlightened and relieved her soul; and this strong woman, taught in the bitter school of experience, became mistress of novices. Soon after in a prophetic vision she saw the Blessed Virgin and our Lord overlooking some vast land sunk in the depths of heathen darkness. Without knowing yet to what part of the world this vision seemed to call her, she became filled with a desire to aid by her prayers and other good works the missionaries laboring in pagan lands. But this did not divert her from her duties as mistress of novices. Her instructions to the young candidates were full of unction, and based especially on the words of Holy Writ. She explained fully and clearly to them the Psalms of David, which form so large a part of their office, and the Canticle of Canticles, in which the great masters of spiritual life have seen such mysteries of the union between the elect souls of predilection and our Lord. She also composed for their use a catechism, which the judicious Father Charlevoix, the historian of New France, regarded as perhaps the best then extant in French. “We may at least aver,” he adds, “that there is none in which the truths are explained with greater order, precision, and conciseness. The selection and application of the passages of Scripture show that Mother Mary of the Incarnation was one of those who in her age knew the Holy Scriptures most thoroughly. All breathes a wonderful simplicity which avoids that dangerous curiosity, the ordinary cause of pride, levity of mind, and insensibility of heart.”[[130]] The novices formed by her showed how solidly she had grounded them in spiritual life, and how fully her great experiences and trials had enabled her to guide them through all the dangers of that period where unwise and rash directors make shipwreck of so many vocations or hurry the unstable and doubtful into professions for which they have no grace of state. The novices of Mother Mary of the Incarnation can be traced among the superiors and important officers of many of the greatest Ursuline convents of France.
The interior sense of a vocation to the foreign missions grew steadily within her till her very body wasted under the longing and yearning to know the will of God. Her prayer was incessant. At last a divine light suffused her soul, and at the same time these words were spoken to her: “Ask me through the Heart of Jesus, my most amiable Son; it is through it that I shall grant thy desire.” From that moment, she declares, she felt so intimately united to the Heart of Jesus that she spoke and breathed only through it.
Among the points she often inculcated on the novices was a constant devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of which she was one of the early propagators, although God did not make her the instrument of its general diffusion. She would say to her novices: “The Eternal Father has made known to a person that he is ever disposed to grant what is asked of him through the Heart of his Son.”
One day she explained to her director, the Jesuit Father Dinet, her interest in the foreign missions and her mysterious dream. He remarked that it seemed very possible, and that Canada was probably the country designated in the vision. She had never heard of the colony begun there by France some twenty-five years before, and knew absolutely nothing about it; but some days afterwards, while in choir, she had an ecstasy and the vision was repeated, but she heard distinctly: “It is Canada that I show thee; and thou must go thither to found a house in honor of Jesus and Mary.” God’s designs were becoming clearer; and when a few days later she received from the Jesuit Father Poncet—now known for his labors and sufferings in Canada and New York, but then a perfect stranger to her—one of those Jesuit Relations which our bibliophiles so eagerly seek, and a pilgrim’s staff from Loretto, she felt that the land for her future labors and prayers was beyond the Atlantic. Father Poncet sent with the pilgrim’s staff these words: “I send you this staff to invite you to go and serve God in New France.”
In her heart she responded fully; but how was she, a cloistered nun, to begin a convent in a distant colony of a few log huts, a colony with no female population, where everything was poor, scanty, struggling, and laborious? How was she to become the pioneer nun among the backwoodsmen who had begun to clear the Canadian forest? Nothing could seem to most minds more preposterous in a nun in a quiet convent in a quiet provincial town in France. Yet Providence was guiding her surely to her work. A holy young widow, Mme. de la Peltrie, who had reluctantly entered the marriage state when her heart was in the cloister, had responded to a call in a Jesuit Relation of Canada, where Father Le Jeune exclaimed: “Alas! cannot some good and virtuous lady be found willing to come to this land to gather up the blood of Jesus Christ by instructing the little Indian girls?” She resolved to devote herself, and, when stricken down by illness and given up by physicians, she made a vow to St. Joseph, promising to consecrate under his patronage her fortune and her life to the service of the Indian girls. A recovery from the very brink of the grave, that seemed a miracle, confirmed her. Baffling all the objections of her family, she sought some community of religious to begin the work in which she desired to take an active part. The Jesuit missionaries from the shores of Lake Huron were writing to Mother Mary of the Incarnation; the Jesuits in France had resolved to attempt an Ursuline convent in New France. Mme. de la Peltrie and Father Poncet wrote to Mother Mary of the Incarnation to undertake the great work. The divine call so mysteriously given was at last accomplished. Her letter to the holy widow shows the fulness of her heart.
“Ah! my dear lady,” she writes, “beloved spouse of my divine Master, in finding you I have found her whom I love in truth, since there is no greater or truer love than to give one’s self and all one has for the person beloved. And since it has pleased His mercy to give me the same sentiments, it seems that my heart is in yours, and that both together are but one in that of Jesus, amid those vast and infinite spaces where we embrace the little Indian girls, teaching them how to love Him who is infinitely amiable. Do you really mean, madame, to do me and those of my companions whom God well chose this favor, to take us with you and connect us with your noble design? For five years now have I been awaiting the opportunity to obey the urgent summons which the Holy Ghost has made me; and, not to speak untruly, I believe that you are the one whom his divine Majesty wishes to employ to enable me to enjoy this blessing.”