Marie Estelle Dupont 1847-1917
always be ready
Our dear Sister St. Jean-Baptiste found herself in Heaven without suspecting it, because she did not see herself dying! writes Marie of the Sacred Heart to Léonie (October 29 1917). In fact, Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste died after a short illness, which made Mother Agnès think: he will call us back... Our poor dear sister, from the moment she worried us, lost consciousness and did not recover for a single moment until her death, I even thought she was going to die without sacraments. A little sister of the white veil who looked after her, once dead, asked our little Thérèse inwardly if she had come to meet Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste and helped her to cross the great passage. At the same time, she smelled a scent of roses that another sister smelled too. That was a nice answer, wasn't it? (Letter from Mother Agnès de-Jésus to Léonie, October 29, 1917).
No doubt the community needed this perfume to overcome the sudden death of the one who, for Thérèse, had been “ordinarily the image of the severity of God” (LT 230).
“I will not write a circular to our dear sister, I have several reasons which prevent me from doing so, but the good Lord has written his virtues in his heart, that is the main thing. concludes Mother Agnès.
Three thorns for a rose
While a lovely rosebud was announced from afar and blooming in Alençon on January 2, 1873, Providence, infallible in its designs, endowed the Carmel of Lisieux with three postulants who would one day be the companions of this rose. . Thérèse will learn from these elders like from the others. These three Carmelites were Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste, who entered on October 7, 1871, Sister Aimée-de-Jésus, who entered on October 11, and Sister Thérèse of Jesus, who entered on May 6, 1873.
The first of the three, Marie-Estelle Dupont, was a refugee from the war of 1870. Born on October 10, 1847, in Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne), she was the daughter of François-Denis Dupont, basket maker, and Louise- Antoinette Dardenne. The household had two other daughters. Marie-Estelle served for a time the Hamel de la Barquerie family, one of whose daughters was a nun at the Hospice de Lisieux. During the Prussian invasion, the Barquerie family took refuge in Lisieux, taking with them the three Dupont sisters. Estelle enters into contact with the Benedictines. On the desire she expressed to become a Carmelite, the Prioress of the abbey introduced her to M. Delatroëtte, the new superior of the Carmel. Weakened by the foundations of Saigon (1861), Coutances (1866), Caen (1868), the monastery badly needed to be bailed out. Mademoiselle Dupont is admitted all the more easily because appearances plead in her favour. She thus entered on October 7, 1871 and received the name of Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste to honor the Superior (Jean-Baptiste Delatroëtte). She received the habit on March 19, 1872 at the same time as Sister Aimée-de-Jésus. In the meantime, Mother Geneviève-de-Sainte-Thérèse was re-elected prioress on October 27, 1871.
The two “twins”, Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Aimée pronounced their vows on May 8, 1873 and received the black veil on the following July 16. Mr. Delatroëtte presides over the ceremony and gives the sermon. The foresight of the latter, who took office on September 14, 1870, was to be found wanting in 1887-1888, concerning a postulant named Thérèse Martin. Should we say, by way of excuse: "How much more in 1871?" “Everything makes a number,” said the man, seeing his loot. The superiors will one day regret certain hasty post-war admissions (1870).
“Too big a soul”
“If you don't understand me, it's because you have too great a soul,” Thérèse was to write one day to her sister Marie, only to correct herself immediately (LT 197). Does the sentence apply to Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste? Here is the portrait drawn by Sister Marie-des-Anges in 1893: “46 years old. First laundry. Saint anchorite who would live well like her patron saint only on grasshoppers and wild honey - Great mystic, always hovering on the heights... Saint emulator of Mgr de Bérulle!... Passionate lover of the Incarnate Word. Soul so absorbed in the Divinity and forgetful of the things of the earth that one day, at the time of serving the soup, she could not remember where she had put it, and that one discovered after much research devoutly posed in a closet." (CG, 1173 s.)
On September 24, 1890, she had addressed to Thérèse, who received the black veil, this dedication on the back of a picture “To raise the soul to holiness, God raises it on the cross, and to lead it to life he leads it to death. Your very affectionate little Sister in Jesus.”
One day, during recess, the mystical seamstress is mending wimples that are worn out and badly shaped. She confides to Thérèse, seated next to her, that she reserves them for “her intimate friends”, the lay sisters, as additional hats for heavy work. "Oh! So, beg Therese, consider me, I beg you, as one of your intimate friends! (PA, 485). Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste acceded to his request so well that, even for the mortuary toilet, on September 30, 1897, she took out a worn hat for him. Mother Agnès was heartbroken: “I wanted to cry, she would say, but my little Thérèse's smile stopped me. She seemed to be saying in her repose: "What does it matter to me to have that ugly hat, I who am so well dressed up there!" (Green Notebooks, 125).
We know about the incident of May 28, 1897. Thérèse was already very ill. Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste comes to ask for her immediate assistance for a painting job, in view of the feast of Mother Marie-de-Gonzague. Therese apologizes; Mother Agnès, present, raises objections; Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste insisted, Thérèse ended up growing impatient, the sister withdrew. In the evening, the two sisters meet. "Instead of passing coldly" next to Thérèse, Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste kisses her: "Poor little sister, you made me feel sorry for you, I don't want to tire you, I was wrong, etc., etc ". In short, “sweet and tender words”. "I couldn't believe it," writes Thérèse! Image of God's justice, Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste, this time, did not condemn... Therese is overwhelmed: that evening, "the vase of Divine mercy overflowed for me."
"If I were mistress of novices..."
Estelle Dupont is tall, very personable, we told her that once. Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste also knew how to embroider admirably (ornaments are proof of this even today in the sacristy of the Carmel) and to work the hair in floral motifs.
Father Silverio, General of the Carmelites a few decades ago, warned the most “observant” religious who took advantage of their fasts or their early rising to denigrate colleagues less strong in asceticism. Did the dear Sister belong to this brotherhood... The novices especially exercised her vigilance: “If I were mistress of the novices, I would not suffer a single black hair on the fleece of my lambs. She could not understand that this task fell to Thérèse, so young, and made her feel her opposition without care. One day among others, during recreation, she exhales her bitterness, telling Thérèse that she would need to direct herself more than to direct others. His passionate air contrasts with the gentleness of Thérèse, who replies with humility: “Ah! my sister, you are quite right, I am even more imperfect than you believe! (CRM.
A laundry woman, she stands on her doorstep to watch the comings and goings of the novices going to Sister Thérèse, at the back of the same dormitory: "My heart was beating hard as I passed...", confesses Sister Geneviève. Either she arrives on tiptoe as far as Thérèse's cell, finds an urgent commission, and goes to report to Mother Marie-de-Gonzague, titular mistress (it was under the priorate of Mother Agnès), what she saw. In March 1896, the two prioresses had the good taste to replace Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste with Sister Marie-de-Saint-Joseph, in the linen room, with Thérèse as second in charge. Thus the entire Saint-Élie dormitory would become, in fact, the novitiate wing that year.
Let's wait! The truth will come out
It is useless to specify that the Sister did not appreciate, at the beginning, that the Cause of Beatification of Thérèse was opened. She shared in everything the opinion of her companion, Aimée-de-Jésus: “It's at the instigation of her sisters that we owe this, don't doubt it... Let's wait! the truth will certainly come to light.” Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste will not testify at the Trial.
But Thérèse does not refuse her favors for all that. After the exhumation of September 6, 1910, “the earth collected under the first coffin, in the old tomb, several times spread sweet smells of iris root. These emanations were perceived in particular by Sister Geneviève, Sister Aimée-de-Jésus, Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste and by me (Mother Agnès), even though we were not thinking at all of the presence of this earth”. (PA, 208.)
Willy-nilly, the old seamstress is swept away in the general movement. She also began to make relics: bags of wool from the pillow of the Servant of God. One evening, at the beginning of the "silence" (from 20 to 21 p.m.), his Pigeon lamp will go out, for lack of gasoline. She fervently prays to Sister Thérèse: “Oh! I beg you, revive our dying lamp! "Immediately," she confided then, "I saw her come to life with incredible speed then shed such a vivid light that it looked like there was a gaslight in our cell, which lasted two or three seconds, and our lamp resumed its usual glow which lasted until the hour of Matins. (Foundation IV, 144.)
At the beginning of October 1917 — she reached 70 — Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste followed, like the whole Community, the retirement of Father Pichon, a 75-year-old Father Pichon, quite aged. "She seemed less ill and less woozy than many of us, she would not have been chosen to die first" (Sister Geneviève in Léonie, 29th October, 1917). Taken from a painful point on the right side, one obliges it to go down to the infirmary on October 26; she refuses the doctor, falls into a coma the following night and dies on the 27th, around 11 am, without the slightest sign of consciousness. But how can one doubt that Thérèse had not, at the last moment, revived the lamp of this wise virgin? The burial was celebrated on October 29. The next day, Tuesday, October 30, Archbishop Lemonnier solemnly closed, in the cathedral of Bayeux, the Apostolic Process on "the heroic sanctity of a soul which is ours and which all admire". The Church had spoken the full truth and Sister Saint-Jean-Baptiste rejoiced in it on the great Day of Eternity.
Sr Cecile ocd
