Alice-Emilie Bougeret 1851-1906
Peace and most humble greetings to Our Lord who has just set free from the struggles of this life, to give her, we hope, eternal rest, our dear Sister ALICE-EMILIE SAINT JEAN DE LA CROIX, aged 56, 1 month, 8 days, including 30 years, 4 months, 12 days of religion.
Our dear Sister, from an honorable and Christian family, was born in Torigni-sur-Vire, in La Manche. She was educated with her older sister, Adèle, at the Bon-Sauveur boarding school in Saint-Lô, where she distinguished herself by her piety and her exactness in observing the rules. Adèle, on the contrary, although of a weaker temperament, stood out for her exuberance and her enthusiasm at work as well as at play, and their good Mistresses, seeing these contrasts, said pleasantly: "To find perfection in these two children, their dispositions should be balanced; take the enthusiasm of one to give it to the other, and give Adele a little of Alice's wisdom and health. » -« So what is this headache you constantly complain about? said the youngest to the eldest. Pass me that once, so I can taste it myself. »
It was on leaving boarding school, in the midst of the joys of the most united family, that our dear daughter felt called to religious life. His vocation was not a vocation of attraction; a single motive drew him to Carmel, that of conforming to the will of God. What did she not suffer to leave her father's hearth! His father, his mother, his two brothers who always remained so devoted to him; her sister, finally, whose sweet intimacy she was going to sacrifice. She remembered in these last months, not without deep emotion, the grief of her father, a few weeks before his departure, when, to express it, he found, even at family reunions, only a gloomy silence and bitter tears. Our good Sister Saint John of the Cross, so rarely expansive, took to confiding to us again how this sorry father had had one of his brothers send her, very shortly before his death, a bouquet of thoughts with this simple Word: “Tell Alice to always think of her father.” She thought of it, in fact, and on the efficacy of this piously filial remembrance depended, we do not doubt, the Christian death and the eternal salvation of this beloved father.
We were telling you, my Reverend Mother, that our dear Sister rarely showed herself to be expansive. It is true that she knew very little of all that, in community life, somehow recalls family life and makes the heart, which has left everything for God, feel the holy joy of finding brothers and living together in union. She suffered from this inability to taste the promised hundredfold, but had the rare common sense to humbly take it on herself, always recognizing and admiring in her Sisters, the qualities and talents of which she believed herself to be lacking. However, she was endowed with a very loving heart, and more than once gave us touching proof of it: one day, among other things, when one of our young Sisters had just learned of the death of her mother, Sister Saint Jean de la Croix, usually so reserved, kissed her and said to her tenderly: “O my little sister, how much I share in your sorrow! “You see, your whole family, I love them, as if they were mine.”
She also had, for our beloved Mothers and Sisters who preceded us in the heavenly homeland, feelings that one would not have suspected. Witness this prayer, found in one of her Office books: “My little sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, I greet you through the Heart of Jesus, and I offer you this same Heart of your divine Spouse. I thank him for all the graces he has showered on you. I beg you to associate me on earth with the love you have for him in Heaven. Pray to the seraphim who must have pierced your heart with the arrow of divine love, to please do in me what he did in you... Since we are the children of the Saints, have for me, I beg you, the tenderness of a Mother; assist me until the evening of my life and bless me. This writing is humbly signed: a tiny nothing.
But what seemed most edifying in our dear daughter was the constant practice of perfect regularity. She was the wise little boarder of the past who had become a veritable hermit in Carmel. We do not remember having seen her fail in silence, in the most scrupulous punctuality, in going, at the first stroke of the bell, to our holy exercises. She had acquired, by this unfailing accuracy, such a reputation for regularity, that a novice having heard her say a useless word, remained so astonished, that she would not have been more so, she tells us, of the collapse of the monastery.
In such complete solitude, this faithful soul knew little of the divine consolations. Although she exerted herself all day long, by means of blind obedience, to overcome her nature, virtue assumed for her only austere forms. If Jesus spoke to his heart, it was usually through the voice of a wise director or through the intermediary of the holy authors whose works all passed through his hands.
She had a real confidence and devotion to indulgences, and devoted her leisure to studying its conditions. When one wanted precise information on this subject, it was not necessary to look for it in a collection, Sister Saint John of the Cross became the living book that one would consult and which was never wrong.
Until the month of April of this year, our very dear daughter had been able to rigorously follow all our holy observances. At this time, she complained of pains in the stomach and pains in the bowels, which the alteration of her features made us consider very serious, from the beginning. The doctor confirmed our fears, and on July 19, after having struggled as long as possible, it may be said, to attend the community exercises and fulfill the duties of her job, she went down to the infirmary, where she was waiting for her. a slow and painful agony. We find no other expression, my Reverend Mother, to express the state of weakness and impotence to which the cruel illness from which she was stricken soon reduced her.
More often than not, during these last weeks, frequent vomiting again deprived her of Holy Communion, and this deprivation was very noticeable to her: “Ah! my Mother, she told us, I who had asked God so much not to lose a single Communion until my death! »
What she did not lose, at least, was resignation, patience, all the precious fruits of the fervent Communions she had made in good health. We saw her, day by day, more humble and more abandoned to God. If she was distressed, it was only to cause fatigue to our so devoted and so charitable Nursing Sister. "She takes care of me like a princess," she repeated. Is it really Sister Saint John of the Cross who allows herself to be surrounded in this way?... Mother, do you recognize Sister Saint John of the Cross whom no one, until now, could grasp and touch?... That makes me think of the words of Our Lord to Saint Peter: In your youth you went where you wanted; but when you are old, another will gird him and lead you where you would not like to go. »
This constraint, so keenly felt by our beloved daughter, was not to last long. From August 23, she prepared herself holy, by receiving the last Sacraments, to free herself from her earthly ties. “How happy I am! she then tells us, there is nothing more between the good Lord and me! O my Mother, always tell me your will When it seems difficult for me to accomplish it, I will have the grace to strengthen myself. I know your will is the Lord's will, and I want to die in the Lord's will. »
This last thought never left her. Every day she did not express it in the most edifying terms.
It was in these holy dispositions, my Reverend Mother, that our dear Sister Saint John of the Cross fell peacefully asleep in the Lord on Monday, September 3, at six o'clock in the morning. A few moments before breathing her last, she piously kissed her crucifix, and holding out her hand to us, she had no rest until we pressed her firmly in ours. His gaze then seemed to say to us: My Mother, may your will, which is that of the Lord, now be to lead me to Heaven.
The memory of the virtues of our beloved daughter gives us the confidence, in fact, that this will of the Lord, only sought during her life, was completely benevolent for her at the time of her death. Nevertheless, as the judgments of God are unknown to us, we beg you, my Reverend Mother, to have her return the suffrages of our Holy Order as soon as possible. By grace, a Communion of your fervent Community; the indulgence of the Way of the Cross and the six Paters, an invocation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to Saint Gertrude, to whom she had a particular devotion.
She will be very grateful to you, as well as to us, who have the grace to tell us, in Our Lord, my Reverend and most honored Mother, Your most humble, sister and servant,
Sister AGNES OF JESUS,
thank you
From our Monastery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Conception of the Carmelites of Lisieux on September 8, 1906
