Leopoldine-Marie-Cécile Feron 1852-1930
Peace and most humble greetings to Our Lord who, in the time consecrated to his holy childhood, the day after his Epiphany, withdrew from this world to show mercifully to her soul, we have her sweet confidence, our very dear Sister Marie-Leopoldine, LOVED BY JESUS FROM THE HEART OF MARY. She was 79 years, minus 17 days, and had spent 58 years, three months and 25 days in the holy religion of Carmel.
Our dear Sister was born in Anneville-en-Saire, in La Manche, of very Christian parents, wealthy farmers. She was the second in a family of 7 children. From an early age, Léopoldine thought of becoming a nun and even a Carmelite, because her mother had a relative in the English Carmel of Valognes, which had been dispersed since the war of 1870. Having heard the Carmelite vocation blamed for this relative, she had her attention awakened in that direction, and thought: “Well! Me, despite everything they say, I will imitate my cousin one day”.
She then began to read the Lives of the Saints, and seeing the tortures inflicted on the martyrs, she said to herself: "I am going to try my hand at martyrdom, to see if I would have the strength to cry out to the end: I am a Christian. ! And there she is, arming herself with a penknife and completely tearing off the nail of one toe!
Around the age of 11, she suffered a terrible crisis of revolt against maternal authority. “I was as if possessed by the demon of disobedience, she confided to us. And I still hear my poor mother telling me: "If you continue, you will be the dishonor of the family". To this, I replied abruptly: "Have no fear of my future, I will not dishonor you, for I will be a nun." From that day on, I took so much on myself that I relaxed, and my mother forgot my ugly past.
Our teenager entered, three years later, the Boarding School Notre-Dame de Saint-Pierre-Eglise. She would certainly have been gifted to succeed in study, with her taste for digging, analyzing, getting to the bottom of things; but her very fixed intention of being, later, a Converse Sister in a Carmel, and the fear of imposing a useless expense on her parents, prevented her from staying the necessary time at the boarding school: "I did not want to stay in class, she tells us, that there is just enough time to learn what it is essential to know in order to be self-sufficient in the Community; how I regretted it afterwards! »
The director of the young girl had been the chaplain of the Carmel of Saigon, from the foundation of this monastery by that of Lisieux. Returning to France, to restore his health, he offered his penitent, as soon as she had reached her twentieth year, to our Venerable Foundress, the Reverend Mother Geneviève of Saint Thérèse. “Was I lucky, exclaimed our good Sister, that the Carmel of Lisieux was then exhausted by the foundations of Saigon and Caen! Without that, I would never have been received there, especially as a Choir Sister, because my director did not want to propose me as a Sister of the White Veil, and I had to make the sacrifice of my attractions. His brothers, however. who had learned of her resolution to be a Carmelite, often teased her about the penances practiced in an austere order, telling her that she could not endure them. To which she replied proudly: "If I can't stay where I want to go, I'll come back with you, and rest assured that I'll never try twice."
“Soon after this declaration, my pride was well put down,” said our dear Sister. Indeed, her director, who had the desire to become a Carthusian, advised her to abandon her project of Carmel to go to the Chartreuse of X, where she spent three weeks, not ceasing to cry day and night. It was then that, despite the protests made to her brothers, she left this convent to enter Carmel.
It was on October 11, 1871, that Reverend Mother Geneviève de Sainte-Thérèse opened the doors of our Monastery to the young postulant, in her twenty-first year. She gave him the Holy Habit in ordinary times and received his vows on May 8, 1873.
Endowed with a most robust temperament, our fervent Sister followed the whole rule with great generosity. However, the fast was extremely painful to him. How many times did the mornings seem endless to her, so hungry was she! But she was hard on herself, and happy to do penance for sinners.
Our dear Sister Aimée of Jesus had a very complex and difficult nature to penetrate. .She hid real qualities of heart and deep piety, under a harshness of form that disconcerted at first sight. And besides, it must be admitted, it lacked scope, got lost in minutiae and complicated everything as it pleased.
No Superior, nor Director, we believe, managed to understand this soul thoroughly, despite long interviews, and the folios that she passed on to them when necessary, in the first years of her religious life. One of them, who nevertheless esteemed her real virtues, said: “That good Sister! the more she speaks, the more she explains herself, and the less we understand her. »
The obligation of the breviary frightened him at first and for a long time. “I couldn't resign myself, she confided to us recently, to recite such long prayers in Latin, without grasping their meaning. Finally, after 10 years, the good Lord took pity on me and, after a retreat given by a Jesuit Father, I saw the beauty of liturgical prayers, and I put all my effort into nourishing my mind with them, reading and rereading the translation of the Divine Office in French, so that it didn't take me long to understand everything. Hymns especially charmed me; the antiphons, responsories, verses, all imprinted themselves on my memory, which is good and I found myself relieved, on this very important point, for the rest of my life.
"The good Lord is admirable in his Saints, she added, I have often noticed this when reading their legends of the breviary..." Of these legends, she knew, in fact, the smallest details. One of them had inspired him with this naive prayer, traced in pencil on the back of an envelope, and which we have just found at the head of a Latin-French psalter for his use:
“Saint Antonin, you who have received the gift to learn all the sciences without the help of any master, be my protector in my study of the psalter and the breviary; develop, I pray you, my little intelligence and fill my memory with the holy thoughts which I find in one and the other of these sublime books, so that my soul may glorify the Lord night and day, in this holy occupation which makes me happy here. It is in this limpid source that I drown all my sorrows. »
Remarkable thing: our humble Sister, by dint of persevering research and study, succeeded not only in understanding the Office, but in mastering its rubrics so perfectly that the Sub-Prioresses had recourse to her advice in difficult cases, and could follow them without fear of making a mistake.
This point of reciting the breviary was not the only laborious one for her, my Reverend Mother. There was still his inaptitude for needlework. No doubt she made herself useful in the manufacture of altar breads, incense, and other obediences of this kind; but she found opportunities at every moment to regret her refusal to learn, and to have wanted to know only the work of the house and the fields.
“Through what humiliations I have passed! repeated our poor Sister, in her old age. When I saw, the first year, my companions of the novitiate, who were so skilful embroiderers, offering such beautiful things to Mother Geneviève for her birthday, and when my present, to me, consisted of a nasty tunic, and still very badly sewn, what a shame ! »
After her profession, she was given as assistant to the first nurse, Sister Adelaide de la Providence, who was at the same time in charge of the Office of the Relics. She thus learned to care for the sick and, in her spare time, to work with ribet, ornamentation then very popular for reliquaries.
In 1881, on the death of Sister Adelaide, to whom she owed so much gratitude and whom she rightly regarded as a saint, she continued to fulfill these two functions, to the satisfaction of her Mother Prioresses.
It was in the arms of our devoted Sister that Venerable Mother Geneviève of Sainte-Thérèse died. She had become blind and constantly called for her charitable nurse as soon as she could no longer hear her. During her painful agony a few minutes before expiring, she called him again, in such a gentle tone, and said to him: "My Sister Aimée of Jesus, how one must suffer to die! »
This dear Sister remained the first nurse until 1896, when the job of the lathe was entrusted to her, in the place of Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who was stopped by illness. Three years later, she was called back to the infirmary, to remain there until 1908. From then until the end of her life, she devoted herself as third party to the Custodian, occasionally rendering her service for carpentry and other work. But she mainly exercised her activity in lingerie. There, as elsewhere, our good Sister Aimée of Jesus brought her great and generous good will, but also all her originality. Unable to succeed at sewing, she took on most of the laundry work, such as hanging and caring for the linen, especially the novices' hats and veils which she wore to the Community, so well done, so well stretched to be folded definitively, that the work was three-quarters done. She took great pains to combine a thousand ways of "getting out of trouble advantageously," as she said, and her marvelous discoveries she would have liked to have her aides adopt. There were certainly some excellent ones, but no one could reasonably lend themselves to such complications.
Did she see a rust stain on the linen, she had to look for the cause, and we saw her watching all the circles of the tub, the smallest nails in the laundry room, the trestles and the attics, where she spent days whole, in any weather, to paint them or wrap them entirely.
“Poor Sister Aimee of Jesus! we said to her one day when she was particularly tired, you go to too much trouble, never a seamstress, after you, will do what you do. - It's too bad,. my Mother, she sighed, (with a good air that we were familiar with, but in a big voice that would have liked to be sullen) and above all that we don't have more attics. We are far too cramped; a large attic would have to be built; so that would simplify everything”.
This story of granaries and laundry was kindly recalled to our valiant Sister at the time of her jubilee, in the couplets that we sang to her then. She laughed heartily, but was never convinced that it was not of capital importance to transmit from age to age, to posterity, her many discoveries for hanging and drying laundry; especially to have a new attic very spacious and fitted out to his liking.
Some time before the Process of Beatification of our Saint, this dear Sister came to tell us: “My Mother, I have compassion for the Sisters who have to prepare their Depositions. Will you allow me to exempt them from coming to help me with the laundry? This will be my way of taking part in the work of the Trial”.
It was meritorious, because the glorification of Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus had first appeared to her, like a mystery. “That we take care of Mother Geneviève, of Sister Adélaïde, I would understand that, she had said, but, of my Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus! Why not leave it hidden in Heaven among the Innocents? What did she do to claim anything else? We even heard him, one day, say to his companion by profession, who shared his views: "It is at the instigation of his sisters that we owe this, do not doubt it... Let's wait!" the truth will certainly come to light. »
But, in this expectation, her suffering was great, increased, it must be admitted, by certain harmful influences which acted on our poor Sister to torture her more, not only on the occasion of the subject which occupies us, but to other motives too... And she shed abundant tears, even in the Community, where they flowed bitter and silent....
“I would gladly tell, of this. time of my life - confided to us, a few months ago, our poor dear Sister - - - which would be to my confusion; but that is impossible for me, because I would have to betray certain confidences, and that would be a serious breach of charity. »
Sister Aimée of Jesus was also called as a witness, to her great surprise and pride, at the Beatification Process, as "c"ontestis", that is, a witness added to the witnesses ex officio designated by the Postulator; the Promoter of the Faith having desired to hear him, because he had known his hostility of old. But, as the foregoing leads you to suppose, my Reverend Mother, when the truth, desired with a sincere heart, shone in the upright soul of our dear daughter, when she had understood, even before the commencement of the Trials, the plans of God, she was one of the most enthusiastic, the most zealous, to second them by prayer and sacrifice.
She had already assisted them, unbeknownst to her, even in the time of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Doesn't this one recount in the Story of her soul, the sign that she had asked God to know if her father had gone straight to Heaven?i give this sign...
The opposition she had shown to the entry of Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face was indeed irreducible, but the causes were not very bad. If she feared the influence of four sisters united, she feared, above all, the talents of Sister Geneviève: dresses, lingerie, etc., nothing more. "It was still artistic taste and a waste of time to put flowers in the courtyard, "instead of sowing potatoes there," she sighed, looking at the rosebushes surrounding the Calvary. .
However, our Saint, so prudent and so wise, who nevertheless was not unaware of many things, less than favorable in her regard too... nevertheless had sympathy for Sister Aimee of Jesus.
“I agree that the bark is rough, she told us, but I assure you that the fruit is excellent. The good Lord does not judge like us according to appearances. »
And, pointing out to us how much this dear Sister was devoted, courageous and forgetful of herself, she added: “ Conclusion name suits her very well, yes, she really is LOVED of Jesus. Besides, she is in good faith, she acts according to her lights. In her place, with the only information at her disposal, to assess the cases that arise, we would perhaps do like her. And then, those who contradict us are precious to us, because they give us opportunities to exercise our patience, our trust in God, our fraternal charity. It is the Philistine people that the Lord, in the past, carefully allowed to dwell not far from the tents of Israel, so as not to allow his people to fall asleep in vain rest”.
In the last days of September 1897, when the weakness of our dear Saint prevented her from moving, it became necessary to place her for a few moments on a temporary bed, to redo her sickbed. Seeing the embarrassment of the nurses who were afraid of hurting her, she said, "I believe that my Beloved Sister of Jesus would easily take me in her arms; she is tall and strong, and very gentle around the sick. »
So we called our good Sister, who lifted the holy little patient like a light burden, without giving her the slightest shock. At that moment, his arms around her neck, this angel thanked her with such a smile of affectionate gratitude that she never forgot that ideal smile. It even became like compensation for her regrets at having been the only one not to hear the bell of the infirmary, which summoned the Sisters, at the supreme moment of the most beautiful death that had ever been seen in the Carmel of Lisieux.
The happiness of our dear daughter, during the last 20 years of her life, was to hear about “my Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus. It was thus that she always affected to want to name her, in the beginnings of her reputation for holiness. But little by little it came to that, like protestations of old to his brothers; and its very free evolution only seemed all the more charming.
She had therefore been saying for several years: "Are there so many pilgrimages to our Saint little Thérèse ? What are the new proofs of his power over the Heart of the good God?
“I too would like to work for our incomparable Holy. I thought we could do something with his bench. If I tried to take just a few straws, pieces of which I would glue onto the colored picture of our little Thérèse dying?... If I at least opened his mail? »
Both permissions were gladly granted. She spent more than an hour each day unsealing the letters, with care and discretion. Twice during the day, at a fixed time, she humbly knocked on our door and, if the mail wasn't there, or if we hadn't had time to check the addresses and do a first sorting, she said, withdrawing completely behind our office: "Will you allow me to stay here, Mother, or do you want me to go and sit on the stairs in the meantime?" »
As for the souvenir images that came out of his poor hands deformed by the drop, their finished stamp was remarkable. She would not have suffered the slightest stain of glue, the slightest irregularity in the point which attached the wisp of straw, chosen and cut from among the most golden.
Since the death of our dear Sister, we have found a small box where she had written in large letters: “Very beautiful images intended for my Mothers and Sisters. This box contains, in fact, two dozen images which are a perfection of work and the last that she has made.
However, we had to recognize, there as elsewhere, this trademark to which our perfect, but original worker had accustomed us. One summer day in 1928, during recreation, as our Sisters congratulated her on working so well despite her bad eyes, she gave them, half-serious, half-laughing, this unexpected answer: "It would be quite impossible if I hadn't found, again, a practical way to get out of trouble. Well, at daybreak, when the weather is clear, I sit at our window, and I thread about sixty needles into my ball of silk, in a ray of the rising sun. » ( ! )
The fine health of our beloved Sister deteriorated three years ago. Towards the end of February 1927 she began to suffer from anthrax, and several surgeries had to be performed. The poor patient let herself go, like a lamb, without a complaint. “How courageous is this Sister! exclaimed the Doctor as he withdrew. And he said to several people in town: “You only see that in Carmel, I am deeply edified. »
After one of these painful interventions, we asked to. Sister Aimée of Jesus, for what intention she had offered her sufferings. "My Mother," she answered us, without hesitation, so that the resources necessary for the construction of the Basilica will never be lacking. »
If we were moved to tears, my Reverend Mother, on hearing these words, what then must have been the feelings of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, faced with such a simply heroic and disinterested proclamation! The following fact clearly proves that she did not allow herself to be outdone in generosity.
One morning, the dear patient received us mysteriously, but with joy in her eyes. She had something to tell us, and first of all we had to close the door of the infirmary firmly, then we should come close to her bed and listen to her in silence.
“I had a sweet vision last night, she tells us verbatim. And it wasn't a dream... You know me, Mother, I can't take a dream for a vision. Here then is what it is: Yesterday evening, not being able to sleep, because I suffered a great deal in my wound, I prayed to our holy little Therese to get me a little sleep. : I had never asked him that. Immediately, I fell asleep, and this morning, at. the hour when I usually have to take a remedy, I was awakened by a beautiful and strong voice, then I saw a Carmelite woman the size of our Saint but. she was like enveloped in a cloud, so that I could not distinguish her features. She said : " Well ! You are completely rested. » chickens she disappeared, leaving me in great inner consolation”.
Another time, she said to us spontaneously: “My Mother, during this illness, I am not inactive, I constantly put wheat into the granaries of the Heavenly Father, and it is our little Saint who ties the boots. She helps me ". - What do you mean by this wheat? we asked him. "- But you guess it well, my Mother, I mean souls ". We resumed, as if to recreate it: "It's something else, isn't it, than hanging out laundry in our attics?" She replied quickly: "No, Mother, it's not anything else at all, because that was also what I was doing, taking the laundry up to the attics and taking care of it as best I could." »
This rough nature hid true delicacies of piety and love for Our Lord. "When I was doing the Way of the Cross, she confided to us, I stopped more at the station where Jesus is attached to the Cross, I sympathized with him and I asked him to reserve for me the graces he gave me. had acquired at this hour of his Passion, for the moment when, like today, I could no longer be self-sufficient. »
Against all expectations, our good Sister Aimée of Jesus triumphed over this illness, and some time later, from a pneumonic point with high fever which returned her to the gates of the tomb.
On her first outing, still very weak, she wanted to begin the new life that had been restored to her, by going to "greet", is her expression, the Baby Jesus of the cloister, the Blessed Virgin who is opposite his Little Therese. " Later, she tells us, when I am taken to the cemetery, I will be very happy to be able to greet her Basilica as I pass, since it will be on my way. In the evening, seeing that she had been able to complete her pious pilgrimage without fainting, she said to us resolutely: “All the same, it is going to be time to remember that we are in the middle of Lent; and no longer allow me to be cared for like a seriously ill person, I beg you, my Mother, to give orders, accordingly, to my nurse”.
Our dear Sister gradually recovered her surprising activity. Have we not seen her resume all her usual laundry work, again taking on the hardest part of the laundry and laundry, with our White Veil Sisters, until the last week of her life!
Since then, however, because of her steadily failing eyesight, she had to make many sacrifices.
In the choir, where she had been so assiduous until then, still fulfilling in her turn the obediences of the week - although she had been a Jubilee for several years - she was hardly ever seen except on September 30, on the feast of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. . How touching it was, then, to hear our venerable Dean piously read the 6th lesson of Matins! She had learned it almost by heart so as not to make any mistakes. All this Office, moreover, delighted her; every morning she recited the prayer which she found so beautiful.
Not even being able to say the Canonical Office in particular, she imagined cutting from old breviaries, in bold and very black characters, the orations of the great feasts and the hymns, with which she lined the inside door of her infirmary cupboard. You had to see her land in front of this kind of table of the law! She said recently to a Sister who visited her and did not yet know this page of office, of a new kind: “Here, I have here the prayers that I like. Thus, see the prayer of the feast of Christmas. And she gravely began to read this oration on her cupboard, which seemed to serve her as a desk.
She had had to make the sacrifice again of no longer coming with the Community to the refectory. One could then judge of her mortification, by seeing what she demanded to be served to her in the kitchen, or what she prepared herself, if necessary, in the infirmary. Our White Veil Sisters were edified, with good reason, to see this good old woman coming to get her meals herself, so as not to bother the nurse. She then sat down like a beggar at the kitchen door, somehow holding an old wooden basket to herself, to put her "rocaillons" in it, as she called her favorite portions, and her dish of potatoes. boiled earthenware, replacing bread, which a very advanced disease of diabetes prevented her from, causing her many other hardships.
These deprivations she had confided to our dear Saint for a long time, as well as a very painful onset of deafness, which she had noticed especially in 1925, during our great celebrations of the Canonization, where she could not enjoy, to her thanks to the beautiful religious music of the Chanteurs de la Sainte-Chapelle. “I don't know how to rhyme or sing, she sighed, and yet God knows if I would like to hear well-sung Hymns, if I once enjoyed the angelic voice of Sister Marie of the Eucharist! »
Our compassionate little Saint took pity on the grief of her good Sister Aimee of Jesus. And this is how she consoled her:
One night in September, during the holidays, the dear sister was awakened by the sweetest concert she had ever heard on earth. Voices of incomparable harmony intertwined with an infinite sweetness, no nuance of which escaped him. And these voices, which rose from the courtyard, seemed to him to come from the place where the statue of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus is.
The happy privileged woman got up, opened her window, and, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, went back to bed, her soul flooded with celestial happiness. But before fully believing in such a favor, she too asked for a sign: to hear once again the voices that had delighted her. Now, the following night, the fact repeating itself, she was entirely convinced and told it to us, even wrote it down with scrupulous precision, adding that, among the voices heard, she had singled out one which reminded her of the one, never forgotten, of Sister Marie of the Eucharist.
Before talking to you about the simple and sweet death of our late Sister, allow us, my Reverend Mother, to return a little to her virtues. Her spirit of poverty was truly remarkable, everything she had for her use bore the imprint of it, but always in her own way, a way which, in certain cases, could have reminded us, somewhat, of this adage of a saint. hermit of the Thebaid It is not appropriate to seek cleanliness in a hair shirt. »
She often edified us by her fidelity in asking for the slightest permissions, her humility, her fraternal charity. Recently, on one occasion when she had the obvious right to hold on to her way of seeing things and had used it with a little stubbornness, she came back to us a few hours later, her face calm and smiling, rallied to everyone's opinion. world and happy to have subscribed.
She was extremely charitable to the point that our Sisters often wondered if she had not made a vow never to refuse any service. This is not to say, however, that before lending herself to the desire of each, she answered Amen to everything, without any thought, when it thwarted his plans, but we expected the debate, as well as its happy outcome, and we were never wrong about the latter. This virtuous Sister, offered as much as she could her services to the nurses, to assist them with the sick, reserving to keep them at night, helping to bury the deceased Sisters, and never leaving them, so to speak. If her Prioresses had listened to her, she would have spent whole nights with them, to spare the Community the fatigue.
Finally, my Reverend Mother, our generous and so dear daughter ended her long religious career with an act of humility, by saying her faults at the Chapter, on Friday January 3, with such roundness and neatness of delivery that we could not help to say to her: “My good Sister Beloved of Jesus, you remind us of the Last Judgment, where everything will be discovered. When she came, after her accusation, to kiss our scapular, we said to her in an undertone: "Why did you accuse yourself of having spoken in the refectory, since you no longer go there?" She answered us with a frankness full of good nature, and loud enough to be heard by all the Sisters: "But if, Mother, I go to the refectory, I even go there every day, before meals, to looking for the bottle that is put in our place, that's how I often forget myself to ask for what I need. She concludes abruptly and pleasantly at the same time. “You know very well that I prowl everywhere! And she returned with a firm step, to her place, not without having provoked general, ill-contained hilarity.
It was on the evening of that day that she felt a very sharp pain in her right shoulder and side. She didn't complain; however, the night was bad, and the next morning she said to the Nursing Sister, with extraordinary assurance: "Sister, I am sick this time, very sick, believe it." She nevertheless tried to get up, but had to go back to bed immediately. The doctor noted a double pneumonia with serious lesions and did not hide from us that, despite his strong constitution, he had no hope of saving her.
Our venerated Sister, very calm and very abandoned, received in the afternoon of Sunday with great piety and simplicity, Holy Viaticum and Extreme Unction, her tongue was embarrassed, and we could not fully understand her, when she asked the Community for forgiveness. He was heard, however, to implore “the grace of a holy death; through the intercession of our holy little Thérèse. » At the Christmas licenses, she had said to a young Sister: « We have so much work here that I prayed to the good God: not to leave me sick for more than three days before dying, and I will be answered, I am sure. She was indeed, and literally; for exactly after three days of illness, she fell asleep peacefully before our eyes, in the kiss of the Lord, at 3 am on Tuesday, January 7th.
The day before her death, our venerated Sister had a pious delirium. She had the project it seems, to offer us this year at the feast of Saint Agnes, a good number of what our little Saint called in her childhood Rosaries of practices, so that we can provide some for children who are preparing for their First Communion. Now, this work haunted the mind of our poor dying woman, to the point that, with her eyes half-open, she made the precise movement of stringing pearls, separating the ten with knots and then pulling these pearls, like if she herself counted her practices of virtue. We then think, with moved hearts, that soon this faithful servant of the Lord would come out of the darkness of exile, to see, in truth Sunrise of eternity, all the actions, sufferings, humiliations of his long life divinely counted by the good God, like precious pearls, to form his immortal crown. Didn't she also seem, by this unconscious gesture, but symbolic at such an hour, to count the graces she had received, so abundant, from her Heavenly Spouse, and to remind him of them, to bless him eternally.
“I want,” she wrote, barely a year ago, “to receive faithfully and never to forget all the graces that Jesus intended for me, through the bent of his good Heart. May all that I suffer serve me as purgatory, and may the last moment of my life be an act of perfect love which opens Heaven to me”.
The very virtuous life and serene death of our deserving and very dear Sister Aimée of Jesus leaves us with an impression of great peace. “It seems to us that she is not dead, say our Sisters, but that she simply went to work elsewhere”.
On Thursday, January 9, at the solemn and very pious Mass of her burial, the organ recalled, for a few moments, a canticle of apotheosis, where our Saint, after having asked the Almighty for the help of the Angels to carry out her mission , ends like this
... I would unite myself joyfully to their phalanxes, To pick with them, ep night and day.
But, when the Seraphim, on the last day of the world,
Will have shouted: “'All times are finished! »
Carrying away our blond harvest,
We will return to Paradise.
Who knows, we said to ourselves, if our humble Sister Aimee of Jesus will not take on in Heaven the apostolic tastes of our little Saint, to whom she gave on earth the care of binding in bundles, for the attic of the Father of family, her ears, that is to say the souls, which she hoped to have saved by her sufferings....
She would therefore indeed continue to work, but can we say that it is work elsewhere?
Among the testimonies of sympathy that we received on the occasion of the death of our beloved Sister, we put in the first rank that of our holy Bishop and Superior, so paternal and so good for us: His Lordship wrote to us, in the morning even of death, still hoping to find our Dear Sister alive:
“With all my soul, I assist you in the painful circumstance that you point out to me. Please tell the dear patient that I bless her with all the outpouring of my heart as a bishop who lives in thought with you all, and who is interested in each one in particular as a member very closely united and much appreciated by the Episcopal family. “I would add that the spiritual kinship that the venerable Sister has, so to speak, contracted with our little Saint, by living at her side, makes her even dearer to me. »
We humbly beg you, my Reverend Mother, to return as soon as possible to our venerable Dean, LOVED SISTER OF JESUS FROM THE HEART OF MARY, the suffrages of our Holy Order, by the grace of a Communion of your fervent Community, the indulgence of the Way of the Cross and all that your charity will suggest to you; she will be very grateful to you, as well as we who have the grace to say to ourselves in Our Lord, MY REVEREND and Most HONORED MOTHER,
Your humble Sister and Servant,
SISTER AGNÈS‑DE JESUS,
thank you
From our Monastery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Conception, under the protection of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, of the Carmelites of Lisieux.
January 17, 1930.
