The Novice Mistress's Guide

CHAPTER I

Provisions that should be in a novice mistress.

Our holy Constitutions have traced the portrait of a good Mistress of Novices too well for me to claim to add anything to it. They say it all in a few words in chapter 14; and this well-understood and well-thought-out article suffices to instruct the one to whom this important employment will be entrusted. Everything is contained mainly in these short words: “Let her who has this office take care not to forget herself in any way; for its charge is to nourish souls in which God may dwell. »

The most important of his duties is therefore to prepare his dwelling place for God, to dispose these souls to receive the touches of grace, and not to exercise an absolute empire over them, to want to bend, so to speak, the attraction of grace to her will, to make laws of perfection so exceptional that, beyond that, she does not know how to recognize the diversity of the ways of God. Let her prepare herself in advance to fight hand to hand with all the human passions which in turn show themselves in these souls, although they have come to religion only to triumph over it. But it is precisely this triumph which must be the fruit of the longest and hardest fights; because divine love is established only on the ruins of self-love, which will find its defeat and its death in the humiliation to which the soul will be reduced.

Especially since the Mistress of Novices decides not to count herself for anything, never to ask for consolation as a salary for her painful work, but the reign of Jesus Christ, and that's all, in the souls she leads. . Let her count neither on her efforts nor on her talents; but that always persuaded of her personal uselessness, she plants, she waters, and waits from God alone, with unfailing patience, an increase which will sometimes be very little noticeable.

It often seems that we are about to cut into the hardest rock, especially in the beginnings of a subject's education. We must not be discouraged, not even worried, but examine, pray and wait. Nothing is more dangerous than to precipitate one's judgment in such a serious affair, and on which depends, in great part, the happiness or misfortune of a soul for time and for eternity. We must also beware of believing that we know a novice immediately or shortly, except for certain characters so pronounced and so obviously dangerous for a religious house, that there is no time to lose get them out. The Mistress of Novices must discern, among the faults she sees, those that time will be able to correct, however repulsive they may seem to her. His duty is to put souls in such dispositions that God can really act in them; then she will see what to expect.

She still has to keep a happy medium between activity and negligence in the work she undertakes. To want to do too much by itself in souls would be to harm the work of God, a work which he essentially reserves for himself. Doing nothing and expecting everything from grace would be to fall into a lack of vigilance which would delay this work. It should not forestall grace; but it must support it with sustained zeal. She must study its progress, seize, on the fly, all the impressions in order to help her pupils to correspond to them with fidelity.

She must not be afraid of any temptation, of any trial, even of those which she would believe to be incompatible with the vocation to Carmel. God leads souls by so many ways, and by ways so hidden, that one cannot be too suspicious of his lights and his judgment in matters of direction. “Let her govern them with compassion and love,” the Constitution says. And how often does too ardent and hasty zeal cause this wise recommendation to be forgotten!

We love our novices; but do we love them for god alone ? Do we not rather like to see in their progress the fruit of our own efforts; to admire, so to speak, oneself in a premature perfection, more dangerous perhaps than the imperfections in which a soul knows itself and purifies itself?

How much freedom, dependence on God, humility and patience are needed to lead novices and all souls! The cherished motto of a Mistress must be this: All for God and nothing for me. Yes, she must determine to bear everything to achieve the goal that God proposes, and her only desire is to immolate herself always, to work without ceasing, and to want no other reward than this very immolation. , and his work without success, if need be.

Sometimes she will have to support the reproaches of her Prioress and of the community, which. tired of the faults of the novices, will complain to the Mistress of their little progress. Far from justifying itself, it cannot take too much advantage of these occasions to accuse itself of being the first cause of these failings. She must take advantage of the advice given to her, for she is religious and submissive to obedience. It prepares the future of the community. She is obliged, therefore, to listen to all observations and bear all reproaches. Let her use it to humiliate her pupils about; but let her take care not to easily change her conduct for their interior, when she has reason to believe that it suits them. And this is precisely one of the pitfalls of self-esteem. We believe ourselves obliged in conscience to endure for some time such a defect, such a way of acting in a subject, and to prepare our soul by this very patience to enter into the designs of God. The other members of the community, who cannot penetrate our motives, complain about the novice and blame her Mistress. Immediately the latter, wounded in what is most sensitive to it, forgets its principal duty: that of forming the interior; and, changing her behavior, she scolds, she hurries this poor soul out of time, humiliates her beyond measure, constricts her heart, and thereby destroys the beginning of the good which was going to take place little by little in her.

She must still regard herself as nothing in relation to the Prioress, for whom she must have complete submission and deference in the exercise of her office. Submission and deference that she must imprint on the minds of her novices, prescribing them to always set aside the orders she has given them, when the Prioress orders something else. May his authority be confined in the novices and in the direction of their souls; there, we cannot repeat it too often, she has only to follow the spirit of God; and this spirit will teach him, on delicate occasions, to combine subordination with firmness. Apart from that, she should never take advantage of her office to show herself anything in the house other than a simple nun. His ministry is hidden: his life must be too. It is in silence and humility that she must work to unite herself with God, in order to make him reign in her soul and in those she leads.

CHAPTER II

The mistress of novices must give them a good example in everything.

What are words without example in a Novice Mistress? We should be able to take his whole behavior as a model. Alas! can we write this in cold blood? And if we have to in order to give just ideas of each thing, would it not be permissible for us to pray those who will read these lines to ask forgiveness from God for the one who dares to trace them, after having herself been so little faithful to fulfill a duty which is the basis of all the others?

Yes, a good example is all the more necessary in a Mistress of Novices, as it is by this silent language that she must instruct and edify the community. It is not for it to correct abuses, but it must disapprove of them by its regularity; may she be, not like the Prioress, a vigilant sentinel in the house of the Lord, but like a living stone which supports the edifice, and like an ardent and brilliant light which one can always follow in safety. Finally, in everything and everywhere his conduct must condemn all that is imperfect, without his words ever wounding charity.

To this end, she will not fail to always be the first in all the common exercises, in all the points of the rule, in all the heavy work, reserving rather what is difficult, humble and off-putting, than what can give some satisfaction to nature. She must make it an inviolable law not to dispense with any hour of community to listen to her novices, and to persuade them that, except in a very rare and quite exceptional circumstance, they would derive no fruit from a direction made at a time when her duty as a nun called her elsewhere. For this, she will take care to teach them to cut off all the little words, and the thousand nothings that often preoccupy young people, and make them want to talk to take care of themselves and have the pleasure of taking care of them. their mistress.

May she make them understand early that one learns more in prayer than anywhere else; that a true Carmelite should use there, in addition to the hours of rule, all the moments which she can dispose of; that it is there that she herself treats with God to learn how to lead them well, and that her novices must desire for their Mistress, these moments of recollection and silence, without disturbing her and diverting her by importunate requests. If they see her assiduous at the foot of the altars, they themselves will be drawn there themselves, and will thus learn that our first duty is to form ourselves in the contemplative life.

While also giving them the example of assiduity at work, it must teach them to avoid haste, and persuade them that even in manual works, everything does not depend on our industry and our efforts; that God does not bless natural activity and moments stolen from exactitude; but that he works miracles in favor of a nun who works for him and according to his will. It is true that they must see her not lose a single minute for work, but also that all kinds of work fall from her hands at the first stroke of the bell, teaching them in this way not to put importance than pleasing God and denying oneself.

That the Mistress never allow herself any delicacy, any particularity in the refectory, unless her health and obedience require it, only to dress and lodge herself, she always seeks the poorest and less convenient, in order to make his novices love poverty and mortification, especially that which Providence spares them; thereby it will help them powerfully to rid themselves of the spirit of the world. May she be careful to show herself humble and submissive towards the Prioress, so that, if sometimes she has been obliged to adopt a tone of command and severity with her pupils, they may find in her the humble novice in its relations with her who has the authority of God over her conduct.

His language, his posture, his conversation must still be the mirror in which the novices can see their model. And if human frailty leads them into some fault, that there too they can learn how to recognize one's weakness, how to humble oneself, how to recover from it and what profit one derives from it.

Finally, if at all times the Mistress of Novices must be the model of her students, let it always be with a simplicity which gives all her actions a celestial charm, and without which the other virtues have something austere and affect that makes them less lovable; simplicity which discovers, without it saying so, that it has only one view, only one desire, only one single motive for perfection: God alone, and nothing more; simplicity which makes him equally take rest and work, suffering or enjoyment, reliefs or oblivion in which one can leave one's needs, if God allows it, in order to exercise one's patience and make one's virtue appear; for true simplicity reduces everything to the unique necessity and to self-contempt; it provides the soul with an unalterable peace, a calm that dominates all inner sensations and all events of life.

And what is more necessary than this sweet peace, this deep calm for a soul destined to be the guide of others, to assist in them the work of God, and to appear constantly in their eyes as the model that they must follow? ? With simplicity, the relationships one has with all the members of a community are easy and charitable; the simple soul, paying no heed to its talents and employments, believes itself neither higher nor lowered by employments and talents which it holds only from God. She uses it according to the divine will; but they will never be an occasion for her to mortify those who do not have them. Humble and confident towards her superiors, gentle and considerate towards her sisters, she will be cherished by all; we will count on it on all occasions, to use it or leave it aside according to the needs of the community, and not according to its desires and its repugnances, since simplicity makes it sacrifice both to him who is its unique good, his happiness and his all, to him who so fixes all the powers of his soul, that any other care than that of pleasing him, any other love than his own, any other motive than he alone dissipates and arrests it.

Blessed are the novices who, finding in their Mistress the constant practice of this simplicity which comes from heaven and which returns there without obstacles, will learn by her example to flee all that is not God, to seek him alone, and thus to cross that crowd of nothings which, even in the holiest communities, oppose such great obstacles to the practice of true and sublime perfection!

CHAPTER III

Difficulties encountered in the passage from the world to the cloister.

It is easy to forget what we left behind and what we no longer practice. Thanks to the goodness of God, the customs of the world being banished from our holy asylums, we do not find there the spirit of the age, and it is hardly if, in our desert, we remember the language and the mores of Egypt.

When one lives in the midst of the world, one is not always sheltered from the spirit which animates it, and even the most severe piety does not always protect against its unfortunate influence. Besides, there are usages and proprieties which are not contrary to the spirit of Jesus Christ, and to which one must even know how to comply as long as one is a part of society. This is why we cannot demand that the religious simplicity, the language and the customs of the cloister be known to young people who ask to enter it, however solid their vocation.

There is more: the piety which they tasted perhaps with all its charms, the spiritual help with which they were surrounded, the pomp of religious ceremonies which spoke to their hearts, the eloquent and anointing speeches which nourished their soul by flattering their ears, all this formed a whole of consolations and supports of which they feel the value only by losing it; and the emptiness they find in the silence and darkness of our monasteries presents them with such a striking contrast that these poor souls are usually disconcerted, especially since they dare not admit it to themselves. to themselves and even less to agree. Nothing more is needed for their vocation to seem to them a chimera, and for them to be assailed by the most delicate and most distressing temptations.

To help them overcome this first difficulty and take this first step, a Mistress of Novices needs to put aside everything she could say to them in favor of our holy state, to go ahead of the confessions they do not dare to do to her, and show them that she guesses what they feel. The only means it can employ is to sow in their souls the first seeds of the spirit of sacrifice. And as almost always a postulant expects everything, except what she finds, the Mistress must seize this opportunity to teach her that the spirit of Carmel being a spirit of retrenchment, it will always take from her what she will have. least expected. To this first lesson, let her add a strong exhortation to patience; that it urges him to suspend his judgment; Above all, she should not begin by reproaching him, although she feels put off by the lack of generosity shown by her new child.

Let her not be surprised at anything; and if she was revolted by the sight of what she discovered was too worldly in the postulant, she should be careful not to show this disgust to the one who causes it to her.

For this, it is of great importance that the Mistress of Novices be convinced that the mysterious disappointment of this soul is the beginning of the work of God in her. It is the veil that is torn and the holy disillusionment that takes place. It is the pure light which penetrates into this interior and the true day which is made there. It is the divine Master who prepares his place and discards what does not suit him. All these operations are a novelty for this soul: and she is all the more astonished because she least expected them. It resembles the people of God, of whom the Prophet says: “That when, after leaving Egypt, he entered the promised land, he heard there a language which he did not know. But let grace take its course; little by little this soul will end up understanding and loving this apparent emptiness which is contrary to what it thought it had found, and which seems to discourage it today.

Let the Mistress therefore know how to wait: for if she is impatient to remove from her pupil this still somewhat worldly bark which should only fall when this young shrub has taken a certain degree of growth, far from advancing the work, it will make it more difficult for the novice and for herself.

Let her confine herself to prescribing to her, from day to day, what she must do, and let her have the wisdom to conceal what will have to be corrected later. Let her descend into the heart of her pupil and penetrate, if she can, what is going on there. She will see how hurt and uneasy he is; How little does the simplicity of the cloister, sometimes a little rustic, bear in relation to the world that its pupil has just left, and how repugnant it is! Above all, let her understand how badly our perfection responds, let us not be afraid to say it, to the idea that her novice had been formed by it; and that it does not forget that the first aspect of religious life, where one believed to find only angels, has something inexplicable for a spirit which still only half understands the things of God, and who understands even less human frailty in an angelic life.

Moreover, a transition as sudden as that of the world in the cloister is always surprising. The absolute change of all the habits contracted since childhood has something dreadful for nature. All the places are new, all the faces are too. You don't understand the kind of occupation you find there. One must, at an age of perfect reason, learn to speak, to walk, to turn one way or another, to eat and drink, according to the usages of religion; lose any kind of freedom; annihilate, so to speak, his own existence; and this in the midst of a host of temptations and inner pains which very often assail a soul from the first steps it takes in the holy asylum towards which all its desires tended.

What I am saying may come as a surprise. One wonders how a soul truly called to religious life finds so much trouble there, instead of feeling at ease, dilated, full of consolation, happy, in a word, to be in the place of his rest. How God, whose will placed her there, does not give her the assurance of the happiness she will taste there, and how finally, after the combats which usually precede the entrance to the cloister, one does not experience the satisfactions of a victory that was costly.

I answer that all these different sensations can meet in a soul, that experience shows every day that the most divine vocations, far from being immune to a painful reaction, are sooner and more violently tormented. than the others. The more the vocation is supernatural, the more God seizes with force and tries the soul he has chosen, to begin in it a work which he wishes to lead to the most eminent perfection. On the other hand, this soul excites the rage of the demons, who see what value a conquest would have had for them, the loss of which must make them lose so many others!

Finally, this soul itself, accustomed to the gifts of God and generous until then, must be plunged into a deep humiliation, so that the foundations of its spiritual edifice rest on a solid foundation. She offered herself a thousand times to God in the days of her first trials; she sighed after the sacrifices of the cloister: now she must give to the Lord what she has promised him. But if she only gave him what she so often desired to leave for his love, her sacrifice would be too small. She must find her immolation even in what she thought she could promise herself. And it is when the sword thus penetrates to the most intimate of the heart, that she needs a skilful hand which supports her, and prevents her from breaking in the shock which she undergoes.

Despite the somber appearance that astonishes this postulant, she will not be less grateful for the benefit of her vocation; and, as we said above, a feeling that she will not be able to define will make her understand that she has found the place where God was calling her, at the same time that nature will feel broken and revolted at the sight of the sacrifice.

This is why the Mistress of Novices must use great prudence, a patient and discreet charity, to persuade the student that, far from being surprised by what she feels, she recognizes the hand of God, who will know how to heal her and draw glory from what she suffers.

This is the first test which begins the mysterious chain of all those which must follow it, to purify the soul which gives itself to God with all its heart, and to make it worthy to immolate itself for him at every moment, as a pleasant-smelling victim.

Sometimes, on the contrary, we meet young people filled with great enthusiasm for Carmel and its holy practices. They find themselves, from the very first steps, in the promised land, and see everywhere only wonders. Their joy is keenly felt. Their imagination only presents them with flowers. They are even surprised to hear about crosses and sacrifices. The future does not frighten them any more than the present. On the contrary, they enjoy in advance the happiness of being one day fixed for ever in this holy asylum.

Should the Mistress of these novices applaud this excessive joy perhaps, and take advantage of their disposition to kindle this beautiful fire? Or should she speak to them the language of the cross and the sacrifice that they find nowhere? No, she has nothing to say then; she must wait, observe and abstain from seconding the indiscreet zeal which inflames these souls and sometimes makes them ask for penances or practices of piety outside the rule. Now is the time to teach them to mortify even good desires, and to train them in the practice of the simplest obedience.

May she lead them to study the ruler and. especially the spirit of the rule. Let it not make them foresee directly the pains through which they will pass later; but let her not miss a single opportunity to make them perform any sacrifice that presents itself to be made. By this means, she will keep this soul within the measure of the grace given to her and will prepare her, without her suspecting it, for what the good God will later ask of her devotion and generosity.

CHAPTER IV

The mistress of novices must first observe in silence what is going on in the soul she is leading.

One of the surest means of properly applying correction is to make it desirable, and, if one wishes to ensure its success, to do it with full knowledge of the facts. In the state of trial in which a young person who has just entered a monastery almost always finds himself, one must not be in a hurry to correct even the most striking faults. It is enough to repress what could significantly shock a community; but always by making it understood that one is not surprised at such and such a way of acting, so as not to be discouraged.

Let the Mistress of Novices be sure that she will do nothing in a soul that is not dilated; and to bring it to this dilation so necessary, it must let it develop without constraint, and observe carefully all that it says, all that it does, without changing face nor behavior during the first times. If she imposes silence on him every time her language recalls that of the world, if she reproves her for all her actions, if too soon she questions her about her dispositions to blame what does not seem to her to be in conformity with the sanctity of the state that she wants to embrace, if she is frightened to see her sometimes turn her eyes towards the objects of her sacrifice, and remember the onions of Egypt, she will produce in this new and timid soul an impression of fear which cannot be may never dissipate.

The strength of the vocation will perhaps make him overcome this kind of terror; but then his poor heart will withdraw into itself and concentrate all its sensations and all its pains. She will no longer dare, it is true, to speak the language of the world in the land of the saints, but will it be out of love of God and out of conviction? Far from it, it will form an erroneous judgment on religious life and on the people who lead it. She will believe herself in a kind of purgatory, in a slavery which will narrow her ideas and no longer allow grace the freedom to act and reform what is opposed to perfection. Yes, everything is there for souls: let God act and correspond faithfully to his grace. It is better to wait for the effects of this divine grace, to respect its delays, and then to reap solid fruits worthy of God, than to overwhelm a soul with maxims of perfection which it often does not understand, and which are still unknown. above its reach.

Moreover, as soon as she enters the cloister, there is a complete reversal of all her ideas in a postulant; and it is during this ordeal that the Mistress must observe and support this soul without being frightened. It is very rare to find a person who has formed correct ideas about religious life, and who does not have reason to be surprised to find in it a kind of perfection completely opposed to what he had conceived. . Were it otherwise, God Himself will produce another reversal in her soul, for if what she sees corresponds to the ideas she had of it, the Lord will allow her to taste nothing more, and be plunged into an abyss whose bottom she does not see.

It must be so, because it is necessary that the soul be divided, so to speak, from itself, in order that nature be crucified, that self-love die at every moment, and that this soul, soaked with self-esteem, understand that if it can become anything, it will only be by the grace of God. She must also feel that, victim for the whole world, she must always be in a state of sacrifice, and immolate to her God the very gifts she has received from him. Indeed, he takes them away from her and hands her over to her own weakness. Faults of which she had scarcely the idea make her feel their attack. Patient in the world, she finds herself carried away into the cloister. Humble in the praises she received, the slightest humiliation revolts her, and she even experiences an insatiable thirst for the esteem of creatures. Accustomed to having only lofty thoughts, generous feelings, she sees herself occupied with trifles, and disposed to love only herself. She had been inundated with delights at the foot of the altars: she finds herself cold, distracted, desolate in the secrecy of the sanctuary. She asks all creatures where her God is, and her loving God no longer answers her and often allows only a language she does not understand to be spoken to her.

It is in those moments when the mercifully stern hand of God weighs down on a soul that a human hand must be careful not to spoil the work. The Mistress of Novices has very little to do then, although in a sense she has a great occupation to prevent her pupil from becoming discouraged, and to observe attentively whether his moral and physical forces are in keeping with the vocation of Carmel. But she cannot convince herself enough that her main job is to support her novice and observe what is going on inside her.

There is a defect that she must carefully avoid: that of consoling her with flattering promises, and making her hope for a better future. Let her repeat to him, on the contrary, that this is the road to Carmel; that she did not come there to rest, but to suffer; that she did not come to take pleasure in a perfection that she believed perhaps already acquired, but to know herself and to see the source of misery which is in her. This is what she can say to her without danger, instead of dragging her, so to speak, to perfection by another path than that which God traces for her. By making her accept this crucified way, however, let her tell her pupil that divine goodness always proportions grace to trial; that he who promised us a hundredfold from this life, do not deceive us; that God does not allow himself to be outdone in generosity; but that the joy and peace in sacrifice and immolation have something surer and more consoling than the sweetest joys of piety itself.

The Mistress must also observe the effect produced on her pupil by the conversations she hears, the faults and virtues she perceives, the customs of the house, in short, all the impressions she receives. Very often the Mistress will feel revolted by the answers that will be given to her; but if she testifies what she feels, she will never manage to form the judgment of the novice, nor even to know her. May she listen to everything, understand everything, respond to everything calmly and truthfully. That it does not require, by an outrageous charity and a misunderstood zeal, that evil be called good, and abuses respectable usages. It is there that she must facilitate the confessions and not compress the various feelings that are shown to her. A time will come when everything will be understood by his student, when everything will be executed and supported. But when will that time come? When the spirit of God will have replaced the own spirit; and this is what the Mistress must wait for, praying and hoping. For the moment, let her content herself with examining with the greatest attention whether the novice is capable of receiving salutary impressions, of renouncing her ideas, of tasting what is good and becoming attached to it, of understanding the reasonings given to him. She will see these dispositions in the distance, through the current errors, through the words that escape, through the advice requested, finally through many signs that the watchful eye of a Mistress carefully collects, when she has decided not to to seek only the glory of God and the good of souls, and not to go too fast in a work which requires the longest and most serious reflections.

There is a delicate point on which human reasoning has even less effect than on others: it is the affection of parents. These feelings, so legitimate, born with us, can only be canceled by divine love. When God tells a soul, in the secrecy of his heart, to leave everything and follow him, this soul, delighted by the sweet invitation of his divine Master, seems to no longer hold on to the earth, and finds the days that are too long. elapse before that of his sacrifice. It is then easy for her to believe herself detached from everything; and if sometimes the love of her parents is still felt in her heart, a glance at the Cross, an hour of recollection make her triumph over natural sensibility, and taking on new strength, she exclaims: Yes, my God. , I will leave everything and I will follow you.

It must also be said that the contradictions by which the parents try to oppose our good projects, contribute a little to the release which we believe we have reached. There is always, in combat, an activity which sustains. The will then is all the stronger, as it is supported by that of God, and however cruel the struggle with dear parents may be, one has, to resist them, all the ardor of one's courage.

But hardly separated from them, the postulant very often finds herself as tender as before and no longer recognizes herself. We must sustain the assaults of their pain and their affection; and sometimes the parlor is not displeasing. One even complains when too many days pass without visits from one's parents. Finally the poor heart, so firm a short time ago, is more sensitive than ever, and it almost succumbs under the weight of the sacrifice. Is it necessary, in these moments, to break it further by reproaches and by a severity which would show unceremoniously how religious life is opposed to natural feelings? Should we turn into a joke a kind of pain that seems to stem from the weakness of childhood, and remind this novice of the time when, rising above all that she loved most, she trampled underfoot flesh and blood with fearless courage? Far from it; if the Mistress of Novices has a little knowledge of the human heart, she will understand that to this return of natural sensitivity is surely added the pain of seeing oneself without strength and without courage to conquer oneself. Let her give free rein to those tears that astonish her; that she enters into this pain, although it seems to her excessive; that she leaves to God the care of healing the wounds that she herself would only irritate, and that here, as in all things, she observes and waits for grace to triumph over nature, so that from her -even his pupil completes the sacrifice begun, and understands that any sharing is a plunder in the holocaust. By this means also she will let him learn this great lesson: that it is not we who can leave everything for God and detach ourselves from our parents; but that this grace is a gift of his goodness, which we must receive with gratitude and preserve with holy dependence on him who gave it to us.

This is, in fact, what God wants to teach a soul hiding in the desert of Carmel, whom he carves and polishes to remove its first form, whom he instructs, by the destitution in which he leaves it, of what it is by itself. We cannot repeat it enough, there is in this a suffering which one understands well only when one feels it, and which too often one forgets oneself, when, having crossed by the grace of God this slippery step and difficult, we find in the souls that we lead so many weaknesses, miseries, and opposition to good. It is better for novices to be surprised at confessing their weaknesses without receiving reproaches, than to encounter in these reproaches a severity which constricts their hearts and diminishes their confidence.

We can notice that the more a young person has found indulgence in her Mistress to support what she retains from the world in the love of her parents, in the care of her person, in the attachment to certain objects, the more afterwards she becomes detached, mortified, poor, humble and obedient. And these virtues take on a character of solidity which is not subject to change, because it is the work of God, which was done slowly and with force. The conviction of the spirit joins in it with the generosity of the heart, and, all is immolated without reserve and without return, almost without its knowledge.

CHAPTER V

The mistress of novices must form their judgment, and not make them believe that to renounce it is to falsify it.

One of the most difficult things, no doubt, is the death of judgment. One obeys without reply to a command, whatever it may be, provided that one can retain the freedom to judge according to one's own views. The simplicity of ancient manners was less opposed to this renunciation than the present spirit of the age. Young people did not then have the right in the world to say everything and to decide everything. Very often counted for nothing in their family, they left it to exchange a natural obedience for the dependence of the cloister, and that was all. Ignorant in all the sciences, they had read nothing, sometimes learned nothing, and were no more trained in the inner life than in other knowledge.

It is not the same now. Barely out of childhood, they judge everything, they approve or condemn with a boldness, and sometimes with a precision that astonishes. If a Mistress of Novices does not prepare herself to find this disposition in her pupil, and believes she can at first sight straighten her judgment, and make it bend under the yoke of a life so opposed to that of the world, she will be exposed to fall herself under the blame of her pupil. It is to be desired that the Mistress be able to distinguish clearly the difference between submitting her judgment and falsifying it, and that she have very just ideas on the obligation that one contracts in this respect by the vow of 'obedience.

May she carefully avoid a way of acting which outrages self-esteem and does not win the heart: that of treating her novices like children, like boarders, and having with them manners that are appropriate better to a boarding school mistress, or even to a maid who makes a child believe what she wants, than to a person destined to teach chosen souls what they are and what they must be in order to become the wives of Jesus Christ. Far be it from me to want us to conform to the century and renounce religious simplicity. But how beautiful is this simplicity, from its true point of view! How beautiful is this religious immolation, which strips the spirit of its own lights, to prepare it to receive the light of God! And it is precisely in the choice of the means which lead to this stripping, that a Mistress of Novices must, in my opinion, use the greatest prudence, and not apply always and without modification, maxims that time has could make it less useful.

But unfortunately ! we see mistresses of novices who seem to put all the ardor of their zeal into distorting the judgment, constricting the heart, torturing the mind of their pupil. A young person endowed with good and sure judgment needs, in order to be able to renounce it, a wise and gentle direction; tell her in everything and everywhere that she is mistaken, even when she sees and perfectly distinguishes the imperfection of certain acts, the opposition of the maxims of true piety with prescriptions which seem to tend to overthrow everything she has learned is to expose her to shutting herself up in herself, to condemning her Mistress in secret, to judging her incapable of understanding and leading her; or else it is throwing her into an error about herself, forcing her to believe that she has the wrong judgment.

Thus, for example, to bring a postulant into the death to herself that our way of life demands, we will put her aside, as if she were incapable of anything; they will even blame, as a defect, the services that her charity would lead her to render to her sisters. However, this way of acting could run counter to the teachings and even the advice she had previously received, it would be likely to throw the novice into discouragement, by making her take the false or the true, and in making it impossible to know what she should stick to. So that's not how she should go about it. It will arrive more surely at its goal by making use of the lesson that Bossuet gives in his Meditations on the Gospel when he speaks of the vine, from which one cuts off not only the fruitless branch, but also the too much activity of the Good. The Mistress will make her pupil understand that she must, after the sacrifices of the things of the world, still make that of all that she can have that is good, that is to say, let herself be stripped and destroyed even in her best desires, in order to supernaturalize her virtues before following the penchant for good that is in her.

As for the remarks that the student may make on the behavior of others or on certain customs which contrast with those of the world, he must be made to accept what offends his judgment and not condemn it without pity, tell him that charity explains and excuse everything despite appearances, and that the folly of the Cross is here our true wisdom.

One could present to him the example of the divine Master, who, from the inaccessible heights of divinity, descended to all the weaknesses of childhood, reduced himself to the condition of a slave, submitted to laws that he came to abolish, and even to orders of which he knew all the injustice. It will be by raising her soul to this divine object, by dilating her heart with love, by enlarging her thoughts with sublime motives, that she will succeed in making her lessons penetrate into the mind and into the heart of her pupil. It will still be by always speaking the language of truth, by agreeing with it on everything that strikes reason and falls under the senses, without wanting to deny evidence or put error in the place of this righteousness that God Himself even has deposited in us like an outpouring of its eternal truth; but also by teaching her to ceaselessly immolate reason to faith, to humbly submit lights and clear and just views under the yoke of an obedience to which she will one day attach herself by the most sacred vows.

When the Mistress tells her novices that the more their ideas are good and true, the more the sacrifice will be pleasing to God; that the more the small observances of the religious life lower their reason, the more they become similar to Jesus Christ, eternal wisdom, subject to laws so little made for him; that the more their thoughts and their way of seeing are opposed to those of their superior, the more, in obeying, they give proof of their faith, since the merit of obedience consists in recognizing God and his sovereign authority in a weak creature. Oh ! then it will always be heard and understood.

Let her not be afraid to listen to all the reasoning that their minds provide them with, and even to admit to them that they judge well. But at the same time, let her seize every opportunity to make them clearly understand that the light of our reason is not always the light of God, and that it is this divine light that must be respected in superiors; that for them submission is their portion, and that they must believe that the course taken or the command given to them is the wisest; that religious life is the true folly of the Cross, and that true wisdom is to renounce everything to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Novices will sometimes see faulty actions, ways of speaking and judging contrary to the perfection they seek. On these occasions, they must be allowed to judge the thing for what it is, so that later they do not fall into it themselves. But they must learn at the same time to discern, in the midst of what shocks them, a host of motives which they do not perceive, hidden virtues which excuse or compensate for some external faults which God allows. Then they will taste a morality which does not run counter to the uprightness of their judgment, but forms it and directs it through charity. If, on the contrary, we want them to find models everywhere, and tell them, as their only answer, that a novice knows nothing and knows nothing, they will be offended by it, will humiliate themselves outwardly without lowering their spirit and their heart, and will keep a forced silence and not of conviction, which will no longer leave their Mistress the power to redress in them what is opposed to perfection, and to make the remains of the spirit of the world disappear. Let it rather focus on pointing out to them that perfection without shadows is not of the earth, and that the most sublime degree of virtue consists in knowing how to make allowance for human frailty, without sharing the weaknesses that we must condemn.

The Mistress of Novices must still show her students a lack of simplicity in the judgments they pass on many things, on many religious practices, on the way of acting or speaking that they notice in some sisters and which shock them, because their eyes are still darkened by the dust of the world. “The judgment you pass would not be bad in the future, she must tell them; but here you only see things this way because you lack simplicity. Let her remind them again then, that our wisdom is the folly of the Cross, and that the prudence of the flesh must be banished from our holy asylums. By doing so, she will gradually lead her students to judge everything soundly, not by the lights of reason, but by those of faith.

From time to time she will question them on the same subjects, in order to see if they strip themselves of their own thoughts, and to come back herself to those which she must have suggested to them with prudence.

The Mistress of Novices will understand, in this as in all things, that a ray of God's light advances the work of perfection more in an instant than all the efforts of creatures. However, as it was he himself who made her his interpreter with his students, it is up to her to show them the way, to correct their judgment, without ever forgetting that she is only a useless instrument and that it should expect success only from the one whose place it holds.

CHAPTER VI

The mistress of novices must show the happiness of religious life in sacrifice.

Nothing is usually more chimerical than the idea of ​​religious life, such as it is represented in the world. Those who do not even know the Christian life, and who behave only according to their passions, see with a kind of horror the walls that enclose us, and do not suppose that a free will can lead us to separate ourselves. of what they believe to be the only enjoyments of life. Others, who fulfill certain duties of religion without knowing their beauty, regard nuns as selfish, and believe that they are happy only because they are exempt from the cares and sorrows which overwhelm them themselves.

Finally, the pious people, those who have some notions of the interior life, but to whom God has not made these ravishing words heard: “Leave everything and follow me; These people who fear the contagion of the world and seek all the pleasures of piety, convince themselves that it is in the cloister that they are tasted without interruption and without mixture. They seem to see flowing from afar, in this promised land, streams of milk and honey. They smile when we speak to them of the crosses of religious life, because they know of no other than those that the world around them makes them bear and the false maxims that are professed there.

In truth they do not have the courage to say an eternal farewell to him, but they imagine that it is not. once done, a vocation is fulfilled, and everything is easy for a soul separated, by a narrow enclosure, from the scandals that make them moan.

They understand neither the temptations of the cloister, nor the sacrifices that one finds there to make, and much less still this immolation of the human Self, which is the work of all life and tends to destroy in a religious soul all that is opposed to the reign of God.

It must be said, however, if these false ideas are found even in souls destined for religious life, we find other characteristics in the vocation of Carmel. There, almost always, the spirit of sacrifice draws the soul to that holy Mountain. She does not know precisely what her immolation will consist of; but she wants it. The sight of privations does not cause her to recoil, but how far is it still from this sight to reality! and how difficult it is to find a soul without desire, without a project, without any other hope of happiness than God alone, his love and his Cross! One desires solitude; but is it for God or for oneself? We want penance; but is it the one that God will choose for us? We want a hidden life; but is it only to hide from the world? Is it to annihilate himself in his own eyes and those of his sisters, and to wipe away all the humiliations which are attached to the holy obscurity of this life? We seek a life of prayer; but is it not rather to savor its sweetness than to immolate oneself, with Jesus Christ and like him, in a state of victim and holocaust?

I repeat, there are very few souls who have understood everything, accepted everything in advance, and who, without choice, without consideration and without sharing, throw themselves into the arms of God for his love alone, enter religious life head down, like victims devoted to sacrifice, and who far from reserving the least thing for themselves, regret not having a thousand lives to offer to the Lord.

Moreover, even if these holy dispositions were all to be found in a soul, it is difficult for its courage not to be shaken when, having left the world, it passes from theory to practice. We said it in the preceding chapter, the passage from the world to the cloister, the immense difference which is found in a way of life so opposed to that which has it.

preceded, form a set of astonishing and disconcerting events. How then could we taste the happiness that we had perhaps promised ourselves or represented under false colors? How will a soul that feels broken and separated, so to speak, from itself, feel that sweet peace, that divine joy, that foretaste of heaven, which are only the fruit of battles and sacrifices of several years? This will be the triumph of grace in a soul; it will be the expansion of divine love in a heart which will have known how to immolate its self-esteem, and which, far from all that is created even more by its dispositions than by its enclosure, has taken on the wings of the dove, to go and rest in the bosom of God. It is only then that this fortunate soul can cry out in the feelings of her love and her gratitude: that nothing is comparable to the happiness she tastes.

This language is that of truth and starts from the most intimate conviction. But let us not conceal it, this language will never be understood by a soul which is beginning to enter the path of trial, and which has not yet had any experience of what happens in a state so contrary to that which has been his.

Will she better understand happiness such as it is sometimes represented to her in the cloister, when simple souls enthusiastic about their position will unceasingly boast to her of the rest of religious life, the finery of a hermitage, the joys always news brought by the solemnity of feasts, the recitation of the holy office, what else do I know? There are sisters who boast even of their homespun habit, the air they breathe and the food they are given. They go further: forgetting or perhaps ignoring, at least in part, the inner trials of religious life, they repeat a thousand times to a postulant that there is nothing as beautiful as all that the we do in their monastery. They depreciate even the holiest practices of godly living in the world. It is enough that what is spoken of is not of their condition, for them to blame it; and not content with displaying what they feel, they urge the novice without discretion to say with them: What happiness to be a Carmelite!

It is up to the Mistress to correct or modify the impressions that the novices receive in such encounters. May she show them happiness in sacrifice, the glory of God in their immolation, abundance in the privation of all that is not him. Let her make them understand that the more precious the thing they give, the more worthy it is to be offered to the Master whom they serve. Far from disapproving of the virtues that are practiced in the world and the good works to which they are devoted, it must make them appreciate the happiness they have, above the people of the world, of giving to the Lord, not foreign victims, but themselves. May she discover to them little by little the beauty of those virtues and of those inner and hidden sacrifices, in which self-love, far from nourishing itself, finds only death blows.

May she teach them to prefer their homespun habit, their poor cell, their coarse food to all the conveniences and all the delights of the age, precisely because they find in them the means of mortifying themselves and of doing penance. This is true happiness: this is what a great and generous soul will understand in the midst of the combats and repugnances which overwhelm it. With this simple and true morality we win hearts, we strengthen wills, we make everything possible and even easy; one obtains almost certain success in the delicate work of guiding souls. They feel their sorrows soften. They accustom themselves so well to this life of sacrifice which is the basis of the vocation of Carmel, that they often complain that everything for them has changed into delight. And if God, in his adorable designs and in the diversity of his ways, do not prefer them to the bitterness of his chalice, they prefer it to all the joys of the earth; they would not exchange it for the holiest consolations; they support it with a calm, a peace, an equanimity that nothing alters; and they can say with truth that they are happy, because God, however hidden, is the only good they want to possess, and the only reward they expect.

CHAPTER VII

The mistress of novices must never tire of repeating the same things in the advice she gives.

There are things in religious life which it suffices to indicate in order to obtain the practice of it; but there are some that one should never tire of repeating. There is also, in the practices of the novitiate, a multiplicity which can be tiring when one is not used to it.

It is therefore necessary to show souls the abnegation of themselves contained in all that is external, and to work to make them love all that is of their state, not by the taste for external things, but by the love of the divine will, which has marked these things in our holy uses. The contemplative life, to which they are called, must unite with the active life and sanctify all these acts, which without it would only be an assemblage of minutiae, so, at least, that they often come to mind. of a person who has just left the world. Now, this great lesson, which contains so many others, needs to be repeated unceasingly, because nature is always opposed to our practicing it. Moreover, as we have said, the life of Carmel bears such a particular character, so opposed to the piety that was known in the world, that it is by dint of time, care and pain that the Mistress of novices will manage to make them understand and enjoy the morality that she preaches to them.

May she therefore never tire of returning to the principles she seeks to establish in the young hearts entrusted to her. Let her not be surprised at their slowness in understanding the things of God, in grasping what is so opposed to human reason and the wisdom of the flesh.

It will not be in a first explanation that she will succeed, for example, in persuading her pupil that the state of temptation and trial in which she finds herself is precisely the means for her to arrive at the perfection which he seems to push her away. Perhaps she will believe it if these words first bring calm to her afflicted soul. But soon, falling back on herself, feeling her sorrows renewed with more intensity, she will still judge of her inner state by the feeling it produces. She will therefore return to her who is for her the oracle of the Lord. If she still hears the same reasonings opposed to the same difficulties, if the same patience and the same gentleness combat the same pains and the same alarms, she will end by seeing that the danger in which her soul seemed to be in her own eyes, is not not as real as his imagination represented to him. But if the Mistress, tired of hearing the same complaints repeated, accuses her pupil of stubbornness and revolt, she will close his heart, and will never make him enter the path traced for him by the hand of God.

When a Mistress has noticed in the soul that she directs the march of grace, when she believes with some certainty that God calls her to perfection by one way and not by another, that she does not does not easily present other means of achieving this than those she first indicated to him, although she does not seem to like them. Nevertheless, as she is not infallible in her judgement, if after a more or less considerable time, she realizes that these means do not benefit her novice, she could try others and change paths, but always with prudence and humility, and above all without discouragement; for if the Mistress of Novices is well convinced of the uselessness of her efforts, if she works because God wills it, and not to enjoy the happiness of her successes, she will not believe that she is lavishing her time and her care uselessly, whatever whatever the results. If she expects only from God the efficacy of the advice she gives, and although she is persuaded that she cannot even pronounce the name of Jesus fruitfully, as the apostle says, she will be happy to to be the organ of God with her pupil, and, without reproaching her for the little profit she seems to derive from her lessons, she will patiently repeat these same lessons as much as is necessary.

Moreover, to encourage us in this humble patience and in this persevering gentleness, let us cast our eyes on ourselves: are we more perfect, because we are Mistresses? Alas! our pupils might perhaps sometimes instruct us and correct us. Isn't the memory of the past there to remind us of the sorrows and worries that we gave to those who guided our first steps in religious life? The Mistress of Novices is, with regard to her Prioress, only a simple nun, as we have shown in previous chapters. Well ! can she do herself the justice that, always docile to her advice, obedient to her slightest wishes, she executes punctually and without needing anyone to repeat it, what she herself demands of her novices? If she could bear this testimony to herself and say in all truth: I always do what pleases my Father, confounded by this grace, she should cry out with the Virgin of virgins: The Lord has done these things in me, and his name is holy. But she should also understand better still that this grace, far from coming to her from her merit, was given to her in spite of her great poverty, and that a moment would be enough to make her lose it, according to this principle: that the more one is elevated and perfect, the more one is also humble within oneself and indulgent towards others.

On the other hand, God constantly speaks to our soul through his inspirations, through our superiors and directors. Well! Does God cease, by himself or by his organs, to repeat his advice to us; to solicit and urge our hearts to become masters of them? Alas! which one of us who, perhaps for years, has not felt the good and patient God knocking at the door of her heart, and who does not have to recognize before him many resistances and infidelities? , who however have not weary the entreaties of his grace?

One of the most painful sorrows in the heart of our divine Master was the foresight of the uselessness of his sacrifice for many. The shedding of his blood could redeem a thousand worlds, and yet the number of the elect is compared to that of the ears of corn which remain after the harvest, of the grapes after the vintage. And what a price was not a single sigh, a single tear of the God-Saviour! Now, did this sight arrest the course of his devotion and his sufferings? Was he discouraged in this career of pain which began in the crib and ended on the Cross? Oh ! We know very well not; we know well that he would have pushed the great and laborious work of our Redemption to the end, even when a single soul should have profited from it.

This is the model of the souls charged with the conduct of others. If they look away from it for a moment, they will be liable to lack the courage to accomplish their sublime mission. Sometimes one feels a devouring zeal for the salvation of a soul, to make it embrace such and such a point of perfection. It's good ; but if this soul does not seem to understand this zeal and does not correspond to it, one becomes discouraged and abandons the game. This is a fault and a misfortune which prove that this zeal is not according to science, and that humility does not accompany it.

So sow again; do it again without complaining; make sure that your novice, touched by your patience, asks your forgiveness for forcing you to come back to the same things over and over again, and answer him gently that God never tires of teaching you and supporting you yourself. Go further: do not be afraid, according to the characters, to testify to your pupil that you feel the boredom that the same representations and the uniformity of your opinions must cause him. By imposing the Cross on him, show him also that you know what it weighs, and tell him what the Savior said to his disciples whom he devoted to fatigue, suffering and death: "I have loved you as my Father loved me. »

If, on the contrary, tired of repeating the same lessons, and too eager for a prompt success, the Mistress of Novices does not have the patience required by the holy work for which God is employing her, and she changes her method and management; if it seems to no longer know what side to take with the soul it is leading, the latter may initially see a new behavior with pleasure, but it will make no progress. Especially in certain moments of trial, no longer recognizing herself, she will try all means and will not persevere in any, because she will find pain everywhere, and she will become the most imperfect and useless nun in the monastery. .

Happy the novice directed by a firm and skilful hand, and to whom a short lesson well adapted to the state of her soul and ceaselessly repeated, if necessary, takes the place of all instruction! She will draw from it the conduct of her entire life. She will learn that God does not change, and that she herself must remain firm in the midst of the vicissitudes of this world. Fixed forever in the path traced for her by the divine Master, she will know how to never get out of it, whatever the storms that agitate her. In these very storms she will recognize the time of the visitation of the Lord, and will preserve the peace of the children of God, a peace which surpasses all sentiment; divine peace, which would make our monasteries paradises of delight, if all souls understood in a practical way that life is a time of battles, and that those who meet in our holy ways, far from diverting us from it, must rather to firm our steps in the narrow path of perfection.

CHAPTER VIII

The mistress of novices must avoid showing her pupils the views one may have on them for the future.

It would take a more skilful pen than mine to show in all their light the inconveniences which can result from the conduct of a Mistress who lets her pupils see what she or the community may think of their future. There are subjects who have enough insight, enough of a habit of judging everything, and an opinion already sufficiently formed about themselves, to understand the good impression they make on others, and even to seek to produce it. As if a little in love with their merit, they see in religious sacrifice an act of devotion which elevates them, not yet understanding that this elevation requires a deeper annihilation.

If they combine natural talents with zeal for the salvation of souls, a certain ability to talk about the things of God, to understand what is happening in others: it takes very little to persuade them that they will be like suns destined to illuminate the monastery; and, crossing the immense space which separates the postulant from those who are appointed to the government, a subject of this stamp will soon judge his judges, and will become as dangerous as he could have been useful, if a religious education, made by a skilful Mistress, don't come to stop such disastrous beginnings.

Alas! let us not be afraid to say it, we are too often charmed and dazzled ourselves, when such postulants are admitted among us. Doubtless God, in his goodness, sometimes chooses some that he himself has prepared to fulfill the first duties of religion. He imprinted in their souls characters which cannot be mistaken. Seeing them, we conceive of hopes which will be realized one day, if the grain of wheat, thrown into fertile soil, is deeply hidden during the winter of the novitiate, where it is destined to die to produce a hundredfold later. But the word of the Savior is express: If he does not die, he remains alone.

Let's also say it, under these beautiful exteriors we often found nothing but emptiness and pride. It is therefore of the utmost importance to distinguish the true from the false, to put the gold in the crucible to separate it from any alloy, and, in this circumstance more than ever, to silence one's own spirit, to renounce all which is nature, to study in silence, and not to judge prematurely.

If God truly destines a soul to lead others, he will prepare it for this formidable mission by a series of trials which will all tend to humiliate it, to annihilate it, so that, knowing itself, it can, one day, to see oneself as a useless instrument in the hands of a skilled worker. All the natural talents that a young person can bring into the cloister should not be used until she understands that they do not belong to her. It is only after having seen herself in the truth that strips, that she will again be clothed with all the gifts that God had bestowed on her, but which he will take away from her for a time, in order to give it back to her as something that does not belong to her, and which she can then use without abusing it.

As we have said, a Mistress of Novices must attentively assist her pupil in the work of grace. It must not seek to edify when God works to destroy, nor show what he hides. She must not want to use what he himself wants to make useless. Always attentive to the divine work in the soul that she leads, she has only to faithfully follow the movement that God gives her, to assist it, but never anticipate it. Her pupil must be unaware of God's plans for her until the moment when he explains himself by events.

The Mistress of Novices will therefore lead her pupil to interior death as the first and indispensable disposition to the life she wishes to embrace. She will close her eyes to what shines and flatters in this soul, and will leave her in the mystical tomb which the love and jealousy of her God are preparing for her, as long as he keeps her buried there. The more the Mistress believes that God wants to elevate this soul one day, the more she must lower it. The more this soul has remarkable talents and qualities, the more the Mistress must seem to forget her and to have no need of her.

Let her make no difference, in the way she treats her, with those who are inferior to her; and above all, that by behaving in this way, she is careful not to smile, to utter certain words which let her true feelings penetrate, and reveal, in her way of acting, a system of momentary trials, who would confirm her pupil in the good opinion she might have of herself, and would nullify all the wise precautions she would take to train her in solid and truly religious virtues.

May she carefully avoid another fault which also has its drawbacks: exaggeration in her conduct, in the humiliating words that she must use with discretion with regard to her novice. The truth has a character which strikes and confounds a just mind, and holds it in the humiliation which it needs. But too much rigor in the mortification of a strongly tempered soul offends it, breaks it, sometimes revolts it, and gives it the desire to place itself above everything, to suffer everything in silence, not out of virtue, but out of pride. . So no more true submission; more even of a religious spirit. ; more confidence and simplicity towards a Mistress who was to be a mother and a friend. It is not by tightening the heart that one trains it to virtue. One does not make humility lovable when, in order to inspire its practice, one seems to belittle all the greatness that God himself has imprinted on his creature as the image of his own. It is not by speaking of this virtue that we make it taste, but by showing it in Our Lord as chosen by him to become the remedy for our ills. For that, one must not debase the soul one wants to lead there. She must be led gently to the feet of her divine model and placed, with him, in that voluntary opprobrium that the religious soul must embrace, like him, by choice and by love.

Let us say a word about the still more serious inconvenience of persuading oneself that distinguished talents, a superior mind, an intelligence which grasps everything, even in the ways of perfection, suffice to characterize a subject of the first order. Alas! Lucifer was the most beautiful of the seraphim. What creature better informed than he of the most sublime gifts? And yet his pride caused hell; his revolt dragged down millions of angels in his unfortunate downfall; and to the end it will lead men to rise up against God and to delight in themselves. He knows well how to make use of the talents and the apparent virtues of a member, to ruin an entire religious body. A soul without distinction and of an ordinary mind does not excite much either his jealousy or his rage; and if it can become a Cross for a community, at least it will drag no one after it. Whereas a remarkable subject will never be an indifferent and insignificant subject in a house: he will do a lot of good or a lot of harm there.

Talents, whatever they may be, do not make the true nun. What is needed, above all and above all, are souls capable of knowing themselves well enough to come one day to perfect contempt for themselves, even if they were adorned with all the gifts of nature and of grace; souls strong enough and generous enough to leave to God an absolute domain over their whole being; simple and frank souls, who fear neither to speak the truth nor to hear it from the mouth of those who are responsible for instructing and directing them.

If the Mistress of Novices recognizes in her pupil these happy marks alongside the talents that make her stand out, she must cultivate, as we have said, this plant capable of becoming a great tree in the garden of the celestial Spouse. But if she discovers in herself a proud and haughty spirit, filled with her own esteem, submitting only to the exterior, bearing everywhere the imprint of singularity, not knowing what it is to humble herself and never wanting to be, or, what is worse, placing himself above everything, and regarding himself as a privileged being whom neither reproaches nor praises could touch; so that the Mistress does not allow herself to be dazzled by the beautiful exterior which hides there a dangerous subject. Like those sea-monsters which, placing themselves beneath the best-equipped ships, are strong enough on their own to overthrow them and cause them to make a fatal shipwreck, a soul thus disposed would be capable of causing the ruin of the community.

I speak here with full knowledge of the cause, and I know too well what can produce, in the holiest house, the admission of a subject of this temper. It is like a contagious disease whose progress cannot be stopped, like a henchman of Satan placed in the inheritance of the Lord, to ruin his empire. There is, in the words of these kinds of people, something insinuating that resembles the song of the Sirens; it is a mixture of rigorism and relaxation that simple and new souls do not distinguish; it's a training that moves away from legitimate authority with all the more delicacy that one seems to approve of everything, to understand everything and to submit to everything.

The exalted perfection of a soul of this character seems delicious and easy. She speaks of the Cross with enthusiasm; and she rejects it with horror in practice. She loves regularity, perceives and causes to be perceived the least infraction, and the best established observances yield in turn to her caprices and her demands.

When the whole community and the Prioress herself would like to admit to profession a novice in whom her Mistress has recognized the traits that we have tried to depict, let her not be afraid to oppose, she alone, her admission. Let it not be based on the hope of a later change. Alas! these are faults which, far from being corrected by the sacred commitment of the vows, then become irremediable.

It is also to be noted that these subjects, so distinguished in appearance and so dangerous in reality, insisted on remaining in the monastery with a tenacity which made their vocation deceive them. But not every good desire comes from the Holy Spirit. The demon is transformed into an angel of light, and not wanting to let escape a prey which, by getting lost, would lose the souls destined to fight it and to snatch so many others from it, it takes on all forms and makes all the springs, to achieve its goal and make it stay.

So let us not be dazzled by deceptive exteriors. Let us know how to sacrifice what flatters our self-esteem. Let us seek in souls the simplicity and the truth which characterize the spirit of God; and above all let us pray without ceasing; let us renounce our lights; let's defy our judgement. Let us first seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness; God would rather do a miracle than allow us to be wrong. If we take all the means not to be mistaken; if always holding in one hand our holy Constitutions, and in the other the Cross to sacrifice everything to our duties, we proceed with that upright intention and that pure disinterestedness which alone give the divine Master the wives of his choice.

CHAPTER IX

The mistress of novices must reduce everything she teaches to this truth:
Anything that is not God is nothing.

The true spirit of Carmel usually imprints itself on well-called souls with a character peculiar to this Order. He removes from them the multiplicity of attractions and desires which weary, he leads them to God alone, separates them from all that is created, and very often hides them so much from themselves that they do not know how to express their state only by these words: All I know is that it is God I want.

Surprised sometimes to feel no attraction, to find no taste for the practices of piety which generally occupy pious young people in the world, they seek solitude and prefer a little corner of the church to everything outside and wanted by others. All kinds of reading do not suit them, and what they experience sometimes seems to them an error from which they believe they must work to cure themselves; to which, unfortunately, they are only too much helped by directors who do not know enough about the secret ways of grace, and who want to reduce everything to ordinary piety. How many times have we not recognized in our postulants the bitter fruits of a false direction, the traces of which all the care of a vigilant and experienced Mistress has difficulty in erasing!

The Mistress of Novices must therefore question her pupil on the principle of her vocation, see how God led her in these beginnings and what advice she received from her directors. She will almost always find detachment from creatures and that attraction to God alone, of which we have spoken. May she not stop at all that would have followed, and so to speak lead this soul astray, but may she gently part the clouds which have prevented the sun of justice from darting its rays into this heart once so ready to receive his gentle influence.

How many things have gone through the work of God! How many obstacles have stopped this soul! How much his own action, sometimes too hasty, sometimes too slow, has placed obstacles in the way of the divine action! The vocation remained firm, but the grace of this vocation remained almost sterile. Moreover, the temptations which make themselves felt on entering the cloister, the darkness which spreads in a soul at the beginning of the new career it is about to follow, the dryness of the heart which almost always accompanies a way of life which overthrows our first existence, everything finally forms a whole which lets the soul itself and the one who directs it see only a kind of chaos that we must not want to unravel too soon. How, in such an interior state, can a poor soul apply itself to correcting its faults one by one; to acquire virtues the practice of which she no longer understands?

All the postulants are not there, it is true: and those which follow less rough roads are easier to lead, and go to the goal without it being necessary to take with them the precautions which the conduct of others.

Should the Mistress of Novices therefore close her eyes to the state of the soul, to open them only to the duties she prescribes? Certainly not: that would be a fault in the direction, which could destroy the whole work. After having studied in her pupil the first step of grace before her entry into the cloister, after having recognized her attraction and understood her repugnance, that she does not demand all that she could rigorously ask of her; but let her gently repeat these words to him: "God alone is all things for the religious soul, and what is not him is nothing." May she make him apply this consoling truth to all his actions, to all

its joys and all its sorrows. As soon as she sees her too sensitive to a reproach, to the severity of her Mistress or her Prioress, let her accustom her to constantly returning to this principle: All that is not God; no, this sensitivity does not come from God and does not lead to God. To erase from her memory what temptation or trial too often puts back there, far from reproaching her, she will repeat without tiring: God alone and me in the universe.

If the novice experiences too great a difficulty in following a method of prayer, in applying herself distinctly to the practice of such and such a virtue, her Mistress must not insist on captivating her mind, but dilate her heart by knowing of itself and by the knowledge of God. Let her take advantage of the destitution to which God has reduced her, to lead her little by little to annihilation, rather than forcing her to act with a force that would exhaust her.

Let her then tell him that if all is nothing, we ourselves are below nothing. Let her teach him that, even in the spiritual order, nature knows how to attach herself to everything; but that God, by a love of jealousy, pursues her and will reduce her in servitude under the empire of his grace, if she be faithful. The more pains and obscurity there are in the one she leads, the more she must apply herself to simplifying it, always bringing it back to God alone.

There are souls whom the Cross revolts, whom humiliations crush, without making them more humble. Such dispositions frighten a Mistress of Novices, when she does not herself have experience of the desolating ways by which God purifies certain souls. He sometimes wants to reserve for them crosses and interior humiliations which will be known only to him, and which will reduce to nothing all pride and all human delicacy. But it will only be after many years perhaps. It will only be when this soul, after having vainly endeavored to cherish humiliations and crosses, comes to confess at its feet that it cannot perform the smallest act of virtue, and that, laying down its arms, it will obtain , by her abandonment and the confession of her weakness, which she would never have acquired by her own work.

If a Mistress wants too much to act according to the ordinary maxims of the novitiate, obliging her pupil, by various considerations, to understand immediately the necessity of suffering and the love of humiliation; if, constantly returning to the charge, she tires her novice, grace will not act and disgust will take its place. She will then see this soul violently tempted by the vices contrary to the virtues which she wishes to inculcate in him; and it is thus that, far from attaining its goal, it will lead away from it that which it directs.

On the contrary, if while this soul groans under the weight of her Cross, the compassionate Mistress confesses to her that the humiliations in themselves are nothing but repulsive; if she accustoms him to bear the estrangement she feels from him and perhaps feels for all that is good; if she contents herself with presenting to her, for all sight and all support, the God whom she has come to seek in the cloister, her heart, under the pressure, will expand still further. If she cannot love her Cross, she will love Him who gives it to her; if she cannot think of her reproaches, she will attend to Him who allows them; if the sacrifice is odious to her, she will at least abandon herself to the sword of the priest; and soon, far from her own action and that of creatures, she will find what she was pursuing in vain without obtaining it. Surprised by what is going on inside her, she will say with happiness: My God, I am the work of your hands. Reduced to nothing, it will cherish its own destruction. Illuminated on her faults by the true light, she will know herself all the more because God himself will have lifted the veil which hides from so many others the abyss of their misery. She will remember the opposition she found in her soul to the practice of all the virtues and to the love of crosses; and if now she does not yet love these virtues and these crosses, she at least loves her God, who seems so lovable to her that with him everything changes nature and name, everything becomes possible and even easy. Then, always equal to itself in bad days, it will not be subject to these alternations of passing fervor, where one embraces more than one can bear, and of disastrous discouragement where one leaves everything, until to its most essential duties. God does not change: and the virtue of the soul which will have been led as we indicate, coming only from God, does not change either, although the soul does not feel its attractions.

In all events, of whatever nature, in all circumstances of religious life, in all variations of spiritual life, may the Mistress of Novices prevent or stop in her students the agitations of the spirit and heart, saying to them: All this is not God. “They will perish; but you, Lord, you will remain. How often, in the holiest houses, do we not have to suffer from the inconstancy of creatures, from the change of their temper, from the defects of their character! May the Mistress never let her novices dwell on this sort of misery; but let her say to them again: Creatures are not God ; let these shadows and images pass without noticing them. God is still the same ; your happiness is therefore not achieved. The detail would be infinite; but the principle suffices for us to draw all the consequences from it, and to apply them to every action of life.

May the Mistress also apply this principle to prayer, to direction, to the reception of the sacraments. There are circumstances in which the strongest soul needs to cling more inviolably to it. When, for example, it is necessary to make the sacrifice of a Director, a Prioress, a Mistress, who had received all the secrets of our soul, who had understood the way in which God calls us, and made us walk there quickly : They will perish; but you will remain; this is what must then be repeated.

This is the only, the true consolation of the religious soul; when a wise direction has been able to establish it on this unshakable foundation; when it has understood that all the good that can come to it from creatures is only an effect of divine goodness, and that the soul, which has faith in the love of its God, must rather believe to miracles, than to fear that the necessary help will never fail him.

There is a sacrifice which sometimes disconcerts otherwise solid souls: that of leaving the house which was the cradle of our religious childhood. During the novitiate, one must prepare for everything. And how will we prepare for it? otherwise with this thought: “God will be everywhere to me all things. I have no permanent home here below. Him. alone remains. There is only one place where I do not want to go: it is where my God would not be. The soul, thus prepared, can well feel the weight of a sacrifice; but she will never shrink from those who will be imposed on her.

It is not, moreover, by the feeling that a soul thus establishes itself in a kind of stability, that it rises above all things and itself, to see only God. only ; faith guides her, sustains her, shows her the immutability of God: and it is there that she establishes herself in the midst of storms and tempests which rumble around her without shaking her. She learned that feeling is not god ; she knows that we possess God here below only by faith. But this faith, based on eternal truth, remains in the depths of his heart and regulates his conduct in the inequalities of life.

This is the road to true happiness, the source of peace, the happy fruits of a truly religious education, given by a Mistress who knows how to distance her pupil from the childishness of childhood and the weaknesses of her sex. A novice thus formed will be a living stone in the edifice of Carmel. It will recall those strong souls of the first days of the reform, who were capable of undertaking everything and suffering everything for the glory of God, because, always far from themselves, they had fixed their eyes and their hearts on this unique object of their love. God was everything to them, and anything that wasn't God was nothing.

May all the Mistresses of Novices understand that their main duty is to lead their students by this maxim so solid and so true: All that is created is nothing for the religious soul. “God alone remains, and his years do not change. »

CHAPTER X

The mistress of novices must train her students in the true love of solitude.

God is not contrary to himself: he always grants to a soul the graces of the vocation he has given it. The love of solitude, the constancy to remain there are inseparable from the vocation to Carmel. But to fully understand in what this solitude consists, it is necessary to form a correct idea of ​​it from the beginning.

We almost always confuse the attraction of solitude with the true love of solitude. The soul called to Carmel experiences, as we said in the previous chapter, an irresistible need to flee from creatures to find only God alone. She sometimes tastes this happiness in advance with so much delight that it seems to her, in these happy moments, to see herself already in a Carmelite cell. But scarcely has she withdrawn there than the God who calls her to follow him leads her, like the Bride of Songs, to the mountain of Myrrh; or rather he himself becomes the bundle of that mysterious myrrh that the Bride carries on her heart. It is no longer, in fact, this attraction that charmed her, it has passed; they are the bitterness and neglect of the Garden of Olives. It's a certain vague uneasiness that isn't distinct enough to leave support. It is a state where the soul seems to have so lost the sense of the presence of God, that it finds itself with all the troubles and all the emptiness of loneliness, not knowing what it is doing there, and sometimes only feeling the desire to get out. It seems to her that she would rather devote herself to the lowest and most disgusting work in the house, rather than remain between the four walls which crush her.

The Mistress of Novices should not be surprised, even less frightened by this disposition. She will understand that a soul which comes from the world can hardly pass, without shock, from society to complete solitude; from a life where she could give free rein to her activity, to a life of constraint, where her only horizon was the walls of her cell and the choir. She will therefore sympathize with this lassitude of nature, because stiffness in this would engender tension and disgust rather than love. But at the same time, she will examine if there is in her pupil a lack of aptitude for solitude; if his physical and moral forces refuse to support the painful moments; if his soul, especially his head, lose instead of gaining by this kind of life. The head, when it is too weak, cannot do without greater air and a busier life. In this case, it would be necessary to recognize that this soul is not made for our vocation, and not to persist in a long-suffering which could have regrettable inconveniences.

If, on the contrary, this lassitude of nature, this prostration of strength does not produce any of these bad results, one can believe that it is only the transition from the world to the cloister which causes these troubles, these pains, these anguishes at the beginning of a life so new; and then the Mistress, without her pupil suspecting the motive which makes her act, must procure for her some momentary distractions, either by varying her occupations, or by giving her orders which will make her come out of herself. This means, used wisely, will rest the imagination, relax the mind, dilate the soul and even make it desire to return to its dear solitude, to which it is called and whose charms it will taste, when it has overcome the first trials of nature.

Nevertheless, the Mistress will not forget to encourage her novice to make the best possible use of her condition, and to make her appreciate its value. The time has come to teach him that the God of solitude is not always a master who caresses and consoles; than this saying: I will lead her into solitude, and there I will speak to her heart is accomplished in silence and through silence. God spoke to our fathers in many ways in the past. God still speaks today to the religious soul and also in a thousand ways. Suffering has its language like consolation. The abandonment and the anguish of the heart speak to her no less than the interior touches which wake her up and charm her. The wanderings of the imagination exercise it; temptations torment her: and in all this there is an instruction which humbles the soul and teaches it to know itself.

Let the novice therefore be careful not to run away, and to seek in external employments a diversion from her troubles. She would be bewildered without consoling herself; she would distract herself without learning from her own misery; she would grow weaker while appearing to grow stronger, and soon she would no longer be able to bear that solitude so longed for.

Because the body participates in the moral fatigue that overwhelms the soul, it seems that health will deteriorate. The Mistress then, fearing that her pupil will not be able to withstand this ordeal for long, wants to maintain a health without which one cannot observe the rule. She compares the kind of life her pupil led in the world with the sedentary life of the cloister, and thinks too soon that she must provide him with occupations which bring her closer to those of her past. It is a great error, in a life which must be supernatural, to judge by human prudence. Nature is carried there; but grace must overcome it: "The cell which one leaves little becomes 'gentle,' says the author ofImitation of Jesus Christ; frequently neglected, it breeds boredom. If from the first moment when you leave the century you are faithful to keep her, she will become a dear soul to you and your sweetest consolation. »

This is the principle that the Mistress must establish in her novitiate. From the very first days of the entry of a postulant, she could not repeat it too often. Let her not be frightened by the loss of her health, and let her reassure herself about that. If God calls his pupil to the life of Carmel, he will give him the strength to accomplish it. If she cannot remain alone without her health declining, it is proof that she does not have the vocation. Should we therefore compose a religion which would no longer be the Carmel, or else remove from it a soul which will only be good for altering its true spirit? Ah! that we don't waver: that we give her back the freedom she needs; and that this primitive rule which makes the beauty of Carmel and the glory of the Church be allowed to subsist in all its vigor.

The Mistress must remember here what we said at the beginning of this little work, that she must not boast to the novice of the happiness of solitude as a consolation, at a time when she seems to her a martyrdom. On the contrary, let her show him that the Carmelite must immolate herself everywhere, and that the solitary soul more surely attains the goal of God in her vocation, when separated, for her love, from all creatures, she still does the sacrifice of heavenly consolations. That it is there, in this small cell, that the victim must be consumed; there that she can unite herself to Our Lord exiled on earth, and redeem the universe with him. Destined to continue the mission of the divine Master, she should not want to cut off a single minute of her sacrifice, nor avoid what makes her feel it more. Finally, may she urge him not only to endure solitude, but also to return to it with a good heart, with a view to always giving to God, without ever demanding anything other than the happiness of losing everything for his love.

Let the Mistress be careful not to flatter her novice with the thought of another future. Let her not say to him: You will not always be alone; the day will come when you will have distracting jobs and things like that. This would make him consider his vocation too humanly, and from a point of view which should never fix a soul destined to live on earth like the angels in heaven.

Let her tell her rather that the vocation of Carmel commits her to a contemplative life, that this contemplative life is not what she may have imagined up to then; that it is at first obscure and distressing, as our Father Saint Jean-de-la-Croix admirably explains. Consequently, one of the first marks of a vocation having to be this love of the solitary and contemplative life, it must be possible to recognize it in a novice all the time preceding her profession. So let her know that, despite all the trouble she finds there, all the annoyances she devours there, all the fatigue that overwhelms her, God will give her the strength to get used to it if she is faithful. If he does not give it to her despite this fidelity, or if she does not have the courage to overcome the obstacles she encounters, we must conclude that it is not proper to our Holy Order.

Another very dangerous pitfall, especially in houses that are few in number or loaded with old and infirm people, is wanting to employ the talents of a novice too early. There are some who come from the world knowing how to get their hands on everything. Accustomed to running a household, to doing all kinds of work, even to commanding, nothing is difficult for them; and one is happy to use them as soon as they enter the house.

I have always seen our former mothers carefully avoid giving any employment to novices. They kept telling us that they didn't need us, that they knew where we were, and that they would call us when they wanted to. They were very keen that we completely ignore everything that was going on in the house. All they promised the young people who presented themselves was a cell and silence. They received several who were no less than thirty years old, accustomed to being consulted at home like oracles, and who would certainly have fulfilled the offices of the house with all the intelligence and activity of the best trained officers. To these, even more than to others, they were exact in giving nothing but sewing in their cell, and in reprimanding them severely when they interfered in the slightest thing. If nature was broken by it, grace took a marvelous increase in these souls, and later they felt the value of such wise conduct.

Besides, the way of acting in the world is not that of religion. A novice who is employed too early carries everywhere an activity, an authority which is no longer in season. She wants to do everything as she pleases, and changes things without scruple when she doesn't find them to her liking. Poverty and obedience, for which she is not yet formed, do not always guide her. The religious spirit is altered in the whole house; the novice is distracted, becomes completely exterior, and if she feels less boredom, less fatigue by spreading herself out of her cell in this way, her soul receives great damage. The grain of wheat does not die and it remains alone, not in this solitude which destroys in order to revive, but alone without producing anything.

There is not in this soul the intimate union with God, which is its strength and its safety. Nature is always inclined to act. If we favor it. it takes over and weakens grace. Our way of life is made to tame nature; let us not therefore prevent the salutary effect which it must produce on the souls who embrace it, by applying them to other duties and to other cares than that of dying continually to themselves in order not to act only by the movement of grace. The day will come when this novice, formed by skilful hands, hidden and forgotten in the depths of a cell, will be all the more useful to her monastery, the better she will have learned to know and feel her personal uselessness. When she will have become indifferent to all employments, and will have understood well that everything is nothing in religion, except to live the life of God, she will be able to come out of her solitude, not to satisfy nature, but to offer a new sacrifice; for the soul which has tasted the charm of our nothing consents to become something solely by obedience and by a spirit of abnegation.

Then, solitary everywhere, she will carry the spirit of solitude in the midst of the most dissipating occupations. His Mistress did not have to limit her Instructions to teaching him to remain in his cell. To this lesson must be added another no less important one: that of knowing how to find God everywhere and remain with him alone in the depths of one's soul, even when everything takes us outside. It is precisely during the days of the novitiate, during those first and precious years which follow profession, that a soul learns to become truly religious, and lays the foundations of the high perfection to which it is called.

The Mistress of Novices must carefully observe whether, in the love of solitude, there is not mixed up that certain melancholy humor which our holy Mother Thérèse orders to be pursued with great vigilance; if there is not, in the character of her novice, a kind of misanthropy, a proud disdain for the company of the sisters, a kind of piety or exaggerated recollection, which make her believe that leaving her cell, although by obedience or by charity, it is to lose the interior spirit and to dissipate the goods which it had to acquire there; if finally she ceases to believe herself a Carmelite or to be able to become one, because her Prioress gives her a job which forces her to act outside. A virtue that depends on jobs and circumstances is not a solid virtue. A love of solitude which depends on character and natural humor does not make a solitary soul.

It is therefore necessary that the novice be able to know all these pitfalls, in order to avoid them; to keep out of the enjoyments of solitude, as well as its desolations; to seek God and to flee; in a word, to become quite indifferent to what they want to do with her. Alas! despite our best efforts, this indifference is not in the feeling in a stable way. When we think we are closer to it, we find ourselves, in a thousand circumstances, attached to such and such a thing, and we are forced to recognize that we hold on to everything that we thought we had given. But at least let the will attach itself to God alone and to his good pleasure, despite the revolts of nature.

A novice, on leaving the novitiate, must, as a consequence of the education she will have received there, always tend to remain alone with God alone, close her eyes to everything that is not him, know also, at the least signal of obedience, to leave his dear solitude and find in his heart the God who fixes and fills him. She must be able to hear her Beloved say to her, as to the Holy Spouse, in all places and in all jobs: Come into the holes of the stone and into the caverns of the wall, and that she be able to answer with the prophet: "I have taken the wings of the dove, and I have made my dwelling and my rest in solitude." »

CHAPTER XI

The mistress of novices must choose with great care the suitable readings for her pupils.

There are Mistresses who would believe that they were leading their novices out of the ordinary line, if they let them read anything other than the elementary works of beginners, and who, without discerning the action of grace in souls, force them to apply to what sometimes hinders this divine action.

There are others who, too independent of general principles, want to reduce everything to their particular views, submit everything to their sway, and disdainfully dismiss the books which are for the instruction of novices, for which they substitute without choice and indiscriminately those who deal with the highest spirituality. The first virtue of a Mistress is discretion; and this discretion should guide everything: for without it there are pitfalls to be feared everywhere.

To avoid these various pitfalls as much as possible, the Mistress of Novices must distinguish between what is for the instruction of her pupils and what is for the particular needs of their souls. She would do well first of all to give them simple and instructive books which deal directly with the principles of religious life. She will let them know the point of exaction, the direction of the novices, etc. It will be able to give them to read in particular the Christian Perfection, of Rodriguez, and other similar books, making them account with simplicity of the effect which they produce on their spirit and their heart, and of the fruit which they draw from them. It will be good if she makes them read again what has a direct relationship with the life and the mysteries of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the report that the novices will then make to their Mistress on these different readings, she must not prevent them from simply stating their thoughts; she will soon distinguish. by their confessions, if the disgust they have for their reading or the judgment they pass on it, is in them a continuation of the spirit of the world, or if really the present need of their soul would demand something else.

There are proud and arrogant minds who have read indiscriminately in the world all sorts of works on the spiritual life; who even seem to understand them, But make no mistake: it is their natural intelligence that penetrates the theory of the sublime ways of the inner life. What they have not understood is that it is the mortification of nature that leads to practice. To such souls, we must not be afraid to present the little catechism, as our Father Saint John of the Cross did to a gentleman of good family. You have to make sure they read the small catechism, if they need it, and everything you give them, and not be afraid to tame their spirit and break their pride.

But a soul in which God has already acted powerfully, and on which the divine action becomes daily stronger and yet more obscure, which finds itself reduced to that state of desolation and anguish for which there is no neither heaven nor earth; where the will as if benumbed seems unable to produce any act; where the mind, surrounded by thick clouds, no longer understands anything about the practice of the virtues; where the whole soul seems to distance itself from all that is good, and to have no inclination except to follow a nature that everything breaks and destroys from the very first steps it takes in the cloister; how to impose a single genre of reading on that one? How to force her out of this obscure path in which God holds her, by trying to make her see, by such a reading, what the divine Master does not yet want to reveal to her? Should we reproach her for not being flexible enough in obedience, for not being satisfied with the reading given to her, while in vain she tried to understand it and profit from it?

The Mistress of Novices must, on the contrary, listen to these souls with gentleness, in order to discern what is going on in them. This is how she herself will receive more lights for their direction. Then she can, depending on the state in which they find themselves, give them to read a few passages from the works of our Father Saint Jean-de-la-Croix or our Saint Mother Thérèse, and accustom them to reading only what she will itself have indicated and permitted. His pupil must give him an exact account of the effect that this kind of reading will have produced on his soul. So that she will always be subject to obedience; and she will thus avoid, in the choice of her reading, a liberty which is always harmful to a novice.

La Nuit Obscure de notre Père Saint Jean-de-la-Croix has marvelously supported souls who, plunged long before in these hidden paths of interior life, believed themselves to be on the brink of their loss, and did not find in the other books of piety than means contrary to their present needs. The works of Father Grou dilate and strengthen the heart. Bossuet's Letters, his Meditations on the Gospel, his admirable discourse on the Act of Abandonment to God and on the Hidden Life, as well as the Elevation on the Mysteries, are so many works that souls always enjoy with fruit. raised and holy taken from the love of truth and eternal wisdom.

The Mistress of Novices must therefore take serious care in choosing the various readings capable of helping and supporting her students. But she must also carefully avoid another pitfall: that of listening too much to their reluctance and allowing them too easily to give up reading a book she has chosen for them. Independently of what we have said in relation to the special need of the soul, there are knowledge to be acquired in the religious life. It is good for novices to instruct themselves in their duties, to read certain works in full, and not to believe themselves obliged to always be guided by the feeling or the impression they receive from them.

One must not believe that a reading is good only when it moves the sensibility of the soul. If it is needed to nourish the heart and reach that inner depths which need nourishment, it is also needed which enlightens the mind and forms it according to the designs of God and the will of superiors. Thus, in giving a novice a work deemed suitable for her, the Mistress must demand that she read it completely, and even accept the trouble it may give her.

Let us therefore say that in this as in all things, it is discretion that should guide those who show others the paths to perfection. Without it, the means become obstacles. On the one hand, the heart which never nourishes itself with a reading which conforms to its needs dries up; on the other hand, the novice who always wants to choose what suits her, and not stick to what is prescribed to her, becomes independent; her own spirit governs and deceives her. May she therefore obey, she must, but may she who leads her descend to the depths of her soul and understand these words of our holy Constitutions: "Good reading is as necessary to the soul as food is to the body. »

CHAPTER XII

The mistress of novices must take the greatest care to lead her students in the ways of prayer, according to their attraction and the scope of the grace received.

How dare I talk about a subject so difficult, so high, so important in the life of a Carmelite? Others have done it with more light and more authority. Besides, didn't our Blessed Mother foresee everything, explain everything in matters of prayer? So what can I add to it? However, I have seen so many souls suffer as a result of the direction they had received in the ways of prayer; I have seen so many others persist in following not the divine attraction, but their own will, that I cannot help saying, in a few words, what I understand of the duties of a Mistress. novices on such an important subject.

She must first demand from her pupils the preparation for this holy exercise. But it is here that, with certain souls, principles that are too rigorous or too exclusive will never succeed. Let her confine herself to making them understand that this preparation tends to dissipate the dust of the earth, which during the day has obscured their eyes; that this precious moment resembles that when courtiers, who request an audience with the king, wait in an antechamber for the moment of being introduced. Let it simplify the idea of ​​this duty; let her reduce him to this sole end: to prepare his heart, collect his spirit to empty himself of himself, and open his soul to the gentle influences of grace.

For some, the Mistress will be able to use with fruit the methods, the forecasts of what can be occupied in the time of prayer. For others, with the same principles, it would reverse what God wants to establish. When she sees laziness, negligence or presumption in her pupil, let her use the wise precautions indicated in the books which treat of prayer, and let her see to it that they are done, a little violence is needed to subject oneself to it. When she distinctly perceives the action of God, let her respect it and make her pupil respect it. Then, to make room for this divine action, it will ask the soul to lead silence with all its powers, a calm disposition to listen to it, an absolute dependence on its movements. May she teach them not to let the smallest impression pass, the slightest ray of light, without surrendering faithfully to what she tastes.

We understand that she does not suffer from this levity or this false humility which does not want to see the grace and thus exposes the soul which receives it to leave it fruitless. But while recommending to him fidelity to grace, let it teach him to be wary of his imagination, whose operations tend easily to simulate those of God.

This is what the Mistress of Novices must do to assist the divine work in souls; whether it is a professed or a novice, or a postulant whom she leads. It is not for her to trace a course of grace: she has only to observe what this grace does in souls and to assist it. Will it be necessary, because a young person is only entering Carmel, to lead her as a child, if God is already giving her the bread of the strong? Should we confuse exterior conduct with the work of God, and bring back down to earth that whose conversation is in Heaven? This is the error; this is the source of desolation for many souls, and perhaps one of the causes of their discouragement and of the retrograde steps they take in the ways of God.

What the Mistress must require of a postulant, whatever the scope of the grace she has received, is humility, obedience, unfailing simplicity; it is that she never shows outside what she feels inside. Let her make him understand that the closer we come to God, the more we must be annihilated in ourselves, indulgent towards others and faithful to all our duties.

But if proper activity is to be feared, so is laziness. The Mistress of novices, while preserving them from the two pitfalls that we have just mentioned, must still observe if they do not devote themselves to a certain contemplation of the imagination, which is only an amusement and which resembles more a dream than a dream. in prayer. It is found above all in weak, sensitive souls, eager for consolation, and whose imagination sees or thinks it sees everything it wants. I have heard people of very ordinary virtue tell me of those long spiritual reveries, in which there were visions, revelations, ecstasies, etc., in which one recognized nothing true, nothing solid; and if there was not a manifest deception, even if there was something of God mingled with it, there was at least more natural than supernatural: and certainly the fruit of it was not profitable to these souls. .

The Mistress of Novices must withdraw her pupils from that species of idle contemplation in which the soul, buried as in a half-sleep or in vague considerations, remains, so to speak, with folded arms in complete inaction, without performing a single act. of some virtue, without ever coming to anything practical. She must advise them, in order to shake their souls, to converse with Our Lord, to really speak to him, as if they saw him there present before them, to ask him for his love, humility, knowledge of themselves. themselves, the ever deeper understanding and ever greater esteem for their vocation. By these means the soul will emerge from its idleness, and arrive at something positive and practical.

The Mistress of Novices must avoid any system in her way of acting. Thus, as we indicated at the beginning of this chapter, it should no more lead its pupils to confine themselves to a method than to reject it without examination; but she must also, in studying their ways and the extent of their grace, not measure them by the number of years or days they have spent in religion.

There is still a delicate point which has deceived learned men in the direction of our holy Mother Thérèse herself. It is certain that one of the marks of good prayer is the practice of the virtues, and, in general, it is prudent to distrust a soul which seems advanced in this holy exercise, to receive particular graces in it, and which nevertheless does not correct itself for the faults with which it is reproached.

However, God is above the rules of which his divine wisdom is itself the author; he sometimes grants special graces to souls whose conduct is by no means in harmony with these celestial favours. He has secrets that he does not want us to penetrate; his condescension for the souls of his choice is infinite like his love. He raises them up to himself, and lets them fall back almost at the same time into deep misery. Their will, weak and variable, lets itself be carried away, in prayer, by the force of grace, and succumbs a moment later to the slightest temptation. Is their state an illusion? Woe to the Mistress who boldly pronounces it! She would break this soul without making it perfect; she would thwart the plan of mercy, patience and love by which God proposes to make her perhaps another Thérèse.

Because why hide it? Our Blessed Mother, overwhelmed by the most extraordinary graces, could not make up her mind for a long time to give up conversations that she knew were displeasing to God. This is where our mind gets lost, this is where our proud reason does not want to enter, and this is too often the cause of the lack of indulgence that a Mistress of Novices has for certain souls whom God wants to humiliate deeply, and for whom the bitter memory of their ingratitude will later be the surest preservative against vain complacency in their own beauty.

We cannot therefore repeat it too often, the essential point, and so to speak unique, in the conduct of souls, is to observe in which direction grace pushes them. Prayer being the basis of the spiritual edifice, it must be done according to the way in which God wants to introduce a soul. If the Mistress of Novices has understood that it is not up to her to fix the progress of her pupil, and that she only has to direct her in her path, she will not hinder the work of God. .

It must first apply itself to distinguishing whether God leads this soul by an ordinary grace, or whether he has introduced it into a supernatural life. In the first case, she has more to work on the heart of her novice. She must also excite her activity, awaken her fervor, sustain her vigilance, demand certain efforts to second grace and see the practical fruit she derives from her prayer. She must not easily permit her to abandon the subject she has proposed to meditate on. There too it can require preparations, resolutions according to the method, taking care that laziness and idleness do not mingle in a prayer where God wants sustained work.

But as soon as she perceives a supernatural conduct, she must no longer act and judge by ordinary principles. She will generally find a great hesitation in the souls whom God himself wants to lead, a need and at the same time a fear of not acting, a reluctance to enter headlong into the dark paths of abandonment. And yet if, instead of encouraging her novice herself to fear nothing, and of trying to make her produce distinct acts, she leads her to make reflections that God seems to forbid her, she will disturb her, tire her. uselessly, and, thus bringing a foreign hand into the divine work, it will shake the foundations of the edifice that God wanted to establish in this soul by living faith and pure love.

It is in this prayer that God, absolute master of his creature, leads her, directs her without her knowing anything about it, and introduces her into the depths of his secrets. This is where it is so important for her not to resist, but to always acquiesce in God's action, even when she may not always understand it. This is the lesson that a wise Mistress must never stop teaching her pupil. But by supporting her in the night of the ordeal, she must also teach her to take advantage of the lights and the consolations which are found on the way, without attaching her heart to them, and also without believing herself lost when the darkness returns.

There is a most serious advice to give to these souls: it is that their prayer should hold them before God in a profound abasement, instead of nourishing their self-esteem. This is what an experienced Mistress will work for. Is it not, in fact, because we are weak that God makes himself our strength? Is it not to show us that there is nothing in us that is worthy of him, that he causes our own action to cease in a sensible way in order to substitute his own? Is it not still in an extraordinary prayer that the soul needs to keep itself in humble dependence on God? For if, ceasing for a moment to recognize what she is, she appropriated to herself the completely gratuitous favors with which he delights to enrich her, this jealous God would withdraw from her and would leave her to share only misery and poverty. impotence for the good.

This soul must learn not to despise those who do not walk the same way. These work for God and gain admission into his familiarity only by bearing the weight of the day and the heat. They earn, so to speak, their bread by the sweat of their brow; and if God has lesser plans for them, if he gives them less, he will also demand less. Their path is surer, and their account will be less formidable. There are many mansions in the house of the heavenly Father, each must stay in his own, without complacency or without envy, and think that what makes merit is not the gifts of God that one receives, but the fidelity that one brings to it; and often the souls which are best treated remain the poorest and become the most ungrateful. If the Mistress of Novices is convinced of this truth, it will not be difficult for her to instill it in the minds of her students, and to lead them, with the greatest simplicity and far from any system, in the way where God called. But while holding them in contempt of themselves, she will expand their hearts, removing all constraint from them, letting them rest gently in the Heart of their Master, and learn from him what she herself will have often perhaps and for a long time taught without success.

I will say no more about the differences that are found in souls led to supernatural prayer. It is not for me to indicate this discernment. I am silent before the mysteries that God works in souls. His divine light will never be lacking in a Mistress of Novices who totally ignores her own spirit to follow the movement of the Holy Spirit. She will also do well to nourish herself with the admirable doctrine of our Blessed Father Saint John of the Cross. Let her read and reread her dark night, it is there that she will learn not to be astonished at anything, to reassure her pupils in the days of trial, to keep them lowered in the depth of their nothingness, when God raises them up to himself and makes them enter the cellars of his love. I will only point out that the Bride does not say what is entry in these divine cellars, but that the Bridegroom has introduced. Ah! this favor is therefore the work of the Master! It is by preparing the way for him and letting him do it that we will put the Beloved in the position of being led by him into this mystical cellar of divine love, where, intoxicated with its delights, she will be able to add: He ordered charity in Me.

I cannot end this chapter without saying a word about an inconvenience which stops or diverts more than one soul from the path of prayer. It is that, always eager to know what is going on inside them, and. to acquire, on the truth of their way, a certainty that God is pleased to refuse them, the novices, seizing on the fly all the advice of the extraordinary confessors, believe themselves obliged, especially during the retreats, to expose everything afresh their manner of prayer, consult on it, and too often receive advice which retards their progress and hinders their way.

It is up to the Mistress of Novices to protect them against a danger of which they are unaware. It would be good if she possessed their confidence enough to be always consulted for these sorts of overtures. It must avoid, it is true, hampering them in the communications they may have with the confessors; but she must point out to them, both in general and in particular, the inconveniences which result from this ease in asking advice on matters already decided upon.

When a confessor or a superior presents himself who can do real good for these young souls, the Mistress of Novices must encourage them to communicate their interior to these enlightened men whom God deigns to send sometimes. She herself must desire that the direction she gives them be confirmed by such decisions. But these decisions once given, why consult again and always come back to the same thing, especially when you are not sure of the direction of the one to whom you are confiding? There are priests, religious even of great sanctity, who understand nothing of the spirit of Carmel, and who, moreover, want to gain a certain sway over a soul at the first overture it makes to them. That's when you have to challenge yourself and know how to keep quiet. Blessed is the novice whose heart is open to her who directs her, and who submits to her advice which seems to contradict that which she gives her! Blessed is the supple soul, docile to the action of grace, which follows the way without asking so often what is going on in it, and which, humbly adoring the designs of the Lord, consents not to penetrate what infinite Wisdom wants to steal from his knowledge!

The Mistress of Novices must not forget to give her students a very important lesson which is generally little understood by young people: it is that perfection does not depend on the mode of our prayer. We have seen souls, as our holy Mother Thérèse says, on the way to perfection, who have risen to a very great perfection in the way of a common prayer. We have seen others who seemed to be raised to the third heaven, and who have unfortunately fallen from such a sublime state. There are still some who, receiving much light, experiencing many sensible touches of grace in their prayer, are nevertheless the weakest in practice. Let it not be forgotten, then, that perfection is measured by the degree of charity, and not by the manner in which a soul deals with God in prayer. Now, the soul can love him ardently and truly in a common prayer. She can love him in simple meditation as well as in contemplation, in an active or passive state. The essential point is that she make her prayer according to the will of God; let it be him she is looking for there, and not herself.

CHAPTER XIII

The mistress of novices must teach her pupils to distinguish the true expansion of the heart from the false freedom to act according to one's own views.

Everywhere there are precautions to take and pitfalls to avoid. A direction which constrains the heart crushes the whole soul, and by this constraint almost always throws it out of its way. It is therefore necessary to dilate this heart by divine love, and thus make it capable of receiving all the touches of grace. But in this expansion so necessary to the perfect life, so indispensable to Carmel, one still finds something to be mistaken, and without the wise discretion which regulates all things, one can go too far and get lost. Thus, new souls who have a natural thirst for freedom nevertheless decide to chain it under the yoke of religion, and are disposed to do nothing by themselves by submitting to obedience. But if, without explaining to them in what the dilatation of the heart consists, it is shown to them as opposed to embarrassment and constraint, they will eagerly grasp this doctrine, which they will adapt to the form of their mind; and they will act almost in everything according to this misapplied principle: Our Mistress does not want us to act under duress.

According to this, they will not distinguish what is of regular discipline, and what can, by observing itself to the letter, agree with a full latitude of heart. They will leave the letter which kills, without having the spirit which vivifies. And if a prioress or a former sister, surprised to see abuses introduced into the novitiate against which we had to protest, shows them the way in which we should act, they are troubled and surprised. They are immediately drawn together, and have a thousand temptations against the old ones or the Prioress herself. Disregarding our holy practices, they will appeal to all small-mindedness, smile with pity when they see the precision of a sister in letting nothing be lost, out of a spirit of poverty, in placing the objects in the place indicated, to light or extinguish a lamp at the precise moment marked by obedience; or else they will say to themselves, and will testify on occasion that one loses oneself in minutiae, that all this constricts the heart and tires the mind, and that if one does not expand them further, they will not be able to stick to it.

It is up to the Mistress of Novices to make them understand that the true expansion of the heart, being entirely contained in these words of Saint Augustine: "Love, and do whatever you want," it does not diminish the exactness of lower observances; that nature must in everything be subjugated and restrained; that the smallest practices, the smallest prescriptions of obedience are to be respected; that the dilated heart does everything out of love, and that in it is fulfilled this word: The truth will deliver you, and you will be truly free. But free because the soul serves God voluntarily, and he himself, spreading himself so to speak in all the faculties of this soul, lifts it up, enlarges it, and does not allow it to perceive the action it is doing. , but only her God whom she serves.

For the same reason, she understands, in the divine light, that being, at the bottom of her being, misery and weakness, all her actions are necessarily marked by her fragility; that, in spite of his good will, he always slips in some faults in his way of acting, and that the scrupulous and restricted soul is disturbed, preoccupied, discouraged at the sight of his falls; while the dilated soul recognizes itself, humbles itself, and begins again with the same confidence in God, and a firmer, more enlightened, more grateful love, because it sees, in the forgiveness which is granted to it each time she falls, a new mark of the love and mercy of her divine Master.

If all the principles of direction must be explained often and carefully, that of the dilation of the heart requires particular vigilance on the part of the Mistress of Novices, in the application which will be made of them by her pupils. A young person newly entered into a monastery is usually tempted by the thought that one finds sins everywhere, and that one reproaches her, both in public and in private, for faults of which she has not even perceived herself. His pride is sometimes revolted by the punishments inflicted for a badly read lesson in the office, for a lamp knocked over, for a slight noise that escapes his vigilance. If she sees a sister disregarding these sorts of offences, she rejoices, feels prejudiced in her favor, and, concluding from this that she is an dilated soul, she approves of everything she does. , and feels very at ease in his presence, because his example promises him full indulgence for his own failings. Thence soon follows the loss of the religious spirit and a quite secular freedom to say and to do what is most convenient and conformable to the natural character.

It is therefore necessary, to prevent such abuses, that the Mistress first teaches her novice that the nun whose heart is the most dilated by divine love, is also the most exact in the smallest things; that, free in slavery, finding life in her death and joy in her sacrifice, she flies to perfection without obstacles, taking advantage of all the means offered to her, without choosing or rejecting any; that her love changes obstacles into means, and that even in her faults she still knows how to find them, so immense is her charity! so much does it rise day by day to infinity!

Yes, the dilated soul has understood that the infinite having no limits, it cannot put any itself either in its love, or in its sacrifices, or in its virtues, or in the perfection of its works. She experiences the truth of these words of the prophet: “I ran in the way of your commandments when you dilated my heart. He does not say that the dilation gave him the freedom to breach his commandments, to lessen their severity; but that he ran in their way, because God dilated his heart. The same prophet says again, in Psalm 4: "You have set me free in the midst of the tribulation." This latitude of heart therefore does not presuppose rest and freedom from pain, but peace and holy freedom of the soul in labors and trials.

A novice who misunderstands, or does not sufficiently distinguish between the freedom of the children of God and the freedom given to nature, applies to everything and out of place a principle which favors her inclinations. It is not only for the exterior, as we have already remarked, it is also for its interior direction that it calls for all constraint and constriction of heart. Does her Mistress want to show her the pitfalls she may encounter in her prayer, or to arouse her vigilance and condemn a laziness which she herself takes for divine rest? does not dilate her heart and that she can no longer pray, if her freedom is taken away. Do they give her a serious and instructive reading which, while showing her her duties, does not touch her heart and does not produce in her any emotion; it's a book that doesn't suit him, because it doesn't expand his soul. The same is true for confession and direction. She does not know how to act by faith, she does not understand that the soul dilated in God also rises above what consoles it or what hurts it, because it constantly tends to live outside itself, in a region not reached by storms.

The duty of the Mistress of Novices will therefore be to enlighten the mind of her pupil, to remove errors, to make him understand that to dilate his soul is to enlarge it, to deliver it to grace. , so that grace may raise him to God and prepare the place for his greatest favors and his perfect reign. She will tell him that the virtues support each other, far from destroying each other; that consequently the true freedom of the children of God does not harm obedience, humility, charity and other virtues; but that, on the contrary, it causes them to be practiced without scruple and with exact fidelity; that she excludes all embarrassment, because love acts in her heart which is free from all self-esteem, or at least which never favors it and immolates it unceasingly to divine love.

She will also teach him that the inner freedom of the soul does not make it act alone, but keeps it voluntarily subject to the direction of its superiors. This direction must be a support and not an unbearable yoke. The soul which grace expands does not find itself constricted by a refusal, by a correction, by a prescription of obedience; while the soul avid of a false freedom does not support anything contrary to its desires or its tastes. It is therefore evident that a novice must entirely renounce this false freedom, so easy to confuse with the dilatation of the heart, when the soul is not enlightened by a wise direction.

May all the Mistresses of Novices themselves discern well the operation of grace and that of nature, in the pupils entrusted to their care! May they dilate their hearts and prepare them for the gentle influences of grace, at the same time as they will make them practice, with the greatest exactness, all the points of the rule! May they finally, by teaching them to act out of love, lead them, for the same reason, to accomplish everything down to the last iota!

CHAPTER XIV

The mistress of novices must show her pupils that the guidance of God on their souls tends to annihilate them in order to establish his reign in them and lead them to divine union.

Everything contained in this little writing, or rather the whole life of a Carmelite, can be summed up in two words: Annihilation and Union. Yes, this great work of God in souls, this long series of temptations and trials, these sustained efforts to acquire the religious virtues, all this merges and is found in these two words so short and so profound: Annihilation of the creature, Union with the Creator.

God begins by dividing the soul, so to speak, with itself. If sometimes he attracts her by gentleness, he does not take long to break her by trial, but sometimes also, quite sure of his conquest, he delivers her to his jealousy almost at the moment when this soul has given itself to him. without division and without return, and leads her along such narrow paths, along roads so deserted and so hidden, that, quivering within herself at the entrance to the quarry, she believes she has lost everything from the first steps that she does.

We have said a few words about it in the chapters that make up this book. We will add here that the Mistress of Novices, without revealing to her pupil all that she can understand of God's plans for her, must nevertheless instruct her in this great principle of annihilation, and strengthen her by the hope of the divine union which must follow him. Let her show him her happiness in what makes her desolate. May she strive to make the faith of her pupil unshakable in days of trial, to make him a strong soul, a soul capable of supporting the Lord, of supporting, without losing courage, this sword which operates the division in her heart, and separates her from herself only to unite her more closely to the object of her love.

But also, let it not prevent trials in weaker souls. There, she must respect, so to speak, with God what does not yet lend itself to her work. She must observe with a watchful eye the nuances which distinguish the different ways in which the Lord introduces these souls. If all must separate from themselves, all must not be raised so high, all therefore will not pass through the same trials. The essential thing is to make known the goal, which, for the different degrees of grace, is however the same, because all religious souls must forget themselves and unite with God. In some, too, there is more to destroy than in others. In this there is more flexibility, more simplicity under the hand of God; in the former, more resistance, more restraint, and consequently more delay in the accomplishment of the divine work. In some the work is long, and it sometimes seems interrupted, so hidden is it; in others, on the contrary, it is active, prompt, always visible, and carries with it such an intensity of suffering, that there is reason to be surprised that the soul does not succumb to it.

What does the nature, the form, the duration of the ordeal matter? What does it even matter what design God has on the souls who are thus the object of his jealousy, provided that he achieves the ends that his infinite wisdom proposes? This is what the Mistress of Novices cannot repeat too often. There is more: she must teach her pupil that therein lies her true happiness; that everything in her must be destroyed and overturned from top to bottom, even what she believes to be best; that she must immolate to God even the gifts he has given her, and see her own destruction with gratitude, because the kingdom of God is established only on the ruins of nature and self-love .

The duty of the Mistress, in enlightening her novice, is also to support her during the time when this division which desolates her takes place within her. May she make him taste his happiness through faith. May she work to attach him to this truth of God which fixes the generous and devoted heart. May she teach her to find herself happy in proportion as grace snatches from her day by day what she thought she possessed, to bless a thousand times the divine hand which has taken upon itself a work which it does not never had the strength to undertake.

If she saw her pupil more tempted, weaker on occasions of renunciation and mortification, she should not be at all frightened. The humiliation must be deep for the edifice to be solid. There are souls to whom strong temptations suffice to reveal to them, in such a way as never to forget, what they would be without grace. There are others who understand it only through their falls; for these especially one needs a patience, a compassion which does not belie itself as long as lasts this interior purgation, so frightening for the heart which suffers it, so disgusting for that which directs it.

A morality which does not learn to let itself be annihilated and to find its joy in this very annihilation, is not according to the true spirit of Carmel. May God be everything; that her creature is nothing, and that at the cost of the hardest sacrifices: this is what the Mistress of Novices must never cease to show her students as the goal towards which they tend, as the source of peace and the most sure to glorify God.

If they are well directed and well faithful to grace, the day will come when, stripped of themselves as much as one can be on earth, these souls will contract with God that intimate union which, from this life, raise them up to him; a union which makes the soul superior to itself, and makes it see the whole earth as a point which is not worthy of the slightest regard. But if the hope of possessing such happiness inflames the desire of a novice, it is not always easy to persuade her that everything that happens in her, apparently contrary to good, nevertheless tends to lead her to it. . And it is there that the talent of the Mistress must be exercised. Once the novice is introduced to the path where God calls her, it is certain that everything that is encountered in this path tends to unite her to him. He has arranged all things in such a way as to shape her to his liking, and for this he makes use in turn of creatures, of interior trials, and of herself, by making her feel her misery, by demanding the entire sacrifice of her self-esteem and all that she thought she loved only in relation to him in the exercise of the virtues themselves.

The generous soul, when it is persuaded of these truths, desires the blows which strike it only to heal it. She asks that the hand that breaks her finish reducing her to powder, so that a new creation may be made within her. Not only does she submit to pass through the horrible shadows of the dark night, but she would not want anything missing from her immolation. It matters little to him that this division, which takes place in his whole being, lasts a long time, or that the days of trial are shortened, provided that God be glorified, provided that it is consummated in its unity, and that in it accomplishes all its purposes. This is the cry of his heart; this is his daily request.

Novices formed by such principles, and only considering in religious life this double goal of annihilation and union, will become strong souls. For these, we will not need to spare the terms, and to combine the uses which can expose them more or less to temptation. Convinced that they are nothing and can do nothing by themselves, they are ready to obey always and in everything, because their confidence is entirely in their submission and in absolute submission. They will distinguish neither abasement nor elevation, God alone is everything for them; and if sometimes nature makes itself felt, they will remember that without grace they would succumb, but that with grace they can profit even from their weakness.

A soul long tested and faithful in the trial, is happy with a happiness that consolation or pain can neither increase nor diminish. Natural sensitivity is deadened when it has been broken by the mighty hand of God. He reigns supreme in this fortunate soul. So what could happen to him? What will be able to shake her, when she can say with the holy Spouse: “My Beloved is mine, and I am his. I found it, I hold it, and I won't let it go? »

There is an error in the idea that one forms of divine union and that the Mistress of Novices must carefully remove from the minds of her students. We sometimes imagine that the divine union consists in the feeling that the soul has of it and in the sensible presence of God. It is true that when he attracts this soul through the communication of his love, he seems to approach it in an intimate and delicious way which leaves him in no doubt. But if it is there that she leans, if she judges her union according to her interior state resulting from these moments of grace, she will be easily mistaken and she will be disconcerted at the first trial.

The assured marks of the union of the soul with its God, or rather this union itself, is a perfect conformity of sight, desire, and will with the beloved object: it is a devotion so entire to the interests of his glory, that the soul consents to die to anything to procure it; to count itself for nothing. His life becomes that of Jesus Christ out of conformity and out of love. In mystical union, the soul, enamored with the charms of divine love, cries out with the holy Spouse: “My soul melted when my Beloved spoke to me. In practical union, she understands the truth of this saying: Love is strong as death. She adds with the great apostle: “Who will separate me from the charity of Jesus Christ? Will it be fire, sword, tribulation, anguish, etc. ? As for me, I am certain that present or future things, what is higher or lower, no creature can finally separate me from the charity of Jesus Christ. This is the union such as the soul can contract it in this life, if it is faithful. For that, neither tastes nor feelings are needed, but a faith based on the truth of God himself, a love which, becoming the fruit of this faith, is immutable like its object.

If God does not communicate to all souls the sweetness and charms of mystical union, he never refuses to give himself as a reward to those who seek him. This language is rarely understood by novices. They call union the moments when they feel the presence of God; and if then a wise Mistress seeks to moderate their transports, to remind them of the miseries and weaknesses that are within them, to bring back above all to practice the result of these sensitive graces, they claim that they are disturbed, that they are not not understand them, that we go through the action of God. Does it want, on the contrary, to persuade those who, strong in their will, find everywhere only trials and sacrifices, that the divine union will be the happy fruit of their labors, that God communicates himself to them in a way less consoling, but in its eternal truth: it finds them always asking God for sensible testimonies of his love; and it is only with great difficulty that they consent to find the divine union in a more obscure state.

It is therefore very essential that the Mistress of Novices understand well herself the difference which exists between the union mystical souls with God, and the union handy.

CHAPTER XV

How the mistress of novices should conduct herself with regard to their health.

The vocation to Carmel does not impose exclusive care for the interior. There must be, between the body and the soul, a certain harmony, without which one involves the other in its weaknesses and in a quite natural way of acting. We do not need good health for the happiness of enjoying it and being free from suffering; but we need a health capable of supporting the rule at the expense of nature and of all self-seeking, a health which is sustained by sacrifice, mortification, and total abandonment into the hands of God. This requires wisdom, discretion, constancy, continual vigilance, in order to discern the movements of nature and of grace, the requirements of the first and all that the second requires.

In general, young people are not able to conduct themselves according to these principles. They have false and exaggerated ideas about our way of life and about mortification. Some believe that giving everything consists in worrying so little about one's health, that neither for food nor for the harshness of the seasons, one should take any care to stay within the limits prescribed by good sense and reason. The others think that the more they mortify themselves, the better they will do; and, refusing everything from the beginning, they will fall into a state of weakness for which there will be no remedy. Let there be no denying it, it is then that they will need more relief, and that they will demand much more harmful to mortification and to the religious spirit than wise men would have been. precautions taken earlier.

Still others aspire only to make a profession, and if they then have to live in the infirmary, that is what they aspire to, in order to suffer and die as soon as possible. But what happens? It is that they do not die, and that, dragging out a languid life, they will be a burden to the community and to themselves, and will not perfect themselves, for that, as they had imagined. Belated and useless regrets will occupy them then, more than the God they had come to seek and serve.

Finally, there are young people who do not fall into these different pitfalls, who are, on the contrary, very preoccupied with their health, and do not imagine all that can be done with grace. They always judge by their repugnance, or by the fear of damaging their health, and, in a poor and penitent life, allow nature, so to speak, to govern. If they make an effort on themselves at the beginning not to appear too difficult, they do not work seriously to overcome themselves, and hardly out of the novitiate, they become like those religious of whom Rodriguez speaks, who seem not to have come in a monastery only to study medicine, and come to the point that one cannot find, either on land or in the sea, enough to satisfy them.

To avoid these pitfalls, the Mistress of Novices must first study the character of her students, see which way they feel inclined, what kind of life they have led in the world, at the beginning of their vocation to Carmel, and what attraction God gave them then. Then let her establish in her novitiate some general principles which tend to remove for ever exaggeration, false ideas, all kinds of systems, and to establish therein a solid but wise mortification. Thus, she will tell them that the health of a Carmelite is due more to her abandonment to God, to her fidelity to grace than to natural forces; that it is by a total forgetfulness of themselves, and by a wise and sustained mortification that this health is established and preserved. Then she will make them understand that they can no more dispose of their health and their life than of their actions and their will. That the goal for which they must support and preserve their strength is to be able to observe the rule to which they are going to devote themselves, to serve the community which admits them into its bosom, to help their sisters in the various tasks of common life, by enabling them to do whatever they are commanded.

According to the subjects, she will also have to recall that their health must be preserved for their own perfection; because it is very rare that one knows how to bear a habitual state of infirmity, without allowing oneself to be carried away by nature. These infirmities often come from the fact that God takes back his rights over a soul that has not been generous enough in the way of sacrifice. And if sometimes the disabled are models to follow, too often, alas! they lose the religious spirit, and cause the whole community, once regular and edifying, to lose it. Besides, good health does not imply a life free from suffering. Far from it, one can have a thousand little indispositions which serve for the immolation of each day, and which are all the more beautiful sacrifices. more meritorious, that they are perceived only by God and by the soul who offers them to him. Even so, she does not always see them herself, and after a long habit of mortification, she often believes herself to be the most delicate in the house.

The Mistress of Novices will add to these first lessons those which should guide her pupils in their way of acting for food and for all that concerns the care or contempt of their body. May she remember what our Spanish mothers used to say when they saw a novice eat with good grace and without choice whatever was served to her; they discovered in this one of the marks of his vocation. According to this principle, the Mistress of Novices must demand that her pupils accustom themselves little by little to taking a sufficient quantity of food, passing over their repugnances with generosity and persuading themselves that they can do anything with the help of God. Let her never allow a young person to say: I cannot do such and such a way; this amount of food suffocates me; I don't need to eat. A novice must obey in the refectory as elsewhere. She must believe that whatever is commanded of her is possible. She must never judge by the way she acted in the world.

It must no doubt be accustomed to it little by little, but it is necessary that it tends to feed itself properly. She must also distinguish nothing, that is to say, she must never consult her taste: and for that, she must be taught to act with supernatural views in an action so gross in appearance. Let her tell herself that everything has been prepared by an arrangement of Providence. Thus, whether the dishes are more or less salty, prepared in such and such a way, God has seen it, that is enough to close one's eyes and count on his grace.

Let novices never indulge in those delicacies that make them shiver at the sight of an insect that has fallen into what is being served to them. Let them remove it gently, without indulging in those so-called heartaches that would cause them to leave the meal.

One of the most dangerous temptations in its aftermath is never to be willing to sit down to table with the community. A novice, it is true, does not even think that she can dispense with it; but listening too much to herself, she will take only a small amount of food, and later enjoy permission to have another meal, which, instead of being a mere relief, will soon become a necessity. It will seem to her that during the hours when she is alone in the refectory, she has more of an appetite. She will perhaps prefer a piece of dry bread to the simple and poor preparations which are served to her at her meals, and will indulge without discretion to her taste; so that at the next meal she will never be ready to join the community, and consequently she will feel her repugnance increase, far from succeeding in overcoming it. This is one of those faults that a Mistress of Novices must relentlessly pursue. When it has not been cut off at the beginning, it happens that in the sequel nature has demands which lead to the ruin of the common order.

One can notice it: a nun who needs to take common meals outside the hour, and who does not take care to take advantage of this dispensation only to support her strength and not to satisfy her appetite, to supplement this that she could not take at the previous meal, and not to make a new one: this nun gradually gets into the habit of not being able to bear common food, and of having a continual need for a thousand little inventions that are cleaner to flatter the delicacy than to support the body.

I know very well that people seem to moan at this harsh necessity. We would like, it is said, to be content with common food; but one is never hungry at refectory time, and one cannot, without falling into weakness, do without other reliefs. What is there of astonishment there? Nature deceives this pretended good will; she feels a too vile continued repugnance, and when she later asks for the food she needs, she is immediately satisfied. So that she becomes mistress and takes back rights that she no longer had.

If, at the beginning, we have the generosity to forbid ourselves these small meals when we have not taken advantage of that of the community, the stomach, better prepared for the meal which must follow, will become accustomed little gradually making do with what they give him in the refectory. Besides, let it not be forgotten, the soul which gives to God receives from him a hundredfold everywhere. When one immolates a repugnance, one receives an increase in strength. When we act with a will based on faith, we can expect miracles.

The best health, in Carmel, is ordinarily that which God grants as a reward for the continual immolation of natural tastes, as well as repugnance and all delicacy. It is not uncommon to find novices so dead to themselves on this point that their only pain is to have no more mortifications to offer to the Lord in a food which at first had seemed unbearable to them.

These generous souls will drink, so to speak, the poison without being affected by it. Forgetting themselves, they often find remedies in what could inconvenience them, and always find a marvelous ease in nourishing themselves, without distinction, with all that Providence grants them.

There is still a kind of sensitivity about oneself which ruins health, if one is not careful: it is to follow the disgust and the boredom which are the natural consequence of interior sorrows, contradictions, humiliations, finally of all the little sorrows sown under the steps of the novices. They often lose sleep and appetite. If a wise Mistress does not watch them constantly in these circumstances, they persuade themselves that they cannot behave otherwise, and thus lose their strength without there being any more remedy. They must therefore be taught to overcome themselves with courage, and to overcome the demon by keeping a good countenance during meals, whatever their interior disposition; and also to be sufficiently mistresses of themselves to take their meal on the Cross and to sleep under the weight of the sacrifice; never to indulge in tears and sadness, finally to forget oneself in everything and everywhere and count oneself for nothing, even in what costs the most.

The same principles must be applied to the harshness of the seasons: be prepared to endure everything without complaining, giving as little attention as possible to what crucifies nature. The Mistress of Novices must accustom her pupils not to immediately seek relief from what inconveniences them, to drink outside of their meals only out of real necessity, to endure the first heat of summer without immediately leaving the clothes that tire them. By this means the body becomes accustomed to everything, and one does not risk one's health by becoming lighter before the time; for prudence and discretion must always direct reliefs.

This prudence must also regulate the mortifications. Thus, for example, under the pretext of agreeing nothing and of forgetting oneself, one will expose oneself without reason to making oneself ill; no precautions will be taken; one will not do what is permitted, and one will, through one's own fault, be unable to observe a rule to which one should adhere by vows. in work one will do, out of self-love, more than one can, carrying too heavy burdens, tiring oneself beyond measure, acting with an activity which comes more from nature than from grace. but at the end of a few years, one will come to be served, and, it must be said, to exercise the patience of those who will be charged with this office.

The best way to conduct yourself in hard work is to honestly mortify yourself, that is to say, to take for yourself what is most disagreeable, and not what exceeds your strength; it is to regard as trivial all that one can do that is painful to nature without exposing oneself to real harm; it is to pray to God to be our strength, to give us his spirit, so that under his immediate guidance we may always stand far from ourselves; it is to count oneself for nothing, and to draw from oneself all the profit that religion has a right to expect from it.

But as it is difficult to conduct oneself well before having acquired the wisdom and maturity which the spirit of God gives when it has taken hold of a soul, the novices must begin, above all, by practicing simplicity and obedience towards their Mistress, giving her an exact account of both their internal state and their physical state. It will be up to her to discern what reliefs are truly necessary to them; to measure the reach of grace and that of their strength; because one depends essentially on the other.

God sometimes seems to cross the limits of his wisdom with regard to certain souls, and to ask them for sacrifices which become the price of the good health he gives them. These are ill when they agree what relieves the others; and they become strong in privations and sufferings. To others, it is necessary to grant what they themselves will later sacrifice.

Finally, the Mistress of Novices must regard as one of her most important duties, to form the health of her pupils, according to the rule and the spirit of Carmel, by a life of faith and abnegation, of mortification and self-forgetfulness, without ever going beyond the bounds of moderation and the rules of prudence. May it not easily allow them to observe the fasts of the order, except when their body, already somewhat accustomed to our way of life, finds itself more fatigued by the evening meal than by the snack : only then the Mistress can delete it.

It must be the same for sleep and for every kind of mortification outside the rule. The interior martyrdom suffered by almost all novices, the difficulty they have in overcoming nature to accustom it to our way of life, are sufficient material for sacrifice for the time of their probation. Let the Mistress apply herself to making them walk with a firm step in the career that opens before them; to make of them male souls, souls who ask neither to live nor to die, who choose nothing and refuse nothing, who ask for no other kind of immolation than that which the hand of God has designated for them in the rule that they want to follow, and in the interior life that he outlines for them, souls finally which will be the consolation and the glory of Religion, and which prove to a proud and sensual world, that the humble bure of Carmel and the coarse food that is served there, produce, on its happy children, the same effect as the vegetables which were requested by the three young people of Babylon, whom the king wanted to fatten meats of his table.

Yes, it is in this solitude that these words of the divine Master are verified: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is no longer the force of nature that sustains, it is the life of Jesus Christ, it is his grace, it is his love. The soul whose conversation is in Heaven no longer concerns itself with the care of its body, and abandons itself to God and to Religion. But in this happy indifference, it takes on new vigor every day. And if God in his adorable designs sends her infirmities which she has not procured for herself, he will give her a new grace, and she will show, in sickness, the virtue which she will have acquired in health.

May this little writing help the Mistresses of Novices a little to understand how essential it is to direct their students towards this single goal: to seek God and to forget oneself; to make it reign in them over the ruins of their self-esteem; to unite with him by the most perfect annihilation; in a word, to reduce everything to the simplicity of the whole of God so admirably explained by our Father Saint John of the Cross!

Oh my God ! how dare I trace this plan of perfection, I who have not yet taken the first step in these paths so beautiful that your love has shown to the souls who seek you? I poured out my heart and my desires in your presence. May you, Lord, draw your glory from it! And if what I have written does not deserve to serve others, I desire that these pages be thrown into the fire before anyone can read them.

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