The Prioress Guide

Thoughts on the Charge of Prioress
in the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Useful work for superiors of other religious communities

By Reverend Mother ***
New Maison Périsse Frères in Paris - Régis Ruffret and C^e, successors - Paris / Brussels 1870.

FIRST CHAPTER

Estimate of the Prioress' charge.

Who is the Prioress who has fully understood what true greatness she is clothed with, when God deigns to entrust to her the souls he cherishes the most and the charge of preparing a dwelling place for him in them?

He established him in his holy house as a watchful sentinel. He says to him, in a way: Whoever listens to you listens to me, Whoever despises you despises me. So there she is, in this sense, another Jesus Christ. What to conclude from this? That she must, from this moment, no longer consider herself, but consider the authority of God in her, forget herself, despise herself, disappear, but always respect in herself this divine mission by which she is established as the interpreter of God, as his voice, his organ, another himself.

Saint John Chrysostom says that God cannot give us a greater mark of his love than by entrusting us with the care of souls. And that is what must be considered, and not his own misery and weakness, always so disproportionate to functions of such a high kind.

If one sees oneself in the exercise of an office, who will be so reckless as to dare to enter it? But if we are convinced that our miseries and our imperfections do not prevent God from acting in us, we will no longer regard ourselves as the simple instrument of his marvels.

Alas! the choice of a community falls on us because God wills it, and not because of our own merit. Therefore, the more we are detached from ourselves, the more we will respect the designs of God; the more one will be astonished to be associated with him in a ministry so dear to his heart; in a ministry which enables us to discover in the depths of souls something of what God himself sees there. Oh! with what respect and what holy trembling must we not lift the veil which hides in them the mysterious operations of grace! What esteem must be made of these hours destined for the direction of souls! And could he ever mix anything human in such sublime functions?

This is why the Prioress must consider her office as having to raise it so high, not according to the views of nature, but according to the views of faith. As to Saint Peter, the divine Master said to him: Feed my lambs, feed my sheep; and if formerly, like this Apostle, she had the misfortune to go astray, like him too she must give Jesus Christ this mark of love and repentance: work to strengthen her brothers. She is chosen to form souls who make up the noblest portion of the flock of Jesus Christ, souls destined to support the Church, to show the world that the most evangelical perfection is still to be found on earth; that poverty, humiliation and contempt are a glory of which they are proud; that the sublime virtue which makes them like angels is dearer to them than all the affections for which the heart of man is so avid, and that divine love has the power to fill theirs and to satisfy it to the end. 'infinity ; that renunciation of their own will sets them free in the true liberty of the children of God, and that they prefer the chains of obedience to kingdoms and thrones; that the cross, which was a scandal to the Jews and madness to the Gentiles, becomes by the free and voluntary choice that they make of it, their most beautiful heritage, and that they know how to accomplish in themselves what is lacking in the passion of Christ.

If it is true that this life is a problem for the man of the world, it is also true that it can only be established in the religious soul by a miracle of grace. But this grace must be seconded by wise direction: and if a Prioress does not sufficiently understand the true greatness of her vocation, if, too occupied with the weight of her burden, she does not consider it from her true point of view, she will never will not have that male courage, that strength, similar to that of the martyrs, which she must communicate to others.

So let her not stop at the mere sight of her weakness and her obligations: let her raise her thoughts higher: let her understand that a mortal creature can never be capable of teaching perfection and to lead souls to God, who is their center: that in a word, by forming a just idea of ​​the burden imposed on it, it conceives a true and deep esteem for it, and that it is convinced that God alone must always guide his hand, move his mind and his heart, and use it according to his good pleasure.

CHAPTER II

The load considered relative to the lower ones.

It is not rare to hear a newly elected Prioress lamenting the burden imposed on her, the loss of her freedom, the happiness of a simple nun. She thinks of her cross, speaks of her cross, only sees her cross. She likes to be pitied by those whom she must govern. She groans about the choice that has been made of her, and speaks willingly of the resistance she has brought to it. All of this should, it seems, be between God and her.

What should preoccupy her, if she knows herself well, is the cross which is imposed on her inferiors by her election; for we certainly have many faults, and it is easier to complain of those of others than to understand what our own make them suffer.

A Prioress, therefore, who will bear witness, without affectation, to the pain she feels at what her community will have to suffer under her government, already disposes people's minds in her favor and places herself in the humility which is always appropriate, and which is so necessary in the elevation. It is true that this feeling must come from the heart. And how could it not be found in a soul which has reflected, by the brightness of the light of God, on its inexhaustible fund of miseries; who must feel his inability to fulfill such a charge; and who, if she has a little knowledge of the human heart, can be quite sure that she does not please all her nuns?

Our Blessed Mother has found minds prejudiced against her. All the saints have encountered them. There are some whose merit has never been universally recognized. Our Lord himself has been blamed and contradicted in his conduct. A Prioress therefore, were she an angel, will certainly be an occasion of pain to some of her daughters, perhaps to all of them in certain circumstances. There is in our character an inevitable opposition with other characters which are completely contrary to it: and this is what serves to give us exercise.

Besides, the demon always tempts the inferiors against their Superior. He has too much interest in disuniting them not to employ all his malice there. Haven't we ourselves experienced feelings contrary to obedience? Hasn't one found in his own judgment a thousand reasons to condemn such and such a measure taken by a Prioress? Haven't we even sometimes felt a certain disgust for all his actions, for his way of commanding and acting? Finally, in the course of the trials of religious life, have there ever been those moments when authority seemed to us an unbearable yoke, when our greatest cross was in our relations with our Prioress, some holy that she was? Why hide from yourself that you can become yourself, for others, a subject of sorrows similar to those that you have had to suffer through this terrible ordeal?

It is not a question, in such a case, of discerning whether one is right or wrong, of seeing if it is not prejudice in the lower, and thus of seeking to justify oneself in one's own eyes. It is better to recognize in this a particular disposition of Providence, to which we must acquiesce in this as in everything. One must know how to resign oneself to being a cross for the sisters whom one esteems and whom one loves, if God so permits, without distressing oneself beyond measure, without worrying, without eagerly seeking to regain good graces. of those who are displeased. For that, once again, it is necessary to know oneself, and to regard oneself as a dead instrument that the divine Master uses according to his will, to console or desolate a soul which is dear to him and which he wishes to purify.

Without a doubt, we do not see at a glance what experience shows little by little. But there is, at the moment when one receives the charge, a general sacrifice to be made for the future, by accepting the morality of this cross which one is destined to make others bear: a certainty which must moderate the complaints that we feel inclined to do for ourselves. We then understand the indispensable need for a Prioress to no longer concern herself with herself, to count herself for nothing from the first steps she takes in the career that God traces for her, to devote herself to her daughters, to to sympathize with their weaknesses, and to believe that they will do much by putting up with her and obeying her. May she then unite with her divine Saviour, posed as a goal of contradiction, and considered as the reproach of the people whom he came to redeem and save.

Alas! can we say that we have correctly understood this thought, I hold the place of God, if this thought does not establish in our soul the sight of the contrast which exists between God and his creature, between light and darkness, between misery human and the holiness of God? What dose of faith do religious souls need to always recognize, through the weakness and imperfection of a creature, the greatness and authority of God! This must never be forgotten by those who command, so that their humility may be an example that never ceases to encourage those who obey them.

God delights to dwell in humble and exhausted souls, who, deeply convinced of their miseries and of their powerlessness to do good, have unceasing recourse to his goodness and expect everything from him. It is in them that he profusely pours out the gifts of his grace and his love: and he thus makes them less unworthy to be his representatives on earth.

Moreover, it must not be concealed that, even involuntarily, the inferiors know how to distinguish in their Prioress what comes from the spirit of God or from her own spirit. Nothing attracts them like the marks of the divine spirit in her who is at their head. They then bend easily to her slightest wishes and to what she demands most contrary to their inclinations. Nothing, on the contrary, repels them like the marks of one's own spirit in a Prioress. How many temptations and battles are they not exposed to, when they see her seize, so to speak, the power to oppress them, or at least concern herself only with herself, and not understand what her defects can make them suffer!

Let us therefore complain to God, in moments of solitude and prayer, of the weight of the load; but beyond that, never make others feel what they make us suffer; and let them sometimes glimpse that we ourselves feel the burdens that we are

forced to impose on them. May they always see in us the conviction of our personal weakness, united to that strength which comes from God, and which makes the authority of a Prioress firm, invariable, respectable, without causing her to lose the humble distrust must have a mortal creature in an angelic function.

CHAPTER III

Resolutions to be taken by a newly elected Prioress.

The Prioress must apply herself first of all to distinguishing what is due to the obligations of her office, and also what could become a habit in her house subject to many abuses. She should never take advantage of the freedom that the office seems to give her in certain respects, to distance herself from the spirit of the rule and the practices of religious life. For that, she must constantly say to herself: if I were a simple nun, what would I do in this circumstance? If she is in good faith, her conscience will always answer her without deceiving her, and if she is faithful, she will see that, apart from the exercise of her office, there is a crowd of occasions, constantly reviving, where nature would abuse the rights that the office would seem to be able to give him.

How many interior mortifications of the will, of the senses, of all the powers of the soul one can offer to the Lord, without anyone suspecting it! What treasures to collect, when the care, the attentions of a community for the one that God has given it for Mother come to anticipate its slightest needs and favor the demands of a nature which perhaps was just beginning to bend under the yoke religion; when one has in one's hands a freedom which one had immolated to the Lord, which obedience captivated, and which one must now know how to enchain oneself! How often do we have to resist charitable solicitations, which tend to make us grant what our own desires already urge us to choose! It even seems that we have to, so as not to upset those who take care of us. We say so; one persuades oneself that one acts from this motive. This may be true at first - but later those who have done so well with us ask for more. Our needs multiply, and soon we give in to everything; one accepts a thousand useless reliefs.

Then, when it is necessary to leave the office, there is so far from a Prioress to a simple nun, that she will never perfectly resume the spirit and the way of acting of a novice: which is so necessary to her. then and for his own sanctification and for the building of his monastery.

Far be it from me to blame a Prioress for a charitable condescension, and to approve of a stiffness which would afflict her daughters and force them to silence! The own spirit can be there as elsewhere. First, in form, she must accept or refuse with equal gentleness, always showing her recognition of what people want to think of her. But there is a way of acting that is gentle and firm at the same time, simple and serious, which, by warding off too many attentions, does not offend those who believe themselves obliged to have them.

If a Prioress is a little courageous, she will feel that her health may even benefit from a common, uniform and austere life. May she sometimes remember what she suffered and endured in silence when, lost, so to speak, in the bulk of the community, the good Lord allowed us not to pay the slightest attention to the little evils in her. of which our holy Mother Thérèse speaks. How many times has she not believed, in this time which is so easily forgotten, that she could not fulfill such and such an obligation, nor support such and such food! And yet obedience gave him strength.

Will she not find this strength in the love of this God who more immediately became her master in the exercise of his office? With what powerful grace will she not be surrounded from the moment when, forgetting herself, she consults only the divine will! God becoming for her an inseparable director, always his divine light will make her distinguish in her own heart the Prioress and the simple nun. Obliged to speak at all times, at any hour, in any place, she will know how to be silent as soon as she has said what is necessary, without charity having to suffer from it, and as soon as she realizes that nature is taking advantage of the freedom given to him. She may be called by her office to leave the community at the time of a religious exercise; but she will never exempt herself from it for a personal reason. She should not even let the day pass without doing in her private exercise the precious moment of which an occupation will have robbed her. It will be the same in all circumstances. If she is above all a faithful religious, she will preserve its spirit, despite what could expose her to losing it or allowing it to be altered. The conduct of others, on the contrary, the sight of their faults and their virtues will be a useful lesson for her. By working for their advancement, it will work for its perfection. Grace will increase instead of weaken. Her daughters will love to find in her the religious faithful in the smallest things, humble in elevation, obedient in command, silent when nothing obliges her to speak; and example, always more powerful than words, will make his words bear fruit in all hearts.

CHAPTER IV

The happiness of the charge is to always be a victim.

What did we say when entering religion? Here I am, Lord: I come to be your victim. The sight of the sacrifices did not frighten us: we wanted to make them with generosity, and when they tried to show them to us from afar, and they asked us if we would have the courage to live as victims constantly immolated, although not not receiving the last blow of death, we replied that this was what we wanted to find in religious life. Why then should we change our feelings at the sight of this long career of sufferings and sacrifices which a reflective mind perceives through the honorable outward appearance of a high office? Why, when there is such a pressing need not to allow ourselves to be dazzled by this elevation, should we not seize with transport the cross which must be our support and our only hope?

The charge, separated from the cross and considered an honor as it is understood in the world, would be unbearable for a soul which has left everything to annihilate itself and bury itself alive in a solitary retreat, where, far from the eyes of the earth, she was no longer to live except in God, of God and for God.

But a charge that promises me an immolation at every moment, a charge that I must only fulfill by constantly forgetting myself for the souls that God entrusts to me; a charge in which, under the shadow of commanding, I am sure never to do my own will; a charge in which sometimes flattered, sometimes humiliated, sometimes approved, sometimes blamed, I will learn not to esteem myself more in the midst of applause than in the midst of criticism and censure; finally a charge where each step promises me a sacrifice; where, like Jesus Christ, I must immolate myself by state for the perfection and the salvation of my sisters, this office then becomes dear to me. I begin to glimpse happiness there, because the happiness of the religious soul is to have no rest in this life, to count oneself for nothing, to die every day, and to consider oneself in the hands of God as a useless tool. From then on, I say, my complaints must cease. I must no longer think of anything but knowing the designs of God, in order to accomplish them. I must say with the Virgin of Virgins the fiat mihi who saved the world, after having said with the same sentiments and in view of my baseness: Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Oh ! if ever feelings other than those of my personal uselessness, my misery and my weakness should enter my heart; if one day, forgetting what I am, I were to believe myself what I am not, with what insistence should I ask God that he does not allow a burden to be imposed on me under the weight of which I should so unfortunately succumb.

The Prioress must therefore, from the beginning of the exercise of her office, nourish herself with these holy thoughts, divest herself of all human views, complain only of what seems to elevate her, distrust anything that would tend to destroy in her the feelings of the deepest humility, and rejoice in everything that immolates her, in everything that makes her feel that she is the victim of her God. May she never complain of seeing her time taken up without being given a single moment of rest. Her time is no longer hers. Every minute is a precious minute, because it is for his immolation and for the souls of his daughters.

Let her not fear seeing her health weaken. Doubtless she must preserve it and maintain it with wise discretion, according to the order of God and the will of her superiors; but this health is no longer for her, and if the labors weaken her, she must rejoice that the holocaust burns. Besides, she persuades herself that, apart from the discreet care that is permitted to us, the less she thinks of herself, the more her health will flourish; the more generous it will be in the road of sacrifice, the more God will increase its strength, so that it can, so to speak, multiply and suffice for everything.

May she never forget that her life must be the life of Jesus Christ who, in his public life, had no place to lodge and rest his head, was exposed to the contradiction of the people, spreading everywhere his blessings and finding only ingratitude, answering his disciples who pressed him to eat: My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish his work; spending the day instructing and performing miracles, devoting the nights to prayer, always hidden from the eyes of those who surrounded him, and enjoying in the secrecy of his soul, in the midst of a poor and suffering life, beatific union with his Heavenly Father.

This is the true happiness of a nun whom God employs in the guidance of souls: to be another Jesus Christ, to live hidden in a position which highlights her; and keep her inner gaze steadfastly fixed on her divine Model, so that she can say truthfully, "I live no more; but Jesus Christ lives in me."

CHAPTER V

The load is a school of humiliation

Everyone has faults, as we have said - there are some in the holiest soul. Would it be reasonable to believe that the person called to govern others will be exempt from it? Even if we find in a Prioress all the qualities which should determine the choice of her community, she will always have a weak one, by which humanity will infallibly show itself more or less. There are faults which do not appear in a simple Religious, for lack of opportunity, and which the contradictions attached to the office of Prioress reveal little by little. And this is precisely the first kind of humiliation encountered there. A movement of impatience or temper passed unnoticed in the simple nun: in the Prioress it is evident like all her behavior. For a soul who knows itself a little there is a fruitful source of humiliation there; and constantly she will be obliged to recognize all the faults that a more obscure position hid from her eyes and those of her sisters.

Called to set an example, she will understand more than once that one could say of her: do what they say, and don't do what they do. Obliged to show the way to perfection, to speak of the things of God, a look at herself will constantly show her how much this maxim of the Savior is realized for her.

The reputation she must have, therefore, in the community will even force her more than once to dissimulate her faults, and will deprive her of the happiness of confessing the faults which it would be beneficial to her and which it should be so sweet for her to make amends by humbling oneself.

On the side of her inferiors, what will she not experience! The object that she will often be of their sorrows and their temptations, the demon will disfigure her in their eyes as if in spite of themselves; and in the confessions they will make to herself, she will learn how she is judged and under what unfavorable colors appear in the eyes of her daughters what perhaps until then she had thought to be virtues in her. What patience, what forgetfulness of herself, what contempt for her own actions would she not need at certain moments to listen to everything, hear everything, bear everything without being moved! How many measures, wisely taken for the good of the community, will appear to some of his daughters useless or rash! It will constantly be brought to the tribunal of the human spirit, to be judged there, not out of bad will, but because God allows the holiest actions not to meet with general approval, and because all spirits are not equally just and well disposed. These very judgments will often only be temptations presented to the Prioress with the greatest naivety: temptations without foundation; but after all, whatever they are, it is necessary, while listening to the account that one makes of them, to see oneself represented under features which are not flattering, and to say to oneself internally that they are more than once very close to the truth, of this truth which shows us in our heart an inexhaustible fund of faults, miseries and weaknesses.

If one wants, on the contrary, to justify oneself, to take one's own cause in hand, to afflict the soul which perhaps already communicates with difficulty what it has felt against its Prioress, the goal is missed on both sides. Not only will it work no good in the soul it directs; but still it will cause him deep and sometimes incurable wounds; and she herself will not enter into this path of hidden humiliation, which is one of the treasures of the charge.

This is not all yet: there is a kind of humiliation which is never lacking in a Prioress, supposing that what we have just said were spared her. In vain will she work to satisfy all her daughters: it will be impossible for her. It will therefore be applauded sometimes, often even, if you like. But scarcely will she have received praise or thanks for such a measure taken, for such an established custom, than almost immediately other sisters will come to make a thousand representations to her, a thousand complaints perhaps, and, recalling, the government prioresses who preceded her, establish an unfavorable comparison between their conduct and hers. The past is only a dream: the present pain is always the strongest and the most felt.

Perhaps when we have left the office, our memory will be used to afflict the one who will succeed us. Alas! will it be to say for that that we surpass her in merit, in wisdom, in talents? No way. We must know how to understand this sad truth: that in the holiest asylum, in the deepest solitude, by the very fact that there are mortal creatures there, there are found with them all errors, all the whims, all the biases of the human mind. They are modified, it is true, by religious life, but they are never entirely destroyed. They even wake up sometimes with more fury in the most austere cloister for reasons known and directed by divine wisdom, which always lets us see the need to humble ourselves and to be humbled by others in the highest position. .

There is still a kind of humiliation which will not escape a soul whose feelings are great, deep, purified; especially to a soul which, well imbued with the knowledge of itself, has contracted the habit of despising and forgetting itself in its best actions; to a soul which has never noticed the good it has done, and which does not seek its reward in men. This humiliation will come from the very praise that a Prioress continually receives: praise that always contrasts with the feeling that she should have of herself. We are truly only what we are before God. This maxim, so dear to our Blessed Sister Marie of the Incarnation, will be deeply engraved in the heart of a person who almost always owes at her own expense, much more than on her own merit, the esteem of which she is the object. We think we should admire in her actions which are nothing less than admirable and are only the accomplishment of the strictest duty. Besides that, the spirit of faith which must animate her daughters, the respect due to the established authority of God, finally motives sometimes laudable and sometimes quite puerile, will make one find virtues where very often an enlightened soul discovers only imperfections. Should we reject and fight head on this kind of adulation, which is sometimes only enthusiasm? No: this could be a subtle pride, hidden under the veil of humility.

No doubt a Prioress must apply herself to destroying the inclination to flattery in souls who must be as humble as they are true; but this good opinion is necessary. God allows it to preserve in the inferiors the respect due to her who governs them. If, however, far from believing all that is said to her in her praise, she thinks seriously of what she is in truth, will she find a deeper humiliation than that of receiving praise, which she feel so good not to deserve? She will see slight faults in her daughters, almost imperceptible faults that she will have to correct and correct: while she herself, often more guilty than those she will have corrected, will only find correction and confusion in her own heart. . Oh ! what is the soul that will not see in this a real humiliation for it? Who is the one who will want to receive from men the reward for the good she does, and who will not have enough delicacy in her feelings to understand the distance she must always leave between the opinion of others and his own conviction?

I do not pretend to contradict what I have written above, that approval or criticism of the conduct of a Prioress is equally divided, and that one is almost always the counterweight to the other. The kind of praise of which I have just spoken, and which I like to call a real humiliation, is independent of the other and subsists in spite of contrary temptations. It is a language that we use out of habit and that we believe to be essential. It is used for everything a Prioress does, for everything she says, for the talents she has or is supposed to have, for the work to which she devotes herself. If a simple nun is overwhelmed, no one pays attention; and if a Prioress gets her hands on anything, she is found or said to be overdoing it. And even, alas! should it be said? a sister who, in secret, will be tempted to murmur by comparing the work to which she is employed with that of her Prioress, or who will find it bad that she dispenses with such or such work, will be the first to give her praise and to urge him to rest. I don't think it's duplicity, God forbid! It's like I just said, a kind of conventional language, politeness, a kind of necessity that we impose on ourselves. And this is precisely what obliges a Prioress to appreciate what is said to her at its fair value, and to count for nothing what she does, when others seem to count it for a lot.

Happy then a thousand times the attentive and faithful soul to profit from all the kinds of humiliations attached to its office! She will understand that God often uses his very faults to achieve the ends he proposes, and that a simple nun often has many more virtues than her, without our noticing. Let it then plunge into its nothingness; let her remain there, and say with the Psalmist: I have been reduced to nothingness. I am before you, Lord, like that which is not, like the broken vessel which no longer has any form, like an instrument which you use as you please, but which has nothing of itself. even. May she have esteem for those whom she sees herself obliged to humiliate: and may she be convinced that in their place she would have less patience and less love for contempt.

This is how she will learn and profit from everything; that she will run through this difficult career of the government of souls with more certainty, and that, always vigilant over herself, she will be able to hear herself being praised without ceasing to be humble, because she will never cease to confuse herself.

CHAPTER VI

The charge learns to know itself, to despise itself and to esteem others.

If humiliation only came to you from circumstances arranged by divine Providence, it would not be established in the soul on a sufficiently solid foundation. Self-knowledge can only come from one's own experience. There are positions which, by themselves, conceal from us, at least in part, the sight of our misery. A Superior, to whom the virtue of a sister was extolled as far above the ordinary, asked what her employment was. She was told that she was working in her cell. Wait, he says, until she is charged with an office which puts her in touch with her sisters, and then you will be able to judge of her merit. What can we say, after that, of a Prioress who finds herself engaged by her charge in a multitude of occupations, and who has to do with all the characters? It will not be long before she sees faults in herself that she did not know. Gentle, patient, charitable at first, commanding only with difficulty, she does not understand how anyone can act otherwise. But soon one gets used to having authority over all the sisters, and it is then that one lets oneself go little by little to all the faults one had in the past, and against which one had perhaps fought for a long time.

There are times when everything around us seems to conspire to shake courage, exercise patience, offend common sense and contradict reason. The strongest virtue cannot sustain this combat with the same equanimity. For that, the virtue of angels would be needed. In the holiest man there still remains the frailty of human nature. What will it be like for a Prioress who has only a weak virtue, or a character that she finds it difficult to tame? Moreover, if the designs of God are accomplished on the inferiors by the little sorrows that the imperfections of the Superior cause them, they are also accomplished on the latter by letting her know by her own experience of the faults that she did not like to confess, or that a more obscure position would have hidden from view. A soul of good faith will see itself as it is in that depth of the soul where until then God alone saw his misery. She will understand that it is more difficult and worthwhile to obey her than she herself had when she was a simple nun: and this salutary lesson will show her the hidden merit of her inferiors.

In the past perhaps a refusal, a contradiction, a humiliation on the part of her Prioress had seemed to her severe or even unjust. She will learn that with the best will, one is not always enough master of oneself to soften, by one's way of acting, what one is obliged to impose by duty. Finally, if this soul of good faith wishes to take advantage of everything, she will become the most humble of her community. Convinced of her personal insufficiency to carry out a charge that one knows well only by oneself, she will see in the choice of the community only an inexplicable will of God. The submission of her daughters will make her discover in them virtues that she would never have thought to discover there. If she succeeds in doing any good, she will bring the glory only to God; and when she fails in her best projects, she will recognize in them her own work. Moreover, what secrets will she not discover in souls, which will make her admire virtues in actions where there slipped, according to her, an imperfection which was only apparent! How many souls, weak and cowardly on the outside, make efforts upon themselves which are seen only by God and their Prioress! How many reasons will explain to her eyes a behavior in which she will be forced to recognize a very special order of grace! Certainly there are souls in which we find more miseries and imperfections than we saw when we knew them less; but here again, how many lessons to learn! Do we not, for example, have to thank the Lord, to admire his goodness, for having spared us the opportunities and the obstacles which have made, it is true, this soul weak and languishing, but which perhaps would have causes us to suffer more deplorable falls? Seeing this soul more closely, we often perceive that there is still in it a certain good will which we ourselves would perhaps not have in similar circumstances; and then the Prioress felt growing in her heart both contempt for herself and charity for this poor soul.

The Prioress, in the very good that she does to souls, will she be able to find a reason to attribute it to her merit, to her talents or to the trouble she takes? You would have to be blind to believe it! How often all his care and all his efforts will be useless or fruitless! Often she will find herself in the presence of an afflicted soul, tempted, tried, without being able to say a single word of consolation and encouragement. At other times she will work absolutely without success, despite her constancy and her eager care for an imperfect soul. She will repeat the same thing a hundred times without being listened to or understood; and suddenly this soul, emerging from its slumber, will advance in perfection by a means absolutely independent of the work of its Prioress, by one of those strokes of light and grace which enlighten and change hearts without the help of anyone. .

It only remains for a Prioress, after all this, to say these words so true, so consoling for a humble soul: We are useless servants; and these again: I planted, Apollo watered; but God gave the increase.

Another conclusion no less useful to draw from what has been said in this chapter and in the preceding one is that if we want to do ourselves justice and place ourselves in our own esteem in the rank that suits us, we will admit that very often one could say of us what the divine Master said of the scribes and Pharisees: They bind heavy burdens; but they would not touch them with their fingertips. In fact, what repugnance would a Prioress not sometimes experience in executing the orders she gives, in carrying the burdens she imposes, in receiving the reprimands she gives, in supporting the deprivation of the help she refuses or that she neglects to give.

I know full well that she is obliged by the duty of her office to make the weight of her authority felt. Let her do it, on time! But let her feel that there is more virtue in submitting than in commanding. Let her despise herself thinking of her personal weakness. That she esteems others by seeing them submitted to her obedience, and that she convinces herself that the will of God alone must make her act, without losing sight of the low opinion of herself that sight must constantly increase. of his imperfections and the virtue of his daughters. This fundamental conviction will not make his government weak and his progress uncertain. Far from it, a soul which forgets itself in the exercise of its duty to do the will of God, but which remembers at the same time that this holy will placed it there without any merit on its part, takes advantage of the great lessons she finds there; annihilates before the one it represents; in speaking in her name, she does so with that grave and modest firmness which announces that she has understood what she is, and the importance of the mission which she fulfils. When this knowledge of oneself and of the will of God is intimate and true in a soul, it is expressed by conduct, and not by affected words. A single word, a single look, the smallest circumstances as well as the most important, all prove that the authority with which she is clothed, far from nourishing her self-esteem, is for her a fruitful source of humility, charity and patience. . The yoke she imposes with such happy dispositions will never seem heavy. And when the years of office have expired, she will be able to resume, with her rank of simple nun, the spirit of submission and dependence which should characterize her. She will then put into practice the great lessons she has received by teaching the ways of perfection; and she will thus avoid the most fatal pitfall, that of retaining the slightest superiority when the will of God places her in an inferior rank.

CHAPTER VII

The charge detaches us from so much that is created.

If the religious soul who reflects, far from the eyes of the earth, on the nothingness and the vanity of all that she has left understands so well the emptiness of creatures, what shall we say of a Prioress who sees the weaknesses of the human heart, and which, by its charge, has more external relations with the world! How many times will she be attacked in her peaceful retirement by the criticism of a few people who are perhaps dissatisfied with the refusal she will have made of a postulant, or the preference she will have given to another over this one. there ! With the best intentions, it will upset some people; it will not be approved by others; she will receive reproaches from the parents of the nuns, if, exact as she must be in her duty, she refuses them privileges which they have no right to obtain. Finally, in more than one circumstance she will be able to convince herself that through the gates of the darkest cloister, one still feels the effects of the malice of the world, that one finds few true friends, few devoted people, and that among the number of those with whom she is obliged to converse, there are some who question her only to judge and condemn her afterwards. If it were only a question of these small external disappointments, the lesson of clearing would not be very important to collect. When we left the world, we appreciated it at its just value, and we knew that one finds in him a severe judge, especially when one despises him to give himself to God. But the Saviour, jealous of the souls he has chosen for himself alone, still detaches them, in religious life, from all sensible supports. A Prioress especially will feel the emptiness of all that is created, even in the most holy souls, even in the spiritual aids which she has the right to expect, and in which God will be pleased to show her that she must search there alone in a perfect clearing. Yes, in the most holy souls, in those who are usually her counsel and her light, she will discover all the weaknesses of humanity; and in the consolations they will sometimes offer him, in the advice they will give him, there will always be a mixture of bitterness, an uncertainty which will make him feel that God is everything and that the creature is nothing.

For spiritual help, what sacrifices will she not have to make in the deprivation of a good director or in the difficulty of finding one in whom she can fully entrust herself! If she does not seek God first and above all; if she counts on the freedom that her office gives her, God will be able to call her back to himself by changing the means into obstacles, by overthrowing her projects, so that she will be able to recognize that human supports are nothing, and have no meaning. other use than that which God gives them according to our needs. Even when everything goes according to her wishes on the part of the Superiors and the Directors, there will always be times when she will feel a void, an insufficiency, or other kinds of pain which will bring her back to the search for the only good. in the simplicity of faith. Happy times! Lucky hours! where she will test the truth of these words of the Prophet: "All my bones say: Lord, who is like you?"

If in a private life God was her love and her everything, in the exercise of her office as Prioress this love needs something more intimate. The relief is good; they are necessary; but let us not forget it, it is to lead us to God, and not to place ourselves between him and us. Would his jealous love allow a soul destined to show others the way to release to be able to attach itself to something? This is therefore, if I may say so, the object of his most marked care over a Prioress who sincerely wants only him. Obliged by her charge to go abroad, to entertain saintly persons whose conversation attaches her; free to prolong his conversations in the parlor and in the confessional, to find there sometimes the occasion of instructing himself on the interior life, how easy it would be for him to seek out the creature under the most specious pretexts! She must always take from these conversations what can increase her love for God and her freedom from creatures, but never anything for herself. It will be by a marvelous instinct that she will understand those delicate nuances that a soul that is not faithful to grace will never grasp, a soul that has not frankly decided to forget itself for God.

It is also for this reason that God, on his side, works, in his infinite goodness, to free this soul from all that is not himself, by a thousand means that it would not have been able to take from itself. even.

In the direction of her daughters she will find lessons that will be no less fruitful for her. It will sometimes seem to him that it is useful, even necessary to certain souls; she will receive from them testimonies of confidence, of a very special confidence; — she will not be able to hide from herself the good that she does them. But let the temptation come to swoop down on these souls, objects of his predilection, and everything will soon change. They will no longer be able to understand anything at his direction. She herself will feel chilled and unable to calm their sorrows.

There will perhaps arise a mutual disgust which will leave only a crucifying impression on the mother and the daughters in their relations, and a kind of astonishment at having once been able to agree and get along so well. All the consolation that the Prioress received from these souls turns to bitterness. Then she feels that there is nothing necessary, nothing good on earth except God alone, who always remains to her as the sole center of her affections, and the sole source of all the good that she has been able to TO DO.

The death of his holiest and most cherished daughters will perhaps again upset his plans, destroy his hopes and, by detaching his heart ever more from created objects, bring him closer to his Creator, and unite him more and more to him. Placed by her office above all her sisters, she will discover, as from a height which dominates a field of battle, all that human passions have contrary to the grace of God, and what they would still have vivacity in religious souls, if this grace did not give them the strength to surmount and conquer them.

Yes, we have seen souls who already seemed in heaven and whose virtue confounded our cowardice, we have seen them suddenly given up to temptations so violent, that it was impossible to recognize them, and that they became incapable to judge sanely of certain things which caused them an emotion, involuntary, it is true, but all the more humiliating, as their state was more perfect.

As for the various jobs in the house, how many times, after having entrusted them to sisters who seemed destined to fulfill them perfectly, do we find weaknesses, miseries, an incapacity that astonish and confuse!

To all these reasons for disengagement are added the confidences that a Prioress receives in the visiting room, where hearts oppressed by suffering reveal to her the dreadful emptiness and the searing pains hidden by positions which seem made to excite the desire to those who only see the outside.

Must a Prioress, thus enlightened by so many experiences, be distressed at finding on earth no solid support, no real consolation? Far from it, she must thrill with happiness on seeing that God alone is everything, and he is all things. With what transports will she exclaim, perceiving from afar the events which agitate the children of men: "They will perish, but you, Lord, you will remain!" Every day she will rely more on this immutability of God, and will say to him with happiness: "You are always the same, and your years will never end." Taking advantage of all that she has understood of human fragility, she will fix herself forever in the true center of all perfection. She will not, however, experience that disgust for creatures which comes more from regret at not being able to attach herself to them than from a true love of God. Such a sentiment cannot be found in a soul that is set ablaze by true charity, and which knows how to see through human weaknesses the image of God in his creature. Raised above all that passes, nothing created can disturb the peace she enjoys. Well convinced of the nothingness of all that surrounds her, her detached soul has no more home on earth, no more home, no more will of its own. We can send it to the end of the world: Carmel is in all places where obedience marks its place. Everywhere she will find God; and if she still feels the sacrifice, she does not stop, because she has not forgotten that she is his victim and the spouse of a crucified God.

This is how the office of Prioress becomes for the thoughtful soul a school of humility and freedom, far from leaving her with the slightest thought, the slightest feeling of elevation. She got to know herself and the creatures; but at the same time she learned to know God: she understood what he is for a soul that seeks him and wants to take advantage of everything to go to him. What charm does not this sweet thought spread over his life. All that is created is nothing for a religious soul! It seems to her that there is only God and her in the universe, or rather that she has annihilated herself, that she has disappeared and that God alone remains: Tu autem permanebis. It is he alone she sees, he alone she adores, he alone she loves; and in this abyss of love she loses herself happily to find herself in him in eternity.

CHAPTER VIII

The Prioress must respect the different degrees of grace in souls.

All souls are mine, says Our Lord Jesus Christ. They are, indeed, the price of his blood, the conquest of his grace; and if this is the case with all Christians, what will happen to the religious soul, that which he has chosen and which he has separated from the mass of perdition to make it dwell in the house? of the Lord? After the first call of grace, after this mark of predilection, he will continue, he will perfect his work in each soul, but in a different way, and also in a way sometimes so hidden, that the one who leads them will not discover the walk of grace only by a supernatural light and by a sustained attention to observe its admirable economy. Oh my God ! what is man to understand your works? And will we be able without temerity to lay our hands on your work? It is precisely there that one is greatly exposed to antagonizing the spirit of God, if one does not try to empty oneself of oneself, to renounce one's own views, and even to a certain desire, too strong sometimes, of the perfection of the souls that one directs, to allow oneself to be moved by this divine Spirit and to act under its gentle influence.

Doubtless the souls called to religious life, especially to the life of Carmel, are also called to a very high degree of perfection: and we must lead them there, show them the necessity of tending to it. But there is such a great difference between them, God leads them along such different paths, that the great talent of a Prioress is to study her ways and to assist grace without ever anticipating it. Moreover, we must respect it, this grace, in all its forms, in all its progress, even in its slowness, since it is not a question of our own work, but of God's work. This word says everything to a soul already imbued with the grandeur of its mission and the importance of fulfilling it well, or rather of the impossibility in which it is to do anything by itself.

Let her first convince herself that in this multitude of different graces that God distributes to each soul according to his infinite wisdom, the smallest being the price of the blood of Jesus Christ, she must be considered an immense treasure and cultivated with care. Without therefore stopping to see if this grace is of such a high order as the perfection of the life of Carmel seems to require, it must devote all its attention to helping the soul which receives it to correspond to it faithfully. We don't know why God granted it. We do not know his intentions, nor the reasons he has for giving little or a lot. We cannot even judge the value of its benefits. It is enough for us to humble ourselves in his presence and to support his work.

A soul will remain for whole years in a degree of grace which seems to us very much lower than that to which it is called. If this weakness of virtue cannot be attributed to negligence, and if one perceives in this soul efforts which testify to its good will, let us be patient: then it is slowness, and like the mystical sleep of God; respect them and do not force anything. But if we can judge with a sort of certainty that this soul is not generous enough and that it is itself delaying the action of grace, then it is the case for awakening it from its slumber and seeking to revive his walk, without however forgetting the patience of God in the very failures of this soul.

We sometimes push a soul to perfection, we talk to it about it, we urge it to walk, we level a thousand reproaches at it which only end in constricting its heart, and as if our words and our eagerness alone could overturn the obstacles and to build a work which cannot be ours, one does not temper one's efforts by that suave long-suffering of which the divine Master gives us the example.

If we had for the grace of God the respect it deserves, happy that we were permitted to gently prepare souls for it, we would no doubt have a zeal inspired by the desire for their spiritual advancement; but we would not be so agitated at the sight of their slow and uncertain progress, whatever the cause of this slowness, and we would apply ourselves to make them understand and feel the need they have for help. high to correct such defect or acquire such virtue.

A Prioress should do like the gardener who prepares the ground, makes openings for the waters to flow through, and then waits for the fruit of her labor. But, once again, for that we must know how to forget ourselves, count ourselves for nothing, work without wishing success too ardently, and convince ourselves that we are not the owners of souls, but that they belong to God.

We are sometimes irritated against a nun, because we find in her feelings of pride, repugnance for humiliations, for obedience or something else; but does it depend on us to bring about the change in these dispositions? Does it always depend on this soul not to feel this opposition to good? Perhaps this opposition, which she sees very well, makes her feel real pain. Perhaps she would regard as the happiest day of her life the one when the feeling of humility, of dependence and of the other virtues would replace in her those which are contrary to them. Oh ! if so, hasten to raise his courage and inspire him with confidence in God. Perhaps this is even the object of his prayers, his sighs and his tears. God, who wants to make her know by his own experience the fund of misery that is in her, seems to be deaf to her voice. He bears with love the faults, perhaps involuntary, into which this poor soul falls, in order thus to perfect his work, the foundation of which will thereby be more solid. Beware then, under the pretext of assisting his work, from overpowering this soul, from wanting to make it jump precipitously over all obstacles, and from desiring immoderately that it be perfect before the time and the moments which the heavenly Father has marked. Just gently incline his will to the good, and help him bear his weakness. Make her consider with holy respect the importance of the grace she asks for, and expect it as a good which is not due to her. Discover to her the divine operations which exist or which could exist in her. Show her that she still receives many more graces than she thinks, and tell her to thank the author for any good.

It sometimes happens to a Prioress to seek to excite in weak souls the love of a higher perfection by comparing them to others, and thus to want to lead them to imitate them, to want at least to humiliate them by bringing out out their imperfection. I don't know if this method is good or bad, but I confess that I have almost never used it without regretting it. This comparison leaves traces in the souls that are often indelible. A little mind thinks it discovers a preference that hurts it. A lofty mind perceives in this kind of correction only a stimulus proper to childhood, and involuntarily it looks at the faults which compensate, in others, for the virtues pointed out to it; and, by the same contrast, he inwardly excuses himself for the faults with which he is reproached. Ah! that it is much better to leave souls enclosed in the measure of grace they possess, and not admit them to curious looks at the gifts received by others, the sight of which could expose them to a kind of spiritual jealousy !

We are naturally inclined to prefer certain souls in which the gifts of God shine more, especially when they are really dead to themselves, and when we find in all their conduct the divine Spirit which moves them. This feeling is not condemnable. But in admiring the work of God in these lofty souls, one must know how not to misunderstand it in weak and imperfect souls, not to tire of their little progress, and, once again, to respect the degree of grace in which they find themselves. We must be careful not to anticipate this grace, and to believe that we can by ourselves raise souls higher. We must not tell them what God does not tell them, nor reveal to them the mysteries that he hides from them. This temerity would not come from the spirit of God, but from a secret self-esteem which slips easily into our good desires, into our very desire to see everything perfect and without delay. It is so essential to make the heart act, that one cannot be too careful not to give one more food to the imagination by tiring the mind, to make it conceive of a kind of perfection that God does not demand. or don't ask yet.

Moreover, one must know how to recognize grace in the various forms it takes. There are graces of trial, graces of deprivation, graces of humiliation, graces even hidden under the most distressing temptations. How souls must be purified in order to reach divine union, which is the goal towards which they must tend! God knows how to lead them there: and he makes them pass, for that, by various and sometimes very difficult roads. Alas! in those dreadful moments when a soul no longer recognizes itself, we would put the climax to its torment by reproaching it as faults for the involuntary effects of temptation, by showing it its state under black colors, by demanding of it what she cannot really do as long as the ordeal lasts. Ah! why not discover to her, in this crucifying way, the grace and love of her God, the sure way which leads her to him? Why rush her forward when a higher power is keeping her in this sort of purgatory? Why not make her worship God's purposes for her, and take advantage of these cloudy days to help her lay the solid foundation of humility and self-sacrifice?

To maintain this conduct, a Prioress must know well what she is with regard to the souls she leads. She must feel so much the price of the least grace, that she considers all the labors of life, all the temptations of the demons, all the trials of God as little when it comes to obtaining it. . It is also necessary that by gently exciting souls to always rise to a degree of grace above that which they possess, it must know at the same time how to make them benefit from the grace of the moment with all the perfection that God demands. of them. It is thus that she will prepare them for the most signal divine favours, and that the Lord will place his gifts in them with all the more certainty the more they believe themselves unworthy of them.

CHAPTER IX

The Prioress must esteem all the crosses carried by her inferiors.

When our divine Master invites us to follow him, he says: Let whoever wants to come after me carry his cross. He does not say the cross. It is therefore not suffering in itself that can be fully appreciated, but the effect it produces on the person who endures it. Often a thing crucifies or consoles without any other difference than that of our character and our tastes. A Prioress, to properly judge the weight of the crosses carried by her daughters, must start, not from her own point of view, but from theirs. Ah! above all, that she never allow herself to despise their little sorrows, even when she does not understand them. It is enough for him to know that a soul is suffering, to believe that he must give it the remedy, or at least support it, enlighten it, encourage it. Let her thereby lead her to despise herself what affects her, when the subject is not worth the trouble; but let her bring him there out of a spirit of faith, out of love, out of a desire for sacrifice, in a word out of her own conviction: that is the true means; but never by telling her that what she suffers is nothing. Or at least that she comes to this by proving to him that if she suffers, it is because she is not generous enough, too pusillanimous, too attached to herself, and that the object of her pain will seem very frivolous when, having returned to serious reflections, she can consider it in cold blood.

But how does it come about that a Prioress sometimes seems to pay no attention to the crosses that others carry, that she even goes so far as to tell them that everything is nothing compared to the office of Prioress, and that only there is there anything to complain about? Alas! that, filled with ourselves, touched by our own interests, we feel only what is personal to us, and we too often forget that this cross, of which we complain, is the safeguard of the elevation where Providence placed us; and that far from complaining about it, we should only worry about not suffering enough.

What happens from there? that, without penetrating into the depths of souls, into the secret recesses of the heart, one says coldly to a Sister who accuses herself of having had murmuring thoughts: You are only too happy to obey; pity the one who commands! The principle is true; but can we still apply it? No. When a soul is pained by what is commanded of it, when everything in it rebels at the sole name of obedience, when perhaps you yourself have offended its heart, or at least its self-esteem, is it the time to put iron and fire to a wound that should be softened? The temptation can go even further. This soul finds you happy to no longer be subject to the yoke you impose on it. She does not dare confess it to you: and you, instead of guessing her thoughts, you are going to compare your cross to hers and despise her suffering, in order to exalt your own. Far from succeeding by this means, you will increase his pain and heal neither his mind nor his heart.

   Another will complain of the boredom of her loneliness, which God will sometimes let her feel: and she is told that she is the happiest in the house, since she has no worries, no job. We will compare her position with that of the others, especially with that of the Prioress, by bringing out the cross that she carries, by the obligation where she is to speak, incessantly and to spread herself outside.

Assuredly nothing is more true: and for an interior and recollected soul, is there a greater sacrifice than a continual intercourse with creatures? But a tempted or tried soul no longer understands this language; and you end up distressing her if you employ her with her at this moment. You represent to him the happiness of solitude, when the four walls of his cell seem to crush him! You boast to him of silence, when his heart, squeezed by grief, needs to pour out, and finds, so to speak, neither heaven nor earth, but a frightful emptiness which resembles the shadows of death! You find it bad that she doesn't feel the advantage of having no job, and you forget that if she had this feeling she would no longer find a cross in her isolation. Solitude, silence, inaction are the delights of the contemplative soul, when it can enjoy them. But from the moment that nature revolts and wants to regain its rights; as soon as she feels repugnance, disgust, the anguish of temptation or trial, is she not crucified by that very thing which ought to be her consolation? Is it then necessary then not to appear to understand her, and to show her in a different position a cross that she does not see there? What did I say ? a cross which would perhaps seem to her a relief in comparison with the state in which she is reduced?

In other circumstances, a religious soul may be tempted to complain of the continual dependence in which it lives, of the obligation in which it is not to take a step without permission. Suddenly seized with a burning thirst for freedom, she confided her pain to the Prioress, who received it with a kind of indignation, and wanted to show her the happiness that one tastes in the certainty of always doing the will of God: certainty that sometimes she does not have herself, when for example she says that she alone is worthy of pity. If she answers thus, she does not know the human heart; it has never been tempted; and, by a happy exception, virtue is natural to him. But then, may grace and self-forgetting make up for this lack of experience. Without this, it will desolate the soul it leads; and far from advancing it in perfection, it will retard its progress by increasing its pain.

Another Sister, despite all her efforts, will not be able to bear the smallest humiliation: and when her greatest happiness would be to cherish her, a word will disconcert her and will revive, in spite of herself, all the pride hidden in the depths of the human heart. . Ah! Isn't that a real cross for a soul who wants to love God, who no doubt loves him, but who, given up to the excess of his pain, believes he is in direct opposition to his Savior reduced to the deepest abasements?

How many Superiors do not sufficiently understand the difference that exists between a soul of this caliber and a soul which, voluntarily nourishing the esteem of itself, or at least not making any effort to conquer itself, complains about everything which seems to him humiliating and mortifying! For this one, no doubt, it's not just a question of sympathizing with her pain: you have to make her understand that she herself is the main cause of it.

But answer the first by telling him that his cross is nothing; that there is nothing as beautiful as being humiliated; add above all that we would like to be in his place; endlessly repeating the maxim that these are crosses of straw, and that one would rather wear them all than be Prioress: this is what must be carefully avoided.

Let's carry each other's burdens. Let us remember the time when the cross of the Prioress was not the only burden in our eyes. Let us understand that to appreciate a pain is not to feel it, and that the one who speaks to us can well understand the weight of a charge, but can even more succumb under the weight of an affliction which does not seem to us one. It is precisely for this reason that, distrusting our thoughts, we must forget our own interests and our personal sorrows in the presence of those whom we come to deposit in our hearts.

It is the same with regard to the sufferings of the body, the privation of acts of community, certain natural defects which make a person fatiguing for himself and for others; in a word, everything that afflicts, everything that touches, is a cross, not doubtless always a cross in itself, but by the painful impression that the wearer receives from it.

So let's leave the human self aside for once. Let's not make so much of the pains of the office we hold. It is better to let them see in silence and keep compassion for others. Ah! that a Prioress who counts herself for nothing has power over the hearts of her daughters to make them bear their sorrows with courage, patience and love! How eloquent is her language on the happiness of suffering when, herself overwhelmed by the weight of her obligations and the various demands of those she governs, she seems not to remember it and see only the cross of others ; when she knows how to count, so to speak, all the pains one by one, and appreciate them from the point of view of those which come to seek some relief in her maternal heart!

Moreover, if we find in certain souls some weaknesses which seem to us unpardonable, let us remember that we will never make them disappear by rigor or by indifference. Let us enter into this soul; let us proportion ourselves to his little views; let us experience by our commiseration what she feels herself, and we will understand what balm it is necessary to apply to her wounds. When we have properly grasped the kind of evil, it will be easier for us to apply the remedy to it, perhaps even to make it known that this cross was only so heavy because it was carried without courage.

One thing also, which it is essential to convince oneself, is that, however tiring the occupations of a Prioress may be, whatever opposition she encounters to her attraction and her tastes, despite the pain caused to her by distractions occasioned by his relations with people in the house and with those outside, his occupations divert his imagination from a thousand sorrows which he may have felt in the past. His sorrows follow one another and multiply at certain times; but they vary: and in this kind of suffering, she must not forget the immense difference that lies between her and a simple nun. The latter, in fact, shut up in her cell, carries there the pain that she concentrates in herself, from which nothing distracts her, but on the contrary that the imagination grows; and it is only after having changed the object that one can understand the folly of the reasonings which have overwhelmed the mind and dried up the heart as if they had had some foundation.

So let's never compare our position to that of others. There is too great a difference between Superiors and Inferiors for them to be able to assimilate trials which have their source in such opposite causes. The goal that God proposes in both being always to purify them in order to make them more worthy of him, it is certain that the means of this purification, whatever it may be, causes the soul which undergoes it real pain. Let us respect, I will say again, let us respect what we do not understand in souls. Let us become weak with the weak, let us cry with those who cry; and let us renounce the small satisfaction of being pitied by those to whom we owe the example of courage, generosity, patience, and even love of the sufferings that God sends to all of us in his infinite wisdom, according to the measure of his mercy and tenderness for us.

CHAPTER X

The Prioress should not consider herself alone in the choice of Directors.

Our holy Mother Thérèse asks in favor of all the Prioresses to preserve freedom of conscience for their daughters. She judges this point so important, that she does not hesitate to assure in her Path of perfection that if this door is closed to the devil, she hopes that he will find no other to enter the monastery.

One must have suffered from the deprivation of a director suited to the needs of his soul, to fully understand the martyrdom of a nun who is held captive on such an important point. But also what wisdom, what caution is needed to prevent the abuse of a means that can become an obstacle!

All the Sisters must be persuaded that the Prioress values ​​this important point in the Constitutions, and that never through her fault they will not lack such essential help. So much for the general of the community. But in the particular application there are souls to whom an extraordinary confessor must be offered, others to whom he must be granted; others to whom it is necessary to know how to refuse it.

Spiritual help is a means of attaining perfection; but the perfection of a Carmelite does not consist in talking a lot, but in living the life of God alone. Consequently, the management must tend to establish it in a state in which it dispenses, as far as possible, with these long interviews, which may, however, be necessary at certain times. Do not hide it from us, it is not by captivating souls, by depriving them, by continual refusals, of the help they have the right to ask for, that we will establish them in the inner solitude where God is soul that loves and possesses it. This is the work of grace, and when this grace will make itself felt in their hearts, they will be the first to desire nothing more, to ask for nothing more, and to strive unceasingly towards the oblivion of creatures, to cling to the Creator.

But this grace must be well directed in the soul that receives it. The foundations of the spiritual edifice must be laid by a skilful hand, so that the base is solid. If it is not founded on death to oneself, on separation from all that is sensible, after a few days, a few years perhaps of an ardor produced by consolation, the soul will let itself go to a fatal languor, and will gradually fall into an almost secular life.

The important point, therefore, is to provide souls with a direction wise enough, strong enough to establish them in a state of perfection which can withstand all the storms of life. It is necessary, for that, to study their needs and to make, between the various spirits, the discernment which God himself makes, in order to give or refuse foreign help in due course.

I know that the principal direction of the Religious must come to them from their Prioress, that it is to her usually that they must have recourse; but if she provides them with confessors such as they ought to be, this help, far from diverting them from the direction of the Prioress, will help them to adhere soon to her advice, not by force, but by conviction.

It is not up to us to persuade our daughters that they should be satisfied with our direction: experience proves every day that this would be the way to make people feel the need to communicate with others. It must be said, however, after much anguish, many battles, many efforts, a poor soul will come and simply confess to her Prioress that she feels the need to open up to a director. It is then necessary to avoid answering him: “Well! tell me anything you want; I am ready to listen to you. Especially since we are careful not to tell her that she is happy to be a simple nun and to have a prioress! Because perhaps her temptation is to think that the Prioress is free to talk to whoever she wants. May it never be ourselves who assert our direction. If we want to be tasted, let us understand, with the one who speaks to us, all that our direction has that is insufficient to calm the agitations of a heart which desires another. We won't gain trust by asking for it, but rather by showing that we know that open-heartedness is sometimes a sacrifice, and willingly providing a wise and skilful director.

Perhaps a Prioress will be afraid that people will get into the habit of frequently having recourse to extraordinary confessors; and above all, if it concerns novices, she will refuse it to the mistress who comes to ask for them. But should we not treat a patient for fear that he will get used to remedies? Should we not feed a new-born child, for fear that he could only take his nurse's milk afterwards? On the contrary, when a sick person takes the remedies appropriately, he rather recovers good health. A well nourished child easily becomes accustomed to a diet suited to his strength and his progress.

Alas! this is what very often we do not know how to apply to the needs of souls: because very often also a Prioress forgets the interior sufferings of her daughters, or does not pay enough attention to them. She indulges in unfounded fears, in a human prudence which dictates to her a conduct which bears little relation to the state of those she governs; and under the most specious pretexts, it lets souls languish which, well guided, would fly towards the summit of the mountain of perfection.

As for those who seek only to talk, to take care of themselves and to occupy others, and who derive from their long directions only a real waste of time, I believe that it is good to keep them , as far as possible, to the confessions of the Quatre-Temps. It is also necessary that the refusal made to them does not appear to come from a rigor which offends them, or from contempt for their pains. We must make them feel that by wishing to assist them, we fear encouraging their tendency to spread themselves uselessly and without becoming better for it.

This is not all: the Prioress must take care, in providing her daughters with good directors, not to always be guided, in the choice she makes, by the confidence they inspire in her. , and on the special good they can do to his soul. Let us persuade ourselves that a director, for one reason or another, may not go to all souls. He will sometimes see very clearly in some and understand nothing in others. His words will bring strength and life into these, and produce no effect on those. The heart of a nun will expand, will pour out entirely to a director, whose mere presence will bring trouble and fear to another, who will not have a single word to say to him.

A Prioress can receive real good for herself from a director who does nothing to her community.

Thus, without dwelling on the qualities of a good director, which more skilful than myself have explained at length, I will only say that the Prioress must take care not to let herself be carried away by the confidence inspired in her by a priest, to entrust him with his community, to brag about him to his daughters, and find it, so to speak, bad that they do not share his sentiments. There are even some who go so far as to make a nun understand that it is a very bad mark in her if such and such a direction does not suit her, and who want to judge her perfection or her imperfection by the confidence they have themselves in the one they admire like an oracle! This is the way to tighten the heart, and not to cure it: it is a real imprudence, in a Prioress, to show for a director an exclusive confidence, and to demand that all the sisters have for him a unreserved openness.

The Prioress, moreover, must be convinced that God does not use a single means or a single man to do his work in souls. Always powerful, always admirable in the profound counsels of his divine wisdom, he employs sometimes the weakest instruments to work wonders. It deprives one soul of a help that it seems to want to grant to another, without our knowing why. Our duty is therefore to lead each one according to the designs of God and the measure of his grace, without choosing for them other means or other support than those which the divine Master indicates to us.

And then, if the Prioress must always be a victim; if the good of the community demands the sacrifice of its own interests, it will demand it no less in the choice of the confessors it has to admit for the benefit of its daughters. After having communicated herself with a confessor, and having drawn from it the greatest fruit for her soul, if she understands that he would not be able to do the same good in all souls, or that at least she does not find in him the qualities most necessary for the general good of her house, she must, without hesitation, not admit it and prefer a man, perhaps less skilful and who inspires less personal confidence in her, but who seems to her more fitted to do the work of God and to direct each soul according to his way.

Moreover, I have not claimed, by the reflections presented in this chapter, to urge the Prioresses to admit a large number of confessors into their communities, and to follow in this respect the attraction and confidence of each Religious: that would be , it seems to me, to go against the intention of our holy Mother Thérèse, who, by asking for her daughters the freedom of their conscience, wished that we avoid the disorder which the plurality of confessors can produce in a community. My only goal is to make people understand the importance of the article of the Constitutions which grants the freedom to consult wise directors, and above all the delicacy with which a Prioress must make the choice, the duty for her, to carry until then the forgetting of his own tastes and his own interests, to consider only those of his community.

   She must also make it clear to those of her daughters who would not have confidence in the extraordinary confessor of the community, when he is moreover such as one can desire for the general good, that it is a particular disposition. of Providence towards them, a cross they must bear, one more sacrifice to make, proof that God wants deprivation rather than consolation for them, but that there is no reason to complain and seek further help. By this conduct she will avoid the inconvenience of introducing several confessors at the same time.

The essential point is to dilate the souls, and to know how to hide from them sometimes what the yoke of the religious life has of a little severe in comparison with the freedom which people of the world enjoy to deal with the affairs of their conscience. When one directs the Carmelites in a spirit of sacrifice, but of voluntary sacrifice and made for love, which is proper to the spirit of our holy state, one leads them infallibly to immolate what is sweetest. and more consoling in religious life, and willingly to do without what they do not have. If grace works in a heart, it will gradually detach it from everything and lead it to want God alone. But, again, let it not be by compulsion; let it not be we who separate souls from the means that help them find peace and stability, which is the fruit of peace. Let us prepare the way for the Lord, and let him build the edifice and himself ask for the sacrifices he desires. Let us help weak souls to do them with generosity, without imposing them too rigorously.

Let us also take care that they cannot condemn our conduct, the Constitutions in hand, and ask us why we are more severe than our holy Mother Thérèse. No doubt a nun should never come to that; but rather to accept all the provisions of Providence with regard to her, without wanting to penetrate the reasons of the Prioress or condemn them. But as I write here for the Prioresses only, I try to point out on this point the pitfalls into which I have seen several fall.

Sometimes the Prioress convinces herself that all her daughters are happy and want nothing, not even another confessor, because some assert that not only do they need nothing in this respect, but that they even go with it. hard to find the extraordinary confessor. These souls must not change the rule. Were there only one, were there not even one that needed it, one should never allow an established custom to be lost on the most serious grounds: that is to say that the extraordinary confessor must come, and that all the nuns must at least present themselves to him.

I have known nuns who suffered for long years from the deprivation of spiritual help, who even went completely out of their way because they were without a guide, and who never had the courage to make known their sorrow to the Prioress, because the latter, by her words and her manner of acting, seemed not to approve of any direction other than that of the ordinary confessor.

Let us convince ourselves that we do not immediately come to a state of perfection where God alone is sufficient. Our fence is tight. Imagination plays a big part in it; we must tend to calm it rather by the dilation of the heart than by too direct efforts. It is therefore our duty to nourish souls, so that the kingdom of God may be established in them, and so that, knowing it and relishing it ever more by faith and by love, they may rise little by little to this degree. of union which makes one say with happiness: What do I want on earth and what did I desire in heaven, if not you, O my God?

CHAPTER XI

The Prioress must constantly strive for divine union.

What would all the wisest reasonings, the strongest resolutions, the most remarkable talents and everyday experience be, if God himself did not put his hand to work and did not take the place, so to speak, of the one who governs? If the souls called to Carmel necessarily tend to unite with God, this union becomes even more indispensable for a Prioress, who must be another Jesus Christ, and be able to say with truth that she no longer lives, but that he alone lives in it.

It is necessary that, setting aside her own spirit and her natural lights, she must give herself up entirely to the spirit of God, so that he may govern her, and that in her may be fulfilled the words of Saint Paul: "Those -these are the children of God, who are moved by his spirit. She will only reach this happy state by forgetting herself, which will lead her little by little to the perfect annihilation of the human self, as much as that is possible here below. Arrived then at the true paradise of the earth, she will understand, she will feel, she will taste that God is everything and that the creature is nothing.

People will be able to give her praise, she will be able to count her successes by each of her steps, without her heart ever feeling any other feeling than that of contempt for herself and gratitude for him who, despite his weakness, deigned make her the instrument of his wonders. His life will appear perfect in the eyes of others, and will be a completely useless life in his eyes. In vain will they repeat to her that without her nothing could be done in the house: she will feel, without reflection and without effort, that God causes the instrument he uses to give back harmonious sounds which charm the ear; but let him break it when he wants and replace it with another to which he gives the same value, and more value still.

She will see her virtues and her faults with the same eye. Humble, distrustful of herself in the practice of virtues, she will still be humble and confident when her weakness causes her to fall into faults. Glad to see his misery, she will groan about it without discouragement, and will find herself happy to start over every day the work of her perfection.

She will never think of the good she has done; and if sometimes God allows her to glimpse in her, or in the souls she leads, the fruit of her efforts and her labors, this sight will have no danger and will only serve to make her bless and thank God more to whom she relates everything and from whom she expects everything.

Far from being grieved, like certain souls, from discovering in itself only imperfections and weaknesses, and from being able to count in nothing on itself, it will find true enjoyment only in the certainty that all goods are in God and that we must, in humble dependence, expect our daily bread from him. She will love to see herself sometimes unable to say a word or perform the slightest act of virtue, and to recognize, when she succeeds, that it is God who acts in her and through her.

Yes, it is to this degree of disinterestedness, devotion and love that God leads a generous, faithful and constant soul to surrender to his grace, to let him govern as sovereign, to choose only him for his portion. , its happiness and its all, so that it no longer knows what it is, nor even if it exists other than in him. She becomes so indifferent to herself that she can desire nothing, choose nothing but God alone.

What then are the labors and the crosses of the burden? reliefs, compensations for the elevation where it seems to place us. The sacrifices retain only the name, and life has charms because one can immolate oneself and give to God all that one has and all that one is.

What unchanging peace is the fruit of this holy union of the soul with God! Ah! it is peace that surpasses all feeling! The peace which subsists only in consolation passes with it; but the peace founded on the union of the soul with God remains and is immutable like him. It resists external agitations and internal shocks. When everything in us and outside of us seems to unite to disturb it, this celestial peace returns as soon as the soul returns to itself by the simplest and easiest recollection. For what ? Because on returning to its interior the soul always finds there the God who makes his dwelling there, and because, well convinced that everything is nothing outside of him, it continually feels the effect of these words of Saint Paul. , who borrows them from the Psalmist: “They will perish, but you will remain. And the soul remains firm like the one on which it leans in the midst of the upheavals of the earth, and ends up understanding no other enjoyment or other affliction than to find God or to lose him.

This perfection is not the work of a day, or rather it is not the work of the creature, but that of the Creator, who likes to replace it in the state of primitive innocence where the man, barely out of his hands and knowing only him, enjoyed without obstacle his presence and his love. Alas! If sin has left indelible traces in us, and has deprived us of the sight of God during this life, the merits of Jesus Christ, which restore to the soul its first beauty, make it also recover, by faith, the bliss of the earthly paradise.

Although it is God himself who leads the faithful soul to a perfection which it could never attain by its own efforts, this soul must nevertheless strive for it with all the strength of its will, and neglect nothing to achieve it. Let her first convince herself that a charge in which she is placed only by the will of God cannot be an obstacle to divine union; that it is rather a reason which makes it a duty for him; that to do good it must annihilate itself in its own esteem and strip itself of all that is not God, or, so to speak, that it allows itself to be stripped by his divine hand, always acquiescing and never resisting.

She will sustain herself in the occupations of her office only by leading an interior and supernatural life: a life which she must maintain by the constant practice of prayer and recollection, by a punctual accuracy in all the common observances. Let her not forget that the time she would steal from the care of her soul to devote to her daughters would not be useful to them, except in a few very rare cases. The reason is simple. What are our words to touch hearts, if God does not bless them? And will he ever bless that which is out of order, which tends to diminish the spiritual strength of a Prioress? When it is empty of God, what good will it do? But if she is empty of herself and filled with the spirit of God, one word from her mouth will produce wonderful fruit. Besides, what can we not do by example and by prayer? In vain will one urge others never to dispense with prayer, to profit from free moments to employ them in dealing with God, if one himself neglects to do so. God is the master of hearts. It is therefore to him that the Prioress must address himself so that he can kindle those of his daughters with his holy love, so that he can detach them from the earth and from themselves.  

After showing the way, according to the obligation of her office, may she never forget her personal impotence and the need she has for help from on high. Unless the Lord Himself builds the house of their soul, it will work in vain. Oh ! that we have power over the heart of God, when we come to confess our own weakness to him, not out of discouragement and defiance, but out of conviction, and with the firm hope that he will deign to make up for the insufficiency of our efforts !

It is in prayer, in prolonged prayer, that the Prioress will understand, will feel the emptiness of all that is created and will give herself ever more to her God, so that he may possess and govern her. Let her not be frightened by the noise of the imagination nor by the fatigue produced by contact with creatures, by the multitude of affairs; but above all that she never finds in it a pretext for abandoning prayer or cutting it short. Nature is sometimes terrified by a state in which we no longer seem to find God, and often then she wants to refer us to works of zeal, which offer a more sensitive support, and thereby seem more useful than a time spent almost entirely in distractions and droughts. This trap would be all the more dangerous if it were hidden under the appearance of good. Nuns ask to speak to the Prioress for the needs of their souls during moments intended for prayer, and the Prioress will let herself be carried away thinking that she can be useful to them, while she does nothing in prayer!

Oh what! is it nothing to humble oneself in the presence of the Lord? to recognize there that after having spoken of perfection, after having sometimes explained the highest things, after having appeared before a community like the oracle which announces the holiest truths, one sees oneself obliged to say with the prophet "I was reduced to nothing, and I didn't know it! and again: "I was in front of you like a beast of burden!" Isn't it a lot to come out of such a prayer at least more convinced of its misery and its uselessness, more penetrated, consequently, of the greatness of God, of the need for his grace and his of this supreme truth: that he is everything and that we are nothing? Besides, do we know what God works in our soul, when it seems to us that he does nothing there? Why would you want to probe its mysteries and the depth of its wisdom? Why would you want to judge the secret of his ways? And is it not in these days of darkness that faith must grow more in us?

What will a Prioress be if she is not above all a soul of faith; if, like Saint Peter, she does not know how to go to God by walking on the waters of a rough sea; if she thinks she has lost everything because the Lord seems to be sleeping? O mystical sleep, during which perhaps such great things happen! And if the Bridegroom of Songs does not want his beloved to be awakened, why will the beloved want to awaken the one who knows how to lead her when he is sleeping as well as when he is awake, but who, jealous of his love and trust, wants to exercise his faith?

No, once again, the burden and the distractions it entails cannot stop a Prioress on the road to divine union, if by her faith, her confidence and her abandonment, she changes these obstacles into means, thus corresponding to the admirable conduct of God on the souls who seek him in truth and only want him. The more the exterior of her life will seem to oppose this union, the more she must close herself up in order to create a retreat for herself in the most intimate of her heart: a retreat which will become a stay of delights for her soul, and a source of blessings for his ministry with the Sisters. But for that, she must not confine herself there alone: ​​for she would then live there with her own love; she would be there, in the midst of her miseries, without strength and without courage. What kind, on the contrary, of itself; that is to say, it rises above all that can stop it in its course, never spreading entirely into external action; giving out only what God requires, and not what nature requires. Let it say to itself that, left to itself, it is only weakness, that it can only benefit the souls it leads by its own annihilation and by a daily death, which becomes the principle real life for herself and for others; that its main

obligation is to remain in the society of the divine Master by whom alone she can do everything. Moreover, one only reaches divine union by following a path strewn with trials and sacrifices. We find Jesus only by going up after him on Calvary. Why then should the crosses inseparable from a charge where God has called us become obstacles to going to him? If in appearance they offer more difficulties, in themselves and seen closely by a reflective soul, what means are there not to find to know oneself, to appreciate at its true value the emptiness of what is created and detach oneself from it, to plunge into the springs of grace and drink in long drafts the life-giving water that the Savior promised the Samaritan woman!

If the prayer of a Prioress is sometimes more distracted and crossed by involuntary preoccupations, is it not also there that she applies herself, with a better felt need, to pour out her heart into that of her divine Spouse? ? Isn't it there that she looks for him by beginning a day of which she does not foresee the details, but of which she leaves every moment to Him who must dispose of it and fill it? Isn't that where she finds him after the fatigues of the day? And if sometimes the dust of the earth has obscured her gaze, if even faults of fragility have tarnished the purity of her soul, is it not still there that she groans about it, that she obtains forgiveness for it, and that his love makes him find in his pain an abundant reparation, and in his forgiveness a further testimony of the mercy of his God?

Everywhere peace accompanies him. — Everywhere she sees only the One she is looking for; and she passes, without stopping, through the embarrassments of life, because she no longer encounters anything that binds her.

It is through perfect simplicity and constant fidelity that she will gradually achieve such a happy life. May she take advantage of everything, confining herself to the present moment, to act with all the strength that grace gives her, because it is at this moment, and not to the one who must follow it, that she will receive the graces that God has prepared for her. The time that will follow will also have its own; and thus following this mysterious chain step by step, she will pass from degree to degree until that of the perfection to which God has destined her from all eternity and which she would only lack through her fault.

Oh ! what a strange illusion to persuade oneself that the time of a charge is a time of sterility and loss for the soul, and to wait until you have returned to solitude to practice the religious virtues! as if a Prioress was not above all a Religious! as if, to show the way to others, she was dispensed from walking it herself!

Let us never have such thoughts. God is our end, but God reaches and possesses the highest degree one can reach in this life. If he promised those who guide souls that they would shine like suns in his Father's kingdom, he doubtless assigned them such dazzling places, he only planned to clothe them with his own beauty. , only on condition that they will have stripped themselves of themselves and that they will have thus acquired a perfect resemblance to him; such is his will. It is therefore necessary that a Prioress be, above all, united to Jesus Christ. Oh my God ! may all souls entrusted with the direction of others see fulfilled in them these words of your Prophet: "They will change in strength." May they, for this, give you everything, in order to expect everything from you! And they will not be deceived in their hope. They will be able to say with the same Prophet: "Lord, you are my patience." Stripped of themselves, they may well believe themselves without virtues; but you will enrich them with your wisdom, your power, your charity, your sweetness in the midst of trials, and contradictions inseparable from a charge in which strength succumbs and courage is shaken, if the creature acts by itself.With you and through you, Lord, nothing is impossible, nothing is harmful to a soul. With you she takes advantage of everything, even her faults, she walks, or rather you carry her, until the blessed day when she will see you without veil and without cloud, to reign with you and lose eternally in the delights of your love, with all those whom she will have sanctified by her example and her advice.

CHAPTER XII

The Prioress must take on the spirit of Novice when she leaves office.

It is quite common for a Prioress to want to leave office, and above all to show it a lot. She sighs incessantly, she says, after the happy day when she will only have to obey. It seems to her that nothing is so easy, and that the spirit of childhood, which she has so often preached to others, is all the easier to practice as she herself, without knowing it doubt maybe, moved away from it

any further. Does she then measure with just one eye the immense distance that lies between a Prioress and a simple nun? Did she fully understand the change that might have been brought about in her habits of command contracted for many years, occupations diametrically opposed to those of a nun locked up in the walls of a cell? Is it always the spirit of God which makes him desire to leave office? and does this desire presuppose a true knowledge of one's own heart? No doubt one should only be in charge because God wills it; and the inclination of a humble heart necessarily carries this heart back into the exercises of an obscure and hidden life. But, once again, are we sure enough of our dispositions to establish a judgment on our future state? And above all can we believe nature sacrificed enough in us to hope that she will not ask for rights that she no longer has, and that the flatteries inseparable from the duties have not given her back enough life to bring her to life. to complain sometimes of the oblivion in which it will find itself?

If it were only a question of leaving office and preserving more or less the spirit of independence, and a right in certain respects, which we do not fail to offer to the former Prioresses, the difficulty would seem less great. , although in reality a mixed state never brings true peace: but let us not conceal it, for the good of the community and for the good of our soul, it is necessary entirely and in good faith to become a simple Religious again, with the obligation of more to correct in us the faults from which we had to suffer in those which were under our control. We must die according to our judgment, no longer as in the past, when, not having been Prioress, if we were asked our opinion, we thought we had the right to ignore it, but to die according to our judgment in such a way let it be evident, when we state our opinion, that we care little for it, and that we are very far from wanting to lead those who ask us to follow it. It is necessary to decide to fight, in similar circumstances, the opinion of a community which wants to establish in everything a difference between the Prioress who leaves office and the other Religious; to know, on the contrary, to take them up as companions in all work, in all exercises, and to place oneself in the lowest place without affectation: which must be the fruit of the deep conviction of our misery: conviction that the exercise of a charge always increases in an inner soul, as we have tried to prove in this little writing.

That the Prioress retiring from office be convinced that all her rights over the community will in the future be only in prayer and by example; that is all that remains to it: it has no other mission and must retain no other influence.

The grace she had to lead and direct souls will be granted to the new Prioress. It is there, and there only, that his daughters must henceforth seek the light which guides them and the source of living water which quenches their thirst. Whatever this Prioress may be, were she inferior in everything to that which preceded her, she will always be, for souls of faith and obedience, the oracle of God; and therefore it is his voice that they must listen to and follow. Out of there, they would dig themselves broken cisterns, which cannot contain water.

However, either out of affection, or out of gratitude, or even out of propriety, the Prioress who leaves office will be told that no doubt she will not refuse to give some advice, at least from time to time; that if she does not want to commit herself to it, we will ask the new Prioress or the Superior of the house; that, moreover, she knows everything that goes on in their souls, and that with a word, a look, they will make him understand what they will not tell him; that thus it will be easy for him to encourage and support them again. They will go so far as to tell him that it is to manage to give their confidence to the one who succeeds him, and that they need to submit their doubts to him in this respect, at least at the beginning. They will cut themselves off, if necessary, on the days of license; and, abusing this word, they will want to persuade themselves and her, that then they can speak to her of their souls.

All these reasons, and many more, are all the less acceptable the more one understands the danger of sharing the authority of a new Prioress. Yes, it is necessary to leave the load in all truth. You have to give way without retaining the smallest part of it. We must forget, if possible, all that we know about the interior of souls, and preserve for each one only the sentiments of the purest charity, without any search for oneself and in perfect disengagement. The more difficulty they have in leaving our direction and placing themselves under the yoke of a new authority, the less it is necessary to fear breaking the bonds which would become fatal to them by stopping the flow of the graces which flow from the legitimately established authority.

The Prioress leaving office must prevent these abuses by expressing in advance the desire not to interfere in anything; otherwise, the demon would not fail to persuade certain spirits that it is the new Prioress who opposes all communication with her. Authority must always be sheltered. You have to prove by your behavior that you want to be nothing more: that's the real way of persuading others. We must also be determined not to take advantage of the permissions that we could obtain from the Superior or the Prioress to commit ourselves to giving advice on direction, unless there is a completely exceptional circumstance that cannot be foreseen. Moreover, let us not be afraid to say it, the provisions of the person leaving office serve, in large part, as a rule for Superiors to grant or refuse certain requests in such circumstances. If they can seriously believe that it is in good faith that we want to return to our rank of simple Religious, they will leave us there: well convinced that this way of acting, in accordance with our conduct, will produce excellent fruits. in the community, by strengthening the authority of the new Prioress, and by proving ever more the sovereign independence of God, who does not need his creature to accomplish his work, but who pours out his blessings on the instrument that he chooses, and makes him capable, when he wants, of working wonders.

On the contrary, if the Superiors foresee that a deposed Prioress will not be able to fully understand her position; that, having only become a Novice again in words, she will be offended if a Religious is refused permission to communicate with her, or if she is not consulted in everything and for everything, and that she would leave, in spite of herself, perceive his sadness for this conduct: in this case, they will find less inconvenience in not putting it quite in the place that suits it, in having some condescension, less for the nuns who want to speak to him than for his own weakness . They will cover with the veil of obedience certain things whose sacrifice would have been half-offered, and consequently of little profit to one or the other.

It is therefore in our own heart that all the ties by which self-love could hold us attached, if not to the burden, at least to the esteem and affection in which we believe too much must first be broken. often that it gives some rights. It is by ourselves, I repeat, that we must become Novice again, and it is not for the Superiors to impose the obligation on us. If it is for God, and for God alone, that we have filled a charge, we will leave it without even taking away the memory of it. The most sincere wish of our heart will be that the Community forgets what we have been; may she think of us only in prayer, in order to ask forgiveness for us of the inevitable faults in the exercise of this office. We would like the newly elected Prioress to treat us in everything and everywhere like the others; let her never be afraid to give us an order, or to refuse us what she will not think fit to grant us.

If we have a real disengagement of the charge, we will not fear seeing what we have established overthrown; and, always convinced that others are doing better than us, we will see in what will be found in opposition between their conduct and ours the reparation of our errors. This last point, applied to all the details of life, contains, in large part, our duties with regard to established authority, and procures for the soul a peace which nothing can disturb, which leads to an indifference total for everything that happens around us, and constantly brings us back to this consoling truth, that everything that is not God is nothing and must be counted for nothing.

From the slight outline which I have tried to trace, it is easy to conclude that, in order to return in reality to the feelings and conduct of a Novice, when one has exercised the office of Prioress, one must die total to oneself, a practical annihilation of self-esteem. Now, can we believe we have come to this by our own strength, and will we regard this state as easy, if we understand it well? Ah! rather, let us distrust ourselves. Let us feel the need that we have of the grace of God in all positions of life. Let us fear imperfection even in our good desires. Let us present them to God, when he gives them to us as a fruit of his goodness, and, humbling ourselves deeply, recognize that we can only accomplish them through him.

Nature seeks what is elevated and what pleases the senses; she likes to be independent and to command others, without submitting to anyone. Whence, then, will come in a religious soul the desire to be the last of the house, forgotten, unknown, obedient, even despised, if necessary, in an advanced age, with knowledge and talents perhaps make her superior to her Sisters? Ah! this is the work of grace, and God alone can give such feelings. Self-distrust must be its safeguard, and confidence in the goodness of God to establish and maintain the practice of them in the soul which possesses them. The annoyances inseparable from a job, the fatigue one feels there, can very well, after one has exercised it, make one willingly agree to return to a common life; but for the heart to be freed from everything, for the conduct to be always equal, humble and dependent, and this with the simplicity of a Novice, we cannot repeat it too often, the grace of God is necessary, and it is only by grace that a soul returns there.

So what should a Prioress do to prepare to leave her office? Pray and challenge itself; not to conceal the difficulties from oneself, instead of surrendering without reflection to the sweet thought of finding oneself under the obedience of a new Prioress. While she will still be in charge, let her constantly pray to God to prepare her Himself to imitate the obedience of the divine Master during the thirty years of her hidden life. Let her ask him to protect her from his self-respect and from the foolish pretensions he too often thinks he has the right to have after someone has ordered; and that she strives never to lose the spirit of a true Religious, even when the will of God holds her above others.

After asking earnestly and perseveringly for the grace of God to begin a new life; after having shown an unshakeable determination never to accept any distinction and to interfere in anything, she will be able to count on the goodness of God, who always gives us more than we ask of him, and who takes pleasure in shaping a soul he cherishes and which abandons itself to his conduct, according to the various positions in which he places it. It is no longer she who is reforming herself: it is God who is working a new creation in her and rejuvenating her like the eagle. It is he who, becoming a child with her, brings her back by his grace to those first days of religious life, when, ignored in the shadow of the sanctuary, all her study was to please her, all her ambition, to nurture her. be counted for nothing. This fortunate soul, who becomes a Novice again by the hand and under the direction of God, no longer judges things as before. She has forgotten, it is true, all that relates to the office of Prioress; but there is a memory that she will always keep, a memory that is the fruit of her experience: it is that of the virtues of the Sisters who were under her guidance. Yes, if her eye was enlightened by the light of heaven, she was able to discern virtues even in the most imperfect. It has often been given to him to see how appearances are deceptive, and how many acts of hidden virtue have compensated for defects which, by humiliating a soul, have not been without profit for it. To this first memory how many others are not attached! That of our own miseries: miseries that we have borne with more charity than we ourselves too often have for others; that of what caused our character, our way of acting, the various measures that we had to take. Oh ! how powerful all these memories are on a sensitive soul to excite it to good, to give it a sincere desire to repair the past and to place itself naturally under the feet of all its Sisters, to find itself always too well treated, to to receive with gratitude all that we would like to give her, more convinced than ever that we owe her nothing and that she deserves nothing.

If she has been faithful during the time of her office, she will feel the increase of grace in her interior, and God, working in her, will lead her step by step throughout the rest of her life. It will be given to her to feel the happiness of private life, to savor the delights of contemplation in the darkness of the cloister, and to be able to say with truth: I have chosen to be the last in the house of my God, rather than dwell in the tents of sinners.

When one is humble by conviction, one is also humble without affectation. And this is the fruit that we must try to gather from the exercise of a charge. Oh my God ! what is man, if you leave him to himself? What does he find out of you? Dangers in elevation, dangers even in one's good desires, dangers in humiliation itself! Where is the assurance, if not in you? Where is enjoyment to be found if you are not its principle and its object? What is sacrifice but when you, O my God, choose and mark the victim?

In concluding this little writing, which I offer to my daughters as an outpouring of my heart, allow me to repeat these words: What do I want in heaven and what do I desire on earth, if not is you, oh my God? Place me where you please; lead me lead all souls

according to your adorable views. Teach us to find nothing high and nothing low except in relation to you, so that all those whom you have called to the happy land of Carmel may also repeat with truth these words of the Prophet-King: I asked only one thing of the Lord, and I will ask him without ceasing: it is to live in his house all the days of my life. Amen.

FIN.