Catherine Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament

The fear of the dangers one runs in the world led her to enter, despite the insistence of her parents and friends, a monastery of the Annonciades of the Ten Virtues, located in the town of Bruyères, four leagues from Saint-Dié; she received the habit there in 1632, and took the name of Saint John the Evangelist. The superior of this house, who was very experienced in the ways of God, recognized the particular graces with which God favored this young novice: she guided her according to her attraction; there was no mortification she would not undertake, and the wise superior also left her the freedom to perform many more penances than she allowed the other novices, of whom God did not ask what He required of Sister Saint John; He permitted that at this same time the Community was attacked by malignant fevers, which left almost all the nuns unable to attend the divine office and common prayer: Sister Saint John, who was preserved from this dangerous illness, often found herself alone at Matins, and then, wishing to make up for the absent ones, she performed them with extraordinary piety. The demons set frequent traps for her. Having overcome these attacks, she was tested by more subtle temptations; for, being obliged to leave the divine office herself to serve as a nurse to the Mother Prioress, the demon suggested to her that she was called to a more perfect state, and that she could not fulfill the obligations of religious life in this house. The virtuous novice triumphed over all these assaults through the special help of the Blessed Virgin, to whom she represented all the pains and terrible agitations in which she found herself, praying to her to obtain help for her and taking her as her principal Mother Mistress. This prayer had a happy success; and our novice assures, in her writings, that she received a very special protection from the Blessed Virgin, from the time she addressed herself to her with perfect confidence.

The time of her profession approaching, she prepared for it by a forty-day retreat, during which she received admirable graces and lights concerning the perfection of the religious state; she spent the night of the eve of her profession in the church, before the Blessed Sacrament, where her heart seemed to be consumed in the flames of divine love, while awaiting the happy moment of her sacrifice. After her profession, she made another ten-day retreat, which is commonly called in the Order the Silence of the Bride, during which it is not even permitted to speak to the superior. Our new professed made such great progress in all religious virtues that, in a situation where the community found itself without a superior, the provincial judged it appropriate to give the government of it, by commission, to Sister Saint John, even though she was then only nineteen years old.

It was necessary to have the prudence and wisdom with which heaven had favored her to sustain the misfortunes that befell the community whose care had been entrusted to her. Scarcely had she gained some knowledge of the affairs of this house, when she was warned that enemy soldiers (Lorraine was then the theater of bloody wars) were approaching the monastery, and that she had to leave as soon as possible if she and her nuns did not want to be exposed to their insults. She took advantage of this warning very fortunately, and left with her daughters; the army arrived, the town and the monastery were pillaged and burned; she remained for two and a half years in the world with her community, of which she took particular care, both for the spiritual and the temporal; the time for elections having arrived, she was elected without any difficulty as superior in all the ordinary forms.

The state of affairs in the province, which was in continual turmoil, forced her to leave Épinal, where she was at the time, and where she was suffering extreme misery; and, by virtue of an obedience from the superior of her Order, she went to Saint-Dié, the place of her birth, to her father's house, where she remained for about six weeks with her small community. During the stay they made there, God permitted her to learn of the monastery of the Benedictines of Ramberviller, located four leagues from Saint-Dié, whose superior offered her an asylum in her house. She accepted this offer and went to Ramberviller with her community, where she tasted with new pleasure the charms and delights of solitude, silence, and regularity, living with her daughters according to the rules of their profession: this lasted for the space of fourteen or fifteen months, during which this virtuous superior offered new prayers to God every day to know His holy will for her in the painful situation in which she found herself.

The Mother Prioress, having discovered the treasures of grace that God had enclosed in Mother Saint-Jean, thought only of the means to attract her to the Order of Saint Benedict. One day, as they were speaking together about the impossibility of re-establishing the monastery of Bruyères and about the unfortunate accidents to which the nuns were exposed in a time of war, Mother Bernardine represented to her the obligation she had to watch over the safety of her person, adding that the holy Canons permitted passing from one Order to another that was more austere; Mother Saint-Jean reflected on this, and having conceived, moreover, a very high esteem for the Rule of Saint Benedict, which she saw observed to the letter in this house, she prayed much to know the will of God in a matter of such importance. She consulted the most skillful doctors, who decided that not only could she make this change, but that she should do so in such a conjuncture; after which she worked to obtain the necessary permissions, which were granted to her; then, her first care was to place the few nuns who remained with her in several houses of their Order. She took the habit of Saint Benedict on July 2, 1639. Her name was changed to that of Mechtilde: she fortunately had as her mistress the venerable M other Ben Mechtilde Foundress of the Institute of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament. oîte de la Passion, who died in the odor of sanctity in this monastery in 1668.

Mother Mechtilde finally made her second profession on July 11, 1640; it was at this time that she began to share in the most sublime communications with which God favors His spouses when it pleases Him. She became in a short time a perfect model of perfection for the whole community; but the sweet rest she enjoyed in this house was soon interrupted by the continuation of the wars, which finally reduced the monastery of Ramberviller to such extreme poverty that, by a command of the Vicar General of Toul, several nuns of this house, of whom Mother Mechtilde was one, went to take refuge in the city of Saint-Mihiel, where they all kept their Rule with an edification that drew to them the esteem and veneration of the whole country.

They suffered in this place beyond what could be expressed; the help that had been promised to them failed; everyone felt compassion for them, but no one was in a state to give them the relief they needed, which forced them to seek help elsewhere. On August 21, 1641, she left Saint-Mihiel with one of her companions; they arrived in Paris on the 29th, and stayed with Madame Le Gras, founder and first superior of the Daughters of Charity. The next day, Saint Vincent de Paul, General of the Priests of the Missio n, led them to Montma saint Vincent de Paul Saint contemporary to Olier, founder of the Congregation of the Mission. rtre and presented them to Madame de Beauvilliers, who was the abbess, and who received them, accompanied by her community, with all the testimonies of kindness that one could expect from the most tender and perfect charity. Mother Mechtilde did not forget her companions; she obtained that they would be brought, and they were placed in various abbeys of the Order of Saint Benedict. Some time later, a lady having offered them a house in Saint-Maur, two leagues from Paris, to serve as a hospice, they reunited there in the year 1643, under the guidance of Mother Bernardine of the Conception, who soon ceded her place to Mother Mechtilde and returned to Ramberviller.

It was at this time that Mother Mechtilde met M. de Bernières, treasurer of France in Caen, and Father Jean Chrysostome, ex-provincial of the Penitent religious, who made himself commendable b Père Jean Chrysostome Penitent religious and influential spiritual director of Catherine de Bar. y the great experience he had in the most sublime states of prayer and by the generous contempt he had for all earthly things. This great man perfectly understood the extent of Mother Mechtilde's grace; he often went to see her in Saint-Maur to confer with her on the surest means of striving for perfection. He often said that he found more spirituality in the small retreat of Saint-Maur than in the whole great city of Paris and that, theologian though he was, Mother Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament had taught him secrets that he did not find in books.

This wise director knew that Mother of the Blessed Sacrament needed to be given more freedom than she had to exercise herself in the practices of penance; she nevertheless continued, for a long time, to be troubled by a very troublesome cough, and she appeared so strongly attacked in the lungs that it was judged that, if a prompt remedy were not provided, she would not be able to escape it. Mother Bernardine of the Conception, fearing to lose her, had her treated by the most skillful doctors of Paris; but it was useless. Father Jean Chrysostome judged that she should be allowed to undertake a very austere way of life. She therefore cut back much of her sleep; she was seen continually in prayer; she took the discipline every day; her fasts were very exact and she observed with all this to attend with inviolable fidelity to all the offices of the choir and the community.

The Mother Prioress consented only with difficulty to all these mortifications; but she saw herself obliged to abandon her own judgment on this matter so as not to oppose the designs of God for Mother Mechtilde who, infirm as she was, spent, in addition to what we have said, three hours in prayer every night, in a place where it was very cold, having her feet and knees bare, and went secretly, before and after Matins, to a secluded place, to offer herself to Divine Justice, tearing her body until it bled with harsh flagellations; she wore for a long time an iron belt, armed with sharp points, which entered deep into her flesh; but as she practiced these austerities only with permission and under obedience, she left this belt as soon as she was ordered to do so; but, not wanting to admit any witness who could become aware of this horrible mortification, she had enough courage to tear it off herself with violence. God alone knew the pain she suffered in this cruel operation, from which she was dangerously ill, and remained troubled until the end of her days.

After all the trials of which we have just spoken, divine wisdom, which has its own times for the execution of its designs, deemed it appropriate to accomplish in Mother Mechtilde that of the establishment of the Perpetual Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar. Several persons of rare piety assured that God wished to use her for this great work. The Countess of Châteauvieux, who recognized the elevation of spirit and the grace of Mother Mechtilde, promised to assist her in everything she would undertake for the glory of Jesus Christ. The Marquise of Bauves offered her ten thousand livres, the Marquise of Sessac six thousand, and Madame Mangot three thousand, if she would establish this Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament among her daughters.

Madame de Châteauvieux had inconceivable difficulty in overcoming the objections of Mother Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament in this matter, because she could not resolve, she said, to leave her poverty, nor to give her name to a matter of prominence; and it was only the authority of a great prelate, to whom she made the declaration of this design in confession, that determined her to acquiesce to the execution of this beautiful work. The foundation contract was signed on August 14, 1652, by the four ladies named above. Queen Anne of Austria Anne d'Autriche Queen of France who attended the missions of Jean Eudes. approved this establishment and gave orders that work should proceed incessantly; she even wished, in the letters patent, to take the title of *Foundress*, so that the nuns could enjoy the privileges granted to houses of royal foundation, without, however, preventing the Countess of Châteauvieux and the Marquise of Bauves from enjoying all the honors attached to that quality, as the principal benefactresses of the monastery. Her Majesty gave orders to the governor of Paris, M. de l'Hôpital, to make her intentions known to the aldermen, who all gave their consent with pleasure, and special letters were issued for it.

Mother Mechtilde, who was always attentive to withdrawing and hiding herself to attend to the interior exercises of prayer, did everything she could not to be declared superior; but, having been unable to excuse herself, she found herself constrained to take on this burden, and, seeing all matters in very good order on the side of the secular powers, she thought seriously of getting authorization from the ecclesiastical superiors, who contributed as much as they could by their power to strengthen this beautiful work. The affairs of this holy Institute were in this happy situation when it pleased God to test Mother Mechtilde again with a thousand difficulties and embarrassments. She was censured for everything: she suffered a thousand affronts: they tried to make her understand that girls would never have the strength to sustain Perpetual Adoration during the days and nights of the harshest winter seasons; that it was an enterprise too bold and too rash. Inquiries were drawn up against her life and her morals; what had happened in the other places where she had lived was maliciously interpreted. There was talk of subjecting her to a kind of inquisition to examine her ways and her spiritual states.

The worthy nun was never troubled in all these different attacks: she bore them with angelic patience. She joined herself interiorly to those who accused her, and she adhered to their reasons. Writing about this to her confessor, she said to him: "Our Lord grants me a grace that is not small; it is that in everything for which I can be accused and humiliated, I find that those who blame me are right. This is so just that I have no words to excuse myself." Here is also how she explains herself on this subject, writing to M. de Bernières: "Several people arrange crosses for me as much as they can, and if Our Lord let me feel what is done and what is said, perhaps I would think I was being well crucified; but I see nothing but Jesus Christ everywhere, and in all the annoying encounters, everything in God, and God in everything. I want nothing more than to lose myself in his love. Pray to Our Lord that he may destroy me as he pleases; that he may do his work by annihilating me. It seems to me that I take too much satisfaction in this, and I fear not being dead enough to it."

She had taken for her motto these words from the Canticle, which she had slightly changed: *Fulcite me opprobriis: stipate me pudore et confusione quia amore langueo*: "Sustain me by the multitude of reproaches, fortify me by covering me with confusion and ignominy, because I languish with love." She had a particular attraction for honoring the immutability of God; she loved this attribute in God, not only by a special esteem she conceived for it, but also by trying to conform to it and imitate it as much as she could by remaining always equal and always the same in all the most terrible and annoying events of life, never complaining of anything, never exaggerating evils in her most painful and acute illnesses, respecting with perfect submission all the orders of God and conforming to them with complacency. One admired in her this constancy and this equality of spirit, especially during the last ten years of her life, which were for her years of pure suffering, during which she took pleasure in seeing herself destroyed and consumed in the state of victim that she habitually bore. If Mother Mechtilde received with such conformity and humility all the oppositions and adversities that came to her regarding her new Institute, and if she thought only of lowering and destroying herself, God, on the other hand, who was the principal author of this design, showered her with blessings and brought perfection to her work; for finally, after they had rented a house of reasonable size, where they could keep the enclosure, the Queen herself wished to perform the ceremony of placing the cross on the door, which took place on March 12, 1654, and then this pious princess, having gone into the chapel where the Most Blessed Sacrament was exposed, came to make a sacrifice of all human greatness before this adorable Savior, and, with torch in hand, she rendered homage of all that she was to her sovereign Lord. It is since that day that the nuns of whom we speak have had the privilege of exposing, as they do every Thursday, the Most Blessed Sacrament, and of practicing in their houses, day and night, the perpetual adoration of this divine mystery; and it is for this reason that they are called the Daughters of the Blessed Sacrament. They remained for a few years in this house, located on Rue Férou, while waiting to find one to buy that would be suitable for them. After several searches, they finally settled in the Faubourg Saint-Germ ain, on Rue Cassette, whe Filles du Saint-Sacrement Religious order founded by Catherine de Bar. re they bought a house; as soon as it was ready, Mother Mechtilde had her community come there: it was on March 27, 1659, that this translation took place; Henri de Maupas, then Bishop of Le Puy, and later Bishop of Évreux, performed the blessing of this new monastery on the day of the Annunciation.

This venerable instructress chose the most inconvenient hours for adoration; she usually spent them from eleven o'clock at night until four o'clock in the morning, not counting other hours during the day; this is because she regarded herself as a victim consecrated to Jesus Christ. As soon as she had taken on this quality, she began to become it and to be it truly by state, Our Lord making her bear the pains due to sinners, in her body, through continual illnesses, and in her soul, through interior dispositions so crucifying that they would have been capable of causing her to die, had she not been sustained by a superior strength; thus she confessed that she would have then very willingly received death as a singular grace. For more than seven years she endured these terrible trials, both externally and internally; the distresses and anxieties seemed to her to be the poison of hell, of which she drank every day to the full cup. All the human remedies to which she submitted out of obedience and condescension to the desires of her community usually served her no purpose. When the doctors had condemned her to die, she sometimes received a sudden healing, which surprised everyone. Being attacked by several illnesses that were judged to be incurable, and despising in this state all human remedies, she asked with great insistence of her community that they find it good that she make a retreat to prepare herself for the great journey of eternity. After great opposition, she was left full liberty to do everything she wished regarding this retreat: from that moment, she locked herself in her cell, and no one entered during the six weeks that she was enclosed; she only left to go to Mass to receive communion with the community; she spoke to no one: they brought her in a basket what she needed for her meals and left it at her door. It was during the time of this retreat that she composed the little book entitled: *The True Spirit of the Perpetual Adorer Nuns*, etc.

This worthy Mother, who had only a breath of life left when she entered the retreat of which we have just s poken, came out with perfect health and a temperament so cha Le véritable esprit des religieuses Adoratrices perpétuelles Spiritual work written by Catherine de Bar during a retreat. nged and strengthened that she became able to sustain without difficulty the inevitable fatigues of the new establishments that she made subsequently. After having suffered contradictions, insults, slanders, impostures, and a thousand other evils from men, and even from the demons who could not bear the new establishment of the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, she had the consolation and satisfaction of seeing in her lifetime nine monasteries established and closely united with the first by the uniformity of the Rule and the Constitutions that she drew up by the movement of the Divine Spirit, who inspired in her the first design of the Institute. Here is the order of their foundation: The first monastery is that of Rue Cassette; the cross was placed with great ceremony on the door of this house on March 27, 1659. The second monastery is that of Toul, founded on November 8, 1664. The third is that of Ramberviller, which was established in 1666, in the month of April. The fourth is that of Nancy, which was aggregated to the Institute in 1669, in the month of February. Then the one in Rouen was established, and it was on All Saints' Day of the year 1677 that the Most Holy Sacrament was exposed there for the first time, and the Adoration has always continued there since that time. The sixth is the second in Paris, located on Rue Saint-Louis, in the Marais district. They came to live there on September 21, 1684. The seventh is that of Caen, which was associated in 1685, on September 30. The eighth is that which was established in Poland, in the city of Warsaw, in 1687, in the month of October. Finally, the ninth, which is that of Châtillon, was founded on October 22, 1688.

The sufferings and sorrows of Mother Mechtilde increased in the final years of her life as if to complete her perfection. She had predicted them to several of her daughters when they congratulated her, whether on her talents, on the happy success of her affairs and establishments, or on the applause and honors she received from persons of the highest distinction: "You see me now," she would tell them, "in a kind of prosperity and honor before men, but things must change, and a time will come when these praises given to me, these applauses, these friendships, these testimonies of kindness and affection, will turn into contempt, indignation, hatred, slander, and detraction."

Under the heavy burden of these crosses, both interior and exterior, this illustrious disciple of Calvary never complained, following in this the obligation she had imposed upon herself by a special vow; she was very eloquent when she discoursed on sufferings, and she asserted that they constituted the sovereign happiness of this life. She would pleasantly say that the Invention of the Cross was an ordinary feast, which happened every day, because every day one finds something to suffer; but that it was not the same for the Exaltation of the Cross, and that there was nothing rarer than to see crosses honored and accepted with complacency, because they inspire horror in nature and are viewed too humanly: "To discover the grace enclosed within them," she said, "one must look at them in the design of God, and receive them from His divine hand. Our Lord extended on His cross looked more at the will of His Father than at the executioners who were crucifying Him."

Having one day failed to receive a great humiliation that she expected and desired, she testified her sorrow to a religious who was her friend, to whom she wrote in these terms: "I doubt," she told her, "if you will be sufficiently persuaded of the dignity of reproaches to weep with me over the loss I suffer of the participation that the goodness of the Savior seemed to want to give me in these states of humiliation. Oh! how unhappy I am not to be found worthy to bear some small thing of the abjections of Jesus Christ! I am a thousand times more abject for not being abject, and more humiliated for not being humiliated, than if I were. Oh! dearest, men look upon reproaches and contempt as objects of horror and shame; but those who are enlightened by the light of Jesus Christ see them as treasures of the celestial cabinet, and see nothing worthy of God on earth but that. Those who are filled with them are those who have the greatest share in Jesus and the most relation to His states... Believe that the soul loses infinitely when it loses reproach and contempt, and that, from wherever it comes, it is marvelously advantageous to the soul that pretends to be entirely for Jesus Christ; these are the most precious pledges of His love. Farewell, I am going to humble myself at the feet of Jesus." — "Happy the soul," this worthy Mother would also say, "that seeks only to content its adorable Savior, by surrendering itself to suffering as the prey of His justice and as the victim of His love. I tremble when I see a soul that does not suffer: it seems to me that it is like buried in nature and very far from the pure virtue that separates us by the cross from all that can displease God in us."

The discourses she gave on the utility of sufferings were supported by example. She was disposed to all the adversities that could happen, and, as she was told one day that the good welcome and the fine reception she gave to crosses was the reason why so many were sent to her: "Very well!" she replied, "I am always ready to receive everything; if we had faith, we would find nothing more lovable than the cross." She had a singular veneration for the apostle Saint Andrew, because of the infinite esteem he had for his sufferings and the noble sentiments he had on the cross during his martyrdom. She often said with him: O bona crux! because she had known the inestimable price of this precious means that God uses to perfect souls and make them merit an eternal reward, by making them become similar to His crucified and then glorified Son.

When this great soul found herself as if overwhelmed under the weight of interior labors, it was her custom to go to the church, to explain herself to her God in prayer, regarding the anguish and agony to which she was reduced: "I then go to the choir," she said, "to represent to God the pitiful state in which I find myself, and I remain there as long as I am given the leisure, and the conclusion is always to range myself on the side of God against myself, and to find good, just, and holy, everything that He permits and everything that He does, while even admiring His goodness for not having yet struck me down and destroyed me. We must convince ourselves of a truth, which is that God owes us nothing, and that thus we never have reason to complain, in whatever way He deals with us."

It was a fairly ordinary practice for this soul, a friend of abjection, to prostrate herself entirely on the floor, before the Blessed Sacrament, and to adore Him in this humble posture as long as she could, and several times during the day. The religious of her community, fearing that this action, of which they were witnesses, might be harmful to her health at the end of her days, engaged her to use a small mat of her size, upon which she would place herself to make her prostrations. She exercised herself even longer in her postures of humiliation during the night, in her cell where she was in greater liberty. This cell was more of an oratory than a nun's room, having a view of the church, next to the sanctuary, in which the Blessed Sacrament reposed. She slept there almost not at all, and she said one day that she would be very sorry to be more than two hours in a row buried in sleep, without occupying herself with God, and that, by His divine mercy, that never happened to her.

She had such low sentiments of herself that she did not find terms strong enough to express herself on this article. She believed that she alone was the subject of God's indignation: "Have no compassion for me," she said to those who wanted to pity her in her sorrows; "for it is pure justice in God to treat me thus, I deserve it. God does His work by annihilating me and destroying me to the foundations: Exinanite, exinanite usque ad fundamentum in ea; let me be condemned and led to the most shameful torments, I am disposed to accept and undergo them."

She never took advantage of the beautiful work that God had done through her; she looked at herself only as a weak organ, which divine wisdom had been pleased to use to establish His work without supposing any good in her. One had the satisfaction of hearing her say one day that she had no part in all that God had operated through her, in the Institute of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, that she was only a simple little instrument, which could be thrown into the fire after it had been used. She added that God held her interiorly in a state of such great dependence and such great fear for the matter of her salvation, that she could count on nothing, and that she found herself currently in the state of a person who would be suspended with a simple thread above an infernal abyss, and who would always be left in fear that this weak thread might break: "That," she said, "is the state I experience regarding my salvation and the hell I must fear." Her humility continually placed before her eyes her demerits and her imperfections. "God makes me see my unworthiness, and He makes me accept it," she said, "seeing that the process He holds is so holy and so just, that my soul finds itself melted and liquefied with love and respect regarding His divine conduct."

This worthy mistress of the spiritual life had very particular talents for consoling others in the greatest violence of their sorrows, and if all the lights she had were of no use to relieve herself, as she often said, they were otherwise of admirable help and utility for all the persons who resorted to her in their afflictions; it was an inexhaustible source of knowledge and means to penetrate what was said to her and to give useful solutions and answers to everything that was proposed to her. She often anticipated what one had to say and made it known to the persons who came to speak to her. She several times threw into astonishment persons to whom she revealed secrets of conscience that God alone could know: "It is not necessary," she said to her daughters, "that I see you to know what you are doing, I have a presentiment of it that does not deceive me."

She also had a very just discernment of spirits, and she knew in a short time the degree of grace, the talents, the spirit, and the capacity of those who came to consult her. It was this high science and this penetration of spirit with which heaven had favored her, that made her sought after by persons of the greatest merit and the highest virtue. One of her religious complained one day to herself that she was too easy to listen to certain embarrassed and boring spirits who took all her time: "Find a way," she replied, "to make me leave the superiorship, and I will cease to listen to these spirits; for, while I occupy this place, my duty obliges me to answer everyone."

Several persons have assured that her mere presence, or the mere memory of her tranquility and patience in her adversities, dissipated in a moment the most painful situations in which they then found themselves. Her extreme charity often led her to ask with insistence of God that He be pleased to deliver certain persons from the interior sorrows with which she saw them overwhelmed, by offering herself to receive them and to bear them as long as necessary, according to the decrees of His divine Providence.

This charitable superior also had singular attractions in conversation, and there was no one who did not find satisfaction in seeing and hearing her. Nevertheless, she left great liberty to her daughters, in the conferences after meals; she wanted everyone to contribute to the innocent gaiety that is appropriate at those times; she herself made the principal joy of these conversations, knew how to mix the useful and the agreeable, and answered with pleasantness and accuracy to the questions asked of her. Although one had never seen or known her, it was easy to recognize her in the midst of her daughters, by her naturally noble bearing, her grave air, and her rare modesty.

Gentleness always prevailed with her; and her long experience, as well as her good natural spirit, always made her understand that one must use patience, condescension, and a particular kindness toward those over whom one had some authority. A religious of her community, who had more zeal than experience, having wanted to persuade her that she should use more firmness and severity toward certain subjects who appeared difficult to lead, she answered her: "Yes, I agree, I must act with more severity; but let us begin with you; do you wish it?" This word, said with a gentle firmness, threw terror into the mind of this religious, who threw herself at the feet of this prudent Mother and asked her very humbly for pardon for her temerity, recognizing that her conduct was full of wisdom and that she acted by the spirit of God. Another religious, astonished at the extreme patience that the Mother of the Blessed Sacrament had in listening to one of her daughters and in forgiving her several things she did against her duty, took again the liberty to tell her that she should put order to the importunities that this little-virtuous daughter caused her; but as it was only a question here of the interests of this prudent superior, she answered with her ordinary tranquility: "I have promised an infinity of times to my God that I would offend Him no more, and I have contravened my promises as many times; however, God still suffers me, He supports me, and He teaches me by His divine patience to suffer myself and to support others." She never tired of repeating to her daughters, in the conferences she gave them, that they should remember, that being by their profession and their state true victims consecrated to Jesus Christ, the first of victims, they should ceaselessly remember it and always take satisfaction in seeing themselves destroyed and being contradicted in all things, without ever forming the least complaint, so as not to retract their profession nor leave the state of host.

She was so little jealous of her authority, and so little attached to her own judgment, that, in the capitular assemblies, she never wanted to speak first, leaving to others the liberty to say what the spirit of God would inspire in them; she had horror of her own lights, and she followed with pleasure the decisions of others, which she preferred with a good heart to all her thoughts, although everyone was persuaded otherwise that she had a very clear and very solid judgment. It is also in this same spirit that she liste ned, although with véritables victimes Theological concept of sacrificing oneself to make reparation for offenses committed against God. much discernment, to all the advice and counsels given to her, whether on her own conduct or on that of others; and one did so all the more willingly as one was persuaded of her prudence and her wisdom, to keep inviolably the secret on the things one confided to her.

The purity of faith was the ordinary food of this faithful servant of Jesus Christ: "Pure and naked faith," she says in one of her letters, "is my true center, and I must be united to it and consumed by the pure and devouring fire of divine love." It is on this principle that the Mother of the Blessed Sacrament acted, and that, although she was led by the obscure way of privations, in the order of grace, she did not fail to believe, with admirable fidelity and submission, all the mysteries and all the truths of Christianity, being always animated by this spirit of faith; the great feasts of the year were for her a renewal of fervor, and God favored her on these days with so many new graces, that she shared them with everyone, by publishing the kindnesses and liberalities of Jesus Christ and His Church, in the establishment and celebration of these solemn feasts, which awaken and revive the faith and piety of the faithful.

She also had a very high esteem for the religious state, because of the vows one makes there and which bind souls to God by a particular profession: "A religious who loves her state," she said to her daughters, "and who applies herself with fervor to fulfill all its duties, becomes blessed from this life. She is sure that she does the will of God from morning until evening, because all the exercises of religion are for her an open declaration of the divine will to which she has engaged herself to obey; so that, when she goes to an observance, if one asks her where she is going, she can answer in safety: I am going to God, I am going to my blessed eternity." She often said that she made more account of the smallest observance marked by the Rule, than of the greatest austerities that one did by one's own choice.

Of all the exercises of religion, the one she preferred to all others was prayer. One can say that it was her true center and her element, and that it is in this noble exercise that she drew all those beautiful knowledges that one admired in her. She would have spent entire days in the church or in her oratory, on her knees, if the duties of her office and the other observances had not withdrawn her from it. She resumed, during the time of the night, the hours she had not been able to give to contemplation during the day. She found in this noble exercise, better than in any other, the means to testify at leisure the love she had for her God. She said that it was divine love that should be the motive and the principal object of all our actions and all our practices. "One must not desire to know God," she said to her daughters, "except to love Him in a more perfect manner." The most ordinary subject of her groans was that God was neither known nor loved: "Pray, my sisters," she said to her religious, "pray to God that He make Himself known; for if one knew Him, it would be impossible not to love Him." — "Oh! how great is the strength of pure love!" she says in her writings; "it overturns everything; it destroys everything and annihilates everything; this love has the power to tear sinners from their voluptuousness, to lower thrones, and to reduce to nothing all that is proud and most elevated on earth." — "O love," she continues in a transport, "how extended is your power, and what wonders you operate in a heart over which you dominate! You make martyrs, you make solitaries, you make the poor, you make the humble, you make gods. When you reign, you make all things new, but new in the fashion of paradise. You leave nothing imperfect in the place where you make your residence; you triumph over everything, and you want nothing in everything but yourself. O love, since your empire is so precious, so glorious, and so powerful, tell us what you are, and from where you take your origin? Deus charitas est: God is love; O love, you are then God? Yes, I am God, says pure love; that is why I must reign sovereignly everywhere; everything is mine, and nothing must be in everything but me." Here is what she writes again on this subject to one of her friends: "O pure and holy love! I recognize your power, your greatness, and your sovereign authority; reign then and raise yourself above everything that is not you, and appear yourself alone. I put my liberty at your feet. O love! draw me from deep solitude, to martyrdom, to death, to nothingness; tear me from myself and transform me into you, to make me live uniquely from you." She did not believe that one could find the means to restore peace to a person who was without love of God. "Alas," she said, "can one console a soul deprived of its God! O rigorous privation! O unbearable subtraction to a soul that loves and that is not yet dead! But if I speak to you according to my little light, oh! how good it is to bear a state of death to everything!" — "Pure love," she says again elsewhere, "must be the master of everything, in everything, and everywhere: the peace of the heart becomes as eternal to the soul that lives of pure love; it pleases itself there, it establishes its reign there, and it says that it makes its dwelling there during all the ages of ages; instead of having occupied myself with death, as I thought I was doing in solitude, I applied myself to loving. I cannot reflect on the past less than on the future; my soul having met its God upon entering my retreat, it bound itself to Him in such a way that it has not yet been able to take any other thought. God must serve me for everything, and His love must make my preparation for death."

It is thus that this learned mistress in the spiritual ways expressed herself, because she was possessed by the divine Spirit of beautiful charity; but here is on this subject the sentiment of a very enlightened director, who led this worthy Spouse of Jesus Christ. "This great soul," he says, "was animated by the purest divine love with which a creature can be favored on earth. This love was without mixture of any proper interest: she wanted and sought in all things only the pure glory of God, the accomplishment of His adorable will and of His good pleasure; she lived and operated only to establish this divine love: her actions, her maxims, and her sentiments breathed only love. One must not be astonished," continues this director, "if the words of this Spouse of Jesus Christ were like coals of fire that embraced hearts."

After having received an infinity of extraordinary graces, after having passed through the harsh trials of all kinds of interior pains and having also endured a great number of different bodily illnesses, it pleased God to give her premonitions of her approaching death. About six weeks before her passing, she began to prepare her daughters for this sad separation. She was then in great suffering and bore a harsh state of humiliation; but for her, it was a delight. "Oh! How well God does what He does," she said. "I never cease to adore His conduct, to bless Him and to thank Him; I would rather cease to live than cease to suffer. This time is for me a time of grace and blessing, which I would not trade for all the other years of my life; it is now that I begin to live." During Holy Week of the year 1698, she still attended, although very languid, the entire office. On Easter Tuesday, she moved as best she could to a small chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; she remained prostrate there for an hour; at the end of this time, she was asked to return, but she replied that she could not, because she had to place the Institute and the entire community into the hands and under the protection of the Mother of God. On the night from Wednesday to Thursday, she made an effort to perform her three ordinary hours of prayer and also to say her Breviary; but, around noon, she was attacked by a high fever accompanied by vomiting, which determined the community to have the last sacraments administered to her. She confessed and then publicly accused herself of faults that had never been seen in her and asked for forgiveness for the bad example she had given, but which no one had ever recognized. All those present were moved by the sentiments and acts of contrition she produced. She received the Holy Viaticum at the same moment, and responded to all the prayers with a presence of mind and a union with God that inspired admiration and devotion in all those who were present. On Saturday, the illness having greatly increased, she asked for the Reverend Father Paulin, ex-provincial of the penitent religious of Nazareth, to whom she confessed for the last time. She received communion again on Quasimodo Sunday, between midnight and one o'clock, in a spirit of reparation for all her negligences committed in the divine presence. Around six o'clock, Father Paulin asking her what she was thinking about, she only answered these two words: "I adore and I submit." She then gave her blessing to the entire community, then her strength failing her entirely, she fell into a sweet agony which still left her the freedom to abandon herself to her God and to unite herself with the expiring Jesus Christ; it is in the exercise of these supernatural acts that she peacefully rendered her spirit to God, on April 6 of the year 1698, being eighty-three years, three months, and six days old.

[APPENDIX: NOTICE ON THE ORDER OF BENEDICTINES]

The Order of which she was the foundress was received in all forms by both the ecclesiastical and secular powers; for, besides the permissions she had obtained from the State, the Cardinal of Vendôme, legate in France, approved it in the year 1668 with the Constitutions she had drawn up to ensure it was better kept. Pope Innocent XI confirmed the same Institute in the year 1676 and Clement XI has since approved it again by a brief of April 1, 1705, at the solicitation of the Queen of Poland, Marie Casimir, wife of John III.

The Benedictine nuns of Bayoux also took up the reform of Perpetual Adoration, which they professed on September 10, 1701. A convent of this Order was also founded in the city of Dreux, in the diocese of Chartres. It was proposed, as early as 1695, to make this establishment, when the Reverend Mother Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament was still living; but several difficulties having arisen, this matter was not executed until 1708, after the death of this worthy foundress. The Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration have always had several houses, among others two in Paris; one in the former convent of the nuns of Sainte-Aure, rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève; the other in the former premises of the Temple where Louis XVI was imprisoned. This latter monastery recalls august and lugubrious memories, not only by its location, but by its foundress and first prioress Louise de Bourbon-Condé, sister of the last of the Condés, assassinated at the Château de Saint-Leu, aunt of the Duke of Enghien, shot in the moats of the Château de Vincennes.

Something so noble and so useful has been recognized in the cult of Perpetual Adoration that several other famous communities, which are not of Mother Mechtilde's establishment, wishing to participate in the exercises and merits of this new Institute, have also consecrated themselves to render this continuous honor to the Most Holy Sacrament.

In order to extend this pious custom more and more, we will describe the edifying practices that are observed in the Institute of Mother Mechtilde, to honor the Blessed Sacrament.

The nuns of this Order oblige themselves, by a solemn vow, to render perpetual adoration to the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar, in reparation for all the irreverences committed against this adorable pledge of our redemption. Each nun makes her adoration every day for the space of an hour, according to the time that has been marked for her, and as this adoration must be perpetual and without interruption, it has been regulated in such a way that the Blessed Sacrament is never without homage either by day or by night; the nuns succeed one another.

Every month the hours are drawn by tickets, and the adorations are multiplied at each hour, according to the number of nuns who compose the community. Besides this perpetual adoration, reparation is also one of the main obligations of this Institute. Every day a nun, according to her rank of profession, comes at the end of the office that precedes the conventual mass, to place herself in the middle of the choir, where there is a lit torch, placed on a large wooden candlestick, which is called a post; she puts a thick rope around her neck, and, taking the torch in hand, she remains in this humble posture during the Holy Mass, making amends to the majesty of God outraged by the crimes of so many impious people and humiliated in the Blessed Sacrament.

When the time for communion has come, she leaves the torch and the rope, and she goes to receive communion; for the communion of that day is indispensable. The reparatrix likewise goes to the refectory with the rope around her neck and the torch in her hand, like a criminal, walking last of all the sisters, and having knelt in the middle of the refectory in deep humiliation, she says aloud at the first pause of the reading: "Praised and adored be forever the Blessed Sacrament of the altar! My dearest sisters," she continues, "remember that we are vowed to God as victims, to repair the outrages and profanations that are incessantly committed against the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar. I humbly ask for the help of your prayers, to fulfill this duty as I should." Then this nun returns to the choir, and only takes her meal at the second table; she remains in retreat that day until Vespers, to honor the solitude and penance of the Son of God.

Every day, after the conventual mass, the one who is on duty for the week to perform the divine office, kneels at the post, where, having the torch in hand and the rope around her neck, she pronounces aloud an act of Adoration composed by the mother foundress, during which all the sisters are prostrated on the ground. At every hour, both day and night, five strokes of the large bell are rung; to warn those who must come to the choir and to remind all the others of the inestimable benefit contained in the divine Eucharist, and both the one who rings them, and those who hear them, say in a spirit of Adoration: "Praised be the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar forever!" They have these words on their lips at every moment; it is, so to speak, their watchword, whether when approaching each other when they have something to ask one another, or when they knock at the door of the cells or offices.

It is also the first greeting in letters, at the grilles, at the turn, or when they speak to people from the outside; it is how the readers begin the readings that are done in common; these are the first words they pronounce upon waking, and the last before falling asleep. All the hours of the divine office also begin and end with these same words, which are pronounced in Latin, while kissing the ground, and the same is observed at the end of grace and at the beginning of common conferences, after meals. The nuns being then where they must be, they kneel and say: *Laudetur sacrosanctum et augustissimum sacramentum in aeternum*. One never passes before the Blessed Sacrament, nor before the door of the choir, however closed, without making a genuflection, and, when one is at a distance, an inclination. Each nun wears before her, on the scapular or on the large church habit, a figure of the Blessed Sacrament, of gilded copper, made in the shape of a sun, on the foot of which are also engraved these words: "Praised be the Most Holy Sacrament forever!" as well as in a ring that is given to them at profession. They never leave these external symbols of their state; the seal of the monastery is also a figure of the Blessed Sacrament.

By an indispensable obligation of the Institute, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed every Thursday of the year, throughout the day, in the church of each monastery. There is a general communion on that day, and the sisters abstain from manual labor from the exposition until after the benediction. There are also no common conferences after dinner nor on other days of exposition, so that the sisters may be more assiduous in His presence, from which they do not leave except to take their meal and when necessity draws them away. On those days there is a solemn high mass, the sermon, and finally the benediction before Compline.

The feast of the Blessed Sacrament and its octave are celebrated with as much solemnity as possible; and every first Thursday of each month, except during the Easter season, the double office is performed, under the title of reparation for the outrages and profanations committed against the Most Holy Sacrament.

On the Thursday of Sexagesima, commonly called Shrove Thursday, a double feast of the second class is celebrated, with the same solemnity as that of the Blessed Sacrament. During the conventual mass all the nuns are in reparation, with the rope around their necks and a candle in their hands; they do the same at the benediction; the *Miserere* is sung, the priests being prostrated in the sanctuary, face to the ground, and the Adoration bell is rung until the end.

Every year, on the day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin and during her octave, the community makes amends during mass, to repair all the negligences and faults they have committed against the Blessed Sacrament throughout the year, and they receive communion in memory and in thanksgiving for the establishment of the Institute, which took birth on the same day in 1653 and also to ask God for subjects capable of maintaining it in its vigor. When some extraordinary profanation occurs or is learned of, besides the penances that each imposes on herself in private with permission, the prioress orders public and general reparations and amends, processions, with the rope around the neck and the candle in hand, with other acts of penance.

When a nun is in agony, the prioress has the community assemble in the infirmary, and all the sisters, being on their knees, make amends in the accustomed manner to repair the faults of the one who is about to appear before God; and when it is possible, a rope is also placed around her neck and a blessed candle in her hand, so that she may die as a reparatory and penitent victim.

Whatever may be said of what we have said about the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, which is essential to the Institute, there is also a particular one towards the Most Holy Virgin, whom the nuns regard as their mother and their protectress, and whom they honor in this capacity by various practices of piety; thus they expose the Blessed Sacrament on the day of all the feasts of Our Lord, of Saint Benedict, and of Saint Scholastica.

We have extracted this summary from a large number of very faithful memoirs and several letters of the Reverend Mother Mechtilde, which were communicated to us by the first monastery of her Institute. — Cf. *The True Spirit of the Perpetual Adorer Nuns of the Most Holy Sacrament*, by Mother Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament.