Part 2
A life signed: “Your little Sister”
Humility is like the good soil in which spiritual childhood can take root. But the difficulty is that, since original sin, we have all been proud! We want to dominate, we aspire to command, we want to be appreciated…
What a contrast with Jesus, who became a little child on the straw of Bethlehem, who wanted to be a servant to his disciples, who was humiliated by men during his Passion and who awaits us night and day in the tabernacle! He invites us to be like Him when He says: “Become my disciples, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” (Matthew 11:29)
Blessed Eugénie wanted to become a disciple of Jesus:
“What a lesson Jesus taught me when he left Nazareth! Nothing extraordinary to attract attention: he remained hidden, like the last of the sinners. I want to imitate him… If I want to remain hidden and disappear like Jesus, I must be very careful to avoid anything that attracts attention to me.” (SEJ p.126)
“Do I seriously like being forgotten, counted for nothing?” (SEJ p.131)
“Jesus always gives himself to the very humble.” (Notebook 32)
The Virgin Mary also was her model. In her notebooks, we find this revealing resolution: “be the very little handmaid of my sisters, always see myself as such, for love and to be a little like the Immaculate Virgin…”
“I would make myself the smallest in everything and everywhere, especially inwardly.” (Notebook 35)
One day the Mother Superior was talking about a saint who, by a very humble and hidden life, saved a multitude of souls. Blessed Sister Eugénie’s reaction revealed the desires of her soul:
“Then, she said, I felt an ardent desire arise in my heart to imitate him and save many souls.” (SEJ p.142)
To resemble her divine Model, Blessed Eugénie sought to eliminate within herself anything that might be pride.
“O Jesus, with my heart, with my faith […] I choose you for my King, not to enjoy, but to fight with you my pride, my self-love, my petty vanity, to make you, in a word, the unique Master of my heart.” (SEJ p.127)
It was not an empty phrase, then, when Sister Eugénie wrote a few months later in her notebooks:
“When faced with humiliation, give thanks despite your natural rebellions. If the first movement is not one of joy, suppress it immediately and resist it as many times as it reappears. Then, relive the humiliation in spirit so as to savour the sweetness of its bitterness, until nature no longer leaps before what crucifies and immolates it.”
These words may be difficult to hear and understand in our 21st century, in which we live without trying to please God and in which the watchword seems to be: “Enjoy yourself”. But Blessed Eugénie understood that it took a lot of humiliation to accept a little humility…
“If I am generous and if I love Our Lord, how many opportunities will I discover each day to disappear in the midst of my Sisters, to rejoice in seeing them esteemed, approved of, to love to be seen only by Jesus alone!” (SEJ p.131)
These humiliations, so difficult for our nature to accept, are like little deaths that allow Jesus to live more fully in us.
“Our Lord Himself draws me to it by His example, by His love. If I come close to Him through humiliation, He will give Himself to me as a reward.” (SEJ p.131)
She used an evocative image, that of the little grain of dust, to make us discover that humility leads to Jesus and makes us understand that humiliation is only for the purpose of growing in humility:
“Another thought that should lead me to sacrifice myself entirely for God is the thought of my smallness, of my nothingness. If I were convinced that I am just a tiny grain of dust, would I murmur against anything that offends my self-esteem or my bad nature a little? The little grain of dust is made to be stepped on, to be trodden on, and not only is it right to do so, but it is also quite natural. I am a tiny grain of dust, a little nothing, and I want to let myself be humiliated and despised so that I can be a little like the One who has become like an earthworm to me. I ask only one thing: to remain stuck in the folds of his clothes and thus come close to his adorable Heart.” (Notebook 35)
Another evocative image compares the small grain of humility with the mountain of graces obtained!
“If I have a spirit of faith, I will see God everywhere, especially in the cross and humiliation. If He hides Himself, it’s to give me more praise, to make me seek Him more. How Jesus loves to hide and be sought in humiliations! Here is a little warning, a little word that does not spare my susceptibility, in a word a little humiliation, instead of murmuring when receiving it, or avoiding it, let’s say with a big heart a generous thank you and Jesus will place beside this humiliation a mountain of graces; yes, a mountain of delights for a small grain of humility.” (Notebook 35)
But there can be no humility without the support of grace, because humility is too contrary to our nature, wounded by original sin. Our Lord particularly attracted Sister Eugénie to the love of humility. Here is the prayer she addressed to Mary as she began her retreat the year after her Vows:
“Dear Mary, Queen and Mother of the little ones, obtain for me, I implore you, two graces from the Heart of Jesus: the grace of knowing my misery as it is; then the grace of desiring and loving to be humiliated, despised, counted for nothing.” (SEJ p.98)
Blessed Eugénie shows us that the humble person knows that he or she can do nothing by him or herself in the supernatural order. For by ourselves we can do nothing, but He who can do everything does great things in us!
Sister Eugénie was astonished, and she was to be astonished to the end, at the call that Our Lord had addressed to her through her vocation:
“The Good Lord has come to find me in our mountains, me who was nothing, she would sometimes say naively, and He deigns to fill me here with all good things.” (SEJ p.62)
That did not mean that she was not feeling the struggle against her wounded nature… but it gives us good support:
“During this little struggle against evil nature, why not hold the hand of the Blessed Virgin, for example? Why not lock myself in her heart? Then I’ll always be sure to say thank you. Doesn’t a mother always make her child say thank you? Even for things he or she doesn’t understand or appreciate? Sometimes a task seems to me to be difficult, and aridity, dryness, desolation invade my prayer, my exercises of piety… these are precious means sent by Our Lord to help me love him more.” (Notebook 35)
In her notebooks, Sister Eugénie often reflected on humility:
“He who humbles himself like a little child will be great in the Kingdom of Heaven… Humility is the treasure in which all the virtues are contained… The secret to find great peace is humility… A stone detached from the mountain does not find rest until it has reached the ground.” (Notebook 13)
“When God wants to do great things, He goes looking for nothingness, because it is only with nothingness that He can do something.” (Notebook 37)
For her and her sisters, she wrote in her notebook the desire “to be uprooted from our self-esteem”. (Notebook 16)
After this reflection on humility, it is probably worth giving three concrete signs of the way in which Blessed Eugénie lived it.
First of all, the testimony of her sisters reveals her humility in fraternal relationships:
“One of her Sisters, having once spoken a little sharply to Sister Eugénie, wanted to express her regret. Eugénie didn’t let her finish, but asked with a gentle smile: ‘Am I no longer a little child? Aren’t you allowed to tell me everything? Besides, I haven’t noticed anything.’ The affectionate expression in her eyes and the tone of her voice left no doubt about it.” (SEJ p.126)
Secondly, we can talk about humility at work. She who wished to be a servant to her sisters was so within the tasks entrusted to her. Her contemporaries testified that she spontaneously took second position in work done by two people, devoted herself to any task, and chose the most arduous. The sister who worked with her was often called away, and when she returned, she found everything finished and Sister Eugénie with her face all red, offering herself for another task… We can find this reflection in her notebooks:
“You have to work with great indifference to the things you are ordered. God has chosen and fixed my work. Great disinterest in success. Success is nothing in God’s works. Do everything out of love… Then do everything with great purity of intention, that is what gives value to our smallest actions… Our day must be a continual prayer. If we want to, work is a fervent prayer for us, because prayer is nothing other than the union of our soul with God. In Nazareth they worked continuously at material things and yet they never stopped praying.” (Notebook 37)
Finally, it is worth mentioning a concrete sign of her true humility: obedience.
In the notebook from her retreat of 1898, Blessed Eugénie immediately turns our attention to the Divine Model:
“He was obedient to them, those are the only words the Gospel says about Jesus in Nazareth. Jesus did only one thing in Nazareth and he did it for thirty years: he obeyed. He was submissive… He knew only how to obey. What a lesson for me! I must make every effort to perfect holy obedience in myself.” Later, in her meditation, she spoke of “humble obedience” and “obeying like a little child”, insisting on all the graces that it brings. (Notebook 35)
“Obedience is achieved through humility… Obedience must be prompt, joyful and sincere. I will do with all my heart what I would not like to do at all. Obedience required Jesus to go as far as immolation, as far as death, so we must die as children of perfect obedience. Obedience must be loving, affectionate. If we are faithful in seeing God in our superiors, our obedience will produce incredible effects.” (Notebook 37)
“If I always do the Will of good pleasure, I will always have God with me. ‘He who sent me is with me,’ said Our Lord. Every time the bell or obedience calls me to a certain exercise, a certain task, etc., I will think that it is Our Lord Himself who is calling me because He is there and He is waiting for me; and the more I apply myself to this exercise or this task, however humble it may be, the more the divine Master will show Himself in it.” (Notebook 21)
Her Sisters reported how she accepted the situations permitted by God, as well as the slightest requests from the doctor or her superiors. For example, during her illness, “the doctor allowed her to write a little, but not for more than ten minutes each time. She always had her eyes on her watch when she wrote, so as not to exceed the prescribed limit; there was no need to watch over her: you knew that at the expiry of the tenth minute she would leave the word unfinished, as she used to do at the sound of the bell. I’ve seen her taking several days to write a letter, without showing the slightest sign of boredom.” (SEJ p.145)
Her Sisters reported how she accepted the situations permitted by God, as well as the slightest requests from the doctor or her superiors. For example, during her illness, “the doctor allowed her to write a little, but not for more than ten minutes each time. She always had her eyes on her watch when she wrote, so as not to exceed the prescribed limit; there was no need to watch over her: you knew that at the expiry of the tenth minute she would leave the word unfinished, as she used to do at the sound of the bell. I’ve seen her taking several days to write a letter, without showing the slightest sign of boredom.” (SEJ p.145)
To conclude this second part, we could quote the second stanza of Blessed Eugénie’s poem. It gives us a very evocative image of the fundamental link between humility and spiritual childhood, that of the first steps of a small child:
“Like a toddler trotting along,
So little and yet not falling,
For their mother is there, bending down
To guide their every step;
So I want in my weakness
Rely on my mother’s love
And hide all my littleness
In this Heart, foretaste of heaven.” (SEJ p.68)
Those who are truly children are not surprised when they need help to guide their steps. Their humility and weakness are like the good soil in which the Lord’s beloved child will grow.
See you in April for the third part, dedicated to loyalty to small things.
