Part 4
“ONLY GOD!”
Father de Grandmaison [Father Léonce de Grandmaison (1868-1927)] wrote a beautiful prayer which suits our dear Blessed very well:
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, keep my heart like a child’s, pure and transparent as a spring. Obtain for me a simple heart…”
(continuation of the prayer: “… which does not relish sadness. A heart that is magnificent in giving itself, tender in compassion. A heart that is faithful and generous, that forgets no good and holds no grudge against any evil. Give me a gentle and humble heart, loving without asking for anything in return, happy to give way to another heart before your divine Son. A great and indomitable heart that no ingratitude can close, that no indifference can weary. A heart tormented by the glory of Jesus Christ, wounded by his love and whose wound will heal only in heaven. Amen”).
In the previous section, we compared fidelity to little things to what blooms in the soul of those who live according to spiritual childhood… purity and simplicity would then be like a spring that protects and quenches the thirst of this mountain flower.
This source of purity springs from the Heart of Jesus and Mary. It is a clear, pure spring, so clear and so pure!
The words, gestures and whole life of Jesus that we discover in the Gospel are marked by purity and simplicity. Jesus calls those who want to become his disciples to be like him: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:8)
Purity is the absence of any mixture, any stain, any sin, but it is also the fullness of divine life. This is why the Holy Spirit inspired the angel to greet the Virgin Mary by calling her “Full of grace” (Luke 1:28).
Blessed Eugénie evoked this fullness of the divine which requires a struggle: “To want to give everything is divine; to want to sacrifice oneself is divine; to want to give always, to want to love always, is divine. Take all that is human out of the heart, and let in only what is divine” (Notebook 16). That is the purity of the soul!
Simplicity is a sister virtue to purity, because it is a quality that reflects authenticity, honesty and transparency, as well as the dimension of being undivided.
Blessed Eugénie had the heart of a pure and simple child. Looking back over her life, it reflected radical purity. When she was a teenager, she wondered about her vocation, and there were no half-measures for her: she wanted to be either entirely for God, or entirely for the world. At the age of 19, her answer was clear. She chose Jesus to be the Love of her life. “I choose you for my King … to make you, in a word, the only Master of my heart.” (SEJ p.127)
From the very beginning of her religious life, she fought to give him all her love. “Anything that is not only God or only for God can alter the purity of the heart.” (SEJ p.116) Her writings highlight the strong link that she established between purity and holiness: ‘’Only God, only with God, do I have holiness.” (Notebook 1)
In one of her retreat notebooks, she reflected and meditated on the fact that the little sins contracted out of habit (and not out of weakness) were an obstacle to holiness if they were not vigorously combated. Indeed, she added,
“holiness is a purity above all purity and in which the slightest mixture is impossible… no middle way in the path of holiness.” (Notebook 7)
In a meditation on the Incarnation during a retreat, she marvelled at the humility of Jesus and the purity of the Virgin Mary. The Incarnate Word is happy to rest “in such a pure tabernacle”. (Notebook 28)
Finally, let us mention a great and beautiful meditation offered by the Blessed in one of her retreat notebooks. This meditation is imbued with an offering text by Saint Ignatius used during the spiritual exercises [Prayer of offering to God the Father called “Suscipe” (= Receive in Latin): “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty” by Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)]. From this prayer of offering, Blessed Eugénie made a text, addressing the Lord in a style that was very much her own and inspired by her heart as pure as a spring that wanted to give itself completely.
‘’O Lord, in gratitude I give you everything: take and receive all my freedom, my memory, my mind, my will, my heart and all myself; all that I have you have given it to me, I give it back to you, use it as you wish, all I ask in return is your grace and your love, and I am rich enough. Yes, take everything, my divine Master, my freedom; I want to be a slave of love, I want to be chained by love; take my memory; I want to remember only your benefits and your mercy towards me, who have so often offended you! O my Lord and my divine Master, drown and burn all my crimes in the fire of your love, forget them for ever!… Take my mind too; I want to know only you; I want to taste only your Spirit, only your heart; hide from my mind all the reasonings of self-love and my bad nature, and open my intelligence to all that comes from you, from your perfections, from your love for us!… Take my heart too, O my good Master, this poor heart of mine, that it may be yours without reserve.
How much time did he waste with the creature! Why did he not know and seek you sooner, O divine Master of my soul? From now on I swear to you that I am yours for ever, I give you everything; my soul with all its faculties, my body with all its senses, my heart with its dearest affections; only you, O my Jesus, will be the love of my heart. You know how I thirsted for love for as long as I searched for the creature, nothing could satiate me or satisfy me, and then I wanted something pure, I wanted the strongest love, but I also wanted pure love, the love that does not defile and that allows the heart to always say: even more! More love. Give myself even more! Even more proof that I love!
O my Jesus, I have found this love, but alas, very late! Only you are everything to me from now on, I want only you, your love, your glory and your holy will.” (Notebook 15)
Finally, together let us consider the virtue of simplicity. Simplicity is so simple that defining it can be complex! Blessed Eugénie was simple in her way of being, speaking and behaving. She didn’t complicate things or block situations, she didn’t play a character or live superficially. She clearly expressed the link between the virtue of simplicity and spiritual childhood:
“Be a little child, a very little child, and keep the simplicity within me and make it grow.” (Notebook 20)
By reading and meditating on some of her words about simplicity, we gradually discover what the Blessed evoked by using this term. One of her retreat resolutions shows that she wanted to develop the virtue of simplicity within herself:
“I will be able to gain great trust through love; love in the simplicity of a tiny child. All love has faith, and trust is the fruit of faith; so the more I love, the more faith will grow in my heart, and as faith grows in my heart, trust will become greater and greater. Everything out of love, everything for love, everything with love: Love! Love! Love!” (Notebook 32)
We can see that she approached simplicity in a very concrete way as a quality of love. We discover in another retreat resolution that she was advised to do that by her spiritual Father: “I will always keep in my heart what our Blessed Father Rabussier [Louis-Étienne Rabussier – 1831-1897 – from the Society of Jesus, who founded with Mother Marie Ignace Melin the congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family of the Sacred Heart to which Blessed Eugénie belonged] told me:
‘Love, love very much, but love with the simplicity of a little child. Keep that simplicity within you and make it grow. Be a little child everywhere and always, it is the love of a little child that is the most generous… Keep the simplicity of the little children who never say ‘why’ but always ‘yes’, who let themselves be carried by their mother and see only their mother.’” (Notebook 36)
In this fourth part, we have discovered the “sister virtues” of purity and simplicity in Blessed Eugénie’s life. Virtues that she endeavoured to develop over the course of her life through the advice she received and her daily struggle. A pure heart, as we have discovered from her writings, is an undivided heart that lives “only from God or for God only”. A little child’s simple heart is a heart that allows us to love with confidence and even more.
Dear Blessed Eugénie, we want to draw close with you to this source of purity and simplicity that helps us grow in spiritual childhood and bears such wonderful fruit!
In conclusion: “EVERYTHING or NOTHING with GOD!” (Notebook 2)
