Part 8
“What is your secret, little Sister?”
In the second part of our trilogy, we will discover that, for our blessed sister, the role of the Virgin Mary in spiritual childhood was central. Let us first consider how our dear sister spoke about it, then how she experienced it.
The poem that we quoted many times eloquently illustrates the active help offered by the Virgin Mary. She is present in every verse, like a mother watching over her child and protecting him or her from harm, like a mother teaching her little one to walk, like a tender mother carrying him or her in her arms. There would certainly be much to explore regarding the Virgin Mary’s various actions towards our souls if they are trusting souls. We will limit ourselves to summarising the essential points:
Our Lady is here to “preserve” her child “from evil”. (SEJ 68, stanza 1), “guide their every step” (SEJ 68, stanza 2), “make everything easy” (SEJ 68, stanza 3), be a “support” (SEJ 68, stanza 4), “show them what they need to know” (SEJ 68, stanza 5), receive “her love sweeter than honey” (SEJ 68, stanza 6).
Thus, Blessed Eugénie was enthusiastic about the One she called her “Mother in Heaven”:
“Love Mary, love her again, love her more and more! I love her because I love her; I love her because She is my Mother! I love her because She is so beautiful, so pure; I love her and I want every beat of my heart to say to her: My Immaculate Mother, you know how much I love you!” (SEJ p.8-9)
In her private notes, the same thought recurs frequently
“O Mary, you alone are my light, my strength, my refuge; never, never will I forget what you do for your child.” (SEJ p.9)
On several occasions, our blessed sister also reveals to us the role of the Virgin Mary in suffering, and especially the conditions that enable Our Lady to help us follow that difficult path:
“The Immaculate One is, indeed, the Queen of Martyrs; oh, how beautiful she is, adorned, like her Son, with this precious garment! But, having become our Mother in that hour of sorrow, Mary Herself fashioned that double garment (purity and love) for each of her children. She will Herself cover me with the garments of Our Lord, with Her own, insofar as I am small, insofar as I allow myself to be treated like a very small child.” (SEJ p.43)
The Blessed Virgin guides us in our daily lives:
“When something upsets me, think about how the Blessed Virgin would have behaved in that situation. What would she have done? What would she have said in my place?” (Notebook 36)
Blessed Eugénie shows us Mary’s role in our journey towards holiness: she, who felt so small, so incapable of climbing this rough path, shares with us her hopeful discovery:
“From the depths of my nothingness, in order to reach the holiness that God wants me to glimpse during this retreat, I throw myself now into the Immaculate Heart of my Mother, for wherever a mother goes, her little child goes too; would a small child who cannot yet walk think of climbing steep rocks or a high mountain on their own?… And yet they can climb even higher, but they are not alone: they are carried in their mother’s arms, on her breast, on her heart. There, they have no fear of not reaching their goal or falling along the way; they simply do not have such thoughts. Why? Because they see only their mother’s heart, her love. So will it be for me during this retreat. The Good Lord wants, with the grace He will give me, to lead me to a very high summit: that of perfection and holiness. He wants to lead me there so that I may remain there for the rest of my life, but, poor little worm that I am, how can I climb this mountain of holiness?… Ah! I know that well! I have a mother, and I am the child of her sorrows. How could she not carry me in the depths of her mercy and thus bring me to the Heart of Jesus?
Mary is my Mother!” (Notebook 35)
How great was her confidence!
“All graces came to me through Mary, she said later; I owe everything to Her.”
But when reading these excerpts, some might see this as an exaggeration? Perhaps some will even worry: does spiritual childhood towards Mary not run parallel to spiritual childhood towards God? Does one not then overshadow the other?
We will quickly be reassured by great saints such as saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, who repeated to anyone willing to listen: “All to Jesus through Mary”, and following in his footsteps, Saint John Paul II: “Totus tuus”. When Eugénie was only 11 years old, she wrote a luminous sentence to her younger sister Antonia to help her understand Marian spiritual childhood: “The secret to remain children of God is to remain children of the Holy Virgin” (JVPK p.8). Talking about “a secret” reveals that being, or even more so “remaining a child of God”, is not easy and that a path must be found. As a child, Eugénie discovered that being a “child of the Holy Virgin” was the sure way to achieve our goal of “remaining children of God”. Having become a nun, she wrote: “Love the Most Blessed Virgin more and more; love her as much as I want; be satisfied without any fear in this love. Turn to Her all that is tender in my heart; all that says: even more love; in a word, the thirst for love that my heart needs. I can never love the Most Blessed Virgin too much, and I will often think that the more I love her, the more I will also love Our Lord. He wants to give Himself to me through Mary; therefore, the more I am His Mother’s child, the more I will also be His child, His spouse. Love Mary, love Her again, love Her more and more! I love Her because I love Her; because She is my Mother; She has given me everything; She gives me everything; because She is the one who still wants to give me everything; I love Her because She is so beautiful, so pure; I love Her and I want all my sighs to say to Her: ‘My Immaculate Mother, you know very well that I love you’.” (Notebook 32)
Thus, she reassures those who are anxious: far from proposing two parallel paths that would harm each other, she makes us understand that Mary’s arms lead us to the Heart of our God! So, at the end of a retreat, she wrote:
“You, my Mother, will help me, will teach me to love you and lead me into the Heart of Jesus.” (Notebook 36)
After seeing how Blessed Eugenie spoke about spiritual childhood at Mary’s school, we suggest looking at how she lived it. We will limit ourselves to mentioning only a few events among many others, because that filial relationship with Mary would require an entire presentation on its own!
Our Lady leant over her cradle:
“She was there on February 11, 1876, blessing the little child who was entering life at the very first hour of the day, on the eighteenth anniversary of the apparition of Lourdes. Did that providential coincidence not seem to promise the day of your life an uninterrupted manifestation of the graces and love of the Immaculate Conception?” (SEJ p.56, excerpt from a letter received from her sister Marie on her twenty-first birthday)
The little girl, for whom the rosary was her favourite prayer, joined the Children of Mary community (the Virgin Mary herself asked Saint Catherine Labouré to establish the Community of the Children of Mary during her apparition in 1830 in Rue du Bac). Joachim Bouflet, in his book “Une force d’âme” (“A Strength of Soul”), recounted that Eugénie was elected president of the Children of Mary, not by secret ballot as was customary, but by a kind of ovation. This testimony reveals that, for her classmates, there was no point in voting: it was obvious that Eugénie should be president. There is therefore no doubt that her childhood love for the Blessed Virgin was known and appreciated by the other teenage girls.
Let us return to September 8, 1897, when Sister Eugénie was admitted to take her vows on the feast of the Nativity of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. We recall that the Gospel chosen was the one that invites us to become like little children. But to comment on it, Father Rabussier repeated the words of the divine Master, proposing the child Mary as a model: “Unless you turn and become like this little girl, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (SEJ p.73). He added: “If I am the little Gospel child, I have a refuge that is always open, a sure refuge in the arms and Heart of my heavenly Mother. There, I forget all my worries, I love and trust like a child resting on their mother’s breast.
Once in their mother’s arms, the little child feels secure; they do not think: What if I fall? How will I walk, how will I get my food? No, they look into their mother’s eyes, they walk when she walks, they are nourished by her heart.” (SEJ p.75) The path to the Kingdom of Heaven was clearly marked out for Sister Eugénie: to be a little child of God, just as the Virgin Mary Herself was.
Finally, let us share the testimony of one of the nuns about her last moments: “Our dear Sister Eugénie passed away gently like a little lamb on the cross, between the Santa Bambina and the Child Jesus, whom she still held by the hand. I tear myself away with difficulty from this bed where everything speaks of peace, faith, prayer, trust and love. It is truly the blessed death of the little child of the Holy Family of the Sacred Heart.” … “How should I die? she asked naively. — Like a little child being carried in their mother’s arms,” replied the Mother Superior. “When I am up there, I will ask the Blessed Virgin and our Venerable Father, for each of my fellow Sisters, the gift of evangelical childhood and an immense love for the Most Blessed Virgin.” (SEJ p.270-271)
Perhaps we could compare our lives to a rosary composed of joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries? For our Blessed Eugénie, the thread linking the mysteries of our life from birth to death would be this filial relationship with the Virgin Mary, the path of evangelical childhood.
