Part 9
“I thirst for God and I thirst for laughter”
The third part of our triptych aims to show that Blessed Eugénie’s spiritual childhood was profoundly joyful!
Of course, joy is a virtue that generally evokes childhood. As mentioned, for example, in the sixth stanza of her poem on spiritual childhood, small children smile at life:
“Like a little one waking up,
Tweeting their naive happiness,
While their mother is watching over
Their first cries, the impulse of their hearts…
So, every dawn I want to
Smile at my Mother in Heaven,
Find in her love once again
A ray sweeter than honey.” (SEJ p.68)
The first thing to note is that Blessed Eugénie had a cheerful disposition, which was the starting point for a supernatural virtue closely linked to spiritual childhood.
Little Eugénie was an outgoing and cheerful child, according to her teachers. As a young girl, her friends compared her to a “happy little finch”. She herself talked about the “uncontrollable laughter” she had when chatting with her sister Marie, didn’t she?
After she became a nun, her fellow novices testified that: “We teased her about her enthusiasm, but we also admired the generosity of her pure soul” (SEJ p.40).
Throughout her life, her smiling face was a true apostolate for those who approached her: “28 years smiling” (“28 ans de sourire” – Title of Father Maurice Déchaud’s book). Beautiful testimonies show us the source of her joy. A future postulant was doing her vocation retreat with the Holy Family of the Sacred Heart. From her pious solitude, she heard Sister Eugénie laughing so heartily one day that she was filled with joy and said to herself: “We must be very happy with the Holy Family of the Sacred Heart to laugh like that.” Shortly afterwards, she decided to experience the same happiness: “I had understood, she said, that such genuine cheerfulness must spring from a child’s heart, happy to feel at home in the Community, and that thought appealed to me” (SEJ p.112).
But also: a newly arrived postulant at the Holy Family of the Sacred Heart could not take her eyes off Sister Eugénie, who seemed to embody the ideal of religious perfection, both radiant and simple, that she herself sought far from the world. One day, unable to bear it any longer, she ran to find the Mother Superior: “Mother, she said, Sister Eugénie seems so happy! – That’s because she gives everything to Our Lord”, came the reply. (SEJ p.112)
Her child’s heart was enthusiastic and marvelled at God, at the small and great works of Creation, as well as at the kindness of her fellow nuns:
“Tonight, 3 October, we are leaving for Loreto! O Grace of Graces! It seems like a dream to me! I am leaving full of joy!”
They arrived in Loreto for the Feast of the Holy Rosary and, in a letter written in pencil, at Recanati by the sea, Sister Eugénie hastened to give her Mothers Superiors some news of the stay: “At eleven o’clock, we were at the Santa Casa; we kissed its sacred walls, and that filled my heart so much that, apart from the beauty of the sea, I can hardly speak of anything else.
My joy was such that I could not utter a single word, not even one of gratitude, to the Blessed Virgin. Mother M… and Sister E… then took Communion in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and after a short lunch with the Sisters, they returned to attend High Mass.
Meanwhile, I went to rest; and now we are by the sea, breathing in long, deep breaths of delicious, intoxicating air. Oh! How beautiful this sea is, how it speaks to us of the Good Lord! We are enjoying ourselves like children at the moment.” (SEJ p.215-216)
However, as we have already noted, that happiness did not come without struggle for Sister Eugénie.
She had to fight to fully acquire the virtue of joy: “Courage, confidence, whatever the cost! Keep the peace, banish anything that might destroy it; then I will be joyful like a little child, and I will keep the serenity that a faithful and happy nun should always have. Again, and again: courage, confidence — Do not reason, believe firmly, without doubting; obey completely.” (SEJ p.123)
Little by little, two phrases took root in her heart and found their way onto her lips, two phrases that reveal to us what joy and happiness meant to the young woman who had become a little child of God.
Among those phrases, the first one was: “Oh, joy!”
“Towards the end of her life, she often expressed the joy that overflowed from her soul with these words: ‘Oh, joy!’ Was she being told that she would have to make some sacrifice? The favourite word immediately came back to her lips, and she repeated it at the slightest incident of everyday life, at the attentions of her fellow nuns, and especially when she received letters from Saint-Denis (Community Mother House)...
The statement under oath of Mother Émilie Leperche provides us with the same testimony:
“The phrase ‘Oh, joy!’ had become familiar to her. She repeated it before every God’s Will, whether it brought her consolation or sacrifice. ‘The more we want to serve Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the more happiness they give to their children’.”
That is undoubtedly why her fellow nuns recounted that “in the evening of her life, a halo of joyful serenity, well earned through her struggles, shone ever brighter on her forehead.” (Mother Émilie’s testimony)
“Ah! reported one of the nuns who surrounded her at the time, Sister Eugénie’s soul was so close to God around the time of the last Christmas she spent on earth! Her prayer was continuous: accustomed to finding the One she loved in the solitude of her heart, she was happy with a happiness that was a foretaste of that of heaven, and knew how to make it shine around her.” (SEJ Pages 244-246)
The second phrase was: “As long as He is pleased!”
Let us remember that the Inner Master Himself taught her to be a little child with Him, both in struggle and in suffering. Strengthened by his instructions, Sister Eugénie desired to resemble the little host and “abandon [myself] to the good pleasure of Our Lord… as He wills, in everything He wills, as long as He is pleased” (SEJ p.150)
That second phrase was like a compass in her life. She revealed that her joy gradually became that of giving joy to Jesus. We can now examine in more detail what we discussed in Part 4 on confident self-abandonment: choosing God’s Will brings peace and joy.
But as Jesus experienced in Gethsemane, sometimes the divine Will is painful to accept. It is not, then, a matter of feeling joy, but rather of accepting that the soul gives joy in doing His Will: “Rest: fiat! I do nothing, but it is much humbler; I do God’s will, which is the best thing I can do. Believing that I work for the Holy Family of the Sacred Heart and souls by doing everything by obedience… Be in the Heart of the Most Holy Virgin from the morning onwards, like a little host that allows itself to be sacrificed without saying anything, as desired. Every day, it reappears and then disappears again: there is nothing left of it. I want to be that little host, and the Blessed Virgin will be the priest who offers it to the good pleasure of Our Lord. Let me be sacrificed as He wishes, in whatever way He wishes, as long as He is pleased with me.” (SEJ p.150)
“Like a little child sleeping
Without listening to the wind blowing,
Knowing well that their mother watches over them
To protect them from harm and noise:
So, in my misery,
Without fear, without worry,
I want to entrust everything to my Mother’s heart.
Whispering softly to her: ‘Thank you!’” (SEJ p.68)
Thus, not only did Blessed Eugénie’s supernatural joy sometimes combine with the Cross, but it was then the Cross that became the source of that joy. This final part of our triptych could then be represented by a cross…
With the precious pearls that Jesus’ words represent and the thread of her life that is her filial relationship with Mary, spiritual childhood, in the school of Blessed Eugénie, could thus be symbolised by a rosary!
