Acts of love

Perhaps Jesus wanted to show me the world before His first visit to me in order that I may choose freely the way I was to follow. The time of my First Communion remains engraved in my heart as a memory without any clouds. It seems to me I could not have been better disposed to receive Him than I was, and all my spiritual trials had left me for nearly a whole year. Jesus wished to make me taste a joy as perfect as is possible in this vale of tears.

Do you remember, dear Mother, the attractive little book you made for me three months before my First Communion? It aided me in preparing my heart through a sustained and thorough method. Although I had already prepared it for a long time, my heart needed a new thrust; it had to be filled with fresh flowers so that Jesus could rest there with pleasure. Every day I made a large number of fervent acts which made up so many flowers, and I offered up an even greater number of aspirations which you had written in my little book for every day, and these acts of love formed flower buds.

You used to write me a nice little letter each week and this filled my soul with deep thoughts and aided me in the practice of virtue. It was a consolation for your poor little girl who was making such a great sacrifice in accepting the fact that she wasn’t being prepared each evening on your knees as her dear Céline had been Pauline was replaced by Marie. I sat on her lap and listened eagerly to everything she said to me. It seemed to me her large and generous heart passed into my own. Just as famous warriors taught their children the art of war, so Marie spoke to me about life’s struggles and of the palm given to the victors. She spoke also about the eternal riches that one can so easily amass each day, and what a misfortune it was to pass by without so much as stretching forth one’s hand to take them. She explained the way of becoming holy through fidelity in little things; furthermore, she gave me a little leaflet called “Renunciation” and I meditated on this with delight.

Ah! how eloquent my dear godmother was! I would have liked not to be alone when listening to her profound teachings. I felt so touched that in my simplicity I believed that the greatest sinners would have been touched just like me and that, leaving all their perishable riches behind, they would no longer want to gain any but those of heaven.

At this time in my life nobody had ever taught me how to make mental prayer, and yet I had a great desire to make it. Marie, finding me pious enough, allowed me to make only my vocal prayers. One day, one of my teachers at the Abbey asked me what I did on my free afternoon when I was alone. I told her I went behind my bed in an empty space which I was alone. I told her I went behind my bed in an empty space which was there, and that it was easy to close myself in with my bedcurtain and that “I thought.” “But what do you think about?” she asked. “I think about God, about life, about ETERNITY … I think!”  The good religious laughed heartily at me, and later on she loved reminding me of the time when I thought, asking me if I was still thinking. I understand now that I was making mental prayer without knowing it and that God was already instructing me in secret.