[wood] an URSULINE EPIC 7 



Divine espousals are so essentially characteristic of convent visions 

 that they are always the favourite point attacked by those who sit in the 

 seat of the scornful outside the cloisters. The adverse fonnulary says 

 that the devotion of all celibates is only the parental instinct of self- 

 sacrifice gone astray, and that a Divine Spouse is only a nun's hysterical 

 substitute for a more carnal object of aiTection. But this contemptuous 

 view shuts out one obviously common-sense point of refutation, which 

 is almost too profanely worldly-wise for mention here. It simply is that 

 no woman would make it the object of her life to bring in as many other 

 brides as possible for her own beloved spouse, unless her affections were 

 truly spiritual and the object of them divinely infinite. 



Opinions will always differ about the signs which mark the calling 

 of a life apart. But all the world agrees that the essential fitness of such 

 a life for the higher aspirations of mankind can only be tested by its 

 resultant actions. So we, who are bent merely on estimating the good 

 influence that La Mère Marie exerted on Canadian history, might judge 

 her by her works alone, if it were not that her visions, faith and works 

 together made a triune all-iin-all. This being so, we cannot hope to 

 understand any one part of her life, if we wrest it from the whole. We 

 must reckon with faith and vision as practical determinants at every 

 turn. And, to gain a still further insight into her peculiar case, we 

 must call such a supremely competent witness of the beatific state as 

 St. Theresa, whose evidence goes far to prove, by sympathetic analogy 

 at least, how close the psychic correlations are, even if the visions be 

 only subjectively existent. In the 28th chapter of her autobiography 

 she gives her conclusion of the whole matter : " Like imperfect sleep, 

 which, instead of giving more strength to the head, leaves it only the 



more exhausted, mere imaginings only weaken the soul A 



genuine heavenly vision yields her a harvest of ineffable spiritual 

 riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily strength. I gave these reasons 

 to those people who so often accused my visions of being the work of the 

 enemy of mankind and the sport of my imagination. ... I showed 

 them the jewels which the divine hand left with me — they were my actual 



dispositions. All those that knew me saw that I was changed 



As for myself, it was impossible to believe that if the devil were the 

 author of this change he could have used means so contrary to his own 

 interests as the uprooting of my vices and the filling me with masculine 

 courage; for I saw clearly that a single vision was enough to enrich me 

 with all that wealth."' 



When she was thirty and her sou twelve, La Mère Marie committed 

 him to the Jesuits and entered the Ursuline convent of Tours. The nuns 



