Teresa had long felt an interior desire to consecrate herself to God in the cloister.
On the 21st of November 1814, the generous young girl quitted the home of her childhood to go where Our Lord called her.
She entered the Visitation Monastery of Fribourg, Switzerland. In the following June, Teresa was clothed with the religious habit, and received the name of Sr Mary Francis de Sales.
The young novice now commenced that work of interior and exterior formation which is the foundation and basis of all religious perfection. She began by penetrating herself with the spirit of the Directory, a little book composed by St Francis de Sales for the spiritual direction of his children.
On the 9th of June, 1816, the fervent novice had the happiness of pronouncing the three vows of religion.
Scarcely a year had elapsed since her profession when she was sent by her Superiors to Metz, to cooperate in the re-establishment of the convent of the Visitation in that town. The want of space and air however, told seriously on her health and she was recalled to Fribourg.
On her return, she was charged with the care of the novitiate. Though still young, she possessed the secret of expanding the hearts of her novices, and enacting from them a perfect fidelity to all the rules. Before she entered upon her charge, our Lord assured her that He Himself make the choice of His spouses and that he would not permit any to be admitted whom He had not predestined for Himself. And not one of her charges was known to quit the religious habit and return to the world.
(Excerpted from Chapter 2, The Venerable Mother Mary de Sales Chappuis, by the Sisters of the Visitation, Brooklyn, 1924)