Over 6 years ago we shared a post about Sr Angelique Millet, VHM who was Professed in the Visitation Monastery of Caen France, the very same community that St. Therese’s Sister Leonie was a member of and in fact, they were contemporaries!
https://visitationspirit.org/2012/09/sept-mystic-of-the-month/
Since then, much more information about her life has become available and so this month of November we share about Sr Angelique in a more sustained way as Mystic of the Month.
In the Radiation of the Mystery of Gethsemane
FIRST CHAPTER
Holy Father, I thank you that you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and have revealed it to the little ones.
The first years
Charlotte Millet came into the world on May 25, 1879, in Saint-James, a small town in Normandy. Her family was one of those model homes whose patriarchal manners are based on deeply Christian principles, where masters and servants share the evening prayer together; where the children do not know more sweet enjoyments than to be together to take their antics, under the watchful eye of their beloved parents; where, when the little ones have grown up, everyone goes every day to the church to attend a morning mass and to visit the Blessed Sacrament at night.
Mr. Millet, who in 1881 was to be named receiver of registration in Granville and to take all his family there, was the beloved and revered chief of all his family who would never have allowed himself to undertake anything without consultation. In concert with his wife, he surrounded all his children with a solicitude to which no detail escaped, and spared nothing when it was a question of giving to their education the finished form which suited their situation.
Mrs. Millet had a son from a first marriage, when she married Millet, but her little Paul, who was not then five years old, was still considered the eldest of all their children. A girl and a boy had preceded Charlotte; four brothers and sisters were to complete this blessed circle, in which three religious vocations were to sprout and flourish. The baby who, at this moment, smiled at life, looked radiant with health, and grew rapidly. But a Doctor recognized a dislocation of the hip in the girl, an accident caused by a fall that her mother had made a month before her birth. In order that this infirmity should not be accentuated with growth, it was decided that the child should be brought to Paris where she would be treated with an orthopedic device. For a few years she will have to repeat this trip, led by her father and accompanied by her good nurse, so that each time, after a new molding, they could adapt the device to its size. Later, noting the poor results of this care and the tiredness experienced by the girl, her parents will simply make her wear a brace.
Cheerful, affectionate, spontaneous, Charlotte was very observant and revealed in her early years deep and serious tastes. As a child, she followed with a look the clouds, and took more pleasure to contemplate them, in the blue sky, than to have fun with a toy. The dolls did not occupy her; Indignant that they did not answer confidences, she beat them, but in secret, realizing that it was not good to thus relieve her anger on inanimate objects.
The first words that struck her mind and held her attention were “Eternity – Mystery – ¬Martyr.” She remembered them often, abandoned herself to the charm they exerted on her, sought to deepen them: it was her favorite occupation. that she willingly prolonged for long hours.
During her travels to Paris, she went to stay with one of her aunts, who did nothing to give the child a pleasant stay, but, very timid when she was out of the family home, hardly daring to answer when one she questioned her, consoled herself for the estrangement of her family by indulging herself more than ever in her beloved thoughts.
As she thought about it one evening, on leaving the racecourse where her family had driven her to distract her, the starry sky illuminated the “Mystery”, and the crucifix she found in her room revealed to her the “Martyr.” What a sweet revelation! So what filled her heart, what continually created emptiness around her, was the good God. It is he who is in the “Mystery” as in the “Martyr” and who had just manifested himself to her childlike soul! How happy she felt to have discovered such a beautiful thing! She had, therefore, another Father than the one who cared so tenderly for her needs, a Father in the “Mystery”, who consoled her for her pain and the suffering that the Doctors caused by working her in all directions and hindering all her movements, a Father to whom she could speak in her heart and who was to answer her by making her understand and gradually taste the truths of the faith.
From that day, the sessions at the orthopedist, which cost her so much, left her almost indifferent. It was by looking at the “Divine Martyr” stripped on the cross, that she allowed herself to take off her clothes; sharing the humiliations of Jesus, she felt so close to him! “He and I,” she thought, “were together hidden in my body. “
Charlotte was seven when she and her father met a renegade priest who had become a cabman. Monsieur Millet, whom he had just driven, offered him a tip which was refused; he insisted on offering it to him to receive it for God’s sake. At these words the unfortunate man murmured incoherent words, and striking his breast made him understand his situation. Impressed by this scene and the sadness that suddenly invaded her father, the little girl asked for explanations: “It’s an unfortunate thing that we have to pray for,” he replied. Later she will understand, and with what intensity, the repercussion of such a moral distress for which Our Lord will urge her to immolate herself. Charlotte was already used to sacrificing herself and suffering in silence; at the school of the Divine Master and thanks to the virile training she received from her parents, she had learned not to complain about the suffering caused by her leather and steel apparatus, which exalted her arms, imprisoned her body and partly her legs. She knew how to subdue the repugnance which her lack of appetite made her feel for all food. When, sometimes, yielding to her voluntary nature, she had obstinately refused to take a meal and had thus pained her own, it became impossible for her to look at the crucifix without her heart swelling; from the height of his cross the “Divine Martyr” reproached him for her fault; then she resolved to overcome herself, and arrived, by repeated efforts, to “eat by heart,” as her father understood it, that is, without paying attention to quantity or quality.
Although she had been pampered by her family during her visits to Paris, Charlotte did not attach herself to the small trifles that had been sought to surround her to please her. “It goes on” said she-and she dreamed of a happiness that would never end.
This happiness made her think of heaven. But she suspected He was more surely possessed by those nuns whom she often met, and who carried a big Christ on their chests.. “I understood that they were people apart, who had my attraction for silence and the crucifix,” she said later and “I resolved to live like them but far from the world because going around the streets I did not like it at all.”