St.. Claude de la Colombiere, whose Feast is February 15, was St. Margaret Mary’s spiritual director. His sibling was also a Visitandine, like his spiritual daughter!
Let’s go a few leagues from Lyon to breathe the scent of a virtue well hidden from the eyes of men in the life of Sister Marguerite-Elisabeth de la Colombière, who died in Condrieu Visitation Monastery, the February 8, 1734, aged of 84 with 59 years of religious life. Do we not owe this humble sister of Venerable Claude de la Colombière the homage of a memory?
God had given to this child the blessing of great examples of devotion to religion and of fidelity to his holy practices. Among her brothers, the eldest , master of accounts in Grenoble, lived more as a religious than a secular; another, abandoning his homeland, had crossed the seas to go to Canada to win souls to Jesus Christ. We know the greatest of all, the one Jesus called his servant , praise before which all the others turn pale, St. Claude.
In a life completely hidden, Sister Marguerite- Élisabeth showed herself worthy of her holy family by the constant practice of the most solid virtues. She had wanted, still young, to enter Carmel; the affection that her father had for her prevented him from consenting to it. She hoped to defeat him by choosing a less severe Order and focused her sights on the first Monastery of the Visitation of Lyon; the good old man finally gave in.
He allowed his daughter to follow the call of God. But soon the violence he had committed to resign himself to the departure of this child , altered his health and led him to the threshold of the tomb. Father de la Colombière, then at the great college of Lyon, determined that his sister should return to her family to give her father the highest duties; he assured her that she would be to again admitted to the monastery when the time of the Lord came. The presence of his daughter gave the patient his strength and health , and to give him the consolation of seeing her more often, he pledged her to enter the Monastery of Condrieu . She was in her 24th year , when she entered the ark designated by the paternal hand; this is what heaven wanted, that she constantly rise in the path of highest perfection .
When she put the holy Habit, Father of Colombiere made a whole speech to encourage people to dedicate themselves to God. He never ceased from encouraging a great spirit of generosity and of sacrifice and worship of the holy observances he knew thoroughly. You can see the letters he sent her. Let us read the one in which he exalts the advantages of religious obedience, and also that in which he describes the characteristics and dangers of lukewarmness; we recognize in it the zeal of a saint, the tenderness of a brother.
He could not neglect to inspire in her the devotion to the Sacred Heart; also, true lover and adorer of this adorable Heart, Sister Marguerite-Elisabeth burned with the brightest flames of her love; she was happy to pay Him her homage continually , by a thousand ingenious practices of devotion which she also tried to inspire in those of her Sisters whom the same ardor consumed. Her soul was dilated in the participation in our august mysteries; eager to take advantage of the communions ordered or permitted, she was always disposed to those which obedience wanted to grant her. She never relaxed in the practice of mortification and of regularity, even when she had reached an extreme old age; and according to an expression of her worthy brother, she attracted divine favors
The Lord put her to a severe test, 20 years before her death, by the weakening first and soon the total loss of sight. She accepted this sacrifice despite the tremors of nature. Incapable of any other use, she prayed.There was no oratory in the convent where she did not go to do her devotions every day. She remained faithful to the exercises and never refrained from prayer in the morning or in assisting at Matins with the Community. She greeted with the ardor of a seraph ‘s the last visit to Jesus present under the Eucharistic veils, and after nine days of a burning fever that led to her eternity, she went to the Sacred Heart of Jesus of which she had been the fervent adorer. (Annee Sainte. P. 222-229. )
:Letter of St Claude to his sister, November 1680: “For what you want to know,it is not the pain of which you learn, my health is of so little of consequence for others and myself . Please pray to God that, healthy or sick, I will respond faithfully to the designs of his mercy. For you, my dear sister, make better use of your strengths than I did of those God had given me: love him, serve him for you and for me. Often offer him my heart with yours and ask him to accept the unnecessary desires that I form for my perfection and for the sanctification of the whole universe ”
Source:
History of the Venerable Father Claude de la Colombière of the Company of Jesus …
By Pierre Charrier