The Foundation Project in Lyon
We had seen how Madame des Gouffiers had met three Ladies in Lyon who, like her, wanted to place themselves under the direction of the Bishop of Geneva. They were Madame d’Auxerre (Marie-Renée Trunel), Madame Chaudon (Anne-Marie Bellet) and Madame Colin (Jacqueline-Élisabeth Daniel). They had stayed with our Sisters in Annecy in 1613, then they returned to Lyon, while Madame des Gouffiers remained in Annecy. Since Madame d’Auxerre was unable to leave, Father Grangier S.J. advised her to request the foundation of a new Visitation house in Lyon. The permissions of the Bishop of Geneva and then that of Mgr de Marquemont were easily obtained. In the house that it had acquired, the community began to organize itself. Mr. Lourdelot was designated to lead it, he brought a fourth pretender. Both then conceived the plan to found a new congregation. Bishop de Marquemont was in favor of it.
For this congregation which bore the name of the Presentation of Our Lady, permission was requested from King Louis XIII. Without waiting, the inauguration took place, the four foundresses received a gray habit. “The news of this event,” relates Mother de Chaugy (St Fr. de S. XVI p.423), “was brought to Annecy, when it was believed that they were coming to take Sisters to go and found in Lyon. Our blessed Mother was not at all angry at this change; on the contrary, she blessed God for it, telling our Sisters that this should teach everyone that it is necessary to lay deep roots in the most holy humility.”
But among the Sisters of the Presentation, peace did not reign for long. “Although they were all very good souls, so many little disagreements happened to them between them and between their leader, that they could not live six weeks together. “The community had just separated when Madame des Gouffiers, going to her Abbey to be released from her vows, arrived in Lyon in September 1614. Madame d’Auxerre confided to her her troubles and her ardent desire which led her to Annecy. Always active, Madame des Gouffiers implored Father Grangier to take an interest in the resumption of the first project, and wrote to our holy Founder. He replied in admirable terms of detachment and tenderness for his little Institute: “You do extremely well to show a very absolute indifference, because also it is the true spirit of our poor Visitation, to hold itself very abject and small, to esteem itself nothing except insofar as it pleases God to see its abjection; and therefore [therefore], let all other forms of living in God be held in esteem by her, and let her stand among the congregations like violets among flowers, low, small, of less bright color, and let it be enough for her that God created her for his service and so that she might give a little good odor in the Church. (…) It is undoubtedly the greatest glory of God that there be a congregation of the Visitation in the world, because it is useful for some particular effects which are proper to it; this is why we must love it. But if there are people who have greater pretensions (founding a Carmel), we must serve them and revere them very cordially. I will await your news on the service that you can render to this new plant, which, if God wishes to be a plant of the Visitation, his Goodness will be forever glorified by it” (St Fr. de S. XVI p.236).
Shortly afterwards, in a new letter (p.244) to Madame des Gouffiers, he admires God’s conduct on this project: “We will willingly give our Sisters of the Visitation to increase the glory of God. But who could praise his Providence enough? This paternal Goodness will have looked with the eye of his love on a number of women who remained between the hazards of the waves of the worldly sea, if he did not set up for them an easy port from which they could emerge, notwithstanding that their boats are a little weak. (…) Moreover, my dear daughter, he (Mr. Lourdelot) who diverted, is now bringing his congregations back to their first design. He wrote me a trait of divine Providence which pleases me greatly; for in the patent of permission that Their Majesties gave for the erection of this house, it was called ‘of the congregation of the Visitation’, as if Our Lord had wanted to declare himself by the royal voice. “A beautiful sign of divine Providence, let us rejoice, while noting that, in this letter patent, the authorization to found the congregation of “the Visitation” was given according to the request of the Ladies of Lyon to live under the constitutions given by the Archbishop and to remain in perpetual enclosure (cf. St Fr. de S. XVI p.428).
This explains in part the future interventions of Mgr de Marquemont on the subject of the Visitation established in his diocese. But let us leave these difficulties for the future and enjoy for the present the perfect harmony of feeling between our holy Founders , the same desire for the glory of God with the same humility.
Here is what our holy Mother wrote to Madame des Gouffiers in a letter whose beginning is missing: “…that we do not render him the same fidelity that we owe to the service of his glory, as much in Lyon and in any other place that he will please to command us as we do here, having, by his grace, no other pretension. As long as it is possible for you, dispose to holy humility and resignation those who propose to serve the divine Majesty in this small congregation, because it is of these virtues that we have only need, so that they serve as a magnet to the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit.” (Correspondence I-Letter n°18)
Serving the glory of God in Lyon as in Annecy in humility and abandonment, this is what strongly resembles the attitude of the Virgin Mary in Nazareth as in Ein Karim.
1614, a pivotal year for the Visitation, a decisive year for the Treatise on the Love of God, we have travelled through it in the light of these typically Salesian words: “All for love”. This word was taken up by Benedict XVI in his letter for the Jubilee of 2010: “The search for holiness in daily occupations, based on gentleness and humility, simplicity and peace of heart, doing everything for love and nothing by force is at the heart of the spirituality of the Visitation of Saint Mary. This heritage bequeathed by Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Jeanne-Françoise de Chantal is very relevant for the contemporary world. (…) In silence and hidden life, bear witness unceasingly to how the total gift of oneself to the love of God can fill the heart of the human person”. “All for love” is what the Church considers today in our Institute as a gift from God for all.
WORK – OUR HOLY FOUNDER: THE TREATISE ON THE LOVE OF GOD BOOK XI CHAPTER 14; BOOK XII CHAPTERS 8 & 9: following these readings, can you specify what means our Constitutions and Directory give us to apply our whole life to divine love? –
OUR HOLY MOTHER: LIFE & WORKS II p.108 – EXHORTATION XVIII ON THE XXVI CHAPTER OF THE RULE: note the reasons that must make us observe the rules of our Institute. –
THE VISITATION: INTERVIEW WITH SISTER CLAUDE-SIMPLICIENNE: can you make a list of the virtues of a Visitandine as our holy Founder sees her?
Source” Conference of Sr Marie Pierre