Some memories of the Sisters during these childhood years of our Institute.
The community had welcomed a very simple young person, Claude Fardel, out of charity. At the time, an old building was being demolished and she had been tasked with collecting tiles. As the surroundings of the house were open, a small child took the basket from him without Claude defending himself. This trait of innocence earned her admittance among our Sisters; she received the habit on July 2, 1614. “I hope that she will bring some special blessings to our Visitation,” said our blessed Father. One day he will confide to her what he would do if he were a nun at the Visitation. Of this little Interview our holy Mother says that it “contains an abridgement of almost all the perfection that our Institute requires of us”. She wrote in 1629 on the occasion of the death of Sister Claude-Simplicienne: She was a truly religious, upright, innocent, humble and poor soul. Oh ! how this departure touched my heart! It was she who helped me with my little needs; you know how I loved his pure simplicity and candor” (Correspondence III-Letter n°1229).
Sister Anne-Jacqueline Coste fell while supervising the construction work of the monastery. We were surprised to find her not only alive but without the slightest harm, she simply replied: “When the board failed under my feet, I invoked the angel of Monseigneur, he carried me and deposited between the stones. It is not the angel of the diocese, it is the angel of Monseigneur, the one who accompanied him to Geneva when he gave me holy communion. I know this angel well! “.
On December 27, 1614, there was a community habit taking at the Visitation on the occasion of the entry into the novitiate of Sisters Paule-Jéronyme de Monthoux and Jeanne-Marie de la Croix who no longer received the headdress of our first Mothers, but the white veil with the habit. It is on this occasion that our holy Founder gave the shape of our dress. Later our holy Mother will relate this fact to Father de la Rivière: “At the end of the year (that is to say June 6, 1611), we were dressed and dressed just as we are, except that our dresses were attached to the body and the sleeves were narrow. About the third year our blessed Father recommended that we make our sackcloth robes and our sleeves wide, as we wear them” (Correspondence II-Letter no. 643).
Our holy Founder in a sermon on taking the habit (St Fr. de S. IX p.214) gives a delicious explanation of this ample dress and these wide sleeves, an explanation which makes us better understand his intention when in the Directory he gives us invites us to pray to the Lord to “cover us with the robe of charity” (Art. II): “This robe, that is to say the charity with which they [the nuns] must be clothed, must be a broad charity in which they can turn around at ease. The charity of the people of the world is so narrow that nothing can enter into it except the observance of the commandments of God; for as for the counsels they cannot enter into this robe. On the contrary, that of the nuns is broad, everything is included, everything that is pleasant to their Spouse. See the difference in the clothes of the girls of the world from those of the nuns: the girls of the world wear dresses which are extremely tight (…) the nuns, on the contrary, are dressed in a wide dress (…). The dresses of fashionable girls have wide sleeves near the shoulders, but at the end they are very narrow. (…) The sleeves of the nuns’ dresses are wide on the side of the hands to show that words are not enough, but that works are needed; they are wide so that they can hold their arms crossed in them, to show that as soon as they have done some good deeds, they must put their hand back in their sleeve, that is to say, they must hide this practice of virtue to avoid its praise, and only want it to be noticed by their Spouse whom only they wish to please.”
Sometimes God reveals to everyone an act of love accomplished in secret, this is what happened to one of our Sisters. In the novitiate, the crucifix was placed in front of which our holy Mother had engraved the name of Jesus on her chest One day in 1614, Sister Anne-Marie Rosset wanted to kiss Christ’s wounds, but he pulled her towards his pierced side. “It seemed to me,” she wrote, “that this divine Heart was saying to mine: We will never separate; we will love each other forever heart to heart. I receive you for my daughter and for my wife, and will always take care of you. » Thus, Jesus is already leaning towards the Visitation to give him his Heart. Our holy Founder collected like a careful bee the graces granted to his nuns. It is of Sister Anne-Marie Rosset that the Mother of Chaugy writes: “Our holy Founder had this in mind in the composition of several chapters of his sixth, seventh and eighth Book of the Love f God”Here of God, this great director of souls having taken very particular care to regulate the inner conduct of this dear girl.”
Source: Conference of Sister Marie Pierre