Joys and sorrows of our holy Founder
The work of reforming the priory of Talloires weighed heavily on his arms for a long time. He would have liked to install the Feuillants (reformed Cistercians) there, but the Abbot of Savigny, on whom the priory depended, opposed it and took the matter to the Senate of Savoy and to Rome. In 1614, François waited in peace for what God would please to decide. In this affair, the friendship that bound him to his friends of Quoex, one of whom was the prior of Talloires and the other the first priest he had ordained and his confessor, nearly deteriorated. Finally, the Benedictines remained in Talloires. But the divisions remained, what pain for the bishop to note in 1617: “I was deeply touched to learn that at the priory of Talloires one no longer sees the sacred love and union, without which Religion is only a true illusion” (St Fr. de S. XVIII p.8).
On the other hand, what comfort for him to welcome two Barnabite monks in 1614. He had requested this during his pilgrimage to Milan in order to breathe new life into the college of Annecy. Three years later, he could not rejoice in the revival of this house. He would desire the same success at the college of Thonon, but it would be necessary to go through many difficulties before seeing the Barnabites give their full measure.
In Annecy near the lake, the Barnabites, the Dominicans and then the Visitandines crowded together. Our Sisters needed space, but their closest neighbors put up a lot of opposition to them. What sorrows for our blessed Father, who announced in the Preface of his Treatise that “Everything is to love, in love, for love and of love in the Holy Church”. It took a long time to seek ways of a satisfactory agreement and above all to trust in Providence.
Our holy Mother wrote to our blessed Father (Correspondence I-Letter No. 22): “At the end of this our good God will help us, if it pleases him, and after you have done your part, we will remain content with his holy will, and certainly, by means of his grace, more humble and more faithful to his most holy love, with which I beg his goodness to fill our one, unique heart”. We demolish and build in the space that our Sisters have occupied for two years. It is a “small, well-fashioned church” that the Founder wishes. He blessed the first stone on September 18, 1614. But this joy of preparing a house of prayer for his daughters is mixed with sadness: the gentleness of the Visitation and its supposedly new form of realizing religious life are criticized.
In order to provide the arguments to respond to this, our holy Founder wrote during the fall of 1614 a long document (30 pages in volume XXV p.291ff) entitled: “Preface for the instruction of devout souls on the dignity, antiquity, usefulness and variety of congregations of women and girls dedicated to God”. This text will remain unfinished, it is the fruit of meticulous research. The precise details on the congregations of Milan reveal the attention with which he observed them during his pilgrimage in 1613. It is an interesting text to understand the first thought of our blessed Father on his little Institute.
In the introduction to this document, he gives the reasons: “The presumption and arrogance of many children of this century, who profess to blame everything that is not according to their spirit, forces me to write this Preface, my very dear Sisters, to arm and defend your holy vocation against the tip of their tainted tongues; so that the good souls, who will be fond of your so amiable and honorable Institute, will find here something with which to repel these arrows of the temerity of these insolent censors…”
Our holy Founder begins by showing that women were consecrated to God from the origins of the Church, either in their parents’ homes or in congregations. Subsequently, these congregations evolved in different ways: some became formal religions (religious orders) by the profession of solemn vows, others remained simple congregations. All nevertheless are in a state of perfection, but there are varying degrees in the state of perfection.
He continues: “Almost all religions, for several hundred years, claim to be able to extend themselves throughout the Church, under the obedience of a general who governs their congregations everywhere, without dependence on the ordinary jurisdiction of the bishops: which can only be done by the general power of the Holy See, it being reasonable that an Order which spreads over the whole body of the Church should have the permission of the universal director of the Church. (…) But as for simple congregations, they remain in the obedience of the bishops of the places where they are established. The Church has always held them to be sufficiently authorized when they have been erected and approved by the authority of the bishops of the places where they are located.”
It is interesting to note and here is how the Visitation will evolve when it extends outside the diocese of Geneva: it will become a religious Order under the jurisdiction of the Holy See, but without a general at its head, each monastery being entrusted to the vigilance of the local bishop.
Our holy Founder continues his argument on the strength of the commitment: oblation or vows. “Oblation does not oblige as strongly as the vow, although it obliges greatly”, to contravene it is to be unfaithful to God and cause scandal for the neighbor. Also “the bond of oblation is of great importance and is sufficient to put the person in some degree of the state of perfection”.
Our holy Founder then addresses the question of enclosure, he shows that that of his Institute in 1614 existed from the earliest times of the Church. “As for the congregations of women, one of the principal means of their progress to perfection has always been enclosure. Certainly, the absolute, perpetual and so narrow enclosure, which many consider to be the only true enclosure, was never much in use among the ancients, whose blessed simplicity did not require such exact rigor. They were content with a moderate enclosure: so that men never entered without a very urgent cause, and that nuns never left except for good and holy occasions. But secular women and girls had access to the monasteries. This is still valid in the simple congregations that the Council of Trent does not require an absolute enclosure.
Francis adds: “In truth, just as one must exalt rigorous enclosure as a more perfect enclosure, so it is an extreme temptation to want no other in the Church. (…) God has arranged several floors in his house, and the height of some does not prevent the usefulness of others. (…) There is no kind of life in this world to which inconveniences do not arise. (…) Bees in winter, observing the narrow enclosure, are subject to sedition and to killing each other; but in the summer when they take the air, they are subject to going astray. In short, if the spirit of devotion reigns in the congregations, a mediocre enclosure will suffice to make good servants of God there; if it does not reign there, the narrowest enclosure in the world will not suffice.”
It seems like a commentary on his first Wish: “We have no bond except the bond of love…”
This apology finally relies on some Fathers of the Church. “Saint Gregory of Nazianzus esteemed the servants of God so much, whether in congregations or in the houses of their parents, that he has no difficulty in calling them his great honor (…) He protests that he glories more in having a quantity of people dedicated to God than he would in all the greatness of the world, and says that his little Nazianzus was called Bethlehem (no doubt an allusion to the monasteries of Saint Jerome and Saint Paula) for the friends of God who were there.”
Here ends the writing of our holy Founder. The Complete Works have an interesting note on the subject of this text (XXV p.291): “Was it not intentionally left unfinished? Perhaps it was to serve as a Preface to the constitutions of the congregation, if one day they were printed; but soon the foundation of the Visitation of Lyon was decided, and soon also the difficulties with Mgr de Marquemont arose. It is therefore likely that the Saint left it aside, awaiting the final decision. This having been to transform the congregation into a religious order, there was no longer any need to make apologies for the Visitation. This work was then abandoned, but the materials collected were used for the Preface to the Rules of 1618.
Source: Conference of Sr Marie Pierre