Today, our celebrated jubilarian can say: “I fought a good fight.” Maria Cecilia, born of Adam, entered the laudable order in the last decade of the last century, which was founded by the amiable saint, the living image of mildness and love, Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva, for the constant celebration of the home of Mary . It was in September of the Year of Grace 1795. At that time, the ecclesiastical community had not long been transferred from the now so-called women’s convent at Munich to Indersdorf. By the profession she made at that time, she triumphed over the world, flesh, and the devil by cutting off the threefold bond of one cut, with which the enemy chains the children of men to himself and to the world, and draws them away from the kingdom of heaven. These chains are property or the goods of this life, sensual pleasure, and one’s own will, which refuses to submit. She broke these chains in one moment, when she renounced wealth, pleasure, and freedom, and by her own free will, she chose for ever voluntary poverty, constant virginity, and unconditional, and therefore perfect, obedience, and vowed to dwell day and night in the house of the Lord, her eternal Bridegroom.
Probably the most beautiful victory that a human soul can achieve, which is rewarded with the unfading crown of eternal glory.
Our jubilarian , Maria Cecilia, is distinguished by an even greater victory, because it touched, because after the hand she had to fight a much greater and harder fight and also victoriously prevailed over it. It was indeed a real ordeal, into which it was inflicted with the greatest pain after less than ten years. A bad time came for all religious people in Bavaria. It was the third year of the present secular period when the Church of God in our formerly pious Bavaria: Pius VI., of the most glorious memory, called it “holy Bavaria” in his travels through it.” – experienced the most violent storm. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, as if from an infernal pool, the sinful flood of the most evil philosophism poured over my contemporaries, and it may be said that thousands have perished in the mighty flood with faith and action. Only a fleeting drawing of that time is granted to me!
Insolently, unbelief raised its head among all classes. They did not believe in God, who revealed himself in Jesus Christ, of whom the prophets prophesied, whom the apostles preached. The positive foundation of the prophets and apostles, the firm foundation praised by St. Paul, was shattered. Reason, apostatising from faith, carved out of a number of concepts a great man whom it set up as God, and it worshiped this five-finger god, the nonsense of its own power. Christ the Lord was to her the prophet, actually the sage of Nazareth, one of the philosophers of ancient times, who also founded his school, as Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and Pythas Goras or Confuzius founded theirs. In this way the church, with all its divine institutions, was necessarily trampled underfoot. If Christ, the Son of God, the eternal High Priest and His Church, and consequently His ministry and Mysteries, were ridiculed, the same must necessarily happen to the ministers and dispensers of the mysteries of God, the Priests. They were despised, ridiculed, and persecuted in all sorts of ways. Temples had been plundered and destroyed, pious legacies and endowments of our religious fathers had been cancelled and destroyed. What Huns and Vandals hardly did, men who boasted of light and culture, who were also acquainted with the truth by virtue of their birth and education, were guilty of it out of rebelliousness against it. It was indeed a horrible, hideous sight. That which the divine power of the church of Christ the Son of God had sanctified and sealed, was profaned and vomited by her insolent, unholy hand. With impudent arms they opened the sacred seal of the cloister of virgins who, by solemn vows, had consecrated themselves to God the Most High, and had married themselves for ever to Christ, the eternal Bridegroom of souls, and abandoned them to the dangers of the world. I say nothing of the shameful misfortune into which many an unfortunate soul of that time fell ignominiously. is.
*) O sancta Bavaria, **) Ephes. II. 20.
The unfortunate storm that broke out among us at the beginning of the nineteenth century also hit the house of God, the spiritual community into which our honorable jubilarian at Indersdorf had entered. She saw with her eyes and sadly experienced the wild devastation of the enemy’s power, which in the days of peace was far more impetuous and inhuman, then the enemy in war. This hostile force, which bore the respectable name of the Commission, shed no blood, but in various places often used many a harshly sensitive cunning, sometimes flattery and tempting promises, soon also, at least quietly, threats to expel the consecrated virgins from the house of God. This was a most painful sight for our jubilarian, Maria Cecilia, which caused sorrow and sorrow for herself and for the spiritual community to which she belonged. And the sight was all the more painful because one did not suspect such a thing at all, even men did not suspect that such a thing could or should happen. It was revealed to her that she and her fellow sisters now enjoyed full liberty to come out of the community, to exchange the spiritual garment for the secular one, and to live in the country where she pleased. Our venerable jubilarian, however, renounced this unholy liberty which was offered to her, and would rather endure all hardships and restraints, and share every hardship with her sisters, than to depart from the house of the Lord, in which she had vowed to remain for ever, from whom nothing could separate her, to whom she wished to be ever faithful.
In this way Mary Cecilia, the faithful bride, has in truth fought a good fight, and consequently she has a just claim to the crown of righteousness, which Christ the Lord, the righteous Judge, has promised to give to those who endure in patience and love.
This sermon was delivered on the solemn day of St. Teresa Jesus, the 15th of October, the year of grace, 1845. For this reason the speaker also went from the feast day of the heil. Church, and from there, as if through a bridge, led to the treatment of the fundamental idea.
Source: 2 Sermons: 1. I fought a good fight, 2. the sacrifice of himself – Herenäus Haid – Google Books