On this first Sunday of Lent, I would like to talk to you about Marie Eugénie and dust. In one of her chapters, she says that we can only rise up to God if we do not cling to the earth and shake off the dust that might stick to our feet. So, her first suggestion is to get rid of everything that weighs us down, everything that keeps us enclosed, that keeps us attached to worldly things, so that we can move forward. But Marie Eugénie also did the housework! She invites us to put on our aprons with her to get rid of the dust that clutters our lives; she invites us to let God's light come within us. And what is the effect of this light when it enters us? Like a ray of sun entering a room, it reveals the dust that is on our soul. We could not see this dust when God's light was not in us. It is therefore quite a task to accept this light that will reveal our dust.
Here is what she says in her chapter of 20 February 1876: "Souls having a good opinion of themselves are not usually very unenlightened ones. A mystic of the last century said that such souls are like a room with the closed shutters closed: dust can cover everything but it cannot be perceived,because there is no light. But let just one ray of light enter, and the dust, as if set in motion, plays in that ray. If the light is complete, we see the dust everywhere."
Our souls are therefore like these spaces, these rooms illuminated by light, and Lent is perhaps about accepting this fragility, this dust within us, this weakness, and simply and gently placing it in God's hands. Marie Eugénie, commenting on the Gospel of Christ's temptations, emphasises that the first words spoken by Christ in this Gospel are: ‘You shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.’ She herself spent a long time searching in the Scriptures and invites us to find the word that speaks to us in the Scriptures. She says: ‘There is a word for each one of us, and that word is always very close to the initial “Come, follow me” of the Gospel.’ So, during this season of Lent, with her, we can gently enter into the Gospel and recognize and welcome the Word that is for us, so that we may follow Christ step by step. Have a good Lent with Marie Eugénie!
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