Hello, on this second Sunday of Lent, I would like to share with you some thoughts on Marie Eugénie and the artistic life. Talents are important to her, as everyone knows. She believed it was important to be faithful to the talents God had entrusted to us (ME, Chapter Instruction, March 24th 1878). She wanted us to use them to serve Jesus Christ. In fact, the first sisters were true artists. Marie Eugénie herself enjoyed embroidery. Let us try to understand what this activity meant to her.
When she was embroidering, Marie Eugénie was trying to make herself available to God, just as the canvas was in her hands (ME, Chapter Instruction, June 27th 1880). And you see, I believe she was thinking of the Virgin Mary. Because she was convinced that in Nazareth, Mary, through simple, ordinary work, made herself available to the presence of God, in a life of silence, in a contemplative life.
So the question for us today is: what is our work of embroidery? What do we do to enter into a contemplative attitude? We can read, draw, contemplate nature, listen to music... In other words, what do we do to prepare ourselves interiorly to welcome Christ who passes in our lives? What do we do to abandon ourselves to his presence?
This is important, says Marie Eugénie, because the Lord wants to come and “imprint” himself within us. He wants us, through our interior life, to become like him (ME, Chapter Instruction, August 12th1877).
To do this, to bear a resemblance to the Lord, what can we do?
First, we must allow the Lord himself to write in our lives so that he can draw the likeness he dreams of. Marie Eugénie recalls how Saint Bernard compares God to a writer or painter who guides the hand of a small child (ME, Intimate Notes, no. 205/01).
But we must also collaborate with God's work within us, contemplating it at length and with attention, looking at the smallest details of the Gospel, as an artist would do before painting a model. Let us listen to Marie Eugénie: "If the sister who paints, when she is painting a portrait, looked up at the sky instead of looking at her model, if she looked at it only from a distance and in a vague and general way, she would not produce anything that resembled it. In the same way, in order to know our Lord and to form his divine likeness in us, we must approach him and apply ourselves to him." (ME, Chapter Instruction, March 10th 1878)
To listen and to look are the call of the Transfiguration Gospel. Let us allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of Jesus' face, like the disciples, who saw no one else but him, Jesus alone.
Yes, if we can, let us look carefully. We will trace the features of his goodness within ourselves. We will be able to be like Jesus Christ and bring him to life within us if, of course, we believe, like Marie Eugénie, that we were created and brought into the world for this purpose (ME, Intimate Notes, no. 215/01).
So, this week, let us live the life of an artist! Let us embroider, draw, contemplate, read... Let us be both the work designed by the Lord himself and try to look at him with immense attention so that we can reproduce his features in ourselves (cf. ME, Chapter Instruction, August 6th 1893). Have a good week with the Lord and with Marie Eugénie!
Sr Véronique Thiébaut, RA
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