From the outset, Saint Marie-Eugénie, in her private note No. 154/04, acknowledges: "If I resist the Holy Spirit—as I sometimes want to do—I will not be a lukewarm Christian; I will be a reprobate, and I do not know how far I will go. The Spirit wrestles with me like an eagle; at times, all the powers of my soul are shaken, even my body gives way; I feel broken, annihilated, trembling like a leaf."
No one can or has the right to escape the action of the Holy Spirit. The reality is this: "Only this life [in the Spirit] will remedy the many shortcomings related to each virtue, and since I lack humility, silence, generosity, obedience, charity, modesty, it is the Spirit of God—and not my resolutions—that often prevents me from being worse and compels me to be better, even without my knowing it, provided that I draw Him alone to myself, apply myself to Him, unite with Him without any other concern." (NI 189/01)
The action of the Holy Spirit is essential, and it is worth asking the Lord for it tirelessly—letting Him guide and orient us, teach us, and show us how to walk. Thus, Marie-Eugénie asks God for His Holy Spirit so that she may finally have a wide, zealous, and active heart for the good of others. She asks Him to preserve the full and loving will with which she accepts all kinds of work and suffering for His service. She begs Him to remove the timidity that prevents her from believing that she, too, is capable of loving Him, suffering for Him, and being united to Him. (NI 199/01)
The movements of the Holy Spirit are so gentle and leave such freedom to souls... For our Mother Marie-Eugénie, they are the model of the Lord’s guidance among His Apostles and a sign of His authority (NI 206/01, Retreat – 5th day).
The light of God comes from the Holy Spirit: it cost the blood of Jesus Christ and is the seed of blessed eternity (NI 222/01, Retreat – 4th day).
The Spirit of Jesus Christ is also the Spirit of the Church’s prayer. He is the Spirit of prayer of Marie-Eugénie and also of ours, if we know how to unite with Him. The Spirit whose groanings are all-powerful, and in whom we must seek all that we desire to obtain—for the Church, for the Congregation, for souls, for our living and deceased relatives, for sinners, for ourselves (NI 223/01, Retreat of November 2, 1860 – 3rd day).
The Holy Spirit is a spirit of humility and charity. A supernatural Spirit who enables us to think God’s thoughts about all things. The Holy Spirit dwells within us. We are His temple through baptism. It is from the day of our baptism that the Spirit began to dwell within us. Through confirmation, we are marked with His seal on our soul, showing that it belongs to Him. (Instruction from Chapter, Pentecost 1859, on the Holy Spirit)
The principle of obedience reveals to us that, by obeying our superiors, we obey the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. His presence in us frees us from our prejudices, our antipathies, from everything that is not entirely conformed to Him. His active presence in us is both the source and the guarantee of the holiness of all the children of God.
His presence opens us to silence and to charity: two important means for making our mutual relationships pleasant. The Holy Spirit makes us gentle and patient. He leads us not to judge, not to criticize, not to be curious.
With the Holy Spirit, guardian of charity, each of our mutual relationships becomes not only a virtue but also a joy and a sweetness.
The Spirit of God came to help Jesus Christ complete His mission on earth; this same Spirit who transformed the Apostles into new men also transforms us today, and guides our intelligence, our judgment, our lives.
This Spirit within us is the highest, the most exalted, in the natural order. To be led by the Spirit in the 21st century is to allow Him to guide our life, our discernment, our decisions, our exchanges, our questions, so that they become expressions of our faith and that God’s thoughts may replace our own.
The Holy Spirit is love: the love of the Father and the Consoler promised by Jesus Christ.
The movements of the Holy Spirit require recollection and a spirit of faith. They ask that we unite ourselves to the Spirit of God in order to preserve them. In our daily lives, we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into dissipation, whose origin is impatience—manifested in boredom, bad mood, annoyance over all things.
The second source of dissipation is careless speech. (Chapter of September 14, 1873)
There are outpourings of the Holy Spirit that enlighten and reveal; others that strip and impoverish; and others that confirm and strengthen. The first are necessary to give birth to faith; the second, to teach hope; and the third, to communicate the courage to love.
For example, the life of Saint Peter is very significant. If we ask when Saint Peter received the Holy Spirit, we will probably say at Pentecost. And while that is true, it was not the only time.
The Holy Spirit manifested in Peter’s life at the moment of his vocation, when he felt called to leave everything—his work, his nets, his boat, his family—to follow Jesus. He understood that his life was meant to take a completely new direction, consecrated to an extraordinary mission. The Holy Spirit revealed to Peter both who Jesus is and the new meaning of his own life, provoking in him great joy and happiness. A new adventure begins.
If we ask when Mother Marie-Eugénie received the Holy Spirit, we would undoubtedly answer: in the experience she had at Notre-Dame with the teachings of Father Lacordaire during the Lenten conferences. This answer is not wrong, but like Peter, the Holy Spirit also manifested in the life of our Mother at the moment of her vocation, especially during her First Communion, a foundational element of her vocation, which ultimately led to the foundation of our Institute.
Following Saint Marie-Eugénie, our Mother, we must allow ourselves to be led each day by the Spirit, that Spirit who is our life. Because as long as we rely on ourselves, on our own strength, as long as we are not radically poor, we cannot truly live hope.
Hope is the virtue of the one who knows themselves to be infinitely weak and fragile, who does not rely on themselves but firmly trusts in God, expecting everything from Him and from Him alone with immense confidence.
As pilgrims of hope in this jubilee year, we must make of this hope an experience of radical poverty. As long as we are rich, we will rely on our riches. We must learn the kind of hope that consists in relying on God alone, and which passes through radical impoverishments.
These impoverishments are a source of great joy, because they are the necessary step before an extraordinary experience of goodness, of fidelity, of strength: the strength of charity, of the fire of love, of the courage to love God above all things, to confess Him boldly before others, to consecrate our whole life to the service of our neighbor through the proclamation of the Gospel and the power of God.
Thus, strengthened by this experience, following Saint Peter and Saint Marie-Eugénie, we will become, under the action of the Holy Spirit, tireless apostles, joyful in the opportunities we are given to suffer for the name of Jesus, fully devoted to the service of our brothers and sisters.
We can establish a relationship between the Holy Spirit and the fire that enlightens, burns and transfigures. Saint John of the Cross uses these images to illustrate certain aspects of the spiritual life, helping us to understand that, whatever situations we find ourselves in—happy or painful, full of light or darkness—it is always the same love that is at work, the same light that enlightens us.
Just as fire, when it draws near to wood, begins to act, the Holy Spirit, when He draws near to us, enlightens us, warms us, blackens us, produces smoke, bad odors, tar and other unpleasant substances. In this way, we experience our misery, our sin, our radical impurity—until He purifies us, enlightens us, sets us aflame, and transforms us into a fire of love.
We must not fear those moments of misery, annihilation and despair, but continue to surrender ourselves to God with trust, sure that one day that very misery will become burning charity.
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus wrote to her sister Marie of the Sacred Heart: "Let us stay far from all that glitters, let us love our littleness... Then we shall be poor in spirit, and Jesus will come to seek us. However far we may be, He will transform us through the Holy Spirit..."
Sister Solange Immaculée KUETCHE MAGNE
Central Africa Province