Prof. Raymond Winling
The virtues of the Servant of God
Mother-Alphonse Marie
Eppinger
2009
Celebration of 200th birthday of Venerable Mother Alphonse Marie
CONTENT
1.ABOUT FAIT
2.ABOUT HOPE
3.LOVE FOR GOD
4.ABOUT LOVE FOR THE NEIGHBOUR
5.ABOUT PRUDENCE
6.ABOUT JUSTICE: OBLIGATIONS TOWARDS GOD AND THE NEIGHBOUR
7.ABOUT TEMPERANCE
8.ABOUT FORTITUDE
9.ABOUT OBEDIENCE
10.ABOUT POVERTY
11.ABOUT CHASTITY
12.ABOUT HUMILITY
The virtues of the Servant of God
1.ABOUT FAIT
Expression and manifestation of this virtue throughout the life of the Servant of God
34° From her earliest childhood, the Servant God showed a spirit of faith which one could call extraordinary for her age. From the age of 4, she wanted to hear about God and grasped any opportunity to learn more about religious matters. She writes in her autobiography that from the age of 6 “I had a tremendous desire to get to know God. No matter if I was alone or in the company of others, I was always occupied with the thought of God. At the age of 7: “This desire is so tremendous that it makes me suffer inside.” From the age of 10, she permanently takes great care not to forget anything she learnt in her religious formation. Her joy in taking part in religious instruction classes rises continuously. The day of her First Communion, she makes the following prayer: “Dear Jesus, now I have renewed my baptismal vows. Help me to consider and to obey everything our parish priest teaches us.” Throughout her life, this spirit of faith was shown at every opportunity. Her thought is centred on God; nothing is important to her but God and matters concerning him. God is everything to her.
During the periods of illness, her faith does not weaken. Even when, during her first illness, she made the experience of spiritual aridity, she continued to pray insistently. When her health is restored, she receives a special grace, which helps her to advance in spiritual life and in the practice of virtues. During another period of illness (1845-1849), her spiritual director notices that the Servantof God was given very extraordinary divine favours. He confided this to his bishop, who was very interested in the issue because he was convinced that it had to be regarded as God’s intervention. The Servantof God considered herself undeserving of those favours and did not try to use them for her personal honour.
As far as the Congregation’s foundation is concerned, the Servantof God confided to her spiritual director that she had received from God the inspiration to found a congregation which is dedicated to the sick. Although at first reluctant, Father Reichard finally asked his bishop to consent.
While she was Superior General (1849-1867), Mother Alphonse Maria practised total abandonment to God and trust in his Providence. She saw in many surprising events God’s intervention for the Congregation and its rapid development. The Servantof God had total confidence. One could see this in the construction of her work. Although without any human support, she nevertheless began the work expecting every material and spiritual help from God. She feels poor and weak in the face of such responsibilities, but she counts on grace alone. She boldlyprays to Jesus: “You may refuse as long as you wish, I will not stop praying; I give you what you want, give me also what I am asking of you”.“Oh my Jesus, look at my poverty and my weakness. I cannot do anything without your help. Increase my filial trust in you”. “My dear Jesus, do this yourself, you know that I cannot do anything, this is your work”.She communicates this confidence to anyone who approaches her: to the many people visiting her and experiencing divine mercy;to her Daughters to whom she says: “As God has been so good to call us to religious life, wouldn’t it be an insult if we did not have unlimited confidence in Him in all our needs? Turn to Him at all occasions, without the least mistrust”. It is primarily her example that will teach her Daughters to have total trust in God.
Content of faith: truths to believe
35°The Servant of God has ardent and constant attachment to the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Born into a family having fought for keeping their faith, surrounded by Protestants, she considers as good fortune to be a Catholic: “During my illness (at the age of 17), when Protestants visited me,I felt sorry for them that they are not in the truth. Then I thanked the Lord for letting me be born from Catholic parents. I very often said: ‘Oh! How happy I am indeedto be a child of the true Church’.”
36° With keen attention she took part in the catechism classes of Father Reichard, in whom she had the greatest trust. The content of her faith was what he had taught her: God and Providence, Jesus Christ, the Saviour through his death on the cross, the Virgin Mary, the saints, the sacraments, especially that of Eucharist, the supernatural destination of human being, the severity of sin, the excellence of virtues.
37° The Servantof God had great veneration for the Holy Trinity. During the day, she often repeated the doxology: “Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit”.
38° As she was keen on hearing about God from her earliest childhood on, theServantof Godspontaneously turns to God for asking his advice, help and protection. She does it when she is searching her way, when she is afflicted, when she feels the need to thank God for the grace she receives from him. “Help me, oh good God, that I become as pious as those people and that I learn to pray with as much fervour as them”. “I want to love you, I will love you, I only want to do your will”. “See, my divine spouse, how I long for you. So take possession of my whole heart and show me how I can unite myself more intimately with you”.
39° Jesus Christ has a central place in the spiritual life of the Servant of God. Already at the age of five, she is strongly touched when she hears about the Passion of Christ. At the age of ten, a lesson held by Father Reichard about the sufferings of Christ on the cross marks her for the whole life. “Those words impressed me so deeply that my whole body started trembling. I had my eyes fixed on Father Reichard, and it seemed to me that I saw in him the image of the suffering Saviour”. She said she liked no other subject as much as that of the Passion, because there she found the love which Jesus had for us. From the age of ten, she started to meditate on the Passion of our Saviour during the mass. Sometimes she was so imbued with it that her whole body was trembling. She looked for solitude to be better able to meditate on the Passion. Already as a young girl, she tried to evoke the same devotion in her companions. But it is mainly in the instructions addressed to her Daughters that this concern becomes insistent. She repeats it again and again. Our Saviour made her tell her Daughters that they must meditate the Passion every day. Already the Original Rule contains this. The Servant of God gives them a method of meditation which was for sure her own. She took a crucifix and opened her heart to the grace of God. She went from one wound to the next and asked herself different questions to be penetrated by the greatness of our Saviour’s sufferings and his love for us. Her heart was so deeply touched that she could somehow empathise with the pains of the Passion; they became hers.Feelings of gratitude, of contrition and of love sometimes penetrated her for many days. “The impressions she received at the foot of the cross could not be erased from her heart. In the midst of her occupations in her father’s house and in the fields, she always saw before her Jesus crucified, Jesus suffering, Jesus dying for the sins of the world”.
40°The Servant of God had a special devotion to Mary. From the age of three, she learns the Ave Maria and repeats it often as a refrain. From then on she turns to Mary at all kinds of occasions. She said that she liked no other lesson as much as that of the Passion and that of the Blessed Virgin. She was then eight years old. “Hail Mary, full of grace, Mother of God, pray for me, poor child”. Her greatest joy was to hear about the Blessed Virgin. She was always afraid only of not understanding well what she was hearing about her. At the age of 14, she incessantly repeats the Salve Regina. She decides to imitate Mary in everything, especially in her silence, her modesty. “I constantly placed myself under the protection of the good Mother of God”. She entrusts her virginity to her: “Through your holy virginity and your Immaculate Conception, oh very pure Virgin, purify my heart and my flesh”. “Oh Mary, I want to imitate you, yes, I want to, I want to imitate your virtues, oh Mary, help me. Oh Mary, support me. I also want to remain a virgin, I want to imitate your virtues”. She spreads the veneration of Mary through the recitation of the Rosary. She urges Father Reichard to have the Rosary recited at the parish church every Sunday and holiday to compensate for the insults committed to God on those days. In her ecstasies, she sees Mary as mediator: She understands that everything will be rescued by Mary, that her veneration will be extended. Mary gives her instructions. What she repeats is sublime and very consoling. The Congregation founded by the Servant of God was consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the ImmaculateHeart of Mary. The joy of the Servant of God was great when the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which she had predicted eight years previously, was proclaimed. That day, the convent was magnificentlydecorated.
41° Among the other saints, the Servant of God has a special veneration for St. Joseph, whom she considers an efficient protector especially when confronted with financial problemseven threatening the life of the Congregation. She has great devotion to Teresa of Ávila, whom she often invoked “to obtain, through her intercession, the grace of loving God as much as she had loved Him and to endure like her the physical and spiritual sufferings which God sent her”. She also invoked St.Alphonse de Liguori, who is regarded as guide concerning spiritual life and as intercessor for the Congregation. “After the Blessed Virgin, it wasSt.Aloysius Gonzagawhom she most venerated and most often invoked. She had a preference for this saint because of his evangelic purity”.
42° As far as the sacraments are concerned, the Servant of God always showed great fervour for the Holy Sacrament of the altar. Even as a child, she had a very strong desire to go to the church. She slowly passed the door of the sanctuary repeating: “Praised and blessed be the Holy Sacrament of the altar”. She had the ardent desire forthe happiness ofreceiving Holy Communion. “Oh my Jesus”, she said, “when will the moment come for me to receive you? O! In that moment I will prostrate myself before you and adore you”. After her First Communion, she had such a strong desire for Communion that she begged her confessor to let her have it every week. In her mind she always stayed in front of the tabernacle. Fr. Reichard could say: “In the midst of all her occupations, she so vividly brought to her mind the altar, the Host, the chalice and the sacred ceremonies and united herself so intimately with the intention and the prayers of the priests and thosepresent that wherever she was, she could receive Holy Communion as if she had been present in person at the Eucharistic Sacrifice”. During her first period of illness, “she had the ardent desire to receive Holy Communion more often, as the only means that could give her the strength forself-denial and for renouncing her own will in order to do nothing but God’s will”. The parish priest gives his consent to this. Once recovered, she felt it as a new grace to be again able to participate in the Mass and to receive Holy Communion. The Servant of God prayed a lot and made others pray in front of the Holy Sacrament. She herself spent many hours in adoration. She introduced Perpetual Adoration in communities of more than forty Sisters. In smaller communities or communities without a chapel, each Sister was to spend one hour a day in adoration. She said to her Daughters: “You need to have special devotion to the Most Holy Sacrament. Wherever you are in the house, you have to remember that you are close to Jesus. I ask you not to be noisy. Itmakes me suffer when I notice indifference and lack of respect to the Holy Sacrament”.
Understanding of the Church
43° She was obedient to the Church, whose laws she faithfully observed. She venerated the Church in its visible head. She prayed a lot for Pius IX., who was then ruling. She offered her sufferings for him. She had great esteem for the bishops; personallyas well as in the administration of her Congregation she was especially loyal to Bishop Raess. She showed great respect for all priests, in whom she saw God himself. “I would have gone down on my knees before anyone of them to ask them their blessing”. And in a special way, during her whole life she had great respect for her spiritual guide and was completely obedient to him: Father Reichard, who was called to found the Congregation of the Sisters of the Divine Saviour. She called on her Daughters to be completelyobedient to the ministers of the altar. The Original Rule says: “They will always be obedient to the pastor, who, whatever his ministry may be, is to be regarded by them as the legitimate authority”.The Servant of God received many priests who came to ask her advice. Many of them were edified by her. She spoke kindly of the priests, of the high dignity they were given and of the priestly virtues. She prayed a lot for them. Her prayers are very passionate: “Oh Jesus, my divine spouse, look at them with mercy, do not consider their weakness, you only have to say a word, oh my love. Kindle the fire of your love in them. Fill them with disgust for everything which is of the world. Imprint into their hearts your bitter sufferings and make them give up everything that displeases you”. For the bishops, she offers her whole life in suffering.
She showed her spirit of faith through very deep sufferings, which she experiences knowing that the Church is persecuted in Rome, in France, in Switzerland; through the desire which she felt to convert the heretics; through her zeal for leading those who had lost the way, back to the Church, especially the Protestants nearby. It is at first through her prayers and her sufferings that she realizes her zeal, then she sends out her Daughters to win over the souls by recommending them above all the prayer and the practice of Christian and religious virtues. She declared herself ready to willingly give her blood and her life for the salvation of those who do not have faith.
Horror of sin
44°The Servant of God hated sin and everything that was opposed to faith. When she was a schoolgirl, she avoided children using bad language. She cried about it and disliked school for this reason. Later, at a dinner, where people had improper discussions, she preferred fasting. She stood up and went out in order to pray and cry. In her ecstasies, she saw the vices in general and particularly with their different causes. This sight was painful to her, almost unbearable. “She spent all the time of dinner in her room praying and crying, and as her room was next to the dining room, she made the precaution of blockingup her ears so that she was not able to hear through the partition what was said”. She was clearly shown how to correct vices. “See, my daughter, said our Lord, all that must be corrected by you”. She sighed and said: “O, what a heavy burden! Your will be done!” “She was troubled in her tender joys considering the many insults against God”. She herself experienced moments of doubt and discouragement, when she realised that she was a sinner and unworthy of God’s grace. On the other hand, when the Servant of God saw in her visions the conversion of sinners, she felt great joy. Father Reichard testifies to this: “She witnessed many conversions among the enemies of Catholicism, among the schismatic and unbelievers, through whom God shows His mercy […]. From this experience of mercy, of God’s might, again she received great consolation”. As a member of the Sacred-Heart’s Association, she had the concern to compensate for the sins of others through her prayers and the penitence shetook upon herself.