Page:For Remembrance (ed. Repplier) 072.jpg

 simplicity of a modest little shrine, hidden in the centre of Paris, pronounced her "Ecce Ancilla Domini," and founded the Society of the Sacred Heart. She gave her daughters no other mission than that of becoming the servants of God's love, the disciples of God's priests, the mothers of God's children, the adorers before God's tabernacles. And to-day a thousand songs of rapturous faith have declared: "That Peace hath brought forth from the seed, and the vine yielded fruit, and the heavens sent dew, and the desert places become as the garden of the Lord." When Philippine Duchesne bore that little seed in her apostolic heart to North America, and planted it with hope and watered it with tears, it was the prelates of America who invited the laborers and sustained the labor. From that day to this hour, it has been the noble clergy of the United States, its archbishops, its bishops and its priests, who fulfilled the mission of education, of which the religious of the Sacred Heart were, under them, but the handmaids. To that generous and faithful priesthood, next to God, the Society to-day offers its deepest thanks, and the pledge of its enduring gratitude and filial obedience. Well may its daughter say: "He hath given us pastors according to His own Heart, that they should feed us with knowledge and with doctrine, for they are the Angels of the Lord of Hosts, and theirs the voices of God's watchman holding the word of Life! And wisdom and protection are found at the feet of those whom the Lord Himself girded, even as Moses girded the High Priest his brother with the violet robes of knowledge, bound with the girdle, fitted to the Rational whereon was Doctrine and Truth!

But to you, ladies, and to their pupils the world over, the religious have confided the fulfillment of the remaining portion of their loving mission. And nobly, in every land, has that portion been fulfilled! You have taught where they could never reach; you have relieved where they could never pass; you have solaced woes they could never hear; you have trained children whom they may never see; you have blessed homes they may never enter, and, in blessing others, you have been blessed! The Sacred Heart has 52