Page:Life and life-work of Mother Theodore Guerin Foundress.djvu/50

38 rolls the thunders of divine vengeance against the hesitating popes at Avignon if not the Swedish princess St. Brigid? And if it is to bring back the Sovereign Pontiff to Rome after an exile of seventy years, is it not St. Catherine of Siena that accomplishes the deed? Then the secret of all secrets — the love of the Heart of Jesus for man — to whom is it confided but to the hidden, humble Visitandine, Blessed Margaret Mary? In like manner, when in the opening years of the nineteenth century the ecclesiastical power sought means of redress from the evils in which all Europe had been deluged by the awful revolution, women were always to be found associated in the interests of God and His people.

Mademoiselle Guérin felt from her early youth that she was destined for some special work, she knew not what, but it seemed a career other than that upon which she was now preparing to enter. Some of her spiritual guides intimated that the designs of God might be thwarted by her late determination, as there were other works in which she might engage that would redound more to the honor and glory of God than the life of complete seclusion from the world which she proposed to herself. If she urged her special attraction for a life of prayer and retirement, she was met by the reply that there was greater charity in devoting one's energies to the needs of religion in the world; that such a life was not incompatible with a life of prayer, even if not so conducive to it. This consideration had great weight with her, coming as it did from those whose spiritual discernment was widely acknowledged and esteemed; besides, her