From my friend, Fr. Valle.
For the homily today, I have asked Sr. Cooke to do a bit of acting for us. I have asked her to step into the shoes of Madeleine Sophie. It may be a tight fit; our sainted Mother was kind of tiny. In 1809, Madeleine Sophie wrote a letter the head of a school in Amiens, France. As I read the letter, I thought it would be cool if it were re-addressed to you from Sr. Cooke. To all of you, but especially to the Seniors, pay careful attention. Sr. Cooke speaks for Madeleine Sophie and for us – your parents and teachers who love you.
My Dear Young Women of the Sacred Heart,
I received your little record of Our Lord’s favors to you, and you are right in thinking that your complete conversion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is what would please me most. My loving interest in you could be repaid only in this way; otherwise marks of affection and gratitude, etc., whether expressed in prose or verse, would make no impression on me. I feel that my attachment to you cannot be limited to our lifetime. My joy is full only when I think of those words: “At the end of life, united in the God of love, we shall be with one another forever.”
Leave all of that to God; only be prepared for anything, and be absolutely indifferent to everything that is not God. Be very meek, obedient and especially love Jesus only. Then you will sing the mercies of the Lord throughout eternity.
Please don’t feel any obligation towards me for the charity I have shown you. Jesus who loves you has inspired me whenever I have shown it, and how many times I have failed! Indeed, who has more rebuffs than you? You have driven me to it, and God alone knows how much it has cost me. But let us not dwell on the past except to make reparation for our faults.
Good bye, I must end without saying all I would like to say, but you can guess the many other things that are implied in these few words. All that will be left to made plain in the heart of Christ.
I am in our Lord, your loving,
Sophie.
P.S. Respond generously to the grace of your vocations. Wherever you may go and whatever you may do, you are being called to enter, ever more deeply, into the loving and Sacred Heart of Jesus, Our Lord.
Fr Vallee:
I know I should not dare to add to the words of “our loving Sophie.” But remember that, wherever you go in life and whatever you do, your life is a response to a vocation, to a call. People who are utterly autonomous, which means self-naming, are usually miserable. Christians are heteronomous, we are given are names by another, who is Christ. Men and women who respond to a call are, generally speaking, quite joyful. Your choice, my angels, joy or misery. Choose life, choose joy, choose Christ.