ARTICLES
MODERN WOMEN OF THE SPIRIT:
Élisabeth Leseur and Madeleine Delbrêl (part
2)
Reginald D. Cruz, CFX
[For Part 1,
CLICK THIS
LINK]
After her conversion, Madeleine began to
discern a powerful personal draw to a life of contemplation.
Initially, she thought that she could achieve this by living as a
Discalced Carmelite or Trappistine nun. But after years of serious
consultation with Abbé Lorenzo, she discerned that what the Spirit
was asking from her was to realize this call within the very society
where “God found me.” With several of her women friends, she
responded to this summons by immersing herself in the life of
ordinary people, especially those who have been marginalized not
only by the wealthy but by the Church itself. It just so happened
that the poorest and most marginalized in Parisian society were
located in Ivry, a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris
known as the city’s “Red capital” because of the overwhelming number
of communists and their sympathizers who resided there. In 1933,
Madeleine and two of her friends moved to Ivry. However, they did
not settle there with any intention of converting or even
religiously influencing their neighbors:
We did not come with many plans. What we sought
was the freedom to live shoulder to shoulder with men and women of
every walk of life, with those who were our neighbors in time, with
the same years on our calendars and the same hours on our clocks.
[1]
Like Élisabeth, Madeleine took pains to
negotiate her life of Christian commitment with the militant atheism
of the people around her. On one occasion, Madeleine prepared the
body of a deceased communist neighbor but absent-mindedly arranged
the flowers on his chest in the form of a cross. His wife and
political allies loudly scolded her for this act. On realizing her
mistake, Madeleine earnestly apologized and rearranged the flowers
in a circular manner.
The testiest relationship Madeleine and
her companions endured was not with their communist neighbors but
with their fellow Catholics. The curate of Ivry and his lay
supporters considered the stance of the three women as an affront to
the parish policy that Catholics should have nothing to do with
communists. Moreover, the legitimacy of the group was put into doubt
as they sought not to be formally affiliated with the parish and to
live under a religious rule of life. On this point, Madeleine’s
group captured an ecclesial vision that predated Vatican II: “Their
principal objective was to remain as free as possible to live like
Christ, rubbing elbows with everybody even when the elbows rubbed
the wrong way.”[2]
The tensions began to dissipate once Abbé Lorenzo took over the
parish of Ivry and honored the autonomy of the avant-garde
community. In firmly holding on to their convictions, Madeleine and
her équipe
apprehended a refreshing approach to the transcendent life – a
spirituality of the
gens des rues:
There are some people whom God takes and sets
apart. There are others he leaves among the crowds, people he does
not “withdraw from the world.” These are the people who have an
ordinary job, an ordinary household, or an ordinary celibacy. People
with ordinary sicknesses, and ordinary times of grieving. People
with an ordinary house, and ordinary clothes. These are the people
of ordinary life. The people we might meet on any street. They love
the door that opens onto the street, just as their brothers and
sisters who are hidden from the world love the door that shuts
behind them forever. We, the ordinary people of the streets, believe
with all our might that this street, this world, where God has
placed us, is our place of holiness. We believe that we lack nothing
here that we need. If we needed something else, God would already
have given it to us.[3]
SOLITUDES AND LONELINESS
Having embraced the ordinary and unspectacular everyday life
as congenial to her, Madeleine undertook her quest for the
transcendent within the locus of the ordinary. In time, she realized
that the life of contemplation she and her companions sought as
laypersons could be achieved by opening oneself to “the small
solitudes of the day”:
Our tiny solitudes are as immense, as exultant, as
holy, as all the world’s deserts, because they are filled with the
same God, the God who makes solitude holy. The solitude of the
darkened street separating the house from the metro; the solitude of
a bench next to others who are carrying their part of the world; the
solitude of long corridors streaming with souls on their way to the
new day’s tasks. The solitude of the few moments crouching to light
the stove; the solitude of the kitchen spent before the tub of
beans. The solitude on our knees scrubbing the floor, in the
entrance to the garden where we hunt for lettuce for the salad. The
brief solitude of going up and down the stairs a hundred times a
day. The solitude of the long hours with the laundry, washing,
mending, and ironing.[4]
Madeleine also understood that solitude is
also attainable in the “painful losses… which deepen our hearts – of
loved ones who have to leave though we’d like them to stay…. things
that we want to say, but no one is listening; the strangeness of our
heart while we’re among people.”
Élisabeth was no stranger to the solitude Madeleine
described. In resolving “to be reserved concerning matters of faith”
with her beloved Félix, she inevitably entered a period of spiritual
loneliness. This was alleviated to a certain degree once she found a
spiritual director, the Dominican Fr. Joseph Hébert, in the spring
of 1903. She later talked about this encounter as “providential,”
coming “at a precise moment of need.”[5]
However, the direction occurred mostly in the context of sacramental
confession, occurring twice a month –rarement
très longues (seldom very long), according to the priest.[6]
Hébert noted that her spiritual crisis increased as the years went
by, heightened by the death of her younger sister Juliette in 1905
and a recurring liver ailment from 1908.
Élisabeth’s correspondence
to friends and relatives during this period reveals an interesting
development in her spiritual life. While accepting the spiritual
isolation brought about by her resolution, the physical and
emotional sufferings she underwent widened her capacity for
compassion:
When she encourages her correspondent to embrace
the particular form of suffering entailed when witnessing the
suffering of someone she loves deeply, it is clear that Élisabeth
knows what she is talking about. She is aware of her own
helplessness in the face of the death of family members, especially
Juliette’s death. The intensity of Élisabeth’s emotional responses
has not been numbed by her own suffering and illnesses. She
continues to feel deeply and to suffer emotionally as a result. She
witnesses her friend’s suffering; she is also aware of how much
Félix suffers when he witnesses the particularly acute and intense
periods of physical suffering in the course of Élisabeth’s illness.[7]
It is apparent from the previous discussion that Hébert’s
awareness of his directee’s inner life was wanting. It cannot be
otherwise since their association had been peripheral and formal
except in the final years of her life. Moreover, Hébert was at odds
with Élisabeth’s acceptance of the spiritual paths chosen by her
Jewish, Protestant, and even atheist acquaintances, even criticizing
her for not having any hatred toward them.[8]
After her death, Hébert openly bewailed his inability to provide a
deeper direction for Élisabeth:
Madame Leseur knew I was involved in a fairly
active ministry, and she was scrupulous to show – without being too
demanding – her eagerness for the spiritual comfort that the
reception of the sacraments brought her…. But I must I confess that
my innate nonchalance perhaps too easily accommodated itself to this
set of circumstances, which seemed to explain my inaction. I did not
insist on having more frequent meetings, keeping the regimen to the
minimum due to my laziness. Today I do not recall this without being
perturbed by my attitude. To be frank about it, I am not without
reproach.[9]
While respecting Hébert, Élisabeth was
intelligent enough to perceive that his spiritual support was
inadequate: “True spiritual direction is a precious but rare thing.
One can be comforted and strengthened by the guidance of a holy
priest and yet never achieve that fullness of direction God
sometimes reserves to himself.”[10]
He remained her spiritual director to the end. But because of the
inadequacy of his guidance, she appraised toward the end of her life
that “(her) whole spiritual life had been spent alone with God.”[11]
WOMEN
OF SPIRIT
Élisabeth built her self-formation in the spiritual life on the
ground of her womanhood. Her life coincided with the rise of
feminist consciousness in 20th century France. Though she
did not participate visibly in the budding women’s movement,
Élisabeth revealed in her musings her strong conviction that a woman
cannot simply withdraw into the margins that the wider society has
determined for her. While accepting that child bearing is a gendered
obligation – which she qualified as “often a sacrifice” – she firmly
believed that the role and influence of woman in French society went
beyond the domestic, something her contemporaries “had not fully
grasped.” In fact, she mused that “it is an obligation (for women)
to develop unceasingly one’s intelligence” as well as “to understand
one’s times and not despair of the future.” Élisabeth understood
that women can reach such new perspectives for “as much as men, they
are beings who think, act, and love; they can proudly reclaim their
right to responsible action.”[12]
Élisabeth expressed
her feminist consciousness further in an essay she wrote in 1905 for
Marie Duron, her young niece and godchild, who was then preparing
for first communion:
A Christian woman is a human being like everyone
else. Every individual is a thinking, reasoning being, illumined by
that natural light which is the first degree of the divine
intelligence, as you will learn from Saint Augustine…. You must make
every effort to increase your depth of human learning. I should like
you to be very well educated or even learned. The word learned
does not bother me, in spite of Molière, for whom learned women are
nothing but silly pedants. In our times a learned woman can do much
good. A woman is responsible for her intellectual development and
ought to increase the breadth of her knowledge and enlarge her
intellectual horizon, so as to be capable one day of simultaneously
fulfilling her role as mother and her duty toward the society in
which she lives. This stands in need of illumination from all of us,
faint as it may be. When we work not for trivial satisfactions but
to strengthen our minds so that others may benefit from our work, we
can be sure that it will be fruitful and God will bless it. One day,
sooner or later, it will bear more fruit than we can imagine.[13]
And though such vision of womanhood may not
yet seem visible or even realizable, Élisabeth encouraged her niece
to behold and hope in it for “none of our disinterested or generous
efforts is ever lost.”
Élisabeth found
much relief from her spiritual isolation through her journal writing
and correspondence. But in all likelihood, the most crucial source
of consolation for her was her relationship with Marie Goby, a vowed
religious of the Hospitaller Sisters of St. Martha of Beaune. Quite
interestingly, the friendship began in 1910. The relationship lasted
for hardly five years as Élisabeth died in May 1914.
It is also worth noting that apart from their first
encounter, the two women met face-to-face only twice afterward.
Despite this, the friendship was enriched through the deep and
personal letters they sent to each other: Élisabeth writing
seventy-eight, Marie forty-five. Élisabeth was able to share with
Marie her deeper spiritual insights. Through their epistolary
friendship, the two women supported each other with prayers and
sufferings and developed into what some today would call “soul
mates.” Élisabeth expressed to Marie the importance of this
relationship for her:
How open I can be with you my friend, so easily
and simply! The atmosphere in which I live is hardly favorable, from
a religious point of view, to this kind of transparency. I run into
souls in distress, suffering hearts, hostile or indifferent minds
every day. And from this contact considerable suffering arises and,
at the same time, an interior consolation from trying to dome some
good.[14]
On being diagnosed with breast cancer, Élisabeth experienced
an eclipse of the Divine. Although overwhelmed and weakened by pain,
she found the inner strength to resist the feeling of abandonment by
God. Once Élisabeth began her final journey, it was to Marie that
she confided her profound insights as a dying woman.
For several weeks God has seen fit not to treat me
too gently physically and morally. After having been treated by God
like a spoiled child, it’s only fair that I be led along a rougher
road, and for almost two years that’s the way it has been. My dear
sister, how well I understand now what the ascetic authors say about
this straight and painful path that must be walked in order to reach
the First Light. I’m catching quite a glimpse of the “dark night” of
St. John of the Cross! When God drew me to him by some wonderful
means without any human intermediary, he lavished me with
such graces and flooded me with such ineffable joys that I have been
completely conquered forever. But until then he was the perpetual
giver, doing everything for me who had never done anything for him,
who had on the contrary, worked against him. That was all well and
good. It was just that the time came for personal work, for labor,
for effort; the time for personal giving, for self-denial, for
sacrifices; the time when I would finally be able to offer something
to the one who had given me so much. I had already suffered at the
time of my sister’s death and because of my health, but to suffer in
the joy of the spirit is nothing. That’s why the trials of the soul,
the most intimate and subtle heartaches had to come to purify and
transform. This divine work continues, and I daily offer my sorrows
or my efforts to my unique Friend, to the one who alone knows my
depths.
[15]
Madeleine Delbrêl had a longer life than Élisabeth Leseur.
Likewise, her world expanded beyond the domestic (her
équipe) and the local
(communist-dominated Ivry) as her
gens des rues
spirituality gained
credibility among members of France’s postbellum hierarchy. Apart
from Abbé Lorenzo, the most important of her clerical supporters was
Emmanuel Suhard, cardinal-archbishop of Paris. In his desire “to
tear down the wall” (abattre
le mur) separating Church from French society, he established in
1941 the Mission de France,
a territorial prelature consisting of clerics who would dialogue
with and serve the socio-economically marginalized. He had also
given full support to the Worker-Priest Movement (Prêtres-Ouvrier)
whose clerical members donned secular clothes and worked in
factories to regain the confidence of the French working class.
Madeleine rejoiced in the cardinal’s innovative projects and avidly
gave her support when asked for help in forming the social science
curricula to be taught at the prelature’s seminary in Lisieux.
Cardinal Suhard admired the petite social worker of Ivry so much
that he appointed her as an advisor for
Mission de France. More
importantly, he made certain that Madeleine’s
équipe would keep its
unique lay character by refusing to subsume it into the
institutional church as a secular institute.
The groundbreaking thrust of the French church under Suhard did
not receive enthusiastic support from the Vatican however. Pope Pius
XII himself was wary of the innovations, fearful that these social
experiments would be used by communists to destabilize the church.
On 1 July 1949, a
few weeks after the sudden death of Cardinal Suhard on 30 May, the
Congregation of the Holy Office issued an interdict against the
association of Catholics with communists. The decree understandably
stung Madeleine who had spent all of her post-conversion life in
bridging the divide between the two groups. She found in her poetic
soul the means to express subtly yet powerfully her disagreement.
The ironic tone of Le
bal de l’obéissance (The Dance of Obedience) became immediately
evident from the day she chose to write it – 14 July, Bastille Day,
when tout le monde va danser
(all the world is going to dance). She echoed the Gospel lament against
les gens serieux (the
serious people) who refused to participate in this dancing
– Nous avons joué de la
flûte et vous n’avez pas dansé (We played the flute but
you did not dance) – and chose to remain
couchés (lying down):
Les
religieux récitent les matines de saint Henri, roi.
Et moi je
pense
A l’autre
roi,
Au roi David
qui dansait devant l’Arche.
[Monks and nuns are reciting the matins of St. Henry,
the king.
But I am pondering
Over that other king,
King David, who danced before the Ark.]
Just as saints like Teresa, John of the Cross,
and Francis of Assisi were
heureux de vivre (happy to live) because they danced, Madeleine
declared that
Si nous
étions contents de vous, Seigneur,
Nous ne
pourrions pas résister
A ce besoin
de danser qui déferle sur le monde,
Et nous
arriverions à deviner
Quelle danse
il vous plaît de nous faire danser
En épousant les pas de votre Providence.
[If we were happy with you, Lord,
We would be unable to resist
this urge to dance that is sweeping the world
And we would be able to discern
how it is you would like us to dance,
By following the steps of Your Providence.]
To be a joyful participant in this sacred
dance, one needs
Être
allègre,
Être léger,
Et surtout
ne pas être raide.
[to be cheerful,
to be light,
and above all not to be stiff.]
Unfortunately, this is not the case for the
church’s somber people:
Mais nous
oublions la musique de votre esprit,
Et nous
faisons de notre vie un exercice de gymnastique….
Et qu'il
n'est de monotonie et d'ennui
pour les
vieilles âmes
Qui font
tapisserie
Dans le bal joyeux de votre amour.
[But we tend to forget the music of your
spirit,
And we turn our life into a gymnastic
exercise;
And all monotony and
boredom
is left to old souls
who play the wallflower
in the joyful ball of your love.]
In the years that followed, Madeleine sought to dialogue with
the Pope and his curia with the assistance of similarly impassioned
members of the French clergy. It was not always easy and many times
she was deeply disappointed by Rome’s “tragic manifestation of blind
bureaucracy.” In spite of her frustrations,
Madeleine made every effort to maintain her faith
in the Church as the sacrament and worldwide embodiment of Christ’s
love. Even the Church’s teaching authority, she trusted, was derived
from and directed toward that love rather than a lust for power and
control. She also tried not to despair by reminding
herself that the Gospel still proclaimed a message of Good News.
Maintaining her focus on the Church’s essence and the Good News was
at times her only way of remaining steadfast under such distressing
conditions.[16]
One can thus imagine her immense joy when Pope
John XXIII – her “tiny little miracle” – convoked Vatican II. She
sensed in the council the irruption of the Spirit that she had
powerfully experienced in her own life. Because of this, she gave
her full assistance to the French bishops drafting the preparatory
documents on the laity, atheism, and religious culture. And it was
in the middle of this work and all her other engagements with her
communist environment that Madeleine suddenly died at her desk in
October 1964. Not long before this, she wrote the following final
anthem to God and life:
You were alive and I was completely unaware of it.
You had fashioned my heart to your size, you had made my life to
last as long as you, and, because you were absent, the whole world
seemed to me a tiny and ridiculous, and the destiny of man stupid
and cruel. When I realized that you were living, I thanked you for
having given me life, I thanked you for life of the whole world.[17]
The
Spirit of God was no longer dead, as it was for the young Madeleine,
but alive in the brokenness of the Church and the world-at-large.
