Letter to Marie Madeleine part 1

By Els fcJ

During my first year of the novitiate, I tried to get to know Marie Madeleine better and wrote this letter to her, which I feel is still relevant. Because of the length I will post it in four parts over the next two weeks.

London, 14^th November 2015

 Dear Marie Madeleine,

Yours is the special honour to be the first deceased person I am writing a letter to. I am already having doubts about how to address you: during your childhood you were known as ‘Gigi’, descendants of your family speak of you as ‘Victoire’ and I am sure you were called ‘Madame’ and ‘Mother’ by many in your later years. The name that speaks most to me is the name most used by your FCJ sisters ‘Marie Madeleine’.

An added difficulty in our case is that we have never met in person, unfortunately, but reading and talking about you has brought you more to life for me. Like Jesus I want to know more about you so that I may love you more intensely and walk more closely with you.

When I first met the FCJ sisters I can’t say I felt a great attraction to you personally as the society’s foundress and I only looked into the specific charism of the congregation much later. I initially looked at things of a more exterior nature: e.g. the fact that they don’t wear a habit, just a cross with the FCJ initials. The more FCJ sisters I’ve met the more I got the impression they were exercising different ministries, that their personalities were very diverse, and more important that there was space for this, acknowledging people’s uniqueness and that ‘all is gift’.

Yet there also seemed to be something that joined them together, distinguishing them from other religious, something more than that they all wore the same FCJ badge or that they wrote FCJ behind their names. But I couldn’t really lay my finger on what this ‘something’ was exactly. That ‘something’ started with you and makes me feel connected to all FCJ’s, alive or deceased.

Personally, I was drawn towards Ignatian spirituality from the start of my religious journey. For men it seemed easy: they would join the Jesuits. For women it was much more complicated: I still don’t know how many female congregations there are exactly with Ignatian spirituality of whom only few have the Jesuit constitutions, why this diversity and how different they are?

Father Varin had a hand in the foundation and establishment of several female congregations and urged you to enter with the Society of the Sacred Heart, but you felt called to found a new congregation, the Faithful companions of Jesus. Meeting other Ignatian women from different congregations, I noticed there were indeed differences, some small, some big, but that choosing between them is essentially a choice of the heart and not one of the mind. One wouldn’t go out with five different men either, analysing their strengths, weaknesses and compatibility with one’s own personality… one simply falls in love and feels at home. I can only be grateful for the wide and rich diversity of religious life that is possible within the Catholic Church and more and more I have come to appreciate the specific charism of the FCJ sisters that distinguishes them from all the others.

I have questioned whether it was wise to enter into such a small congregation. It struck me that you meant for it to be a ‘little’ society and now I see certain strengths in this: it makes the society more adaptable on a practical level, but more important, the sense of companionship among sisters united in Christ all over the world is so much stronger, because thanks to the small numbers it is actually possible to know and to have met many sisters in person.

We are called ‘Faithful companions of Jesus’: this also implies we are companions to each other as the love for Christ and for our neighbour are interwoven. One day a priest said to me: “What a beautiful name: Faithful companions of Jesus”. Thanks be to God and thanks be to you who said: “to have this name I would give everything”, we have a name that makes sense. Yet with the name comes great responsibility: to live out this companionship to Jesus, each other and all our neighbours, every day again.

Read Part 2 here.
Read Part 3 here.
Read Part 4 here.