Letter to Marie Madeleine part 4

Read part 1 here.

Read part 2 here.

Read part 3 here.

I have often wondered how and why God has chosen certain people to follow him in a very specific way, especially questioning my own suitability. The message we find in the Gospel is reassuring: Christ came to call sinners. A remark from you, dismissing an aspirant with strong devotions made me chuckle quite a bit: “she will not suit us; she is too holy”.

The idea of religious life didn’t occur to you until you already were a widow and a mother. As a child and teenager you loved going out to social events, even praying you wouldn’t have to miss a single dance, you assumed you would marry and have children and so you did. Your happy marriage came to a sudden end too early. You presumed you would remarry, but God had other plans.

It took you several years to figure out what you were supposed to do, seeking guidance from several men, who didn’t always give you the best advice or even had your best interest at heart. I don’t have much sympathy for fr. Varin and fr. Selliers and the way they treated you, but I was surprised that in the name of obedience you were able to submit to fr. Varin's instructions to enter with the sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, knowing God was calling to found a new society.

        You were certain God wanted you to follow and therefore you were willing to be obedient to your directors. Although as time progressed you learned to trust and rely more and more on the voice within you, even going astray of the common path of that time, where mystical tendencies were frowned upon, looking with suspicion to the prayer of quiet, instead imposing mediation of the clergy.

Initially I found it hard to grasp why you put so much trust in these male directors, but now I have come to understand that it was a fine line you were treading in a time where Jansenic tendencies were still flourishing. Now I think you were being prudent following your directors as much as possible, yet a woman of great integrity, ready to stand up to them in order not to compromise God’s will as He had made it clear to you. 

      You faced many disappointments and sorrow but you excelled in perseverance, convinced that eventually God would see to it that the work he had begun in you would carry on and therefore it was not up to you to give up, describing yourself as God’s faithful instrument or as an empty vessel.

       These days the time of Jansenism is luckily long gone and the notion that God meets each of us and speaks to us personally is more accepted in Catholicism. Yet we have other difficulties to face. In our secular world religion has become counter cultural and so where it took courage and confidence in your time to stand up against the male dominancy, it now takes courage and confidence to go against the stream of our secular and liberal culture.

To enter religious life these days I think one needs a strong sense that the initiative has come from God, that it is He who knows us and has implanted in us the will to follow Him in this specific way. We are called to walk faithfully and joyfully in the footsteps of our Lord, carrying our crosses. I appreciate your addition of the element ‘joy’, in the conviction that in doing God’s will there is indeed joy.

Like you I only thought of religious life when I was already in my twenties, thinking I would get married and have children, … The idea of religious life frightened me at first, but the fact that it is so far out of the ordinary makes me believe that it is not my idea in the first place and therefore I should trust in the Lord.

      It appeals to me that you and therefore ‘we’ are called as women, identifying with the women from the Gospel, who were willing to follow Jesus to the cross and beyond. Maybe there has been too much an emphasis on the role of the women faithfully standing at the foot of the cross while we should look at them more integrally as disciples and witnesses of their faith. I believe women belonged to the close circle around Jesus, contrary ideas of the first century in Israel but in line with Jesus’ turning towards the despised, the sick, the sinners and the children. Of course women are called to follow Jesus as disciples just as closely as men and equally capable of living out the Jesuit constitutions and your memorable and inspiring words “courage and confidence” still drive us forward.


More than men, women are called from their brokenness, their vulnerability and this is our starting point in today’s world thirsting for justice. “Our fragile, fragmented world hungers for compassionate presence. As women of the Church, standing at the foot of contemporary crosses, we are channels of hope, love and mercy in our villages, towns and cities…With boldness and determination we press onwards” (GC 2013).

In companionship,

Els fcJ