from house to house, at least for a time, and just now when the march of teaching is going at such a rate. God grant we may march at an equal pace in the path of perfection."

These details may appear trivial, but they are required to complete the portrait we are trying to draw, and by far the greater part of life is made up of trifles. We have to realise the simplicity of Mother Connelly's spiritual outlook; and indeed all who would understand religious life must be prepared to relinquish the world's accepted division between what is important and what is not. To a soul advancing in the knowledge of God, His Will grows by degrees more absorbing, until prayer, study, accounts and housekeeping, mean much the same thing, and other distinctions fade away.

"He to whom all things are one, who referreth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may be steadfast in heart, and abide in God at peace." (Imitation of Christ, I, iii.)

CHAPTER XII

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

The secret voice of Jesus is full true, and it maketh a soul true; there is no feigning in it, nor fancy, nor pride, nor hypocrisy; but gentleness, humility, peace, love and charity. And it is full of life, love and grace. And it keepeth a soul in a wonderful reverence and a lovely beholding of Him.-WALTER HILTON.

THE formative period of Mother Connelly's life came to an end when, at Derby, she was installed as the mother and teacher of a new spiritual family. Her ambition had been the contemplative life, as she expressed it later, "to live on this earth in His society, despising all earthly things, being spiritually crucified and sealed in faith, according to His own image," and, as far as we can judge, the mystical gifts had by this time been given to her in great fullness. Some who have studied her life have said that only the presence of these high graces could explain a fortitude so heroic and a peace so unfailing. From her own words, spoken in confidence to one of her nuns, we gather that she enjoyed a continual sense of the Presence of God, which was not interrupted even during sleep-that prayer with her was habitual and effortless-that a word upon the attributes of God was enough to capture her soul and fix it spell-bound in adoration-that though she carefully prepared her meditation, she was able to dwell upon a predetermined subject only for a few seconds, and then her soul took flight wherever God might guide it. All these things betray the supernatural heights of her prayer. Some of the accidentals of mysticism, its flowers dropped by the way, we know to have come to her such as the title of her

Society supernaturally given in response to her longing to have it made lovely with the Name of Jesus-the smiles of the Holy Child which beamed down upon her from His picture, as she tried to express in the words of her Rule His spirit and His desires. Her children tell of signal graces won by her prayers, of peace restored to troubled minds by the mere pressure of her hand upon their heads or by her simple "God bless you."

Contemplatives are the simplest and soundest of all men in their practice of devotion. God has become all the world to them and heaven and earth are transfigured in His light. Mother Connelly had won through hard and strange ways to this haven of inward peace in which the second half of her life was spent. It has been conjectured that it was in that moment of spiritual exaltation before the death of her little son, in which she had offered up the sacrifice of all natural happiness, that her soul had first found God and in that supreme contact had understood that He would call her to great things.

Then came what we may well believe to be the "Dark Night" of her soul-years of bereavement, loneliness and anxiety. In the retreat at Grand Coteau she received, with the consciousness of religious vocation, graces which illumined the rest of her life and opened up a new epoch in her relations with God.

In the light of her own experience she used to recommend, to those of her children who were capable of understanding her, the deliberate practice of interior death, to be followed by a spiritual resurrection. By which she meant a voluntary detaching of the soul for a long time from indulgence in natural joys and self-pleasing, until, loosened from all the bonds of this world, it could rise to a new life, and see everything from a supernatural point of view. Then, she thought, it should relax something of its austere self-discipline and become a child again, simple and joyous, living its life in God. In this connection she constantly quoted the text: "Unless the

grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit."

Those who aim at union with God, she taught, must renounce not only the pleasures of the senses and the affections, but also those of the intellect, and even the joys of spiritual consolation, "loving in strength rather than in too much sweetness." When the soul has given up these things and lost the taste for everything but God, then "all things else" are given back to it in a new way, and it may use them all fearlessly for Him.

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In the early days of her spiritual life she had received the grace to appreciate the value of suffering, and it was one of her fundamental principles that the sufferings that God sends are more sanctifying than any of our own choice. Take the cross He sends, as it is, and not as you imagine it ought to be," she wrote, and was never tired of repeating. And again : "Voluntary penance is chiefly useful in enabling us to accept what God sends." She was accustomed to recite the Laudate whenever any special trial befell her, and her children used to recognise such occasions by the more than ordinary brightness of her face and manner.

Mystical writers tell of a second "Night" of the spirit-more terrible in its action than the first-which by means of anxiety, terror and temptation makes the soul turn in loathing from itself and lean in utter humility on God. It is possible that such a night was experienced by Mother Connelly during her sojourn at the Trinità. We know that she made her own at that time the words, "Unless the Lord had been my helper my soul had almost dwelt in hell," and that her imploring prayer was to be saved from delusion by "the holy justice of humility." Certain it is that this period was followed by new and higher graces and a settled peace, when God's healing presence flooded all the aching spaces of her soul. She admitted to one of her religious, in confidence, that from that time her soul had not been disturbed by passions,

and that through all the sufferings she had endured, its depths had remained unshaken and at peace. A passage from Abbé Saudreau seems to describe the state to which she had now arrived. "The tranquillity and quiet strength which perfect souls enjoy is largely due to the fact that they no longer feel the assaults of the passions or the opposition of the world as vividly as before." 1

This extraordinary grace showed its effects on her exterior. Mother Maria Joseph tells us :

"Those who saw her for the first time were impressed with the indescribable appearance of sanctity which, increasingly towards the close of her life, seemed to radiate from her eyes and in her smile. This was particularly noticed by children."

"From the first time I saw her," wrote one, 66 I looked upon Mother Connelly with awe and reverence as upon a Saint. She had wonderful eyes, and as a child, I used to fancy those were the kind of eyes that saw angels and spiritual things. I thought, too, that she could see right into my soul when she looked at me."

Another who knew her from the early days of her religious life said:

"She would kneel for hours perfectly motionless on her prie-dieu, her eyes closed, or fixed with an intent gaze that certainly saw nothing of this world. I used to love to watch her and wonder if I should ever be able to pray like that. The most wonderful thing about her was her spirit of prayer. You could feel that her days were spent in the presence of God. Even the few small children in the boarding-school believed her to be a saint. And with it all she was so simple."

1 Abbé Saudreau, The Degrees of the Spiritual Life (London, 1907), Vol. II, p. 127.