For Remembrance (ed. Repplier, 1901)/Ecce Ancilla Domini

"Ecce Ancilla Domini."
Address of thanks in the name of Eden Hall, delivered by
Miss Jenny Butler.

 

Your Grace, Right Rev. Bishops,⁠

Reverend Fathers, Ladies:

ELCOME to Eden, on this, its holiest festival! It is with reverence and gratitude that we welcome our prelates and our pastors in the name of the Society of the Sacred Heart! At the feet of our own Archbishop we place our first tribute of recognition, respectful, filial, joyful! He grew to the height of his lofty apostolate under the influence of that great Prince of the Church, Archbishop Kenrick, whose learning and holiness rose like a placid mountain in a wide land. Our Most Reverend Father brought, from the west to the east, a sacred heritage of paternal love for the Society of the Sacred Heart; for Archbishop Kenrick had been the friend and protector of its first two American convents, the houses of Missouri. The crosiers of two mighty brothers had already made St. Louis and Philadelphia episcopal sisters, and an interchange of treasures continued to make them mutual debtors! It is then a perfect clasp which links us to-day with the saints of the past and the benefactors of the present!

We may be permitted to offer another word of thanks in proclaiming another obligation.

The prelate who, this morning, lifted into resplendent light the modest figures of both European and American foundresses has every right to stand as interpreter between the Catholic hearts that value this order and the order that gives its life to Catholic Education. His very name pledges him to speak in its cause, as representing one whose voice is silent forever,—that great Archbishop of Baltimore who taught our nation that Faith and Learning are twin daughters of the Mother Church. The orator who to-day illuminated that truth leaves us forever his debtors. His understanding of that noble and saintly woman whose zeal created the provinces of the East lent him the right and gave him the power to speak the loyal word which carries gratitude heavenward, and brings Heaven's benediction to earth.

In saluting the Bishop of Montana we are reminded that what is often called a chance event is, in truth, a special Providence. His presence to-day symbolizes the missionary spirit that first impelled this order to seek the New World; nor can we forget that, for the dark children of the Western forest, the first religious of the society came with their first message of zeal! They have sent him here to-day, to represent them, and we welcome him with an especial joy.

It is with cordiality and thanks that we greet, in the name of Eden Hall, those guests who, having been its pupils once, remain its children forever. Its very walls have asked its friends to share in the songs of gladness with which those walls are echoing; and your presence here, responsive to that appeal, is adding joy to joy. This day, already so beautiful in the calendar of the liturgy, has a gracious and peculiar fitness for the commemoration that sends upward, from one hundred and forty altars, a single Te Deum Laudamus. The Presentation of Mary in the Temple. The seed of salvation giving its first bloom from the stem of Jesse! The Church's festivals stamp her traditions with the seal of a sacred scripture, and for a thousand years the eyes of faith have gazed on the little Maid of Israel ascending the steps of the second temple. Her heart pronounced for the first time the "Ecce Ancilla Domini" as the token of her consecration; her lips will proclaim it in Nazareth as the signal for the world's salvation promised; her attitude will repeat it on Calvary as the sign of the world's Redemption accomplished. As the handmaid of the Lord, and nothing more, it is ever from the heart of woman that the first hidden, timid impulse comes, as God's instrument for great things; though it is the hand and the mind of man, the Worker, the Ruler, the Priest, which must accomplish each noble task for God's glory. It was a gentle and believing woman who sought out in Jerusalem the Cross of Sacrifice, but it was Constantine who lifted it to glory, and kings and pontiffs have for centuries consecrated it as the token of Faith and the symbol of Christianity. Saint Helen was but the handmaid of the Lord, and she withdraws into the shadows of history as soon as her task is accomplished. Lowliest of God's handmaids, veiled in the obscurest of cloisters, Margaret Mary lived just long enough to take a great message to a Priest of God, to whisper its meaning to the world, and then to hide herself in the depths of the Heart of Christ, Whose love she had revealed. And yet that message made its way to the France that had ignored her, a France of splendor and of shame, of bold unbelief and of patient faith; to that stricken land the embassy carried at last its own force and significance! Jansenism could not chill its ardor; vice could not tarnish its lustre; blasphemy could not silence its eloquence; the Revolution could not destroy its kingliness! The Saviour of mankind had said, "Behold the heart that has loved men!" And His servant had only said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord!" But, according to His word, it was done, and the whole Christian world has this year been consecrated by its supreme Pontiff to that Adorable Heart which gives and asks love, and love only. From the faith, living in the heart of a nation's women, comes then the movement that is the nation's life,—for faith is life, and unbelief is death. The Revolution might well have fancied that it had killed that sacred germ of eternal life in woman's heart.

Once, of old, in the town of consolation by the Lake of Tiberias, the ruler of the synagogue had pleaded for the life of his dead daughter, and the Master had said, "She is not dead, but sleepeth!" So was it in that beautiful France which is the favored land of Mary, and of the Sacred Heart! It was Jesus Himself who stretched out His benignant hand, who revealed His compassionate heart, and who said by means of each restored cloister of every religious order in the awakening land, "Maiden, I say to thee, arise!"

Gentlest and humblest of His handmaids, Madeleine Sophia Barat, on this day one hundred years ago, in the poverty and simplicity of a modest little shrine, hidden in the centre of Paris, pronounced her "Ecce Ancilla Domini," and founded the Society of the Sacred Heart. She gave her daughters no other mission than that of becoming the servants of God's love, the disciples of God's priests, the mothers of God's children, the adorers before God's tabernacles. And to-day a thousand songs of rapturous faith have declared: "That Peace hath brought forth from the seed, and the vine yielded fruit, and the heavens sent dew, and the desert places become as the garden of the Lord." When Philippine Duchesne bore that little seed in her apostolic heart to North America, and planted it with hope and watered it with tears, it was the prelates of America who invited the laborers and sustained the labor. From that day to this hour, it has been the noble clergy of the United States, its archbishops, its bishops and its priests, who fulfilled the mission of education, of which the religious of the Sacred Heart were, under them, but the handmaids. To that generous and faithful priesthood, next to God, the Society to-day offers its deepest thanks, and the pledge of its enduring gratitude and filial obedience. Well may its daughter say: "He hath given us pastors according to His own Heart, that they should feed us with knowledge and with doctrine, for they are the Angels of the Lord of Hosts, and theirs the voices of God's watchman holding the word of Life! And wisdom and protection are found at the feet of those whom the Lord Himself girded, even as Moses girded the High Priest his brother with the violet robes of knowledge, bound with the girdle, fitted to the Rational whereon was Doctrine and Truth!

But to you, ladies, and to their pupils the world over, the religious have confided the fulfillment of the remaining portion of their loving mission. And nobly, in every land, has that portion been fulfilled! You have taught where they could never reach; you have relieved where they could never pass; you have solaced woes they could never hear; you have trained children whom they may never see; you have blessed homes they may never enter, and, in blessing others, you have been blessed! The Sacred Heart has guided you; it consecrates you in their consecration, and their thanks shall be to you as a testimony that you may offer before God, a proof that you have been the "Handmaids of the Lord, and that His Word has dwelt amongst you."

Your Grace, reverend guests, ladies: Thanksgivings rose heavenward with the dawn. The solemn benediction hour will bear them heavenward again. To God—thanks! To the friends of the Society—thanks! To the children of Eden—thanks! Soon, soon we shall be kneeling in that beautiful chapel, which is a visible and perpetual record of generous benefactors, signalized from the earliest to the latest days of Eden Hall, benefactors who rest beneath its fairest shrine; and others, sleeping, indeed, elsewhere, but bequeathing to our gratitude names that shine on tablets of bronze, and sound in hearts of fidelity. And then there are other benefactors, still living, to receive God's recompenses here below. In that chapel, where every window speaks, and every stone is eloquent, one supreme word of thanks shall lie upon the altar before the Host, and it shall be our final word, repeating: "Give glory to God! exalt Him forever, and praise His name, forever and forever!"