Father introduced me to a mystic I had heard of but never
looked into- I think mainly because her books are out of reach in cost.
SISTER
MARY OF THE TRINITY (Luisa Jaques) was born in 1901 in South Africa, where her father was a Protestant
pastor and founder of missions in Pretoria and Johannesburg in the
midst of the Second Boer War.
Her mother
died in childbirth, and Louise was raised in Switzerland, her family’s country
of origin, with her two
elder sisters, by an aunt whom
she calls her "little mother". Luisa
completed her schooling in the summer of 1917 without a state certificate, as
her education had been limited to private schools. She matured to be a subtle
and highly sensitive person with lasting
health problems caused by a weak lung.
At the end
of 1917, the sixteen-year-old Luisa took up her first job as a secretary with a
socially and politically committed couple named Horber, who helped organize the
founding of a "Swiss Federation for Transitional Reforms" in the
Swiss post-war period. Weakened by anemia and with the beginnings of
tuberculosis, the following year Luisa went for treatment at the sanatorium
"L'Espérance" in Leysin, run by a Dr. Olivier. There she made the acquaintance
of Bluette de Blaireville, who became her lifelong friend. She also met, among
others, Adrienne von Speyr, cousin of Dr. Olivier
and a classmate of Bluette..
After her
dismissal in May 1919, Luisa took a short-term job as an accountant with a
notary in Lausanne.
In 1920/21, she took care of her elderly and ailing aunt Alice. In March 1924 she again found work as a typist with the
theologian and later pastor Lydia von Auw, a friend of her family. An
acute hemorrhage shortly after she started work resulted in her being referred
to the "Béthanie" house in Lausanne,
run by deaconesses, for tuberculin treatment.
Repeated disappointments at work, a failed
relationship with a married man, and great loneliness due to her beloved family
being so far away, brought her, at the age of twenty-five to not understanding
the meaning of life and to make the bitter pronouncement: “There is not God”.
During a stay with her friend Bluette, on the night of February
13/14 she had a mystical experience – a kind of vision of a religious woman
wearing a deep brown garment, belted with a cord – which gave her the inner certainty
that she must enter a contemplative order.
From this moment on she was reborn in an “irresistible attraction”
to the cloister, and an ardent desire to receive the Eucharist. Thus began the
journey that would lead her into the Catholic Church.
Having moved to Milan
in October 1926 because of a job, Luisa decided, through the mediation of a
priest, to take catechism classes with the Sisters "Nostra Signora del
Cenacolo" in that city. Mother Reggio prepared her for baptism.
Although she was invited several times by her father to South Africa and by her sister Alice to America, she decided to stay in Italy. A change
in her job as a tutor and educator introduced her to the world of the Milanese
aristocracy, particularly the family of Countess Agliardi. In this context, she
completed a kind of Montessori training with Countess Borromeo, who was a sister
of her new employer.
Amazingly
she tried three orders in one but through
the help of Bluette, Luisa met the
community of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Mary, which she entered in
1931. There she obtained a state diploma
at the TeacherTrainingCollege.
She then taught at the Catholic parochial school in Neuchâtel. In this religious community,
which offered her the framework of solid intellectual and spiritual formation,
she remained for a total of five years, twice renewing her temporary vows but
leaving before final vows.
Due
to her unquenched longing for a contemplative monastic life, she left the community
in 1936, after having met in Neuchâtel the priest Maurice Zundel. He was known for his (then) controversial books of mystical theology. He encouraged her to join the Poor Clares and from this point on, Father Zundel was her spiritual advisor.
On
September 1, 1936 she joined the Poor Clares in Evian as a postulant, but
remained only until April 10, 1937, when the mentally ill abbess dismissed her.
After this upsetting convent experience, Louisa worked temporarily as a nanny
in Lausanne with a working-class family
which had six children, and then again with Countess Agliardi in Cortina
d'Ampezzo. Her prospects for a convent life seemed to have
disappeared.Luisa decided to visit her family in South
Africa, together with her sister Alice and her children,
and arrived in Johannesburg
on August 28, 1937, where she was reunited with her parents and siblings. Still
uncertain about her future, she took up employment as a home teacher in various Jewish families
over the next few months.
In 1938,
motivated by reading the writings of (St.) Charles de
Foucauld, she decided to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land reaching Jerusalem. There she entered the convent of
the Poor Clares on June 30.
In the Poor Clare monastery in Jerusalem, Sr. Marie of the Trinity finally
found refuge where God was awaiting her and an interior voice, the Lord Jesus. On August 28, 1939, she was clothed as Sr. Mary of the Trinity. Two years later she made an extraordinary vow of total devotion. In June 1942, typhus fever broke out in the convent. Sr. Maria died of it on June 25, 1942.
She found direction in the day-to-day of a life offered up in in fraternal
charity, silence, service. In His own time, the Lord Himself revealed its
meaning: “You must forget yourself and discover My Voice” In obedience to her
spiritual father, Sr. Marie wrote these “Notes”.
Through
her confessor, Fr. Sylvère Van den Broeck, she was urged in the last two years
of her life to put down in writing her vocational journey and also to record
the words of the "inner voice" she heard. After her death, he
published her writings. This edition of 1943, translated into various languages
in the years that followed, brought about an unprecedented awareness and
engagement with the spiritual content of these writings, especially in Italy through the work of the Franciscans of the Custody of
the Holy Land.
The works of
Sister Mary of the Trinity have been published in French, Italian, Dutch,
Spanish, Slovenian, Croatian, German, Arabic, Hungarian, Portuguese and English
editions.
This notebook, with the story
of her conversion and vocation, has been published and translated in over seven
languages.
In his
preface to the French edition Hans Urs Von Balthasar emphasizes the main lines of her
spirituality : listening to the interior voice of the Lord, profound
awareness of the free will God allows his created beings in choosing to respond
to him, and the Vow of Victimhood considered as “a high degree of availability
and non-resistance to all God’s decisions” within a profound Eucharistic
orientation.
In her short life, she experienced much suffering, and one wonders how much joy, until her last few years. She is an example of fortitude and perseverance in one's call to the Lord.
Notes:
Adrienne von Speyr (d. 1967) was a
Swiss Catholic convert, physician, mystic, and author of some sixty books of
spirituality and theology.
Father Maurice Zundel (Swiss- d. 1975) was one of the great, if
often-forgotten, theologians of the 20th century. Sometimes student
of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, he wrote various works of Catholic
philosophy in conversation with existentialism, Protestantism, and
personalism. This wide-ranging and erudite scholarship led soon-to-be-Saint
Paul VI to call him “a mystical genius.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar ( d.1988) was a Swiss theologian and Catholic
priest who is considered an important Catholic theologian of the 20th century.
Pope St. John Paul II announced his
choice of Father Balthasar to become a cardinal, but he died shortly before the
consistory.
