THE Baroness de Chantal was, as her title shows, a person of no mean position in life. She was early left a widow, but with children. After her husband’s death she lived with her father and father-in-law, wealthy, and having everything which earth could afford to give pleasure. From childhood she had been a devoted and passionate Catholic. But neither her wealth nor her religiousness gave her true happiness. She wrote the sad words which follow, “There is something within me which has never been satisfied.” How many of my readers must confess, “That is just as I feel.” She wrote this to her spiritual director, a noted divine of the Romish Church, under whose influence she had for some time been, and in reply he pressed upon her her household cares, her duties to her children and her parents, and also advised her to occasionally read good books. Still she continued unsatisfied. At last she entered, under his advice, a convent, breaking every natural tie to do so. She left behind her the two old men who loved her, her father and father-in-law, heeding not their entreaties, while her poor son stretched himself on the threshold of the door to prevent her passing into this living death. Her father, brokenhearted, died the next year.
In the Convent of the Visitation she went through a very mild round of devotion, while she “waited for the Bridegroom.” The rules were not at all harsh, there was little to do, and the nuns drifted into “a fantastical system of devotion.” The unhappy Baroness, in this spirit of false adoration, tattooed with a burning iron the name of JESUS upon her bosom. Oh, that she might only have known what it was to have Christ dwelling in her heart by faith!
But Christ was unknown, and her days passed unenlightened by the Word and Spirit of God, uncheered by the love of Christ. The love and reverence which should have been given to God were given to her spiritual director, and after his death, her only thought was about him, deluding herself into the belief that he appeared to her in dreams and visions, while celestial perfumes filled the air. Unsatisfied through all her life, she wrote just before her death, “All that I have suffered during the whole course of my life is not to be compared to the torments I now feel. I am reduced to such a degree, that nothing can satisfy me, or give me any relief, except one word—Death!”
A melancholy end, indeed! But this I can say with certainty, that the same yearning after something to satisfy exists in every heart that has not Christ for its portion. Nor can the world give anything to meet this desire; there is nothing under the sun which can do so. God’s Word often speaks of the “longing of the soul,” and compares it to hunger and thirst. Where can this hunger and thirst be met? “Jesus said, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” (John 6:3535And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. (John 6:35))
W. J.