In the original edition of the book "Spiritual Realism of Thérèse of Lisieux," Fr. Victor Sion has two appendices: The Novice Mistress and Penitence and Health. They contain plenty of wise advice and are written in the spirit of the saint, so we will publish them briefly in our "Carmel." First, in this Lenten season, we will include an article on penance, and later perhaps also an article for the novice mistress, teacher, and director of novices, even though it is more suitable for those living in a monastery, as we are addressing those who wish to understand Carmelite spirituality.
Abstinence has a very important place in the life and teachings of St. Thérèse. However, she saw it as a condition of love. She did not want to destroy nature, but to make it more accessible to grace:
Thérèse teaches us to look at everything from within. On such a current and anxious question as the health of novices, we must view it from this perspective, as it affects the future of religious life.
Today, young people often have little health, physical strength, and nerve resilience. They know this and somewhat acknowledge it. The problem is that despite everything, they long for a pure, mortified, and truly hard life.
The novice mistress is tasked with ensuring that all life conditions, both physical and moral, support the stabilization of health, and then, with the help of a competent author, to clearly explain what true health consists of, why we should desire it, and how we can strive to improve or preserve it through properly understood mortification.
1. Health and Its Loss
Some novices think that completely surrendering themselves to God means risking their health, carelessly exposing themselves to all discomforts and ailments, and failing to maintain the correct balance in food and sleep. This is imprudent generosity, characteristic especially of beginners, which most often quickly fades. The novice mistress must show them that this way they would soon ruin their health, fall into depression, and anemia, which would require a lot of care and dispensations detrimental to the religious spirit.
Sometimes there are even novices, especially in contemplative orders, who wish only to make vows and then lie down, suffer, and die.
But death does not come so quickly, and persistent illness often does not contribute to the sanctity of a soul that could not practice virtues while it was healthy. So it happens that one begins to regret having entered the order, or at least no longer understands the meaning of their vocation.
Others, on the contrary, are too preoccupied with their health, fearful of anything that opposes nature out of concern that they will get sick, do not really try to overcome themselves, and forget what can be achieved with the help of grace. It seems that they entered the order, as St. Teresa of Avila says in the Way of Perfection in Chapter 11, only with the intent not to die.
We must avoid, if possible, them coming to these errors sooner or later, or correct them if they already exist. The novice mistress must provide clear and supernatural rules here.
1. Health, like life, is a gift from God. Therefore, it should not be put at risk; we may also ask for it, with complete surrender to God's hands.
2. Health depends on the balance and harmony between body and spirit. If this harmony does not exist or cannot be achieved, health will be lost. However, there can be several indispositions that do not actually destroy health and provide opportunities for daily offerings, all the more meritorious because only God knows about them. This harmony can be achieved—at a higher level—by those who are afflicted by illness or disease. It is a painful harmony, but rich in love!
3. A nun should not desire health for her own advantage and a life without suffering, but so that she can boldly keep her religious life, serve the community, and devote herself to her contemplative or apostolic tasks. In all this, she should desire the fulfillment of God's will.
4. The health of the nun is not in her hands. It is God who has it in His charge, and it is her superiors who care for it. She should inform them of what she is obliged to do, respond to given questions, and then submit to the decisions made.
The responsibility for the health of novices practically lies with the novice mistress during the novitiate.
2. Conditions of Health
The novice mistress must ensure — and this is very important today — that she creates an atmosphere for novices that allows harmony between body and soul. Constant reprimands, too passive and blind obedience, overwork, and the resulting inner conflict, as well as excessive effort by the novices to quickly adapt to the laws and customs of the institute are causes of many nervous depressions, anemia, various disturbances, and leaving the order "for health reasons."
Generally speaking, today novices need more time to adjust because the difference between how they lived before and religious life is greater than for earlier generations. It is better to prevent the consequences of this psychological shock rather than to exacerbate it with unreasonable and premature demands. Perhaps it would suffice to extend the postulancy or novitiate so that young people can understand the deeper meaning of various things and the workings of grace.
The novice mistress should try as much as possible to avoid what causes nervous tension among novices. She should grant them the necessary rest. Doctors mainly designate lack of sleep as the most common cause of depression. For twenty-year-olds, our overstressed society requires eight hours of sleep.
Diet also requires attention. Some temperaments cannot remain without food in the morning. For everyone, the diet should be simple yet sufficiently rich and varied.
An atmosphere of healthy trust, joyful friendship, high ideals, and the infusion of true spirit are real elements of health because they promote inner development.
The novice mistress should carefully ensure that she does not become a barrier between souls and God. She should eliminate unnecessary conversations and childishness but spread joy, openness, and light, and teach how to rise to God. Her conferences should be well-prepared and lively. When novices speak about their prayer, it should be very brief; there is no need to turn their gaze inward or overanalyze. After all, something new does not come every day. They should not become accustomed to prolonged prayers, especially when they become a routine. She should suggest appropriate reading according to their intelligence and education.
At the same time, she should provide novices with external peace, balance, alternating spiritual work with physical labor, such as work in the garden. Sports are also good. It is not the work itself that tires but the hustle and tension in it. Finding free moments is delicate but necessary. Today, it is difficult if it comes at the expense of work or sleep, but perhaps one hour of solitude could be saved from recreation even in contemplative orders, as even there, when following the rule of silence during the day, it is often necessary to speak. A Sunday freed from many small duties is then a day of rest, spiritual concentration, and regaining new strengths, a true Day of the Lord.
3. Penance and Health
It is about finding a balance between the necessary care for health and the practice of penance. Novices themselves must strive for this, and the novice mistress must assist them. Young sisters often wish to perform greater penance, more acts of penance than are required of them, than God asks of them, and which are beyond their means. Their generosity can be harnessed and directed. Guide them from outer things to the inner, from the impossible to the possible.
There is an inner self-denial that can be practiced constantly and in the smallest circumstances, deeper, more substantial, and more meritorious than certain great physical sacrifices. Physical mortification certainly retains its redemptive value. The lives of saints, including those "most human," attest to this. To deny the ascetic practices that the Church has approved in its tradition would be contrary to wisdom, and even more so against the cross of Christ. In us works the mystery of Jesus, His death and life, His suffering and resurrection (Phil 3:10–11).
It is necessary to distinguish two planes that intersect:
Basic health, both physical and moral, without which it would ordinarily be illusory to hope for full Christian development, which can become true asceticism (cf. Lk 14:28).
Voluntary participation in Christ's suffering. This is an immense field, the boundaries of which are known only to God. "I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the Church" (Col 1:24).
The leading sister should follow the Spirit here and ask for advice. The novice mistress needs a lot of tact, not to quench the Spirit, to know souls well, and to have sound judgment.
When we speak of inner strictness, we do not only mean abstinence, detachment of the heart, mortification of self-love, although all of this is extremely important, but more precisely the attitude of the soul that seeks to elevate everything to God. According to Thérèse, in external acts of penance, more nature than virtue often sneaks in. More genuine mortification exists, for example, in the precise observance of silence, which does not allow for unnecessary talks, in the recollection that avoids even the smallest curious glance, does not savor earthly pleasures, and does not burden itself with fleeting impressions. Young sisters should learn to mortify the body in those many small matters that simultaneously mortify the foundation of the soul. We take up the cross to follow Jesus. Carrying the cross is only a means to achieve that.
True inner discipline in little things without ostentation and self-satisfaction requires great strength of character, a flexible will, a soul that is already advanced in love. The precise execution of all rituals in the choir or dining room, bowing down, standing up, standing straight, or starting to study immediately at a given signal, all these humble fidelities, all these constant interruptions usually prove that the sister is attentive to God, surrendered to Him, that she leaves no room for caprice or her own will.
In these things, undoubtedly the main prompting and love that infuses them; nevertheless, the novice mistress will often be obliged to remind novices of a more direct spiritual perspective of mortification, for they have a tendency to see only its shell.
Who can declare how much strength a firm will can give even to the body, a true control of inner energies? Mortification is therefore to free the soul, not to trap it for itself, to suffocate it by making the body incapable of serving it. It would be an error to bind the spirit to constantly engage with its "brother donkey," to torment it. That also means taking care of it! True penance must aim so the body does not claim a multitude of natural satisfactions that it loves, or to moan exhausted, so that the soul hears nothing but its voice. It is known from experience that excessive suffering or even physical fatigue makes prayer or attention to God impossible.
Young sisters can understand this. The novice mistress will therefore train them to endure harmless discomforts of winter, heat, minor life inconveniences without complaining. To ignore everything that opposes nature, not to complain for bearable headaches or toothaches, not to react immediately to clothing during seasonal changes. The body will then more easily get used to everything, thus avoiding two extremes: excessive indulgence or unreasonable exposure.
She will urge them to be on guard against self-love, which prompts them to desire heavier work and efforts than they are capable of, or to overfatigue themselves. The lazy and selfish will be driven to avoid leaving everything to others. She will show everyone how easy it is for each one to take on what does not exceed their strength but is most unpleasant to her, to do what others do not want to do, such as taking the worst place when washing, like St. Thérèse.
Finally, at meals, which is an important point, she will ask them to get used to eating everything that comes to the table from the very beginning, to serve in the dining room as everywhere else, to be not dependent on their taste and aversions, to maintain their connection to God even at the table, as St. Thérèse tells about herself. The novice mistress should insist that her novices take nothing except for necessary cases, outside of the established meals. For these indulgences quickly become a necessity to which the stomach gets accustomed and demands, while in the refectory, the sisters always complain that they are not hungry. These irregularities are harmful both for the soul and for the body.
Finally, let us point out one more thing. Let the novice mistress be watchful that her sisters do not succumb to dislike and gloom, which stem from inner troubles, humiliation, or various emotions (like tears). It is seen among novices who do not sleep or eat when the time of their profession or vows approaches, when they undergo trials, or even when they encounter the slightest adversity. Under these circumstances, it is essential to be very energetic. Even to send to the dining room a novice who submits to laziness or excessive sadness.
From her novices, she will demand that they exercise self-control and subordination, that they forget themselves in everything and for everything. Through this firmness, she will greatly contribute to balancing their temperament, for this kind of understood and executed mortification not only does not harm health but stabilizes and strengthens it.
However, this does not prevent the novice mistress from diligently monitoring the loss of appetite or sleep when it seems real and lasting, as it indicates abnormal fatigue and often presages serious illness. It is better to go to the doctor sooner rather than later. But on the other hand, it is often necessary to conceal one's anxiety, not to ask novices to immediately come with their little ailments, discerning between those who push themselves to the limit without complaint and those who exaggerate their smallest troubles.
If the novice mistress wishes for her novices, whether healthy or sick, to become true nuns, energetic and mortified, she will strive to immerse them in a manly atmosphere and create courageous souls in it who do not demand for themselves and do not reject anything, for they believe that everything comes from God and can find in everything opportunities to mortify their nature for the sake of the spirit and thus also their health.
This hidden battle of the soul, which seeks to remain entirely for God, overcoming everything that is not Him, gives less space to self-love than a life that is outwardly poor and hard or heavy, which can be boasted about.
Translated by Fr. Metoděj Minařík O.Carm.
