The Fiery Meditations of a Soul Inflamed with Love (Part 1)

Advice from Mother Mectilde on assisting at Mass, receiving Communion, and more

Catherine de Bar (1614–1698), later taking in religion the name Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament, was one of the great teachers of the interior life in 17th-century France, in regular contact with all of the prominent figures of that very rich age of saints and mystics. She started off in the order of the Annunciades but, due to the upheavals of the time, ended up staying for a long period at a Benedictine monastery and eventually became a Benedictine nun herself.

In 1653, with the support of Queen Anne of Austria, she founded the Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration, an order represented today by houses in France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Mexico, Poland, Germany, Uganda, Italy, and Haiti. The first house of Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration, Our Lady of the Cenacle Monastery (familiarly known as Silverstream Priory), is located in Ireland.

Although nowadays most Catholics don’t find it strange to hear there are religious communities dedicated to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament (the Poor Clares and the contemplative Dominicans being perhaps the best known), Mother Mectilde’s community was, in fact, the first ever to be set up expressly to do this as part of their rule of life, to prioritize it as their chief “work.” We have her to thank for such an immense current of grace at the heart of the Mystical Body.

While her work is well known in the French and Italian spheres, she has been almost completely unknown in the Anglosphere until Angelico Press did us a great service by bringing out the first-ever English translations of her immensely rewarding, challenging, profound, and luminous writings. So far, there are four volumes: The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love (a fine introductory volume); The “Breviary of Fire”: Letters by Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament; My Kingdom Is in Your Heart: Letters to the Duchess of Orleans & Meditations on Christian Life; and, most recently, The True Spirit of the Perpetual Adorers of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. It is this last work I would like to speak of today, sharing some excerpts from it for the reader’s edification.

The True Spirit is a series of conferences addressed by Mother Mectilde to her daughters in religious life, helping them to understand the special charism to which they had been called: entering into the kenosis or self-emptying of Christ by remaining hidden, unknown, silent, and totally consumed with adoring the Lord as His consecrated bride, making reparation for the worst of sinners. But there is much wisdom and good counsel in these conferences that can readily be applied to the spiritual life of any serious Christian, including laity in the world.

Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins, a great Mariologist, writes in his Foreword (which, as it happens, was one of the very last things he wrote before the Lord called him home on February 3, 2024):

I humbly believe that Mother Mectilde was one of those explorers who (like that other great Benedictine mystic, Saint Gertrude of Helfta) discovered some veins of rare beauty—principally in the solemn celebration of the Divine Office, the “work of God,” and then, through her hours of Eucharistic adoration—and found a way of sharing her insights and charism with her spiritual daughters and friends. The texts presented here are examples of what she discovered from living the liturgy of the Church in the context of Benedictine monastic enclosure and that of the seventeenth century, the “golden age” of French spirituality, an extraordinary era in the exploration of many rich veins of the mystery of Christ. (iii–iv)

Let us explore some of these veins with her help.