Spiritual Profile and Virtues

Virtues of the religious vows

Virtues of the religious vows – obedience, poverty and chastity – and the humility that carries them The vows she bound herself to were not an extra rule for her, but a way of belonging wholly to God. The passages below are drawn from the document the congregation prepared for the beatification process.

Obedience

„God wants you to become a great saint. Let him do it according to his will. You will lose nothing.“

The Servant of God was all her life a model of obedience. Already as a child she lived this virtue, which was to mark her whole life. She understood that God’s will speaks through the voice of her parents and her spiritual director. From then on she began a tireless struggle against the fault of her character – the stubbornness that could have ruined what God’s grace had sown in her soul. The „chaff“ was above all her own will; and since she „wanted to become a saint“, she knew she could only do so by submitting her own judgement as well. She would obey, whatever it cost her.

The Servant of God placed all her actions under the rule of obedience. She entrusted herself entirely to the guidance of Father Reichard, of whom she had recognised that God had appointed him to show her his will. She opened her interior to him with the constant care to hide nothing from him; she asked his advice in every detail of her conduct. She kept his counsels strictly, even in the hardest sufferings and despite every reluctance.

Later she made a vow „to obey her confessor as director of her soul and confessor, to practise towards him the greatest openness of conscience, without the least reservation in everything concerning the interior life“. Father Reichard could testify: „She does everything in the spirit of obedience.“ „I repeat and confirm that everything in her conduct was pure obedience, and that with a readiness of mind and heart which from her childhood until today has not slackened for a moment.“

She asked Jesus: „O my Jesus, grant me to be sincere towards the spiritual director you have given me. Show him the path along which he is to lead me, enlighten him about my passions, put on his lips the words he is to place in my soul. In his words I want to recognise your will.“

Obedience was always the guide of the Servant of God’s conscience. Her conscience was so delicate that from her earliest years the least deviation from her own resolutions filled her with fear of having offended God. She overcame temptation, and when it happened that she disobeyed her parents, even in a small matter, she at once imposed a penance on herself.

„What a powerful weapon obedience is,“ she said, „when one must fight against the evil one. Then one strengthens the battle with courage, the face cheerful, joy in the heart. One feels strengthened, guided in the fight, one does not fear the blows that lead into dead ends, nor the dangerous turns. Victory is certain.“

Mother Alphonse Marie kept the rule of her institute. Father Reichard could testify: „She is like the living rule. She observes the prescriptions of the institute with absolute exactness and keeps by preference to the strictest practices and to those most contrary to her nature.“

She taught her daughters the heroic obedience she herself had lived – the one that consists in obeying equals and subordinates. She said: „In temporal things let the soul, in everything that is not against God’s commandments, give preference to the will of the other, especially if something is disagreeable to nature. You must not think, my children, that it is enough to do the will of your superior; you should be ready to do, even in the smallest things, the will of your fellow sisters, though they be younger or less educated than you – and when you have to command others, you should still strive to do their will as your own.“

„You should think that God himself is asking you for this or that. O happy soul, who does nothing of her own will, but only according to the will of others. The merits before God are great.“

Poverty

„Trust in God’s providence instead of the security of possessions.“

The Servant of God loved poverty in an extraordinary way. She loved her simple circumstances and the privations they imposed on her – or rather she wished for nothing but what was given to her, and of what she received she denied herself everything she could. Even before founding her institute she made a vow to possess nothing beyond what, with her confessor’s consent, was strictly necessary for her livelihood; everything else was to be used for the honour of God and the relief of the poor.

Mother Alphonse Marie founded her institute in complete poverty, with no other reserves than trust in God. What was necessary was often lacking, yet help always came in time. Our Lord had said to her: „I will send this work much help, but I want everything to be left to me.“

She wanted the spirit of poverty to live not only in each member but in the institute as a whole. No house was ever to build up reserves beyond what was strictly necessary for a limited time; whatever went beyond that was to be given to the poor or used to found further houses.

Of her daughters she asked the strictest poverty: in their dwelling they were to have only what was most necessary, their food was to be the food of the poor, and the same applied to clothing and to everyday objects. Our Lord told her that the congregation would live as long as poverty and love were lived in it.

„Where the spirit of poverty does not reign, there is no progress in virtue,“ she told her daughters. „You will take steps backwards instead of forwards: your flesh will prevail over the spirit. Reject far from you what is contrary to the spirit of poverty, and you will soon experience a complete change in yourselves.“

She gave the example of the strictest poverty. A priest who visited her relates: „In that small room Mother Alphonse Marie lived; this cell was very poor.“ Father Reichard writes to Bishop Räss: „Since all the members of the congregation are to observe the strictest poverty, it is a difficulty for the superior to wear the rosary which Your Excellency has blessed. She puts it on only at Your Excellency’s instruction.“

Chastity

„A heart belonging wholly to God, undivided among several loves.“

The Servant of God preserved her virginal purity with a care that never slackened. She had a particular love for this virtue, and her prayers from childhood and youth show it: „O my Jesus, give me the grace to keep my heart always entirely pure. Will you not give me, my good Jesus, the grace to serve you in the state of virginity and to die in it? I do not want to be a virgin in name only, but let my heart be adorned with the virtues you ask of a virgin.“ At fourteen she made a vow of virginity for one year, and at twenty-one she promised perpetual chastity.

With constant vigilance she used everything to preserve her purity. Not only did she pray much, but she resolved to imitate the Virgin Mary in her simplicity. When walking she usually kept her eyes lowered and did not begin a conversation unless it was necessary or charity required it.

Her appearance too, her bearing and her glances radiated an angelic purity that won over all who came to her and led them to God. Father Reichard testifies: „Her purity was such that she trembled at the shadow of subjects contrary to this virtue.“

She wanted to protect her daughters from every harm to their purity and urgently recommended that they avoid the world and free manners: „I earnestly beg you to begin living as befits a bride of Jesus Christ. Follow your divine Bridegroom, who led an utterly retired life. Look at him as you will – you will find in him only recollection and modesty.“

Humility

„I ask our Lord that after my death I may be forgotten, that no one may speak of me any more.“

The Servant of God lived humility heroically. From an early age grace enlightened her about the holiness, greatness and majesty of God; she trembled before him out of reverence and because of her weakness, her nothingness. These two impressions took deep root in her soul and formed the solid foundation on which the whole spiritual edifice of her sanctification could rest.

She, who had a natural inclination to inflexibility, showed that she had overcome it – by the docility with which she accepted the orders and corrections of her parents and followed their judgement, and likewise by her humble and constant submission to the guidance of Father Reichard and Bishop Räss, without ever setting her own will against it. When, however, as superior general she considered it her duty to express her opinion, she was able to do so with reverent respect, yet decidedly and without any affectation.

She showed her deep humility by always considering herself unworthy of any esteem or regard. Her wish was to enter a religious community „in order to be regarded as the last“. When our Lord asked her to found her congregation, she exclaimed: „O Jesus, my divine Bridegroom, how can you do this? I am so poor and ignorant a servant; what can you need me for?“

Sister Leonia confirms: „I heard the foundress say: I ask our Lord that after my death I may be forgotten, that no one may speak of me any more.“

Father Reichard could say: „I always had to calm her against her excessive fear and hold her back from withdrawing into nothingness even with the gifts granted to her, to which she constantly inclined.“ Aware of her deep weakness and wretchedness, she was never discouraged, but found in this very recognition an occasion for a more ardent love of God.

Towards others she always showed herself modest and kind. Father Reichard confirms: „One always notices in her a pleasant balance that attracts and fascinates.“ Sister Leonia: „She was kind and friendly in her dealings with the sisters. There was nothing hard in her behaviour.“

In her rule she prescribes kindness to her daughters as a fruit of humility: „When they come to a sick person, they will greet him kindly with the words: ,Praised be Jesus Christ.‘ Then in a few words and with great warmth they will ask the sick person about his complaints, and then with the same great goodness they will ask his relatives.“

She loved and sought humiliation; she considered it the best and shortest way to humility. All her life she had to bear humiliation and contempt, and she never complained of it. Father Armhard says of her: „I also recognised the high enlightenment of her spirit, her perfect surrender to God’s will, her great desire for humiliation and for the cross.“

She told her daughters: „O my children, if only you understood well the usefulness of humiliations! It is almost the only means of acquiring humility.“ „The grace to recognise our faults, to admit them, to accuse ourselves and to rise again is more precious than the grace of visions and miracles.“

She strove to hide her virtues, her extraordinary graces and the holiness of her life. She did so with such simplicity that she could not even think there was anything good in her. Of the extraordinary graces she had received she never spoke, except to her spiritual director. Sister Leonia testifies: „She never spoke of her visions.“

She completed her life in heroic humility. She often prayed: „I beg you, O my divine Bridegroom, my Saviour, make me like yourself, that I may suffer in contempt and die alone.“

We pray for her canonization

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She was beatified in 2018. For her to be declared a saint, a miracle through her intercession is needed — and the prayer of those who ask for it.

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