Many of the nuns remained all night before the Blessed Sacrament. We novices made the holy hour together--that midnight hour of union with the Saviour's agony in the garden. "Couldst thou not watch one hour with me," he seemed to say. Such an hour is an eternity for the heart that loves.
"O God!" I say constantly, "the Catholic Church alone knows how to honor thee with due worship." I wish I could define all the emotions of the past few days, when the sufferings of Christ were renewed in our hearts. I thought my very heart would break on Holy Thursday during the _Stabat Mater_. The words and the music are the very embodiment of sorrow, and I felt myself with Mary at the foot of the cross, sharing the pain from that sword of grief.
The ceremonies of this holy time are, of course, far more simple in our chapel than at the cathedral, but perhaps not less touching. Nothing could be more so than, at the veneration of the cross on Good Friday, to see the long train of nuns reverently lay off their shoes, and, all enveloped in their long black veils, and bowed down by sorrow of heart, approach the crucifix, prostrating themselves to kiss the sacred wounds; and then the three hours agony, when the heart is full of anguish on Calvary.... Several of us remained a part of Good Friday night to grieve with _Marie désolée_ over the traces of her crucified Son. There is a whole existence in such days and nights, and when we come back to ordinary life we are oppressed by the heaviness of the atmosphere.
"How shall we breathe in other air Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?"
Our whole Lent was uncommonly solemn. I never entered so fully into the spirit of the church, never meditated so much on the sufferings of Christ. They so occupied my mind during the hours of meditation, the _via crucis_, which we make so often, and even during the ordinary duties of our life, that I felt bowed down by a weight of inexpressible sorrow, which the alleluias of Easter and the joyful "_Regina Coeli lætare_" have hardly dissipated. Oh! why are you not sharing all these impressions? But then you have what perhaps is better--the cross, which is our portion everywhere. "_Souffrir et mourir, c'est toute la vie._"