#saveriocannistraocd — Public Fediverse posts

Quote of the day, 7 February: Saverio Cannistrà, ocd

He indeed is a miser for whom God does not suffice.

Blessed Mary of the Incarnation
Madame Acarie

Three years after the fifth centenary of the birth of our Mother Saint Teresa of Jesus, Carmel celebrates the fourth centenary of Blessed Mary of the Incarnation, also known as Madame Acarie. This approximation is due to the special bond that existed between Blessed Marie and St. Teresa. In fact, St. Teresa appeared to Madame Acarie in 1601, then in 1602, asking her to implant her Reform in France.

Why did St. Teresa address herself to this married woman, mother of six children? Madame Acarie had known the Spanish reformer for some months through reading the book of her Life, translated into French in 1601.

Recognizing the depth of this foundress of communities, she remained nonetheless reserved regarding the exuberance of mystical phenomena. She certainly esteemed Teresa as a mystic and for her impassioned commitment to the cause of the Church. Hadn’t she founded St. Joseph’s at a time when she had learned of the wars of religion begun in France in 1562?

At this same time, in fact, the one whom Teresa called 35 years later to found the reformed Carmel in France was born.

Barbe Avrillot was born February 1, 1566, in Paris into a wealthy family of the nobility of the robe. For thirty years, she lived in a land where six wars took place with disastrous consequences both from a social and a religious perspective. She married against her will at the age of 16 to a 22-year-old man, Peter Acarie, a wealthy and fervent Catholic engaged in the Party of the League for the defense of the Catholic monarchy.

Thus, she found herself in the heart of the conflict linked to the last of these civil wars (1588–1594): her husband was one of the 16 members of the insurrectional government installed in Paris in 1589 after the assassination of King Henry III. During this period, she lived an intense spiritual life after a conversion in 1587 that stirred up within her a taste for prayer and concern for the poor.

Barbe Acarie’s concern thus joined St. Teresa’s great project expressed in The Way of Perfection: to restore the religious spirit of France not by weapons, but by prayer. Teresa of Jesus, after having ordered her twice to bring her Reform to France, appeared to her again in 1602 at the shrine of Saint Nicholas of Port to ask her to become a Carmelite nun with the status of a lay sister!

This she did in 1614 after the death of her husband, pursuing from this time onwards an intense activity at the service of different monasteries and accompanying the rapid expansion of Carmel in France. Her spiritual director and first biographer, André Duval, wrote that nothing important was done in the Church in France that did not pass through her.

Saverio Cannistrà, o.c.d.

Archbishop-Elect of Pisa
Letter from the General Superior, 18 April 2018 (excerpt)
Fourth Centenary of the Death of Blessed Mary of the Incarnation

Featured image: The Madonna and Child appearing to Blessed Marie of the Incarnation is an oil on canvas painting attributed to Pierre Delestres, ca. 1750. It is part of the collection of artworks at the Discalced Carmelite monastery of Pontoise that depicts Madame Acarie. Image credit: Discalced Carmelites

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