Just recently, I found myself 'introduced' to a new friend. Her name is Venerable Anne de Guigne, and she is the Apostle of the Nursery. As seems appropriate, I was reading a child's catechism book with my four-year-old daughter, and there she was, completely grabbing the heart of me with her expression, her inner beauty drawing me to her. My daughter and I sat staring at her image for a minute or two (that is a long time for a four-year-old). Well, perhaps it was more me. I decided I must find out more about this young girl.
That Sunday, I was in the bookstore after Mass, and there she was again, the same photograph, staring at me from the bookshelf. Again I felt grabbed. I remember now a good friend once told me, "You do not get 'interested in' a saint- he or she calls you"- out of grace, in God's plan, I believe. I have felt this "drawing" a few times and it seems like someone in heaven is flyfishing for me and finally caught me; there is a distinctive tug. Often, I believe, it is an answer from Our Lord to prayer: He often sends His saints to walk alongside us for a time, or for the rest of our lives. We do foster devotion, but this can I think quite naturally wax and wane, depending on our journey of salvation.
So Little Anne caught me. I bought the biography and read it that night. I found myself at 12 am weeping and weeping, at the beauty of this child, who, "climbed the mountain of sanctity by going up a cliff face... God called her to come quickly and she came quickly.."
She was converted at four years old, the catalyst being the death of her father in the Great War: it is thought by those who knew her, that her father's sacrifice for his country and his family, his faith at the threshold of eternity, that these gained great graces that the father left his daughter as an inheritance. "The graces poured through this open wound...her soul was cleaved and she was no longer the bossy and willful child.."
She truly was the Apostle of the Nursery, in that her greatest efforts, somewhat like St. Therese of Liseux, were in little things- but done with heroic efforts to put to death the willful and sinful parts of her. She took the admonition, "Obedience is the Sanctity of Children" quite literally, as a child would do, quite literally in every little way. But her struggle is evident, all the way to the end. A reading of the biography by "A Benedictine Nun of Stanbrook" is the only way to really understand Anne.
I wept after closing the book upon the last page, after her death at eleven years of age, a death she was called to by love, and realized she was coming into my life as an answer to prayer for my three children, for whom I have been afraid in the culture we live. The end, that is, heaven, is all that matters: to know that your child is working hard towards God and not away from Him. To know that you are doing whatever He calls you to do in your great responsibility, this is peace within the vocation of parenting. And I know I cannot do it alone, we cannot do it alone, my husband and I. These days are too shrouded with the smoke of Satan. So Anne came, and I am so grateful. May she become better known, the Apostle of the Nursery and of Big Sinners.
Translated:
O Maria, my good mother,
Give to me your Son and
lay Him in my humble arms
O Maria, give Him to me
If you please, I desire
your Son
If you please, give Him to me
O Maria, it is that I desire
your Son
Give Him to me
Give Him to me
I am happy now
that He is with me.
