A prominent woman in Parisian society, Marie de la Guesle—the Countess of Châteauvieux—met Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament on a charity visit in August 1651. So taken was she with the Prioress’s wisdom that she returned several days later to resume the conversation. Soon the nun began to serve as the Countess’s spiritual guide, leading her in the paths of faith, self-renunciation, prayer, and the pure love of God. The Countess and her husband became great benefactors of Mother Mectilde’s undertaking, and the Countess herself, and on the day after her husband’s death in November of 1662, entered the monastery of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration she had helped to build.
A permanent record of the friendship, which grew ever deeper between the mystic of Lorraine and the grand lady, was left in their candid and multifaceted correspondence, conducted over a period of about a dozen years. Marie later arranged Mectilde’s letters into a volume which she called her “breviary of fire.” Benedictine in its fundamental principles, Mother Mectilde’s teaching reflects and contributes to the French School, which included such luminaries as Pierre de Bérulle, St. John Eudes, and Jean-Jacques Olier, while drawing freely on other sources, especially St. John of the Cross and St. Francis de Sales. Mother Mectilde’s gifts of psychological penetration and practical mysticism are fully evident in the advice she gave to Marie de Châteauvieux, which her daughters in religion eagerly recopied and passed down for over three centuries, and which is now available for the first time in English in a translation that faithfully reflects the fiery quality of the original.
“The Letters written by Mère Mectilde de Bar to Madame de Châteauvieux have been treasured by the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament since the seventeenth century. A sure guide for serious souls who take God and His love seriously.”—ABBOT XAVIER PERRIN, OSB
“No woman in the French Grand Siècle, or in any other time, has been as inspirational as Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament in giving the Church a profound understanding of the Real Presence in the Eucharist.”—MSGR KAREL KASTEEL
“Mother Mectilde was so aflame with the love of God that her whole life was a sacrifice to Him. To read her letters is to be filled anew with the desire to give oneself to God.”—P. EDMUND WALDSTEIN, O.Cist
“In her ‘Breviary of Fire,’ French Benedictine Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament provides a tender, motherly yet precise guide through the path of the sacraments into an increasingly deeper dying to self which opens to an ever-deeper intimacy with Christ.”—FR THOMAS ACKLIN, OSB
“Mother Mectilde is one of those chosen souls who give themselves to God in Christ without holding anything back. She aims at perfection, trusting completely in God’s grace to accomplish this miracle.”—DR ELLEN GRYNIEWICZ, Obl.OSB
Catherine de Bar (1614-1698)--in religion, Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament--stands out among the luminous spiritual masters of seventeenth-century France as one of the great teachers of the interior life, a woman of the stature of St Gertrude the Great or St Teresa of Avila. Living in a period marked by superstition, sacrilege, and war, Mother Mectilde responded with a call to faithful reparation, self-abandoning adoration, frequent Communion, and total adherence to the Eucharistic Lord. Even while she suffered exile, illness, poverty, dangers, and uncertainties on all sides, she offered counsel and comfort to men and women in every state of life, teaching them how to surrender to Divine Providence and how to become ever more united with Christ.
