EPILOGUE

Throughout her life Dina, like the “poor of Yahweh” came to know the mysteries that her life presented; a humble search, dim half-light, deep faith, trusting commitment, unconditional fidelity, unlimited self-abandonment and thus she could enter into the infinity that is God.

To believe is to trust, it is to let things happen, it is, above all, to commit oneself, to love.  Dina passed through life leaving us not only her footprint on the sand but, above all, the footprint of God. She presents God to us as the supreme Beauty, as the Love that seeks to be loved, like the moonlight over the sea of our lives, arousing in us the nostalgia for Him.

The Autobiography of Dina is not the fruit of a theological reflexion, she never studied theology. Dina searched for God, silently as a gentle breeze, tranquil as peace, attentive as the watchman who scans the horizon before the sunset. Dina is the faithful echo of the word of God, without looking for interpretations, without taking any initiative because God alone is the protagonist. In her writings Dina reveals her life and soul, unfolding as does a flower in the rays of the Sun.

If you like, having learned something of Dina’s passage through our world, we can delve more profoundly into her life, in order to get to know the score better. Do not forget that the work of God is all important, hidden to human eyes and that the score of every life requires our cooperation, so that, if you wish, we will then be able to play the whole melody.

Thank you Dina for your life and for your constant fidelity to grace. Help us, so that the score of our lives may be in tune and, like hers allow a melody to be heard – a melody to the greater glory of God

TESTIMONIES: Her Mistress of Novices

Today I would like you to hear from Dina’s Mistress of Novices in whom Dina confided the rich graces that God was offering her. We are treading on holy ground, where the main protagonist is God Himself and we feel overwhelmed by the path along which God led Dina. Her life as a religious was very brief, only eight years, but long enough to reach to the depths and navigate the deep waters of the mystery of God, something which Dina, obediently has described for us in her autobiography.

Dina hid nothing from her Mistress of Novices. She told her everything about her spiritual experiences because, receiving such an abundance of divine graces, she was afraid of falling into illusion.

The Mistress tells us:

When Dina spoke to me about her communications, I was worried and showed it; I knew that, as she was so sensitive this was a problem for her.  On seeing my concern she wept: “Why am I not like the others?” Something that, at one moment when she heard the voice of Jesus, filled her with joy, subsequently became a real torture. She found peace only when I told her that it was God’s will.

She was very simple and while her intimacy with Jesus developed, she participated fully in every aspect of the life of the noviciate.

One day in which she had confided to me that she was in deep communication with God, the novices had an outing; she laughed, enjoyed herself with and like the others but nothing revealed her secret.

The Mistress says throughout Dina’s religious life sources of suffering can be perceived:

Community life - given her gentle and sensitive personality. Her illness during which, on the orders of the doctor, she had to lie motionless in bed, in order that her lungs might heal. The greatest was when Our Lord offered her His chalice so that, in her agony, she would participate with all the suffering that He underwent: downcast, fearful, sorrowful, revulsion, loneliness etc.

Another profound suffering that we can grasp only with difficulty, was the sense of longing for heaven that is felt by those to whom Our Lord especially reveals Himself. Then faith becomes a journey, like Abraham, like Mary …

An important moment in Dina’s life was when Jesus told her that she would die on the 15^th August 1924.  The Mistress says that when , some days earlier, she went to visit her in the infirmary  and seeing that her state of health had not  declined she said to her “ You don’t seem to be dying”. Dina accepted this humbly and said nothing.

The Mistress tells us that after the 15^th August has come and gone, she made Dina understand that she was perhaps living with an illusion. She replied simply and quite naturally that she had been mistaken.  Dina was not depressed and profited humbly from the situation. She continued as before, without concern and even with greater fervour. After this I realised that she had received no further communications for quite a long time, but that her faith and love for Our Lord were even more intense. The death that Our Lord had predicted and that she had not understood, was a mystical death and now silence came over her. This silence of God, both disconcerting and overwhelming, can lead to a vague impression of insecurity, of asking oneself if all this was true and might have been the product of the imagination and not really the action of God.  The greater God’s self- manifestation, the harder it is to bear the silence that follows, Dina did not doubt, she continued to abandon herself, after which God offered her much greater graces.

Dina remained completely open with her novice mistress and the latter tells us that when Dina confided in her she was certain that it was true, even though she was aware of the possibility of illusion, she had nothing on which to base such fears.

More testimonies could follow, but there is a silence that speaks more than words,  I leave you with Dina…

TESTIMONIES: Her Sisters in religious life

Dina left what would have been a most attractive future, a loving family life, a successful musical career, a promising future, the chance to create a happy home … all this to respond with a YES to God who is above everything.

Dina made an impression on her Sisters.  Let us listen to them. They tell us that it was rather by her attitudes than her words that they noticed:

Her great simplicity

She was so self-effacing that it seemed that in her own eyes she counted for nothing. Her great humility hid her talent.

Exteriorly she was like all the others. Nobody imagined that she received extraordinary gifts of grace.

At times of recreation when the conversation became very animated, she was quiet so that others would have the pleasure of recounting what had happened.

Her joy

In the afternoons the novices organised recreations, or musical or literary activities. Dina participated fully in the activities and in the games. Her sketches amused everyone. One would have thought that her shyness would prevent her from playing unusual parts, but the contrary was true, when anything was entrusted to her she did it with spontaneity, thought and cheerfulness.

Her self-forgetfulness

In the noviciate tasks were allocated to each one. When they were not assigned she always chose the most difficult and offered to replace those who had had the hardest ones. She did this so pleasantly that she gained their affection

She always wanted to make others happy and one had to pay attention to the expression of the simplest wish because she responded to it immediately. If possible she did more, she did not wish to do less.

Always affable and good, she avoided hurting others, even if it was a religious who made her suffer.

Her austerity

Dina did not like apples. Her parents, who did not know this, often brought this fruit to her and her superior, taking her health into account, wanted her to eat some. Dina ate apples for many months until the Mistress of Novices perceived the repugnance that they caused her.

Throughout her time in the infirmary, Dina suffered in knowing that her Sisters had to serve her. She would have preferred that the roles would be reversed. She was always surprised and grateful for the smallest attention offered her, for a minute detail.  She was not demanding and seemed surprised that they had even thought of her. She endured the suffering brought on by her illness without saying anything, without it being noticed. She never complained. Her constant smile in the midst of such pain was what most attracted attention.

Her helpfulness

Sometimes the tasks that she was given to do accumulated: compositions, songs, copies, letters, registers, translations … but she never considered herself overworked. They say that, after her death, there was surprise at the amount of work she had undertaken during her illness.

She always had something good to say about people. She gave the impression that she never saw the less good or defective side of others.

While she was still able to teach music she did so with interest and was greatly appreciated. She was demanding but kind. She only sought to give the best of herself and for the good of each of her pupils.

I could tell you much more but I feel that by now you can make out what Dina was like and you yourself can draw your own conclusions.

TESTIMONIES: Her companions in New York:

Let us now follow Dina during the two years that she spent in New York. It was a period of hard work in her studies, of very happy moments as a consequence of her passionate love of music, of living it all with the lively energy of a young woman who explored all that surrounded her in that great metropolis, of daily contacts by letter with her parents, in order to thank them for their sacrifice and that they should not feel the pain of separation too much.

Dina was there with two Canadian companions: Bernadette and Aline.

The two saw her as a friendly young woman, who unselfishly tried to please. She worked very hard at her musical studies, but was also capable of breaking the monotony and laughing at some joke. Dina was very cheerful, laughed easily and accepted that we should jokingly pull her leg. She had will power that was strong and disciplined and was both firm and gentle at one and the same time. She was very tidy and careful with things, but never referred to the fact that we were not … she pretended not to notice.

She was really shy, but overcame this when she had to entertain others. In conversation she was always ready with a word to set the other person at ease. She was reserved, not easily excited, but so friendly that nobody could imagine the efforts that she made to be entertaining.

Dina’s strong character, which was evident even when she was very small, continued to occasionally betray her and be a source of suffering. One day a rather unkind remark was made about her manner of playing the piano. Bernadette tells us: I was in my room. When I saw her enter I noticed how very pale she was and asked: What’s the matter? Are you ill?  She burst into tears. I repeated my question … through her tears she told me: “I am very proud. What they have just said to me is true”. Dina accepted the rather exaggerated comment, but rebelled inwardly. Some years later she met the person but was so pleasant and discreet that nobody would have believed that something so disagreeable had previously taken place.

Bernadette, with whom she shared a room, suggested in Holy Week that they should pray during the night between Holy Thursday and Good Friday.  Dina was happy with the idea, but did not want their other friends to know about it.  We dimmed the light and prayed for an hour. Dina always followed faithfully the programme of daily prayer that she had drawn up in Quebec. Taking her health into account she could have omitted the daily Mass, but did not even dream of doing so. Aline adds that every evening, she saw Dina praying with fervour at the altar rails, for half or three quarters of an hour, not moving, with her head in her hands.

During the holidays, Bernadette tells us that they went to Chicoutimi (Quebec) by boat.  On the return journey they found that, due to a misunderstanding, the cabins hey had reserved were not available. In the evening a passenger, who was half drunk came to the lounge where we were. Dina noticed my anxiety and said “You’ll see, we will get a cabin” and she began to cough. An employee offered her a woollen blanket but she continued to cough. At about one o’clock in the morning the employee returned triumphantly, saying that he had a cabin for us. On entering, Dina, seated on the bed, began to laugh: “I told you that we would have a cabin”, for a moment I also found it funny, but then realised that she had planned it to help me, when she had noticed my anxiety.

TESTIMONIES: Her friends and neighbours

Now we will follow her during her youth in Quebec, before and after her stay in New York. From 16 to 24 is a long time in which to get to know Dina.  Her friends tell us:

 

I was fifteen years old and Dina was about 20. She offered to help me with my school homework. I went to her house and showed her my literary compositions and also asked her to help me solve my problems in algebra.  Thanks to her precise advice and for her innate ability to communicate what she knew, I soon became very good at mathematics. She has always fascinated me, above all, for her young and joyful conversation. She knew how to laugh and tease us. I admired her and found her very good-looking, without understanding exactly that her very attractive personality was but the expression of an intense interior life. She was very gentle and her artistic soul was revealed when she played brilliantly the works of the greatest musicians.

Dina never complained when she was asked to play something and did so immediately. She wanted to please everyone, but was never proud of her musical talent.  Her success never went to her head.

After leaving our boarding school we spoke mainly about music. At that time she had great ambitions, even glimpsing a European Prize on the horizon. Now I think that this pretended ambition was only to hide the fact that her only objective in life was the great love of God that overwhelmed her.

She was very charitable towards the poor. She would work day and night to help those who asked for something, even making it with her own hands. She seemed to understand what misery is and knew how to cure wounds. She had a good word for everyone, her spirit of service was constant and without limits.

A neighbour says: Dina was a very distinguished young woman, generous and without caprices. She asked for nothing from her parents and was content with everything. We were poor, and I had eleven children. When my husband asked her to be the godmother to one of my daughters, she felt content and honoured. Every month she wrote to us from New York, in spite of much work that she had.

Dina was very attentive to the needs of others. A companion tells us: in a musical sketch I had the role of a beggar; I did not have a dark coat and did not know what to do. Spontaneously Dina lent me hers, having removed the buttons, something which made it look more miserable.

Someone who knew Dina very well states that she had to struggle to overcome her strong temperament, but that her efforts and the resulting progress, was continuous. The setbacks and serious disappointments that came her way did not upset her serenity or remove the smile that made her so attractive.

TESTIMONIES: Her companions

Today I am going to tell you how her school friends saw Dina – is that alright?

 They say that Dina was always very punctual and attentive in class.  She never found an excuse to be absent from school. Very studious and gifted, methodical in her work, she never lost a minute. Doing well in every subject, she came first, but was never proud. Always very generous, one day she allowed another student who had ten marks less than her, to take the first place for which she had struggled and which was hers by right. She was known as an outstandingly good student.

One companion says that Dina was a little nervous. She was rather timid but made efforts to overcome her timidity. Dina was a little shy of her above-average height. The somewhat fearful look in her eyes made her companions nick-named her “our little gazelle” which greatly amused her. In spite of this timidity, if it was a question of helping her companions, she did so. When any of them got up to mischief, she never reported about them, but when asked, told the truth. She never told lies.

Dina did what her teachers told her, which was more than the rest of us, and for this we pulled her leg, calling her Saint Dina, Holy Dina. This was not from ill will, but to tease, although underneath we did admire her.

She was very humble and unpretentious, she did everything naturally. She was simple, courteous, distinguished in her manner and easy to get on with. She did not speak of herself or of her gifts; if these were mentioned, she accepted graciously. She did not take the first place in meetings. She did not say much, but when she did speak her conversation was serious, but agreeable and entertaining, listening to all that was of interest to us.

Dina was self-forgetful and thought of others. She always had something good to say to those who annoyed her. She did not like to hear unkind things being said about others, she knew how to make excuses for their shortcomings.  In conversation she never criticised or said anything disagreeable about other people.  When a conversation arose about someone, she always tried to bring out a good quality. One companion says that she never listened to criticism: if I criticised sometimes, she found an excuse, assuming that the person’s intentions were good; she corrected my opinion but without being harsh. I do not think that I have ever heard that she made anyone suffer, she was too gentle for that.

Dina had a strong personality but was never in a bad mood. I was near her in the dormitory and in the mornings I noticed that she always had the same smile. In one music examination they asked her something that surprised and bewildered her; she blushed and seemed very annoyed, but soon regained her self-possession. She was rather slow and once her mother reproached her for making me wait, she was not cross but smiled humbly.

Her life was reflected in her writings. When asked about this, her companions say that what she says about her childhood and adolescence is true.  We can see that she was interiorly fulfilled.

TESTIMONIES: Her parents

We have followed Dina through the different stages of her life: family, childhood, schooling, youth, piano and harmony studies, New York, celebrations, concerts, religious life, apostolate, illness … An ordinary life, like that of many people but lived extraordinarily in but one key: God

The many gifts that she received from Him were unnoticed by those who lived with her, but are  reflected in the ‘stave’ of her daily life, which she lived with exquisite fidelity to the graces that God offered her and to which she was constantly attentive, not wishing to miss one note of the symphony .

The score of her life would not be complete if we did not hear some testimonies of those around her: let us begin with her parents.

Her mother says: 

        She worked on her character.

Dina did not like to be contradicted or corrected, she had a strong personality. In her early years she had small crises when she did not get her own way. Once when I asked for something she replied, very crossly “No”.  Her father tried to teach her a lesson by stamping his feet along with her … Dina understood and never did it again.  She was determined to control her strong temperament!

She accepted peacefully the events that life brings.

When the family underwent a financial difficulty, it was Dina who consoled her mother. Her mother had enjoyed singing but ceased to do so. Dina noticed this and said to her: “God knows what He is doing. Perhaps you would be proud of your house or your clothes. Perhaps God wants it like this”. On other occasions, to cheer me up she would say: “wait until tomorrow, it will change”.

When her mother had the accident which prevented her from going to New York Dina said simply, in spite of the sacrifice that this implied, “ If I cannot leave  home, I will stay”.

Her parents tell us: 

        She maintained her life of prayer

Dina went to bed late and, in the morning, feeling tired, was slow to get up, but never missed going to Mass at 7 am. She hastened to do her school homework in order to pray before the Blessed Sacrament in the afternoon. Her parents tell us that after communion, they saw that she was completely absorbed in adoration and that when she prayed with them she was very attentive. Her father said: she was very discreet concerning the graces she received.

Daily fidelity

Dina was very energetic and tenacious in what she undertook and, above all, persevering if it was a just cause. She had a good family spirit, was very sensitive and tidy. Her life was tranquil. She spent three or four hours each day practicing her music. She was grateful for everything and felt that too much was being done for her.

As a child she loved nature and admired the wonders of God, above all the flowers, birds and the beauty of clouds, trees, the sky, moonlight: everything served to praise God.

Dina was very generous and shared her belongings with others. She was always truthful and expressed her thoughts with candour. Her parents add that they never had to reproach her for telling a lie.

She was respectful and on hearing criticism would say "We do not know what the intention was".

She became a saint

The fame of Dina’s holiness soon spread. Almost immediately after her death much information about her life was received and was read by many. This was especially true of her Autobiography, translated into various languages and already having reached the 5^th edition in French. Those who read it are amazed at the work of God in a simple creature.

Her remains are in the chapel of Convent in Sillery, Quebec, and the number of visits to her tomb in order to pray and ask for numerous favours increase.

On 20^th March 1993 in the Basilica of St Peter in Rome, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Dina to be ‘Blessed’. In his homily he quoted St Paul who said: “I exhort you not to receive the grace of God in vain”. This is what Dina did throughout her life, giving us also a shining testimony of intimate dialogue with Jesus, whom she always sought with the greatest delicacy and sensitivity. Dina’s gift for music prepared her to welcome the Divine Presence with praise for God that goes far beyond words. Dina found the hidden pearl, the treasure of which the Gospel speaks, and for which she is prepared to sell all.

The perfection of the charism of the Foundress of her Congregation became incarnate in her life, to reveal the active goodness of God. Her apostolic heart is consumed, burning to make Jesus and May known and loved to the ends of the earth. Even this is not enough for her; she wants to continue her mission throughout eternity, begging love for the benefit of all souls for the greater glory of Gd.

By means of her prophetic witness, written at the request of her superior, Dina reaches out to young people, adults, priests, consecrated souls, artists, the sick, in a word to all those who seeing her, open themselves to the love of God , who is the only one capable of transforming lives and of giving true happiness.

Thus is the trail that the saints leave behind them. Their lives on earth end, but their light continues to illuminate the pathway so that we do not let ourselves become imprisoned or bogged down in the mud on the way. The saints knew how to glimpse beyond everything. If we allow them to do so, they can raise us up on their shoulders, so that we too may see further, as a father lifts up his son when he cannot see because he is too short… Dina is prepared to do this. Let yourself be lifted up by her!

Who was Dina?

Dina was a simple person, noted for her great artistic sensitivity, who only desired “to love and let Jesus and Mary have their way”. She was not just a young pianist, composer, apostle and mystic, gifted with a great musical talent, applauded and praised, with a brilliant future which she renounced in order to give herself completely to Jesus, but she was also the religious who let herself be totally captivated by Jesus in silence with an intense spiritual experience. God alone was her all and she never said “no” to him. Her whole existence was consumed by him with constant and faithful correspondence with grace.

 We cannot grasp what it means to go deep into the depths of a God who is Trinity. Neither can I explain it to you. God gave this gift to Dina and with simplicity she tells us about it in her Autobiography with all the beauty and sensitivity of the artist, always attentive to the interior voice of Jesus. But you see Dina’s holiness does not lie in these extraordinary aspects which are comparable with those of many great mystics. She was holy because she never denied anything to God, she made her life a rhapsody interpreted  in the key of love, written on the score of the gospels: ”If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him  and we shall come to him and make our abode with him”.

After her death there was unanimous agreement in declaring that the holiness of her life corresponded to what she had written and that, thanks to her great reserve, she was able to hide from the eyes of others, without anybody being able to imagine what she was experiencing interiorly. The testimonies received speak of a constant fidelity to grace, of having always been very sincere, of being unable to recall any occasion in which Dina had spoken ill of anyone, of always, when something was being said against  another , of knowing how to take their part , of never having seen her to be disheartened in moments of difficulty or, during her long illness, of never complaining, accepting everything without showing either her likes or dislikes, taking on what is hard and continuing to be joyful afterwards, being ingenious in passing unnoticed and bringing out the worth of others, of seeing the amount of work she had to do in spite of being ill and isolated in the infirmary, of having always been very good to her students, of doing everything with great simplicity and not drawing attention to herself in anything, of not ever boasting of her musical talent, always emphasizing that of others.

Perhaps you can say the same as a young lady who had lived with her expressed it; “I had a saint for a friend and did not know it”. Dina can be your friend today and you will not regret it.

The end arrives

Another important moment in Dina’s life approaches. The time comes in religious life when the vows that were made five years previously are renewed forever. In her heart she had already made them forever on the 15^th August 1923, but now it will be done publically. The years have passed and Dina is aware of being totally absorbed by Jesus and she only seeks to let him have his way; grace fills her life and she makes great efforts always to respond faithfully.

Dina enjoyed and enjoys the experience of God and the desire to communicate it to others burns within her. If her apostolic activity was reduced because of her illness, her missionary spirit was not. Her apostolic impulse to work for the salvation of all mankind takes on the dimension of the whole world. She wants to travel through the universe and she discovers that her mission for all eternity, from now until the end of time, is and will be to irradiate the love of Jesus to everyone, through the Virgin Mary. Jesus said “Ask and you will receive…” Certain of this, Dina says: ”In heaven I shall be a little mendicant of love; this is my mission and I begin it immediately”. She understood that people are united with one another as much in the spiritual as in social life, and she feels at one with the whole world, loving and letting Jesus and Mary have their way. Dina desires that all may be saved, that no one be lost; that is why she affirms, “I would like to close hell forever”.

To be one with others is not always easy. It is enjoyable when solidarity entails sharing success and happy moments,  it  is hard when it must be suffered in silence, alone without visible results. This is what Dina lives in her simple room in the infirmary. Her life is ebbing away and her apostolate remains in the joyful silence of anonymity, accepting in faith whatever Jesus offers her in each moment and which she desires to give him because she continues to let him have his way.

Her illness follows its course but the suffering does not in any way reduce her concern for others. At times the suffering is so intense that she has to cry out, “Jesus come quickly and give me strength”. From July 1929 Dina writes no more, she is too weak to do so. She continues, however, to faithfully tell her superior what she is experiencing in her inner life. Those who visit her suspect nothing but admire her serenity, her joy and the kindness she shows to all who approach her. She does not lose the smile for which she once fought at the beginning of her religious life. Her parents visit her and she suffers to see their suffering.

Having lived an ordinary life filled with an extraordinary love, the 4^th of September 1929 arrives. At about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, a few very calm, imperceptible breaths mark for Dina the final encounter with Jesus.

Apostolic life

Let us now continue with Dina. The doctor detects the beginning of an illness which is more serious than the previous one.  It means that although Dina takes up her teaching again, she has to interrupt it on several occasions. Dina makes the sacrifice of having to leave the pupils she has known and loved and for whom she had always been an excellent teacher. Sometimes when things are not as we had anticipated, great indifference is needed to accept them and the consequences. Dina feels her limitations and is aware of being a mere creature before God; she has to renounce many things so as to continue to have Jesus as her only Principle and Foundation.

Dina  gives  continues at various times to give herself passionately to the teaching of music in St. Michel and Sillery.  But her frequent enforced absences, in the infirmary, distance her from teaching but never manage to extinguish her apostolic zeal. Dina realizes that among many attractive possibilities, one must choose some and renounce others.  She had already done it before entering religious life and now she is convinced that this is “to love and let Jesus and Mary have their way”.

On the other hand, Dina never forgets that religious life is consecration for a mission and that she is part of an essentially apostolic Congregation. Mission is passion for Jesus and at the same time passion for humanity. Now she has to leave teaching, but not the apostolate. When she can no longer be with the students, she increased the help she gave to her sisters, by means of musical compositions, literary works, English translations, copying registers, poems, one-act plays for feast-day celebrations, writing letters to past pupils, friends and relatives who ask for help, or for a religious, teacher of the piano, converting this correspondence into an authentic music lesson. This inactivity, imposed by illness was completely apostolic and thus she could be fully contemplative in action.

During one of the periods spent at St Michel, in March 1924, she begins to write her Autobiography, about which I have already told you. In it she describes for us the stages of her mystical journey. It is a fascinating text, a progressive dialogue with Jesus in the midst of dark nights and great consolations, which leads to unsuspected heights of the greatness of God.  I am not going to translate it for you, one must read it directly because in many places it is of such great depth that it makes one feel faint.  If some day you read it don’t forget that is written by someone with a marked artistic sensitivity and, as I said, in the spiritual language of the early twentieth century, which is very different from that which we use today. Moreover it has to express the most profound stages of contemplation of the Trinity in a dialogue that goes far beyond the merely human - a symphony between God and Dina, which often can only be transcribed by silence or the use of terms that are humanly speaking absurd, with which to try to express such deep realities which escape our understanding.

Piano teacher

Apostolic life then began for Dina. She is sent to replace a sick religious as music teacher in St Michel School in Bellechasse. When the religious returned, Dina went back to Sillery where she continued her teaching, but for only eight days. She had to be withdrawn and isolated for 40 days because she had caught scarlet fever while looking after a pupil with the illness at St. Michel. Two things were a source of suffering while she was in the infirmary: not being able to go to communion for several days, because she was in isolation and the knowledge that the religious who were replacing her in the employments which she could not carry out, were overworked in consequence.

During this long period of solitude Jesus is with her and teaches her to live completely abandoned to his action. Jesus substitutes himself for her and she lets him have his way. Dina tells us: ”We are no longer two people, Jesus and myself, we are one, only Jesus. He makes use of my faculties, my feelings, my limitations. He is the one who thinks, loves, acts, prays, looks, speaks, walks, writes, teaches – in one word, it is he who lives in me. I am very small in the centre of his heart, so small that only he can see me. I have abandoned everything to him. My only employment is to contemplate Him and to tell him without ceasing: Jesus  I love you …! It’s the heavenly chorus, my eternity has begun. I am happy!” So this is her ideal: ‘Let Jesus have his way’. This ideal will carry her take her to the height of intimate union with God. This self- abandonment does not mean doing nothing; she is going to fill her life with apostolic love and she knows that love cannot be without suffering, she leaves off the last part of her motto so that only “To love” remains.

The period of isolation was prolonged for a further nine days after which, on 7^th December, Dina was able to return to normal life. Once more she takes up her teaching and other employments with the students. She is happy giving herself to others. During the end-of-year retreat, aware that the Virgin Mary Our lady, is always present when she wants “to let Jesus have his way” Dina also wants to include Mary.  From that moment she finds the motto for which she has been searching for so long and which sums up all her aspirations,   “Love and let Jesus and Mary have their way”. It is an echo of St. Augustine’s “Love and do as you please.”

For Dina, love means to love madly, even to martyrdom. Let Jesus have his way, that is total abandonment, it is to let him work freely. To let Mary have her way is to confide everything to her so that Jesus will operate fully in her life. Thus it is completely apostolic, because to let Jesus work is to make one’s own the task of saving humanity.

We find ourselves before someone who has completely disappeared, so that Jesus can be the only one living in her. God surpasses everything and He alone can fill our smallness with his infinity. It is what John the Baptist announced one day by the Jordan “He must increase and I diminish.” This growth has been realised in such a way in Dina that it has already totally overwhelmed her and taken her over completely. 

This substitution will be the thread of her whole life and will even lead her to desire to exhaust Jesus the infinite One, so as to fully satisfy the Infinite One “ Exhaust the Infinite, satisfy the Infinite” - absurd words in human terms. Dina says that it does not matter because there are no words in heaven, love is the sublime language and that whatever she is incapable of expressing, it is enough to know that God understands it.

Religious of Jesus and Mary

Dina continues on an upward path. She grows in intimacy with Jesus, she identifies with him. She still hears the voice which, since she was small, she had heard interiorly, often not only during prayer, but when working or even during times of recreation. As always, nobody noticed anything outwardly. Dina joins in with her companions, enjoys herself with them and interiorly Our Lord communicates with her.  Her confidence in Jesus dominates her life more and more and sometimes she takes the liberty of telling him mad things, yes mad ones. Is it not true that when two people love other very much, they cannot find the right words to express this love? And more and more Jesus becomes the “life of her life”; one day she hears him say: “I am who works in you and through you. From now on I shall call you Jesus, but, when you do something stupid, this will come from you and I will call you Cecilia”. And do you know what? Dina becomes aware of her fickleness and then she hears a voice which says: “Cecilia has done this”.  Jesus begins to take her place and this ever growing substitution demonstrates what St Paul says “It is not I who lives, but Christ who lives in me”.

Her love of the Eucharist, which had filled  her the day of her First Holy Communion grows.  One day, at the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the noviciate chapel, she seemed to see a crowd of people rushing towards their perdition. Jesus tells her that she can save them by praying for them and offering up small sacrifices. As a true apostle she does so immediately and sees how grace prevails and those who were running to their perdition, abandon that path. Many times she feels a burning desire to save souls and a great responsibility for them, something that she will retain throughout her life. She cannot shut herself up in her inner life; she needs to make space for other people. Frequently Dina repeats: “My God, I ask you for the grace to live and die a martyr of love, a victim of love, an apostle of love”.  In June 1923 her motto becomes “To love and to suffer”. Everything within her is a constant and rapid ascent. Her love and her desire to unite herself to God are so intense that, with St Teresa, she can say “I die because I do not die”…

As the days pass the desire to belong radically to Jesus, to give herself totally to him through the vows of obedience, poverty and chastity grows continually within Dina. Already eighteen months have passed since she entered the noviciate and eventually the long awaited 15^th August arrived.  Her parents are present and one of her cousins celebrates the Mass. The priest who had been her spiritual director for half her life was also there. Dina pronounces, in public, the vows that she had already offered privately to the Lord. Bernadette, her friend from New York, made profession the same day. Dina is now a Religious of Jesus and Mary in the Congregation founded by Claudine Thévenet in Lyon, France.

Before leaving the noviciate she expresses her feelings in a poem, it is the ideal which pursues her “Jesus, I will be a saint”.

The Noviciate

Although we know that Dina now has a new name. We shall continue to call her Dina because it is more familiar to us.

The period of the noviciate begins and Dina’s motto is: Not to deny anything to Jesus. She has a great desire to give herself completely to Him. Her heart burns with the fire of the Ignation “magis”, which means “always more” - she desires to give Jesus always more and more, being faithful to grace in everything. She sums up her desires saying: “Jesus I want to be holy and with your grace I shall be”.

To want to be holy is to be very clear about the primacy of God in life and to work for His greater glory.

In Baptism, all of us, you and me as well, are called to be holy and to be holy is nothing else than to develop as fully as possible the graces received that day. On account of our negligence the strings of love sometimes get out of tune and it is necessary to re-tune them constantly; often we are unable to do this, but if we allow him to do so, God will take charge and do it. With her artistic temperament, Dina, who was always sensitively and unconditionally faithful to grace, wishes to keep the harp of her life very much in tune, so that Jesus would always be able to play it. The motto which she drew up on leaving boarding school, “Death rather than sin” is no longer enough for her; she desires to impregnate everything with love and wants her most beloved names to appear in her motto. She finds what she wants; “Jesus and Mary, the law of my love and my love the law of my life”.

Dina dedicates herself to the tasks that are usual in the noviciate: cleaning, sewing, washing, studying … everything that is going to prepare her for religious life and teaching. She participates in the recreations and amusements. As she is very clever, she writes one-act plays in which she herself takes various roles. 

She continues to give piano lessons and likes her pupils very much, but following the preferences of Claudine Thévenet, the Foundress of her Congregation, her favourites are the least talented ones. She herself personally carried on with her musical studies and also begins literary work. She revises the rules of rhyme and begins to compose poetry. At the beginning she does not find it easy and according to her has the dictionary in her hand, searching for words, longer than it is lying on the table. She does not become discouraged and with the help of the Lord the rhymes come to flow more easily. Could it be that what Jesus had said is being accomplished: “You will do good through your writings”?   Dina never managed to fully understand the meaning of these words. Little did she imagine that it would be through her Autobiography.

The days pass.  Dina does not always feel tangible fervour; there are long periods when Jesus is silent, but she is determined to follow her desire not to deny him anything. When the darkness is greatest, she places herself in Mary’s hands so as not to reduce, in her heart, the  ever –more “magis”  that she has promised Jesus.  Suffering is present in the midst of great consolations. She does not want to let herself be carried away by illusions, she need to discern and although on account of her reserve and timidity it costs her a great deal to communicate what she is living interiorly, she shares it in all simplicity with the religious responsible for the noviciate. Obedience “before all else” is a characteristic which Claudine wanted to stamp on her Congregation; Dina makes it completely hers and tells us that obedience was always her refuge.

If you begin…

Dina enters the noviciate and the first thing that she reads on a mural is: “If you begin, do so perfectly”. This made a great impression on her and she is ready to put it into practice. 

Community life continues to be a source of great suffering or her, not because she did not care for her companions, she would have given her life for anyone of them, but given her sensitivity even small difficulties offered her an opportunity to constantly put others first.

For nothing in the world would she abandon her vocation, but her homesickness continued for several weeks. She writes “Sometimes, when I was taking a stroll, I got the idea of slipping away without hat or coat, or of escaping from the window during the night”. She struggles with this ceaselessly and it is painful when her natural feelings are evident to others. Because at times tears fall, she decides to undertake the challenge of smiling continuously, because she tells herself “a sad saint is a sorry saint”. Jesus makes her understand that true interior joy must be reflected exteriorly. It’s not always easy. If at any time you have been through it, you will know the cost of not showing your feelings when you are annoyed by things around you.

The days pass. She begins to give some piano lessons. She loves it and tells herself that Jesus will be the real teacher. This is not hard, because she knows that Jesus lives in her. These classes are happy times for her and for her students; she is demanding, but so kind that all remember her with great affection.

Jesus continues to communicate with her interiorly. Dina listens in order to please Him in everything. One day, at Christmas, Jesus invites her to play and tells her that whoever loves the most will win. The competition gets more difficult but in the end they tie because Dina tells Jesus that she loves him with the same love that he gives her. Another day, the game becomes more complicated, because this time it is about the Cross and whoever carries it better will win. She sees that Jesus is winning; Dina’s responses are increasingly wavering, until it occurs to her to turn her eyes to the Virgin Mary, begging her help. In no time Dina sees clearly and tells Jesus that she unites her poor crosses to His and that thus they have an equal value.  Does this seem like a childish game to you? Don’t you believe it; when you truly love you say things that others do not understand – but those who love each other need to express such love in a thousand ways.

The 15^th February 1922 arrives. But what happens on this day? I don’t know if you know that in religious life there is an initial period of testing before beginning the noviciate as such. This period ends with a ceremony in which the young woman, in addition to receiving the religious dress, is given a new name. From now on Dina will be known as Mary Saint Cecilia of Rome. For her this was a great joy. It begins with the same name as the Our Lady and, as a good pianist, they could not have added a better one than that of Cecilia, the patron of music and whom she had always greatly liked and invoked for a long time. Moreover Cecilia fulfilled all Dina’s aspirations, virgin, martyr and apostle.

Homesickness

The 11^th August 1921 arrived and Dina was accompanied by her parents to the noviciate of the Religious of Jesus and Mary in Sillery, Quebec. 

She relates that darkness and repugnance reigned within her, but that hardly had she crossed the threshold that an inner force made her say, “I am at home”. This convinced her that she was where God wanted her, without alleviating the conflicting feelings that everyone who is in darkness experiences. Her desire for solitude, her dreams of religious life had disappeared, but on the other hand, Jesus was with her. When someone does something very difficult, but with the conviction that she is doing what she ought to do, is it not true that one feels a mixture of anguish and certainty?  Something that cannot be explained is a source of suffering, but at the same time is a cause of joy.  This is what happened to Dina.

I can tell you that Dina is not the first or the only person to have these feelings, which really just mean not understanding what is happening. There was a woman, the Virgin Mary, who also did not understand anything when the angel announced to her in Nazareth that the greatest of mysteries was about to take place, and yet she said her “Yes”, without seeing clearly. Although Dina’s “Yes” is nothing in comparison with Mary’s, it is quite likely that she remembered it during these moments, because, although I did not tell you from the beginning, Dina loved Mary very much and had recourse to her at difficult times.

With all this you must not think that during these first days that life became easy for Dina. She continued in darkness and both temptation and discouragement afflicted her. Everything seemed almost impossible for her. “Are you going to live here until the end of your days? Are you going to submit yourself to these demands which are so difficult for you?”

Community life was one of the things that cost her most and she was very homesick. No one noticed anything however, nor did she tell anyone, only some very discreet people were going to know. One day she found a chicken coop in the garden and with a heavy heart she said to the hen “You are in your house, make the very most of it, make the most of it!” Such was her state of mind.  Moreover Dina thought that she would not have the possibility of living a life of solitary prayer; at various times during the day everyone came together in the chapel for prayer; Dina came to think that she would no longer be able to speak intimately and alone with Jesus. She was seeking something else. One day she relived the first moment when a voice made her say, “I am at home” and she came to understand that these feelings did not come from God. She rejected them and renewed her great desire to be faithful.

Later on during the retreat in preparation for the official entry into the noviciate, light and peace returned to her. She received two big graces during these days: the intimate communication with Jesus returns and she felt that God had taken her heart and replaced it with those of Jesus and Mary. She does not know how to describe it. She will no longer have to search for them outside herself, she will possess them interiorly. Our Lord reserves ever greater graces for her. A continuous ascent is about to begin for Dina, which she will communicate to us by means of the mottos that she will choose for herself. She sums it up now “Obey blindly, suffer with joy, love until martyrdom”.

God calls her

 Three years have now passed since Dina returned from New York. We have seen something of her life in the city. 

Now she spends her holidays in the country. Nature had a very special attraction for her. She was moved by the twilight, moonlight, plants, flowers, fruits, stream, rivers, butterflies and the twittering of the birds, As someone who loved all that is beautiful, she loved the order in nature, the silence of the firmament, the beauty of the stars… their infinity. It is as someone in love who  lets  herself  be captivated – everything is directed to God and helps her to unite herself to Him. Doubtless her being, filled with music and harmony, enabled her to rejoice intensely and become ecstatic in the face of the marvels of creation. Dina is like a harp which vibrates with music. The contemplative is a person not caught up with themselves, but full of admiration, emotion and gratitude, with a tremendous capacity for awe.  Dina is a person who has been captivated, seduced by God; she does not bother about herself and deep down is always turned towards God.

We have now reached the summer of 1920. Dina is now 23 years old and the desire for religious life grows within her. She does not feel called to the Congregation of Our Lady where she had been educated. She is attracted to the contemplative life, but has doubts because of her studies and is inclined towards teaching. Three possibilities seem to lie before her – the Ursuline  Congregation, the Religious of Jesus and Mary and the Society of the Sacred Heart. But she cannot see clearly. She continued to discern and one day heard the voice of Jesus speaking to her, ”I want you in Jesus and Mary”.  

Dina responded, “Wherever you wish, Lord. You know that I don’t like teaching, but I want to respond to your call, I don’t mind where, all I want is to answer your call, all I want is what will most please you”. The Master replied “You will not teach for long”. Dina did not understand, but her doubts vanish.

The time had come to speak once more to her parents. She wrote: “I had no doubts about their consent, but yes, I foresaw their sorrow and my heart was broken”. At last she spoke to them and was consoled by their consent. None of this is easy; if any one of you has lived through such a critical moment you know what it means to break intimate ties. But the strength of God works in such moments and Dina experienced that. If one day you have to face a similar situation, don’t be afraid, Jesus will take your place and, without knowing it, you will feel very strong.

During the final months while Dina was still living at home, her parents went out of their way to make her happy. They had done so all her life, but now they excelled themselves, without meaning to turn her away from her vocation in the least. In order to give her all the happiness that was in their power, they proposed a trip to the Niagara Falls, offering her every kind of pleasure and amusement. These were very happy days in a wonderful natural setting which again raised Dina’s mind and heart to God.

The day came to say goodbye. Dina tells us that the waiting was agony for her- she would leave her home for ever. She departed with no hope of ever seeing it again. He herself tells us that, without some superior strength, she would not have been able to take this step.