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.