Sister Mary of St. Peter: The Soul and the Life
This show now turns from the historical moment to the person through whom the response begins to take shape, Sister Mary of St. Peter.
She was born on October 4, 1816, in Rennes, France, into a Catholic family marked by fidelity. Her father was a locksmith who lived a life of steady labor, observed the fasts of the Church, and approached the sacraments with reverence.¹ The life that unfolds does not emerge from instability, but from a home in which the faith was lived seriously and consistently.
Her early years were marked by both weakness and correction. As an infant, she suffered a severe accident that left lasting scars.² At the age of four, she nearly died from illness.³ She later described herself as quick to anger, stubborn, and prone to jealousy.⁴ These faults were not ignored. They were corrected firmly, even in small matters, including her behavior in church.⁴
From a young age, she was introduced to the sacramental life. Around six and a half, she made her first confession and began to accuse herself seriously of her faults.⁴ She also developed an early devotion to the Blessed Virgin, turning to her with confidence for help.⁴
A decisive turning point came at her First Holy Communion. After careful preparation and a general confession, she recognized that she had truly offended God and gave herself entirely to Him. At that same time, she received Confirmation and was invested with the scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.⁵ This moment marks a real interior conversion.
That conversion did not bring immediate peace. It led instead to a period of scruples and interior distress. She feared constant sin and was troubled by her past.⁶ This was resolved not by her own effort, but through obedience. Her confessor instructed her to disregard imagined sins, and by following that direction, she gradually emerged from that state.⁶
At the age of twelve, she lost her mother.⁶ In that loss, she turned more deeply to the Blessed Virgin and entrusted herself to her maternal care. This strengthened a dimension of her life that would remain constant.
As she matured, her interior life became more stable. Even while working in ordinary duties, she maintained an awareness of the presence of God and practiced spiritual communion throughout the day.⁷
Her path was not without interruption. A change in confessors led to a period of restriction from Communion and interior stagnation.⁸ This lasted more than two years. It ended through retreat, renewed Marian devotion, and a return to sound spiritual direction.⁹
Her desire for religious life became clear. While praying before a statue of the Blessed Virgin, she expressed her longing to become a nun. Shortly afterward, a priest, without prior conversation, spoke directly to that desire and confirmed her vocation.¹⁰
Even then, entrance was delayed. She underwent several years of formation marked by discipline, humility, obedience, and self-knowledge. She was required to overcome her passions and deepen her interior life before being admitted.¹¹ This formation was not only interior. She practiced concrete charity, assisting a poor family, begging on their behalf, and intervening in their needs.¹¹ Her life remained grounded in reality.
It was during this period that the first indication of something more appeared. After Holy Communion, she saw a vision of souls linked together by a golden chain, each carrying a cross. She desired to be among them and was told that, upon entering religion, she too would receive a cross to carry.¹² This points forward, but the mission is not yet given.
She entered the Carmel of Tours in 1839.¹³ At the moment of her entrance, she experienced a call to complete self-sacrifice for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.¹⁴ She later understood this as the foundation of the work that would follow.
What becomes clear is that nothing is given prematurely. The soul is formed first. It is corrected, tested, and purified. It learns obedience and humility. Only after that is something entrusted to it.
This is the life that stands behind the revelations. It is not removed from the ordinary human condition. It has passed through it and been shaped by grace.
Sara Remarks
You think about how connected we are to our own life, right. You cannot really separate yourself from the reality of your own life, no matter how hard you try. And we do have a lot of people right now who are trying. They are pretending that whatever is going on in their psychology is entirely separated from the reality of their physical life. But that requires some level of illness. There is something disordered there when you have that kind of disconnection.
And I think that when you examine a life, periods of intense faith, periods of weakness or scrupulosity, illnesses, scars that are carried over a lifetime, all of these things that a person has to endure, you cannot separate the person from that reality. There is always a real, lived experience. Things are not abstract. Those things set the reality.
And someone who has lived a life like that is given a particular ability, first, to suffer, and also to understand the reality of how people act and how those actions affect the world. That becomes very real.
And I think that is what introduces us to the reality of Christ Himself in a more modern frame. She is going to lead us in prayer, and lead us into the understanding that the Holy Face of the Lord is certainly offended and wounded by the things that are done against Him.
That countenance is not static. I always think of that image, and I do not know if you have seen it, but living in Northern Virginia and being able to go to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, that great image of Christ in the basilica, Christ as Judge, where He has that expression, almost an eyebrow raised, looking at you.
And in the Holy Face, we have to recognize that it is not a static countenance. A face moves through different expressions as He looks at us and as we look at Him. There is a kind of reflection there.
He shines upon us, right, and helps us, and shines upon us and makes us glad. There is something to be said about that, even if I am not recalling the exact Scripture.
And Sister Mary, I am thinking of Sister Mary of St. Peter, she lived a real life, and that gives weight to what she is going to instruct us in.
Closing Remarks
The pattern we have seen continues here. The response does not begin with a message. It begins with the formation of a soul.
The question is not distant. It is immediate.
The response begins in the same way. It begins with attention, with obedience, and with something concrete that is offered.
You can begin in a simple way. Take a moment and offer this prayer slowly and deliberately:
I salute you, I adore you, and I love you, O adorable Face of my beloved Jesus, as the noble stamp of the Divinity. Completely surrendering my soul to you, I most humbly beg you to stamp this seal upon us all, so that the image of God may once more be reproduced by its imprint in our souls. Amen.¹⁵
Notes
- Dorothy Scallan, ed.,The Golden Arrow: The Autobiography and Revelations of Sister Mary of St. Peter (1816–1848) on Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, trans. Fr. Emeric B. Scallan, S.T.B. (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2012), 26–27.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 1.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 2.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 2–3.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 5.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 6–7.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 9.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 10–11.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 12.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 13.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 14–16.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 30.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 46.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 49.
- Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 228.