Your June 2010 Light from the Monastery

June 12th - Blessed Alice – the Leper

There is in the monastery library a wonderful 1,200 page Latin history of the first 600 years of the Cistercians called Cistercium Bis Tertium, it was printed in Prague in the year 1700. Included in this volume is an account of Blessed Aleydis (Alice) of Schaerbeek.

She was a nun of the Cistercian Monastery of la Cambre, near Brussels in present day Belgium, who lived during the first half of the 13th century. At the age of seven she was entrusted to this Community, which had something in the nature of a present-day boarding school, a monastically orientated one. The Bible, the Liturgy, the liturgical year, the Rule of St. Benedict were all part of her education. Alice was an exceptionally gifted young girl, yet had about her a profound quietude and self- effacement.

In due course Alice became a professed nun of the Community. It was said of her that anything she turned her mind to, she did well, and that what she really turned her mind to was giving herself to God. One day in prayer she saw a gold cross let down to her from heaven, with her beloved Lord, arms outstretched to caress her. The Lord gave her the cross of leprosy. An apartment was built for her and she was cut off from the Community and its life, from all that she had loved so dearly. Yet in her leprosy, she found her second vocation, that of sharing profoundly in the passion of Christ, by her physical suffering, her isolation, and all that her condition imposed on her.

Alice with seraph in window over the Church entrance There were times of terrible desolation as her disease progressed. Then she lost the sight of one eye, then of the other. By times she seemed to lose the sight of God himself, but she held on, and her love for the Church of Christ grew and expanded, taking especially to heart the souls in purgatory.

The year before her death during the Easter Vigil, Alice heard the nuns singing the Exultet, the great hymn of praise of the Easter Candle – the Lumen Christi, the symbol of Christ. The heavens seem to open and a bright light enveloped not only Alice’s dwelling but the whole monastery: the light of Christ which shone in Alice’s own heart now radiated to her whole Community.

The Lord had promised Alice a place among the Seraphim, and there she is in the triple window over the entrance to the Monastery Church with the seraph, and wearing the crown of martyrdom and virginity.