Notre-Dame Du Cenacle; Our Lady of the Cenacle, Or, of the Retreat (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART FIRST. SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF THE SOCIETY OP NOTRE DAME DU CENACLE, OR, OF THE RETREAT. To what, or to whom, do we owe the Society or the Institute of Notre Dame du Cenacle? How was it formed? What has it become? In other words?What was its origin? How did it grow? What has been its success, and, at the present day, what is its place in the Church? First of all, as to the origin. The first commencements of this Institute, we will now relate, very briefly?the circumstances that surrounded its cradle. The complete history of that cradle, which so vividly recalls the manger of the infant God, would offer the reader an edifying spectacle. One breathes therein at each succeeding incident the perfume of the purest Christianity. But it is often better to leave a little shadow, a sort of twilight, hovering about the birth of great and holy things. It is with institutions called to become great as with men we name great men?a littleshade around their cradle increases rather than diminishes its prestige. Predestined institutions are like certain rivers?their sources are more or less mysterious, and we can trace their course only when they already water the valleys and fertilize the plains. To the question: To what, or to whom, do we owe the little Society now decorated with that name beautiful among names, we will content ourselves with replying: We owe it, as many other religious institutions, to a spontaneous movement of the Catholic life. And, if the reader insists upon discovering and seeing, as far as it is posaible to see them, the sources whence it sprang, we will say to him, that religious life which bears the blessed name of Notre Dame du Cenacle sprang, under another name, from two sources forming one? from the heart of a holy man, and from the heart of a...