After recovering from her illness, at around 17, St. Margaret’s family regained their wealth. Her mother encouraged her to socialize, hoping that she would find a suitable husband and abandon the religious vocation she had vowed to pursue since childhood.
Her mother, with the remembrance of past sufferings, did not care to remain in a house ruled by an in-law. Her only hope was that St. Margaret would marry, so that she herself could be cared for by her daughter’s new family.
Time and again, her mother tearfully begged her to wed. St Margaret recounted, “My relations, and especially my dear mother, urged me incessantly to marry. She wept as she told me that she saw no hope of release from her misery except in me; that she would find her consolation in being with me, as soon as I should be settled in the world.
On the other hand, God’s voice pursued me so vehemently that I had no peace. My vow was ever before my eyes with the thought that, if I violated it, I should be punished with frightful torments”. She continued, “The devil, taking advantage of my love for my mother, incessantly represented to me the tears she shed; told me that if I became a religious I should cause her to die of grief; and that I should have to answer for it to God, since she was entirely dependent on my care.
This thought was insupportable, for our mutual love was so tender that we could not live apart. At the same time, the desire to be a religious and to live a perfect purity pursued me without intermission. All this made me suffer a true martyrdom.
I had no rest, I was constantly in tears; and having no one to whom I could disclose my grief, I knew not how to act. At last, my love for my mother began to gain the ascendency.” Out of obedience, St.
Margaret began going out to balls with her brothers. She embraced the vibrant life of a young French woman. To please her brothers, she wore the latest fashions, adorned herself with elegant jewelry, and joined the lively carnival crowds hidden behind a festive mask.
She began to examine the terms of her earlier vow: she had made it when only a very little child, wholly unconscious of what she was doing, was she then bound by it? Believing that the vow she had made as a child was no longer binding, she danced the nights away, and started socializing with other young people. She even entertained the possibility of marriage.
St. Margaret passed three or four years, from 1663 to 1667, in these terrible alternations between the world and God. But one night, the music stopped.
Returning home from a grand ball dressed in her finest attire, St. Margaret stepped into her room and froze. Standing before her was Jesus—not in radiant glory, but bruised, bleeding, and brutally scourged.
St. Margaret recounted, “as I was taking off Satan’s accursed livery, for thus I term my vain adornments, my Sovereign Master presented Himself before me all disfigured as He was during His flagellation. He reproached me, saying that it was my vanity which had reduced Him to such a state; that I was losing infinitely precious time of which He would demand of me a rigorous account at the hour of death and that I had betrayed and persecuted Him after He had given me so many proofs of His love This made so strong an impression upon me and wounded my heart so painfully that I wept bitter tears”.
Feeling that there was no torment that she did not deserve and that she could not endure, St. Margaret uncovered her shoulders and disciplined them to blood: “To avenge in some manner on myself the injury I had done Him, I bound this miserable, criminal body with knotted cords, which I drew so tightly that I could hardly breathe or eat. I kept them on so long that they ate into my flesh.
It was only by force and at the cost of cruel suffering that I could get them off again. It was the same with the little chains that I clasped around my arms. I could not remove them without tearing off with them pieces of flesh.
I slept on planks, or strewed my bed with sharp sticks”. St. Margaret carefully hid her macerations so that no one suspected them.
Although in the flower of her age and the freshness of youth, they saw her “suddenly grow pale and thin”. As St. Margaret was entering her twentieth year, she felt the desire of being a religious rekindle within her.
“My desire became so ardent,” she said, “that I resolved to execute it at any cost”. She had constantly before her the beauty of the virtues, particularly of humility, voluntary poverty, and chastity. She devoted herself to the service of the poor: “When I had any money, I gave it to some poor little ones, to induce them to come and learn from me their prayers and catechism; and they flocked to me in such crowds that in winter I knew not where to put them”.
She also read the lives of the saints with delight; but she avoided those of the greatest servants of God, whose heroism she felt unable to imitate. Opening the book, she would say: “Let me look for a saint easy to imitate, that I may do as she did”. But hardly had she begun to read before her tears flowed abundantly, on seeing that the saint had not offended God as she herself had done.
At around the same period, one of St. Margaret’s brother, Chrysostom, married a girl of a good family. As head of the family and St.
Margaret’s guardian, Chrysostom declared it time for St. Margaret to take a partner for life. Another brother of St.
Margaret, who was preparing for Holy Orders, also offered her half his patrimony as a dowry. Her mother implored St. Margaret with tears to come to some decision, and to take her to live with her.
“I could no longer withstand,” St. Margaret said, “the importunities of my relatives, nor the tears of a mother who loved me tenderly, and who represented to me that at twenty a girl ought to take a husband. The devil, too, did his part.
He whispered to me continually: ‘Poor miserable creature, of what are you thinking in wishing to become a religious? You will make yourself a laughing stock to the world, for you will never persevere. What a disgrace to take off the religious habit and leave the convent!
Where will you turn to hide yourself after that?’ I began, then, to share my mother’s sentiments with regard to remaining in the world, though my horror of marriage was so great that I could not think of it without bursting into tears.” While being in this state of hesitancy, God came to her assistance one day after holy Communion.
He said to St. Margaret, “if thou dost thus contemn Me, I shall abandon thee forever; but if thou art faithful to Me, I shall never leave thee. I will render thee victorious over all thine enemies.
I excuse thy ignorance, because thou dost not yet know Me. But if thou art faithful to Me, I shall teach thee to know Me, and shall manifest Myself to thee”. These words brought abundant tears to St.
Margaret, who renewed her vow of chastity: “rather to die than violate it”. On leaving the church, St. Margaret announced her resolution to her family, imploring them to dismiss every aspirant for her hand, however advantageous the offer might be.
She uttered these words in a tone that she meant what she said. “After this my mother shed no more tears in my presence; but she wept before all with whom she spoke on the subject. Those persons failed not to tell me that if I left her I would be the cause of her death; that I should have to answer to God; and that I could become a religious as well after her death as before it.
One brother, in particular, who loved me much, did all in his power to dissuade me from my design, and offered me his patrimony as a dowry. But to all such considerations my heart had become as insensible as a rock”.