In 1833, Esther became a teacher in the parochial school of Vaudreuil. Little by little, she found out that one of the causes of widespread illiteracy was a Church ruling that girls should not be taught by men, nor boys by women. As a result of this ruling, many parish priests, not able to finance two separate schools, had no schools at all.

  In 1848, under an irresistible call of the Spirit, Esther presented to her Bishop, Ignace Bourget, a plan she long cherished: that of founding a religious congregation “for the education of poor country children, both girls and boys in the same schools”. Bishop Bourget authorised this revolutionary move, not least because the State was in favour of such schools and the Church should not be left behind.

  The Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Anne was founded in Vaudreuil on 8 September 1850 and Esther, now named “Mother Marie-Anne”, became its first superior. The community grew rapidly and in the summer of 1853 Bishop Bourget transferred the Motherhouse to Saint Jacques de l’Achigan and appointed a new chaplain, Father Louis Adolphe Maréchal.

  Father Maréchal set about getting absolute control of the Community he was meant to serve. He took it on himself to change the pupils’ boarding fees while the Foundress was absent, and forbade the Sisters from confessing to any priest but him. Mother Marie-Anne, as was her duty, fought to protect the rights of her Community, until on 18 August Bishop Bourget instructed Mother Marie-Anne to resign, called for new elections, and warned Mother Marie-Anne “not to accept the superiorship, even if her sisters wanted to reelect her”. Even though she could be reelected, according to the Rule of the Community, Mother Marie-Anne obeyed her Bishop, whom she considered God’s instrument. And she wrote: “As for me, my Lord, I bless Divine Providence a thousand times for the maternal care she shows me in making me walk the way of tribulations and crosses”.

  Mother Marie-Anne was moved to the convent at Sainte-Geneviève, where she was named director of the school. Father Maréchal and the new leaders of the Congregation continued to persecute her and in October 1858 she was accused of mismanagement and recalled to the Motherhouse, where the Bishop warned the authorities to ensure that “she will not be a nuisance to anyone.”

  Mother Marie-Anne never exercised authority again. For the rest of her life she was kept to domestic chores, mostly in the laundry and ironing room. The General Chapters of the congregation in 1872 and 1878 showed their respect for her by electing her as General Assistant; but the General Council barred her from attending any of its meetings.

  Mother Marie-Anne led a life of total self-denial and thus ensured the growth of the Congregation. In the Motherhouse basement laundry room in Lachine, where she spent her days, many generations of novices received from the Foundress a true example of obedience and humility, imbued with authentic relationships which ensure true fraternal charity. To a novice who asked her one day why she, the Foundress, was kept aside in such lowly work, she simply replied with kindness: “The deeper a tree sinks its roots into the soil, the greater are its chances of growing and producing fruit”.

  As she felt the end approaching, Mother Marie-Anne left to her daughters her spiritual testament in these words which are a résumé of her whole life: “May the Holy Eucharist and perfect abandonment to God’s Will be your heaven on earth”. She then peacefully passed away at the Motherhouse of Lachine, on 2 January 1890, “happy to go to the Good God” she had served all her life.

  Mother Marie-Anne remained ignored by the congregation she had founded for almost another generation, due to long-held prejudices about her character. It was only in 1917, after a chaplain at the Motherhouse had come to know the details of her life and gave a series of talks about her to the community, that enthusiasm arose among the Sisters for honouring her. The Sisters began to collect the information necessary for having Mother Marie-Anne canonized. In 1950 the Archbishop of Montréal gave permission to introduce the cause of Mother Marie-Anne in Rome. Her first complete biography was published in 1956, entitled Martyre du silence. The Sacred Congregation of Rites approved the writings of Mother Marie-Anne on 15 December 1964. Pope John Paul II granted her the title of Venerable in 1991 and beatified her on 29 April 2001.

  The attitude of Mother Marie-Anne, who was a victim of so many injustices, allows us to bring out the evangelical sense she gave to events in her life. Just as Jesus Christ, who passionately worked for the Glory of His Father, so too Mother Marie-Anne sought only God’s Glory in all she did. “The greater Glory of God” was the aim she herself gave her Community. “To make God known to the young who have not the happiness of knowing Him” was for her a privileged way of working for the Glory of God. Deprived of her most legitimate rights, and robbed of all her personal letters with her bishop, she offered no resistance and she expected, from the infinite goodness of God, the solution to the matter. She was convinced that “He will know well, in his Wisdom, how to discern the false from the true and to reward each one according to his deeds”.

  Prevented from being called “Mother” by those in authority, Mother Marie-Anne did not jealously hold on to her title of Foundress; rather she chose annihilation, just like Jesus, “her crucified Love”, so that her Community might live. However, she did not renounce her mission of spiritual mother of her Community. She offered herself to God in order “to expiate all the sins which were committed in the Community”; and she daily prayed Saint Anne “to bestow on her spiritual daughters the virtues so necessary for Christian educators”.

  Like any prophet invested with a mission of salvation, Mother Marie-Anne lived persecution by forgiving without restriction, convinced that “there is more happiness in forgiving than in revenge”. This evangelical forgiveness, guarantee of “the peace of soul which she held most precious”, was ultimately proven on her death bed when she asked her superior to call for Father Maréchal “for the edification of the Sisters”.

  Whenever we take up a Bible we touch Irenaeus’s work, for he played a decisive role in fixing the canon of the New Testament. It is easy for people nowadays to think of Scripture – and the New Testament in particular – as the basis of the Church, but harder to remember that it was the Church itself that had to agree, early on, about what was scriptural and what was not. Before Irenaeus, there was vague general agreement on what scripture was, but a system based on this kind of common consent was too weak. As dissensions and heresies arose, reference to scripture was the obvious way of trying to settle what the truth really was, but in the absence of an agreed canon of scripture it was all too easy to attack one’s opponent’s arguments by saying that his texts were corrupt or unscriptural; and easy, too, to do a little fine-tuning of texts on one’s own behalf. Irenaeus not only established a canon which is almost identical to our present one, but also gave reasoned arguments for each inclusion and exclusion.

  Irenaeus also wrote a major work, Against the Heresies, which in the course of denying what the Christian faith is not, effectively asserts what it is. The majority of this work was lost for many centuries and only rediscovered in a monastery on Mount Athos in 1842. Many passages from it are used in the Office of Readings.

  In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.