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| Bournemouth Church History |
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All these buildings will be a lasting monument to her love of God to her special devotion to the Body of Christ in the Adorable Sacrament. Even this which you behold and enjoy is only part of her lavish labour and unbounded self-denying liberality. The Mission of the Sacred Heart at Bournemouth, that magnificent church with all it possesses, will also testify to her work and her gifts. Though not her own foundation, still she has been and will remain, a principle helper and support of that flourishing church as it stands at present. In all this working for God, in the labour of love for the blessed Sacrament, she spent her life, she spent it more abundantly, as the Apostle Paul speaks, she wasted herself away.
Aye, my brethren, there is an old saying, that the priest who builds a church, shortens his own life in the long relentless effort. We can scarcely doubt that the same has proved the case where the builder has not been the priest, but the Baroness Pauline Von Hugel. None will ever realize, none will be able to fathom the intense care and anxiety, pain, and distress that she suffered in bringing to completion those things which you so much admire.
The building of this church the buying of the Presbytery (though not all by her own money, for, as you know, she had some most generous helpers, and (in particular devoted to her from childhood), were a strain upon her finances, and consequently upon her mind and heart, beyond anything you can imagine. Not being independent myself, as a Jesuit priest, and not being authorised to undertake the responsibility, she had to bear the whole heat and burden of the day alone, practically herself alone.
While she was buying, completing, and furnishing these various buildings, she felt herself bound to continue her alms to the poor, her assistance to the schools, her assistance to the little iron church, her other charities, and, among the rest her support to the Church of the Sacred Heart at Bournemouth. It was too great a strain. She was in dread of not being able to meet the expenses. More and more she sought to economise upon her own self, till she denied herself much that was even most necessary.
And yet, withal, she never ceased her bodily labours of continually passing backwards and forwards between "Moorfield" and Boscombe and visiting her beloved poor. Oh, if our guardian angels are said to count the footsteps we tread in doing good, what a reckoning there must be in Heaven for the angel of Pauline von Hugel! And so her long illness came upon her, not merely borne with patience, but with a silence which would not be believed to exist had we not witnessed it.
She concealed her pains, or rather her violent sufferings, even from the watchful eyes of her anxious and devoted mother, even from the doctors who attended her. At last she could stand up no longer, and, as you know, she was then for the greater part of a year and a half confined to her room. Yet all the time she was never idle. Always working, praying, or instructing others; making clothes for the poor or lace and linen cloths for the altar; or, again taking up the lien for pious biographies or histories, the pen which she had laid aside for years in order to devote herself to more immediate works of charity.
Ever busy, thinking and planning on her sick bed and devising ways to beautify her Boscombe Church and in order to earn money for this work (as well as for the glory of God and useful occupation of her time) she wrote her little booklets and articles that brought in some remuneration; and in one particular one long article in the American Ave Maria on the life of the Prince-Priest Gallitzin, for which article the editor sent her 60 dollars only about three weeks ago. It was her last earning, and it afforded her the greatest happiness to devote that also to the church. And so on and on; she was preparing adornments for Easter when her last moment came.
And here for a moment I will pause. It might seem from all we have said that would make out that the Baroness Pauline was more than human, that she had only virtues, no possibility of a fault - more than human, not knowing the frailty of our nature. My brethren, I do not for a moment pretend this, it would disencourage us. It would damp our ardour in the pursuit of virtue if we pretended that to be really holy it is necessary to have no fault.
I have no doubt she had her faults, or mistakes I should say, rather than faults, because when she thought anything to be a fault she would amend it determinedly at once, or die in' the attempt. If she had faults they were doubtless due to the uncompromising energy of her nature whereby she embraced an ideal, or course of action, as if it were the only one possible, and so could scarcely see any other side of the case, any contrary claims.
But, my brethren, as she lay on her bed of death, the light of God's grace seemed to shine more and more to her soul, and dwelling upon the past, she longed to repair any fault, however slight, she could remember. If there were any persons who might have complained against her, to them she wrote the most loving messages and sent the most touching presents, and thus she endeavoured to prepare herself to die, at peace with God and in the greatest charity with all the world. Oh, she had plenty of time, and in the long months and months of suffering, months indeed of Purgatory, that purified her soul, and surely expiated, if necessary, any fault she had committed.
At length the long desired, ardently prayed for moment of delivery came, - on a Feast Day she would have chosen, if it had been given her to choose. Last Friday, the Feast of the Seven Dolours of our Lady, at 5 30 in the morning, all the members of her family who could be summoned were kneeling round her bed., she could no longer, according to her wont, speak her ardent prayers and acts of affection to Almighty God. Nor speak the sweet name of Jesus, which, when she uttered before, gave light to, her emaciated countenance and sunken eyes. But though her lips could no longer utter the words of prayer it was evident by her smiles and the pressure of her hand that she was conscious and attentive to the prayers of those at her bedside.
There was no longer any appearance of pain, no heavy breathing no movement scarcely - all was perfect calm and peace. At 6.30 I left to say Mass for her. It seemed as if she waited for that Mass to be said and the next at 8 o'clock. At 8. 30 there was still a feeble flicker of life as she still waited for the last command of the Church to be repeated once again - "Go forth, O Christian soul, out of this world, in the name of God the Father who created thee, in the name of the Son who redeemed thee, in the name of the Holy Ghost who sanctified thee." And then, after a few instants, her soul left her worn-out, emaciated body, to meet its God. There was no convulsion, no sigh; no movement of any kind. All was calmness; so that it was impossible to tell the precise moment that life had ceased.
She died as she had wished to live and die, like one who had taken the vows of chastity undefiled, in almost absolute poverty. All her valuables, aye, even lher smallest possessions, her very clothes, had been given away, She wished to be a Benedictine Nun in death even more than in life. That was one of many reasons why she chose to be buried in the little cemetery near the Benedictine Abbey of Downside. It was to Downside she used to retire for some of her annual retreats.
She loved the little parish Chapel and she loved the Abbey, and to it she has devised all her richest jewels, which are now being set into a magnificent monstrance for the Abbey church. And, one word more: in giving away those beautiful jewels and other treasures, she not only impoverished herself, but deprived her family also; her family that she loved most dearly.
Much as she loved them, her zeal for beauty of God's House was yet more eager. That zeal, I may say, devoured her soul. "The zeal of thy house," says the prophet of our Blessed Lord, "hath eaten me up."
So my brethren, while we remember her with admiration and gratitude for all she has done; while we must not fail in prayer for her soul, as we would not fail in the duty of gratitude, so I say, we must not fail to pray also for her devoted mother, rendered desolate on the Feast of the Desolation of the Mother of God; and so also let us not forget to say a prayer or the other members of the family who have lent themselves generously to carry out her wishes and suffer themselves ungrudgingly to be deprived of those possessions which are so prized upon earth, uniting themselves to Pauline von Hugel in her zeal for the glory of God's House and the good of souls".