Additions or Reminiscences (1880)
Our share in what the world may perhaps admire, what is it? Simply and honestly, to have checked and opposed the workings of divine grace instead of cooperating faithfully with it. Ah! if we had all and every one of us duly responded to the advances of the divine Master, what glorious results would new rejoice the guardian angels of this New World! But alas! the more forcibly we feel obliged to confess our infidelities, the more evidently do we prove that what little good has been done must be wholly credited to the protection of Heaven.
One thing, perhaps, will appear evident more than any other, viz: that the Blessed Virgin has taken this mission of the Holy Cross in America under her special protection from its very incipiency throughout. To me the evidences of the fact /if I can use the only expression I know to convey my conviction/ are such, so numerous and palpable, that, when I think of them, Notre Dame and what has sprung from it stands beyond doubt the work of our glorious and Immaculate Virgin Mother.