LITTLE NELLIE'S CONVERSION FROM HOT-TEMPERED CHILD TO MYSTIC

Cork, Ireland. In May 1907, a home was found for a 3 year-old toddler by the name of Little Nellie in the Good Shepherd Convent. Little Nellie's mother had passed away, her lungs ravaged by TB, and the nuns were to take her mother's place in caring for Nellie. Immediately after Nellie arrived, no sooner was she greeted by the nuns when they diagnosed her as having a horrible case of whooping cough and she was promptly sent out of the convent to the district hospital for two months intensive care before she was considered well enough to return to the nuns.

When she returned to the nuns, she lived for only 7 months  in the company of the sisters, as opposed to 9 months which people mistakenly say was the length of her time with them, and while this may seem hairsplittingly pedantic, bear with me, because I am building to a point. During the 7 months that Nellie spent with the sisters, she demonstrated an extraordinary love for the Eucharistic Christ, evinced in how ravenous she was to receive the Holy Eucharist and that her face was transfigured by a heavenly light beaming from her face when she received the Sacred Species. When she had reached 4 years of age she relied on her limited life experience to express herself. She was born in an army barracks and knew that prisoners were detained in a cell or "lock-up", and when she saw the tabernacle, she said this was, "Jesus in de lock-up".

But Nellie was demonstrably indifferent to the Blessed Sacrament when she first came to live with the sisters. After her recovery from whooping cough, when she had returned to the sisters, on only her 2nd day, she attended the Mass for the Feast of the sisters' patron Saint - St Mary Magdalene - and while sitting with the other children Nellie refused to face the altar for Holy Mass. She was mesmerized by the organ-piano and especially by the sight of the nun playing the keys of the organ. Nellie's face was blushing with joy as she heard the music stream from such a monstrously big instrument. Her eyes were glued to the nun tickling the ivories. One of the older girls tried in vain to get Nellie to turn around and assist at Mass, but Nellie stamped her foot defiantly and put a stop to the older girl's reprimands with, "Me want to see the moosic nun!" This small vignette shows Nellie was not easily led.

Nellie had a strong, willful character. There was an occasion when Nellie was decidedly naughty, and once just to have her will over the other children, she forced 6 other children to stay with her in the playground, and made them very late for supper, which rather meant she imposed a fast on these hungry children, and upset the sisters who had to spend much longer serving dinner because six stragglers, seven when you count Nellie, came so late.

I am not suggesting that Nellie was ever impious, this would be almost calumny, because from her earliest days as a baby Nellie always called Our Lord, "Holy God", and when she would go with her father to Mass, she would toddle alongside him and talk to her soldier-dad of "Holy God", and her father never knew how she came to call Jesus by this title. But rather I am pointing out that in that 7 month stay, Nellie had a very dramatic conversion to deep piety and mysticism which was catalyzed by her relationship with the Divine Infant of Prague. After it was discovered that she was extremely ill and she was she was transferred to the infirmary her bed was nearest a little altar to the Infant of Prague, and soon she was instructed that this was a statue of Jesus as a Child. She was delighted on hearing this, and freely conversed with Him and turned all her loquaciousness on Him, and she treated Him like a peer, all the while she was possessed of the knowledge of His omnipotence.

And there were a few occasions when the Infant came alive for Little Nellie. Once when Nellie was yammering to the Holy Infant, He appeared to her, He picked a daisy from the vase and gave it to her. Nellie was seen clambering back into bed, daisy in hand, and Mary Long, or "Longie" accused her of stealing it, something Nellie denied to one of the nuns, "Modder, I was only talking to Holy God and Him gave me the flower, Him did, Modder." Nellie always addressed a sister by, "Modder", and it is unlikely she pilfered the little flower because Nellie was vocal about her desire that bunches of the freshest of fresh flowers be kept by the Infant and she never expressed a desire to have flowers for herself. Such was her love for Him that she wouldn't have taken a blossom from those that were to honor His presence had He not given her one.

My thesis is that Little Nellie spent only 7 months with the sisters and in that short time she turned from being a hot-tempered child who admittedly showed signs of piety to being a tender child with many mystical gifts and a child treated to the exquisite vision of the Christ Child dancing - predominantly because her love for the Eucharistic Christ was founded in her love of the Christ Child.