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Once, during a vision, two saints were sent by Our Lady to Benoite to offer her a choice between two crowns. The first crown was of roses, the symbol of an easy and pleasant life of peace and happiness. The second crown was of thorns. It signified the renouncement of self and a lifetime of difficulties and suffering which would be encountered whenever she attempted to serve God and her neighbors. Benoite had no hesitation in choosing the second path, upon which she had already set foot, and accepted the crown of thorns offered to her by St. Catherine of Sienna.

When Benoite was 46 years old, the two priests with whom she had been working from the first years of the pilgrimage died. Their successors were two Jansenists, who inflicted a 19-year period of great suffering upon Benoite. They refused to believe that Our Lady had trusted her with a mission, and they forbade her to speak to the pilgrims, denied her Holy Communion, criticized her in public, and threatened to have her locked up.

Together with the exterior sufferings, she experienced great spiritual suffering, undergoing the most acute interior anguish. In order to make this suffering more bearable, angels were sent to give her Holy Communion.

Strengthened by the Bread of Heaven in which Our Lord gives Himself to us as food, Benoite remained faithful to her mission during this long and painful period of suffering.

An wonderful example for those traditionalists persecuted by the modernists in the Church.