Modern saints: Their Lives and Faces (Book 1)

Ann Ball

• Editorial: TAN Books
• Año: 1991
• ISBN:
  9781505102499
• Categoría: Teología y religión
• Categoría: Denominaciones cristianas

Originally published in 1951 (with minor updates in 2002), the book covers the nature of God, the nature of man, the meaning of life, the nature of religion, the sources of Faith, the necessity of prayer, the duty of belief, the consequences of sin, the Commandments of God, the Holy Trinity, belief in Christ, the Redemption, the supremacy of the Pope, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Sacraments, the Mass, the priesthood, devotion to Mary and the Saints, what happens after death, the devotional life of a Catholic. Very interesting and very popular!

1

SAINT JULIE BILLIART

Saint Julie Billiart, S.N.D. de N.
Marie Rose Julie Billiart
1751 - 1816
France - Belgium
Died Age 64

     As a child, playing "school" was Julie Billiart's favorite game. Usually, Julie had the role of teacher, by the wish of the other children. When she went to work as a field laborer at the age of sixteen to help support her family, she began to teach "for real." She sat on a haystack during the noon recess and told the biblical parables to the workers. Julie carried on this mission of teaching throughout her life, and the congregation she founded continues her work.

     Julie was the fifth of seven children. Her parents at one time had been well-to-do, but at the time of Julie's birth they lived on the proceeds of a small linen draper's shop. She attended a little one room school in Cuvilly to learn to read and write. Julie enjoyed all her studies, but she was particularly attracted to the religion lessons taught by the parish priest. This priest recognized something "different" and special in his young pupil. He allowed her secretly to make her First Communion at the age of nine when the normal age at that time in France was thirteen. In addition to her catechism lessons, the priest taught Julie how to make short mental prayers, to control her fiery temper, and to develop a great love of Jesus in the Eucharist.

     In a mixture of innocence and wisdom beyond her age, Julie said, "I ought to die of shame to think I have not already died of gratitude to my good God." "The good God" is a typically French expression, and it was Julie's favorite. With her, however, this was not just a pious national comment. Each time Julie spoke the words, "the good God," she meant them with all the sincerity of her heart.

     At home, Julie had plenty of practice in controlling her temper. Her younger brother constantly teased and played tricks on her. He was, in short, a pest. Julie tried not to react in anger, and she played with him frequently. Her older sister was blind for many years, and Julie, with her warm and loving heart, spent long hours reading to her and helping to cheer her life.

     Debts and poor investments reduced Julie's family to poverty. In an attempt to help support her family, Julie overworked. A murder attempt on her father shocked her nervous system badly. A period of extremely poor health for Julie began, and was to last for thirty years. For twenty-two of these years, she was a completely paralyzed invalid, unable to move about even with the aid of crutches. All of her sufferings and pain she offered up to her "good God." Visitors were so impressed with her cheerful acceptance of these trials that her reputation for sanctity began to spread over the countryside. Many came to her bedside to hear her talk about the lives of the saints, the catechism, the parables, and "the good God."

     When the French Revolution broke out, Julie offered her home as a hiding place for loyal priests. Rumors of the aid Julie gave to these faithful sons of the Church reached the ears of the revolutionaries, and Julie became hunted prey.

     Once while she was staying at the home of friends, an angry mob arrived. They planned to burn the hated "devotee" on a huge bonfire made of church furnishings. Hastily, Julie was hidden on the bottom of a rude cart and covered with hay. While a servant distracted the mob's attention, she was smuggled to safety. Five times in three years Julie was forced to flee in secret to avoid compromising her friends. Each move troubled her health more and more. At last, more dead than alive, she almost completely lost the power of speech. During this time, sixteen of Julie's Carmelite friends were led to the guillotine.

     In desperately poor health and without the consolation of priestly care, Julie was privileged to receive an astounding vision at this time. She saw her crucified Lord surrounded by a large group of religious women dressed in a habit she had never seen before. An inner voice told her that these would be her daughters and that she would begin an institute devoted to the Christian education of young girls. How impossible this project must have seemed to the poor invalid! Nevertheless, she accepted this revelation with the faith that if God had chosen her for the work, it would be accomplished.

     In 1794, Julie met the Baroness de Bourdon, a rich young woman who had cheated the guillotine only through the death of Robespierre. Together these two women founded the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

     At Amiens, the two women and a few companions began living a religious life in 1803. In 1804, Julie met the missionary priest, Enfantin. Recognizing a favored soul in Julie, he secretly resolved to obtain her cure. He asked her to begin a novena to the Sacred Heart with him for a special intention, not telling her what the intention was. On the fifth day when he visited her, he found her seated alone in the garden. Abruptly he said, "Mother, if you have any faith, take one step in honor of the Sacred Heart."

     Julie arose and put her foot to the ground for the first time in twenty-two years! After a few steps, the priest made her promise not to mention what had happened. On the ninth day of the novena, he removed the obligation of secrecy, and Julie walked to the dining room where the rest of her sisters were.

     The stunned sisters clearly heard her first words to them, "Te Deum Laudamus." Immediately after her thanksgiving, Julie began to help some missionaries by traveling to neighboring towns to give instructions. Some of her friends who knew how recently she had been an invalid begged her to stay off her feet and rest. Laughingly she replied, "Since the good God gave me back my legs, surely He intended that I should use them."

     In 1805, Julie and three companions made their profession and took their final vows. She was elected as Mother General of the young congregation. Less than a year later, there were eighteen sisters. Soon schools and houses were beginning to grow in several dioceses.

     No lasting success is reached except through the cross. For the Sisters of Notre Dame, the cross took the form of misunderstandings with the bishop and some members of the clergy. In 1809, the bishop wrote to Mother Julie that she was free to retire to any diocese she chose, but the houses given to her order would be used to train "true Sisters of Notre Dame." Calmly and with no bitterness, Mother Julie prepared her sisters for this terrible blow. She never failed in her charity and did not entreat her sisters to follow her. Unanimously they chose to go with her to Namur where they had been offered a home.

     From 1808, Mother Julie had been given a gift of healing. Once, upon returning from a trip, she found twenty-three of her sisters in the infirmary with typhoid fever. She addressed them with these words: "My children, if you have any faith, arise!" All but four immediately arose, cured. These four left the order after a long illness. Julie also cured a young girl suffering from bad eyes by praying with her and making the Sign of the Cross on her eyes. Both of these miracles, along with several others, were examined and approved during the canonical inquiry into Mother Julie's life.

     In 1812, when the same priest who had had Mother Julie sent from the diocese of Amiens recalled her and publicly repented of his actions, she treated him with humility and charity, rather than adopting an attitude of triumph.

     In 1815, Mother Julie taxed her ever poor health by nursing the wounded and feeding the starving left from the battle of Waterloo. For the last three months of her life, she again suffered much. She died peacefully on April 8, 1816. Julie was beatified on May 13, 1906, and was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1969.

St. Julie Billiart, who cured 19 out of 23 nuns of typhoid fever with the words, "My children, if you have any faith, arise!" This picture was probably painted from memory by one of her sisters after her death.

2

BLESSED PHILIPPINE DUCHESNE

Blessed Philippine Duchesne, R.S.C.J.
Rose Philippine Duchesne
1769- 1852
France - United States
Died Age 83

The name of Rose Philippine Duchesne is the first inscribed on the Pioneer Roll of Fame in the Jefferson Memorial Building in St. Louis, Missouri. After coming to America at the age of forty-nine, she worked thirty-four years in the mission fields of the Society of the Sacred Heart, bringing education and love to the people of the area.

Philippine was born in Grenoble, France on August 29, 1769. As a child, she often accompanied her mother on visits to the sick poor. To the children of these homes, she gave many of her toys and other small possessions. When beggars came to her own door, she gave them her spending money. When her parents protested that they gave her these things for her pleasure, Philippine rather tartly replied, "This is my pleasure."

At the age of twelve, Philippine was sent to a boarding school run by the Visitation Sisters. Here she developed a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart, and determined to become a sister herself. Although she did not speak of this vocation, her father suspected that she was inclining in this direction. He was a liberal and somewhat anticlerical, and so he removed her from this school. He sent her to dancing school and had her tutored, along with her cousins.

When Philippine was eighteen, her father introduced her to a young man whom he intended her to marry. She informed her father that although the young man was most pleasant, she had decided to become a sister. Somewhat to her surprise, she got away with this statement, although her father refused to discuss the possibility of her entering a novitiate.

One day on a visit with her aunt to the convent of Ste. Marie, Philippine simply stayed, leaving her poor aunt to go and face her father's wrath. A day or so later, she thrashed the matter out with her family through the protective grill and finally won her father's grudging consent to stay. She thought she was settled for life, but the French Revolution broke out and her father forbad her to make her vows and removed her from the convent. She went in obedience and silence, hoping one day to bring her father back to the Church. During this trial, as in all others she was to endure in her long life, she went for consolation to the one Heart that would never fail her.

In the years of the Revolution, Philippine was saddened by the loss of her beloved mother. Her father, who had become a lawyer in the Revolution, was the cause of much heartbreak to her on account of his actions and views.

For eleven years, Philippine worked for her family at home and performed works of mercy for political prisoners, the poor, and the sick. When someone was dying, Philippine would bring a priest to administer the Last Sacraments. At Grenoble she often risked imprisonment for her charitable ministrations to the victims of the Terror awaiting the guillotine. Her former convent had been turned into a prison for political prisoners, and she helped them in any way she could.

Driven by the desire to spread the news of Christ and His Kingdom, Philippine rounded up a group of street urchins and began to teach them catechism in her home.

At last the Revolution was over. Although it was still not entirely safe to resume the religious habit, Philippine bought her old convent from the government and invited her former superior and sisters to join her there. The superior was over eighty years old, and could not regain a firm control. The life was very austere, and one by one the sisters left, leaving only Philippine. Philippine was saddened by this, but she accepted the failure as God's Will. A priest friend suggested that she offer both herself and the monastery to Madame Madeleine Sophie Barat and her newly founded Society of the Sacred Heart. The offer was accepted, and Philippine became a member of the new society.

For twelve years, Sister Philippine lived under the direction of this gentle and saintly foundress. Mother Barat helped her control her impetuous nature and bend it to the Will of God.

In 1818, after many years of pleading with her superior, Sister Philippine and four other sisters left France for the mission fields of America. At this time, she was already forty-nine years old.

In America, these sisters literally carved their foundations out of the wilderness, in spite of intense poverty and freezing weather. At times it was so cold that the milk froze in the bucket from the barn to the house. The sisters faced misunderstanding, language difficulties, and disease. Through it all, Mother Philippine and the sisters held to their goals of bringing Christian education to the pioneer children and spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart.

A letter from the bishop who invited the sisters to America shows the spirit in which the pioneer sisters were to work. "You have come, you say, seeking the Cross. Well, you have taken exactly the right road to find it. A thousand unforeseen difficulties may arise. Your establishment may grow slowly at first. Physical privations may be added, and those more keenly felt, such as lack of spiritual help under particular circumstances. Be ready for all . . . One must plow before one raises a crop. You and I shall spend our lives in this thankless task; our successors will reap the harvest in this world—let us be content to reap it in the next." This letter was to prove prophetic. Many hardships and trials did attend the foundations in America. In spite of all difficulties, however, Mother Philippine and the sisters kept their hope in the Sacred Heart, and their work slowly but surely began to prosper.

Once, in the early days of one of the foundations where the sisters were desperately poor, Mother Philippine's brother offered to pay her return fare to France. She wrote to her sister, "Tell him to use the money to pay the passage of two more nuns coming to America."

The Jesuits of the Missouri mission field claim a special debt to Mother Philippine. Their novitiate was moved to a log cabin at Florissant in 1823. A sturdy band of twelve Jesuits arrived to prepare for a lifelong mission to the Indians. Toward this little group, which included the missionary Father de Smet, apostle of Kansas, Mother Philippine showed the greatest charity.

Father William Robinson, S.J., said of Mother Philippine Duchesne, "She saved the struggling Missouri mission and prevented it from failing through absolute lack of resources." Sh...