Learning from a Saint Who Rested in Grace

Today we continue our regular series called “Learning from the Saints.” Our guide is expert Bert Ghezzi, a dear friend of mine and the author of numerous books including Voices of the SaintsSaints at Heartand Discover Christ: Developing a Personal Relationship with Jesus.

His newest book is The Saints Devotional Bible, which illuminates the Scriptures with the saints’ own reflections. You can learn more about Bert and his work at BertGhezzi.com.

Today, Bert profiles St. Louise de Marillac, a patron of social workers, widows, and the sick.


 

St. Louise de Marillac lived most of her adult life conducting mundane affairs, which probably accounts for the practical bent of her spirituality. She married Antony Le Gras in 1613 and they lived happily together for 12 years. They had a son, Michael, for whom Louise took a lifelong concern. When her husband died in 1625, she decided to remain single and undertake some Christian service.

St. Louise de MarillacAt that time St.Vincent de Paul was recruiting wealthy women to serve among Paris’s poor. However, these aristocrats were not well suited for the job. He needed peasant and lower class women who were like the poor and who could more readily deal with their harsh circumstances.

When Vincent met Louise he chose her as his partner because he recognized her strengths. He judged correctly that Louise was self-effacing, unflappable, and gracious. These traits made her the ideal leader to train women for streetwise service.

Neither Louise nor Vincent intended to found a religious order, just a gathering of committed women who would work and pray hard. “Your convent” said Vincent, ” will be the house of the sick, your cell a rented room, your chapel, the parish church, your cloister the city streets or the hospital wards.” In 1633, Louise brought the first four women into her home for training. But the community soon evolved into the Sisters of Charity, and within a quarter of a century Louise had established 40 convents in Europe.

Louise led her sisters with intelligence and grace, as her extensive correspondence shows. In this refreshing letter, for example, she requires one of her friends to relax her perfectionism:
 

“I begged God to help you to forget yourself and to mortify your desire for self-satisfaction which in you, hides under the beautiful appearance of striving for great perfection. We are greatly deceiving ourselves if we think that we are capable of it, and even more so if we believe that we can attain this perfection by our own efforts and by constantly and closely watching over all the movements and disposition of our souls.
 
“It is a good thing, once a year, to apply ourselves seriously to this kind of examination while being duly distrustful of ourselves and recognizing our weaknesses. But to put ourselves through a continual purgatory to analyze our souls and to give an account of all our thoughts is useless, even dangerous. I am repeating to you what I was told long ago.
 
“I beg you, my dear Sister, to help me by your prayers, as I will help you by mine, so that we may obtain from God the grace to walk simply and confidently along the path of his holy love without too much introspection, lest we resemble those persons, who, instead of growing rich, become bankrupt while striving to find the philosopher’s stone.
 
“Succinct confessions are always the best. What are we looking for in this sacrament? Grace alone, and we can be certain that the divine goodness will not withhold it from us if we approach the sacrament with the necessary dispositions of simplicity, heartfelt sorrow, and submission.”

 
St. Louise de Marillac died in 1660, six months before St. Vincent.

Strict, self-propelled Christianity was popular in seventeenth-century France, and today many still take that human will-power approach. But St. Louise’s spirituality was more divine and, thus, more realistic: Stop fussing. Don’t try too hard. Let God love you. Rest in his grace. Sounds to me like the teaching of Christ, who promised his burden was easy and his yoke, light.

 
 
(Image Credit: Catholic Fire)
 


 
Read more from Bert at his website www.BertGhezzi.com, or check out his many books on Amazon.