St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

 I realize that my posts this month have been kind of heavy on the male saints. That's mostly because many of the women saints that I encountered in Rome were already familiar to me and I have posted about them in the past. So, I scoured my pictures to see if I had "accidentally" encountered someone new. Today's Saint is one of these. I found her in the background of one of my pictures - so let's bring her into the foreground.

Madeleine Barat was born in Joigny, France in 1779. She was born two months early because a house fire at the neighbor's home frightened her mother into early labor. She was considered so fragile that she was baptized the next morning. A local woman on her way to early Mass and Madeleine's older brother, Louis, stood in as godparents for the rushed rite. Louis answered the call to seminary at a very young age. He was ordained a deacon, but because he was still too young to be ordained to the priesthood, he went home to wait until he turned 21. He became a teacher at his old school and decided also to take on Madeleine Sophie's education. He taught her Latin, Greek, history, natural science, Spanish and Italian. This was a level of education rarely available to young women of that time.

In 1793, Louis was arrested for renouncing the oath of allegiance to the new revolutionary French state. He escaped the guillotine only through the intervention of a friend. After his release from prison in 1795, he returned home briefly before going to Paris to seek ordination and exercise his ministry in secret. He brought the sixteen-year-old Madeleine Sophie with him to further her education. During this time, she worked as a seamstress. At the age of 18, she decided to become a Carmelite nun, but this was impossible as the order, along with many other religious orders, had been abolished in 1790. She continued to live a life of prayer and secretly taught catechism to children.

In 1800, Madeleine met Joseph Varin, who wanted to found a religious order of women devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and involved in the education of young women. So, at the age of 20, Madeleine Sophie abandoned the dream of becoming a Carmelite and, with three other women, took her vows as one of the first members of this new religious congregation. Because the French authorities had prohibited devotion to the Sacred Heart, the group was initially known as Dames de la Foi (Ladies of the Faith). 

The new order grew quickly and expanded to North America, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Algiers, England, Ireland, Spain, Holland, Germany, South America, Austria and Poland. Madeleine was elected Superior General in 1806. During her 65-year leadership, the Society of the Sacred Heart grew to include more than 3,500 members educating women in Europe, North Africa, North and South America. She died at the Mother House in Paris on Ascension Day in 1865. Her feast day is May 25.

St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, pray for us.