Today is the feast of Blessed Pauline von Mallinckrodt (1817-1881). If one would have to choose only one or two words to describe Blessed Pauline it would be "heart" and "love." Even the habit of the order she founded (Sisters of Christian Charity) incorporates a heart in the veil around the face. Her rule for the sisters was this: "To give to the blind, and all the ones entrusted to our care, a happy heart."
Even as a young girl, she had heart. She got into trouble one day at school for being late. When the teacher finally got her to talk, she admitted that she had picked up all the broken glass on the way to school. "I don't want poor children who have no shoes to be hurt."
She was the oldest child and as such often had to care for her younger brothers and sister, especially after the death of her mother. She also had to attend and give parties and dances, especially as hostess for her father. She didn't care for all that, being a sensible and non-materialistic girl, but she said: "Of course, I know that God is served and glorified in any way, provided one acts out of pure love for him."
She was an attractive girl and had many suitors, one in particular whom she really felt an attraction to, but she felt called to a different vocation. When she finally broke off with him, a profound sense of peace flooded her soul, so she knew she had made the right choice. She knew she was meant to be a nun, she only had to find an order to join. Trouble was, none of them seemed to meet the immediate needs of the small children of poor, sick, or working mothers, especially the blind children of which there were many. So instead she struck out on her own, forming first a day-care and then a full-blown school for the blind at Paderborn. She was most up-to-date on teaching methods for the blind, and emphasized music and dancing. She also took in retarded children, some profoundly so. "Should an individual be regarded as a total imbecile because she has never been taught, or even been in contact with human kindness?" She was ahead of her time.
She needed help with the schools and was told to ask the Bishop for advice. He thought she should form her own order. Quietly, calmly, she went forward and in 1849 was able to start the Sisters of Christian Charity. Not content with just staffing the schools, she started soup kitchens for beggars and even washed and de-loused them herself. Some of her sisters criticized some of the poor who were coming twice in the same day. She famously said "Never mind. Give it to them if they ask it. And don't forget this -- the giving of alms never made anyone poorer."
She was caught up in turbulent times there in Prussia. When Bismark came to power, she was told she'd have to close down all the schools, day-cares and hospital unless her nuns agreed to put off the habit. She refused. "I could not accept your offer at such a price," she said. So she packed up her nuns and sent them off to North and South America. On one of her visits to the U.S. (to the cathedral in Philadelphia, in fact), she looked with satisfaction at her sisters and said, "See what he [Bismark] suppresses in one country is blossoming and prospering in another."
She died of pneumonia in 1881 and her last act was to donate all the money that had been saved for her memorial Masses to pay the sisters' debts. A priest friend, writing to her successor, said: "Reverend Mother has fought a good fight; it was the combat of love, with love, for love."
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