Today May 25

Today is the feast of many (and varied) people, but we are going to focus on St. Madeleine Sophie Barat ( 1779-1865). She was a dynamic woman, and in almost every respect ahead of her time. A simple Burgundian girl, she was instructed in all subjects that at that time were restricted only to men: Latin, Greek, history, physics and mathematics. This curious state of affairs was due to the inspiration of her brother, a priest and her godfather. He could see something in her and wanted to nurture it. He couldn't have foreseen the exact nature of the need his country would have of her: someone to reverse the complete shutdown of Catholic education after the Revolution and Reign of Terror. For men's education there were loyal priests still (for one: the brother in question, Louis Barat, who had been arrested shortly after the execution of the king and held prisoner for two years for refusing to sign the civil constitution of the clergy), but for women there was hardly a qualified nun left to turn things around. But Madeleine (a pretty girl who was planning on marrying) was brought to Paris (when the heat had died down), further taught in Scripture, theology and patristics and introduced to Father Varin who was dedicated to bringing back the Jesuits, who'd been suppressed by Clement XIV 30 years previously. He saw in Madeleine just the girl he needed and she became the foundress of his actual brainchild: the Society of the Sacred Heart. Of those days Madeleine was later to say: "I knew nothing: I foresaw nothing: I accepted all that was given me."

What began as a little day-school in the previously closed Catholic school in Amiens grew into a convent and boarding school there, then also in Grenoble and the derelict Visitation convent, then at Poitiers in an ancient Cistercian monastery, and ultimately to 105 houses in 12 countries on two continents at the time of her death. She wrote to all and visited most (she wasn't actually able to visit her deputy St. Rose Philippine Duchesne who took the Sacred Heart order, with its convents and schools for girls, to the United States), and said wistfully, "I am always on the road." She didn't care for travel. But she worked till nearly the end when she was struck with paralysis and died four days later on this date in 1865, which happened to be Ascension Thursday. One of her biographies is entitled "Heaven on Thursday."