Today January 9

Today is the feast of Venerable Pauline Jaricot (1799 -1862). She was a plucky favorite daughter of a hard-working silk merchant in France. She herself was hard-working, vibrant and possessed of great powers of organization. She was also beautiful, worldly and vain -- at least until her first obstacle in a life FULL of them. At 16 she fell off a chair and suffered a concussion and some brain damage: her speech was slurred, her walk unsteady and her pain unbearable. She also suffered what would later be called an "identity crisis." Mentally and physically she was a wreck. But after a particular confession and reception of Holy Communion, she began to recover. She experienced a total conversion a short time later. At 17 she heard a sermon against vanity that particularly moved her. Never one to do things by halves, she cast off all her Parisian fashions, dressed as a peasant and started giving away all she owned until her father stopped her. She volunteered her time at the local hospice for incurables. She organized poor factory girls into a prayer team for the conversion of sinners and France. Her brother cautioned her to be reasonable, saying, "Pauline, you are taking your soup too hot; let it cool a bit." But she was idealistic and wouldn't listen. Thank God, because Miss Jaricot was a pioneer of Catholic action.

Her two greatest endeavors were the establishment of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (in which she got her factory girls to collect "prayers and pennies" each from 9 others, who is turn collected from 9 more, etc., turning all the proceeds in to the missions) and the Living Rosary (a prayer chain of each person taking just one mystery of the Rosary each day; a chain that soon swept the country and resulted in a 3 million membership!), both huge successes. But not for Pauline personally. This humble, devout and innocent servant of God was viciously and jealously ATTACKED by priests and other clerics who felt such an undertaking (the Society of the Propagation of the Faith -- they let her have the Rosary) did not belong to the laity but to the clergy. It was unjustly ripped from her to the point that the new directors denied she ever had anything to do with it! And when she fell into bankruptcy and poverty, they wouldn't help her at all (even when Rome requested it!), saying, "You never laid claim to the title of foundress of this movement until you found yourself in financial difficulty. Our money is for the missions, not for you." And she didn't disagree. She even prayed for them, as she did for all who denied her. Her last painful years (she suffered greatly from edema) were spent begging for her bread. She went into a huge debt because she trusted her advisers in her most idealistic charitable project of all: a whole town run according to Catholic social justice principles. She bought property, a foundry, a stream, a flour mill and a beautiful chapel, all with the ideal of using fair wages, dignity and equality for men. It stood as a beacon against the rapacious capitalism of the day -- workers oppressed, underpaid and crushed, all in the name of profit. Well, one of the advisers absconded with a lot of the funds and Pauline was held accountable. The town never materialized -- it was all a huge failure -- and Pauline was to spend the rest of her life attempting to collect the funds necessary to pay this debt -- 430,000 francs. These last 10 years she spent as a pauper, as she cut down on expenses, begged, and lived primarily on bread and cheese, saving every possible sou and attempting somehow to pay off the huge debt before she died. Even there, she was a failure -- it wasn't paid off til after her death. And still she was insulted and misunderstood, even by clergy, even by devout churchgoers: she was accused of not caring for anything but money! Her heart was broken time and time again, but she soldiered on, always loyal to the Holy Catholic Church and the Chair of St. Peter. She forgave all who had injured her and told the loosely-structured community of women she founded, called the Daughters of Mary, never to offend against charity, "the greatest of all treasures," and to "never go to bed without asking pardon for the small injuries you have done during the day." She died on this date 146 years ago, her last words being, "Mary, my mother, I am all yours!" Dear Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.