Threads of a Life… St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

  • Photo by Paqui Rodriguez rscj

On May 25th we gratefully celebrate the Feast of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, the foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart:  a woman of God for the world. 

Her life was made of threads woven by the Hand and Love of God: 

“…the threads with which the weaver God began to braid secretly.... that work that we now celebrate and for which we are grateful:

- the thread of fire that brought her to the world and enkindled her spirit;

- the thread of the vineyards that saw her being born and growing, and from which she learned how the branch clings to the vine in order to live;

- the thread of a simple home that gave her the taste for poverty and simplicity;

- the thread of a human and intellectual formation unusual for a girl of her times, that prepared the future educator;

- the threads of separation from her parents, her companions, and from a train of life full of fun but superficial… and of the encounters: Paris…a center of relationships: L. Brouillard, who briefly guided her on her way of trust;

- the thread of her reading: St. Teresa who gave her the attraction for prayer; St. Francis Xavier who communicated the urgency to take the Gospel to others; the life of St. Margaret Mary that showed her that the love of the Heart of Christ could reconcile those two attractions…”
(D. Aleixandre. In the Shadow of the Word:  Praying with Madeleine Sophie Barat, p. 8)

And also along this fragile and vulnerable thread, amidst threads of difficulties and failures, in her life she learned to lean on Him alone: 

“Like you, I rely on God, who can do anything with even the feeblest of tools. The essential thing is to rely only on Him, and to have boundless confidence. He can make up for any deficiencies.”
(St. Madeleine Sophie Barat)
 
Madeleine Sophie,
In the threads of your life we recognize some of the threads of our own life.
Teach us how to put our capacities and fragilities into God’s hands 
and let Him be the one to weave the pattern beautifully on the loom of life. 
Teach us to let God weave with our colors but in God's own way, with love, as God always does. 
Teach us how to leave the loom of our lives in others’ Hands.
 
Paqui Rodriguez rscj
May 2014
Province: 
Spain
Our Spirituality: 
The Sacred Heart Spiritual Tradition
Tags: 
St. Madeleine Sophie Barat