A Woman Ahead of Her Time

For many years, our religious community was best known in the United States as half of a college sports parody comparing the worst teams to the Little Sisters of the Poor. 

Since 2013, we have been in the limelight for a completely different reason as we found ourselves involved in a lawsuit against the federal government over the HHS Contraceptive Mandate.
After 12 years and three victories at the Supreme Court, we were in the news once again this summer as a U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania vacated our hard-won religious exemption in this case.

We are grateful for the prayers and support of many people of good will who appreciate our commitment to our Catholic faith.

At the same time, however, we would prefer to be known for who we are – the spiritual daughters of Saint Jeanne Jugan, and for what we actually do. Our mission is to accompany and care for needy elderly persons of every race and religion. 

In this month when we celebrate the feast day of our foundress, Saint Jeanne Jugan, I would like to highlight her life and spirit, which were heroic and which are, I believe, more relevant than ever.

On a recent Sunday Pope Leo XIV preached about Jesus’ words in St. Luke’s Gospel, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing” (Luke 12:49).

Jesus was speaking here, the pope said, of “the fire of love – a love that stoops to serve, that responds to indifference with care and to arrogance with gentleness; the fire of goodness, which doesn’t cost like weapons do, but freely renews the world.”

There can be no greater peace, our Holy Father said, than having this fire of love in our hearts.

Saint Jeanne Jugan was “all heart” – she welcomed this flame of divine love into her own heart from an early age. 

Precocious and fervent in the practice of her faith, in her youth some of Jeanne’s peers found her a bit too austere but this didn’t stop her from following Jesus, poor and humble of heart, in a radical way.

By the time she left home in her early twenties, Jeanne had already turned down a marriage proposal, citing a vague inner certainty that God wanted her for himself, for “a work not yet founded.” 

‘Never forget that the Poor are Our Lord.’ Saint Jeanne Jugan

Jeanne’s season of discernment lasted for many years, during which time her friendship with Jesus Christ grew stronger and her selfless service to the poor and abandoned more committed. God was preparing her for greatness, although it would be a greatness couched in humility and poverty.

When the moment of God’s choosing arrived, Jeanne Jugan recognized the face of Jesus Christ in the person of a poor, blind old woman in need of assistance. Her name was Anne, and she  would be the first in a long line of elderly persons who would be welcomed into Jeanne’s home; there they would be warmed by the fire of love bursting forth from her heart. 

Jeanne Jugan threw in her lot with the poor, holding nothing back for herself and identifying herself completely with them.

She epitomized the ideal described by Pope Leo when he spoke of the fire Jesus brought to earth.

The pope thanked those who carry the fire of charity to others and encouraged them not to distinguish between those who help and those who are helped, between those who seem to give and those who seem to receive.

“We are the church of the Lord,” the pope said, “a church of the poor, all precious, all subjects … Each is a gift to the others.”

It is when the fire that Jesus came to bring burns the prejudices and fears that marginalize those who bear the poverty of Christ, the pope explained, that we truly become the Body of Christ. Pope Leo beseeches us to see Our Lord in the poor, to welcome them into our lives, our homes and our churches.

Saint Jeanne Jugan often said, “Never forget that the Poor are Our Lord.”

She would have fully agreed with these words of our new pope. She was a woman ahead of her time, a woman on fire with the love Christ came to bring to earth. 

Like Jeanne Jugan, may you be all heart!

May you allow yourself to be guided by love – the fire of love that stoops to serve, that responds to indifference with care and to arrogance with gentleness; the fire of goodness, which will renew the world!
 
Sister Constance Veit is the communications director for the Little Sisters of the Poor in the United States and an occupational therapist.