Our Saint of the Day proves that God’s work gets done by people ready to take risks and to work hard. 😇
October 3, 2024
Dear John,
Having been educated at an all-girls Catholic school, I have a great appreciation for the work of our religious sisters. Over the years, they have worked tirelessly to establish foundations upon which others can build up their faith.
Today's saint, Mother Theodora Guérin, is one of those sisters. During her life she served as a teacher, caretaker for the sick, foundress of a new religious congregation, and so much more. She did this all in the face of many obstacles, all of which she offered up to God, saying “With Jesus, what shall we have to fear?”
Trust in God’s Providence enabled Mother Theodore to leave her homeland, sail halfway around the world, and found a new religious congregation.
Born in Etables, France, Anne-Thérèse Guérin’s life was shattered by her father’s murder when she was 15. For several years she cared for her mother and younger sister. She entered the Sisters of Providence in 1823, taking the name Sister Saint Theodore. An illness during novitiate left her with lifelong fragile health, but that did not keep her from becoming an accomplished teacher.
At the invitation of the bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, Sr. Saint Theodore and five sisters were sent to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, in 1840, to teach and to care for the sick poor. She was to establish a motherhouse and novitiate. Only later did she learn that her French superiors had already decided the sisters in the United States should form a new religious congregation under her leadership.
Mother Theodore and her community persevered despite fires, crop failures, prejudice against Catholic women religious, misunderstandings, and separation from their original religious congregation. She once told her sisters, “Have confidence in the Providence that so far has never failed us. The way is not yet clear. Grope along slowly. Do not press matters; be patient, be trustful.” Another time she asked, “With Jesus, what shall we have to fear?”
Mother Theodore was buried in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, now the Shrine of St. Mother Theodore, in Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana. She was beatified in 1998, and canonized as Saint Theodora Guérin eight years later.
Reflection
God’s work gets done by people ready to take risks and to work hard—always remembering what Saint Paul told the Corinthians, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.” Every holy person has a strong sense of God’s Providence.
His friends ask him, “Are you thinking of marrying someone?” But Francis answers them figuratively, saying, “I shall take a more noble and beautiful spouse than you’ve ever seen.” And Br. Thomas then proceeds to break open the allegory for the reader, saying, “Indeed, the immaculate spouse is the true religion which he embraced, and the hidden treasure is the kingdom of heaven, which he [now] sought with such great desire” (1 Celano III).
As the story of Francis progresses, it becomes evident that the true religion here means gospel poverty, the poverty of the poor Christ, and the concrete image of that true religion is Lady Poverty, whom Francis takes as his bride. Lady Poverty is the Bride of Christ, the only one to ascend the cross with Christ on Calvary. And Francis’s marriage to Lady Poverty assures him the great treasure, which is the kingdom of heaven, but at the cost of the cross, which Francis embraces as eagerly as he embraced his spouse.
In this rendering, Francis becomes the epic hero of the gospel who has the courage to find and hold on to the hidden treasure, Holy Poverty, which in a grand paradox means having nothing, which will bring him everything, and at times feeling abandoned by God, only to discover that God is closest when God feels farthest away. This mystery of gospel poverty is the great desire of Francis’s heart and soul because it is the mystery of Christ, who is being born within Francis as Francis dies to himself to become like Christ.
Francis of Assisi wrote his “Canticle of the Creatures” as a hymn of praise to God for all things great and small—and that includes us. Do you realize how fortunate you are to be a member of God’s menagerie of creatures?
Pray
God of every living thing, Your servant, St. Francis, couldn’t pass a field of wildflowers without praising you, the first and truest artist. Let me not sleepwalk through life without praising you for your works of art: the birds in the sky, the breeze in the trees, a bountiful life—even a happy death. Francis understood that every living thing around him was created and loved into being by you. And that fills me with perfect joy. Amen.
Act
Spending time with Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle” is always time well spent. Get started by clicking here.
Today’s Pause+Pray was written by Christopher Heffron. Learn more here!
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