The Spirit of Love

[Weedy]

The Spirit of Love

"Excellent guest that he is, the Spirit finds you empty and fills you;
he finds you hungry and thirsty and satisfies you abundantly.
God the Holy Spirit, who comes from God, when he enters into people,
draws them to the love of God and neighbor. Indeed, he is love
itself."
--St. Augustine--Sermon 225, 4

Prayer: Cling to the Lord with love, that your life may grow in the
last days. Hold fast as well to the faithful, great, certain, and
everlasting promises of God, and to the unshakeable and ineffable gift
of his forbearance.
--St. Augustine--Letter 248, 1

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30 August – St Jeanne Jugan /Mary of the Cross LSP.

(1792 – 1879)
Jeanne Jugan – Founder – born on 25 October 1792 at Les
Petites-Croix, Cancale, d’Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany, France and died
on 29 August 1879 at Saint-Pern, d’Ille-et-Vilaine, Bretagne, France
of natural causes. Patronages – the destitute elderly, poor and
abandoned. St Jeanne Jugan was a French woman who became known for the
dedication of her life to the neediest of the elderly poor. Her
service resulted in the establishment of the Little Sisters of the
Poor, who care for the elderly who have no other resources throughout
the world.

Jeanne was born 25 October 1792, in the port city of Cancale in
Brittany, the sixth of the eight children of Joseph and Marie Jugan.
She grew up during the political and religious upheavals of the French
Revolution. Four years after she was born, her father, a fisherman,
was lost at sea. Her mother struggled to provide for the young Jeanne
and her siblings, while also providing them secretly with religious
instruction amid the anti-Catholic persecutions of the day.

Jugan worked as a shepherdess while still very young and learned to
knit and spin wool. She could barely read and write. When she was 16,
she took a job as the kitchen maid of the Viscountess de la Choue.
The viscountess, a devout Catholic, had Jugan accompany her when she
visited the sick and the poor. At age 18 and again six years later,
she declined marriage proposals from the same man. She told her mother
that God had otherplans, and was calling her to “a work which is not
yet founded”. At age 25, the young woman became an Associate of the
Congregation of Jesus and Mary founded by St John Eudes (1501-1680)
(Eudists). Jugan also worked as a nurse in the town hospital of
Saint-Servan. She worked hard at this physically demanding job but
after six years, she left the hospital due to her own health issues.
She then worked for 12 years as the servant of a fellow member of the
Eudist Third Order, until the woman’s death in 1835. In the course of
Jugan’s duties, the two women recognised a similar Catholic
spirituality and began to teach catechism to the children of the town
and to care for the poor and other unfortunates.

In 1837, Jugan and a 72-year-old woman (Françoise Aubert) rented part
of a small cottage and were joined by Virginie Tredaniel, a
17-year-old orphan. These three women then formed a Catholic community
of prayer, devoted to teaching the catechism and assisting the poor.

In the winter of 1839, Jugan encountered Anne Chauvin, an elderly
woman who was blind, partially paralysed and had no one to care for
her. Jugan carried her home to her apartment and took her in from that
day forward, letting the woman have her bed while she slept in the
attic. She soon took in two more old women in need of help and by 1841
she had rented a room to provide housing for a dozen elderly people.
The following year, she acquired an unused convent building that could
house 40 of them. From this act of charity, with the approval of her
colleagues, Jeanne then focused her attention upon the mission of
assisting abandoned elderly women and from this beginning arose a
religious congregation called The Little Sisters of the Poor. Jugan
wrote a simple Rule of Life for this new community of women and they
went door-to-door daily requesting food, clothing and money for the
women in their care. This became Jugan’s life work, and she performed
this mission for the next four decades.

During the 1840s, many other young women joined Jugan in her mission
of service to the elderly poor. By begging in the streets, the
foundress was able to establish four more homes for their
beneficiaries by the end of the decade. In 1847 based on the request
of Leo Dupont (known as the Holy Man of Tours) she established a house
in that city. She was much sought after whenever problems arose and
worked with religious and civil authorities to seek help for the poor.
By 1850, over 100 women had joined the congregation.

Jugan, however, was forced out of her leadership role by the Abbé
Auguste Le Pailleur, the priest who had been appointed Superior
General of the congregation by the local bishop. In an apparent effort
to suppress her true role as foundress, he assigned her to do nothing
but begging on the street until she was sent into retirement and a
life of obscurity for 27 years. Her eyesight was impaired in her final
years.

After communities of Little Sisters had begun to spread throughout
France, the work spread to England in 1851. From 1866-1871 five
communities of Little Sisters were founded across the United States.
By 1879, the community Jeanne founded had 2,400 Little Sisters and had
spread across Europe and to North America. On 1 March that year, Pope
Leo XIII approved the Constitutions for the Little Sisters of the Poor
for an initial period of seven years. At the time of her death on 29
August 1879, many of the Little Sisters did not know that she was the
one to have founded the congregation. Le Pailleur, however, was
investigated and dismissed in 1890 and Jugan came to be acknowledged
as their foundress.

In September 1885, the congregation arrived in South America and made
a first foundation in Valparaíso, Chile, from which it expanded later
on.

Jugan died in 1879 at the age of 86 and was buried in the graveyard of
the General Motherhouse at Saint-Pern. She was Beatified in Rome by
Pope John Paul II on 3 October 1982 and Canonised on 11 October 2009,
by Pope Benedict XVI, who said, “In the Beatitudes, Jeanne Jugan found
the source of the spirit of hospitality and fraternal love, founded on
unlimited trust in Providence, which illuminated her whole life.”

Today, pilgrims can visit the house where she was born, the House of
the Cross at Saint-Servan and the Motherhouse where she lived her last
23 years at La Tour Saint Joseph in Saint-Pern.

https://anastpaul.com/2018/08/30/


Quote/s of the Day – 30 August – The Memorial of St Jeanne Jugan /Mary
of the Cross

“Jesus is waiting
for you in the chapel.
Go and find Him.”

“Little, very little,
be very little
before God.”

“God is with us,
it will be accomplished …
God will help us,
the work is His.”

“In our troubles,
we must always say,
“Blessed be God,
thank You my God,
or glory to God!”
--St Jeanne Jugan/Mary of the Cross

“The Hail Mary
will take us to Heaven.”
--St Jeanne Jugan/Mary of the Cross

“Do not call me Jeanne Jugan.
All that is left of her
is Sister Mary of the Cross,
unworthy though she is
of that lovely name.”
--St Jeanne Jugan/Mary of the Cross (1792-1879)

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Jesus, you rejoiced and praised Your Father for having revealed to
little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. We thank You for
the graces granted to Your humble servant, Jeanne Jugan, to whom we
confide our petitions and needs.