Part 1
As the Feast of the Foundress of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary , St Jane de Chantal, approaches on August 12, we turn to our Holy Mother’s devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to understand more deeply the mission of her monastic vocation.
Both she and her co-founder, the Bishop of Geneva, St Francis de Sales, seemed to intuit, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the centrality of the love of the Heart of Christ among the Visitation Sisters.
Sixty years before St. Margaret Mary joined the Order and received the revelations of the Sacred Heart from Jesus, His holy Heart was already the seal of the Order, its source of virtue and its central focus.
Bishop Emile Bougaud captured these sentiments very well in his book on St. Margaret Mary.
“A century before opening his adorable breast and declaring to Margaret Mary that He wished to make the daughters of the Visitation the depositaries of His Heart, the Lord cast a look of love on him who was to be the founder of the Institute, (St. Francis de Sales) formed his heart on the model of His own, and rendered it the meekest and humblest of all hearts. ” I do not know,” says a certain author, ” whether there has ever been a saint that practised more excellently the lesson of the Savior : ‘ Learn of Me that I am meek and humble of heart”
Some years after, God also prepared for foundress the saint who, formed by St. Francis de Sales, became, as she was pleased to call herself, ” the child of the Heart of Jesus,” (St Jane de Chantal) and who was to practise in a high degree, in the natural and supernatural greatness of her strength, the virtues of meekness and humility. “It was revealed to a soul eminently favored by God,” relates Mother de Chaugy, ” that, when Jesus pronounced this high lesson : ‘ Learn of Me that I am meek and humble of heart,’ ‘ He cast a look of love and predilection on our holy Mother de Chantal.”
But it is especially during the years that the two saints worked together to form the Visitation, that it is sweet to study by what mysterious ways they were led to dispose all things in order that this Institute, ” founded on the golden basis of meekness and humility,” might become the sanctuary of the Sacred Heart.
At the moment of Mme. de Chantal’s departure for Annecy to begin the foundation of the Institute, St. Francis de Sales wrote her a line to animate her courage : “ My advice, my daughter, is, that henceforth we live no more in ourselves, but that in heart, intention, and confidence we lodge forever in the pierced side of the Savior”
Again, on the eve of her entrance : ” My daughter, I must tell you that I have never seen so clearly how much you are my daughter as now. But I say it as I see it in the Heart of our Savior. O my daughter, how I desire that your life be hidden with Jesus Christ in God !
Source: The Life of St. Margaret Mary by Bishop Emile Bougard
To be continued