Jane de Chantal: a life for the poor at the time of the wars of religion
“I have always believed that in the person of these poor I wipe the wounds of Jesus Christ,” said St. Jane de Chantal, the founder of the Order of the Visitation.
Jane-Françoise Frémyot was born the very year of the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572. It is in this context of great change for the Church, undermined by the wars of religion, Jansenism and the decadence of the clergy, that she founds her community with Françis de Sales.
His father, deeply Catholic, transmits his fervor.
At the Bourbilly castle, the “perfect lady” devotes herself to the poorest, especially the many victims of the raging war, which she invites to her table, saves from famine … A habit she will keep after her installation at the castle of Monthelon at the death of her husband, at her irascible father-in-law, where she says she lives “seven and a half years of purgatory” because of a servant installed in the house.
She also does not forget charity during her religious life, before the order of the Visitation is completely cloistered, but also after, while Annecy faces a deadly plague in 1620.
“I have always believed that in the person of these poor I wipe the wounds of Jesus Christ,” St Jane said.
“In opening the Rule, here is the thought that has come to me on the preface of our Constitutions: all as well as the weak will enjoy the fruit of the health of the robust ones, the robust ones will enjoy reciprocally the merit of the patience of the sick.[…] O God! my dear sisters, what good to serve the sick! The good Job, so dear to God, boasted of it: I am, said he, the foot of the lame, the eye of the blind, the support of the poor. We, the poor, can not go to the crossroads and the hospitals to exercise charity in their place; but God will have more pleasant service than, by obedience and charity, we will render to our Sisters, that if it were to the beggars; so are we all poor, and should we receive, as by charitable alms, the good that is done to us, and never serve our Sisters as mere creatures, but as Our Lord in their persons, for he has said , this divine Master: Whatever you do to the least of mine, I will say it as if you did it to my own person; this word should melt us, to lovingly serve our neighbor. “