St. Jane Antide Thouret
Feast day: Aug. 24
“See Jesus Christ in the person of the poor. Always serve them as if you were serving Jesus Christ Himself.”
These are the words of St. Jane Antide (Jeanne-Antide) Thouret, a French religious sister who devoted herself to helping and educating the poor and the sick in the tumultuous times during and after the French Revolution. When her order, the Daughters of Charity, were dispersed by the revolution, she fled to several European countries before returning to France and founding her own religious order, the Institute of the Daughters of St. Vincent de Paul, known also as the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne-Antide Thouret.
Born in 1765 to a poor but devout family, St. Jane lost her mother at 16 and took on many family responsibilities despite the disapproval of an aunt. At age 22, without the support of her family, who wanted her to marry, St. Jane joined St. Vincent de Paul’s Daughters of Charity. She had a formative spiritual “encounter” with St. Vincent de Paul as a young postulant; for the rest of her life, she considered St. Vincent de Paul, who had been canonized in 1737, to be her spiritual father and model in the virtues.
It was a difficult time for the Church in France. Only a few years after St. Jane entered religious life, the new government formed by the French Revolution abolished religious orders, and the Daughters of Charity were dispersed. The sisters were encouraged to embrace secular life — a choice which St. Jane refused and for which she was badly beaten by French authorities. She chose instead to follow the final counsel of the Daughters of Charity’s mother general before the dispersal: “Don’t abandon the service of the poor, don’t let yourselves be pushed down and don’t lose courage; no matter what happens, let nothing divert you from loyalty to Christ and the Church.”
Back in her hometown, St. Jane cared for the sick, opened a small school for girls, and provided refuge for priests until she was forced to flee to Switzerland. She followed the community La Retraite Chrétienne, which had opted to go into exile rather than be dispersed. While dealing with illness, grief over her father’s death, and the confusion and persecution created by the revolution, St. Jane never wavered from her vocation of helping the sick and the poor.
She went on to Germany before returning to Switzerland near the sanctuary of the Madonna of the Hermits. Here she took the advice of a hermit that God’s will for her was to return to France and help the abandoned, ignorant young people as a daughter of St. Vincent de Paul. Vicars general of her home diocese were also in exile in Switzerland, and they advised St. Jane in 1797 to take some young women with her and form them according to the formation she herself had received.
On April 11, 1799, St. Jane founded a new congregation in Besançon, France, known informally as the Thouret sisters and formally as the Institute of the Daughters of St. Vincent de Paul. She gave her sisters the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul, the main provisions of which she had written down from memory, and they began their new work by opening a school for poor girls, a dispensary and a soup kitchen.
In 1810, St. Jane moved to Naples, where she was responsible for the Hospital of the Incurable and where she and her sisters visited the poor and sick in their homes. In 1819, St. Jane’s new order was recognized by Pope Pius VII, and she opened several schools and convents in France, Italy and Switzerland. She died in Naples on Aug. 24, 1826, of natural causes and was canonized in 1934 by Pope Pius IX. Today her sisters are spread throughout the world in 27 countries.
St. Jane found her life’s mission to serve the poor, children and the marginalized in reading the Gospels. She believed Christ when he said,”whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” She saw her mission as sharing in Christ’s mission on earth. In this, she was following in the footsteps of her beloved spiritual father, St. Vincent de Paul, who wrote, “To teach the poor to know, love, serve the Lord, is to do, in some way, what the Saviour of the World came on earth to do, to work for the establishment of the Kingdom of God, to cooperate in the saving of souls.”
Reflection
My Lord and my God, help me to be open to your call which may change with time and world events. Help me to live the words of your Gospel in service to the poorest of the poor.
Prayer
Lord God, who gave the holy Virgin Jane Antide Thouret gift upon gift from heaven, grant, we pray, that, imitating her virtues on earth, we may delight with her in the joys of eternity. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
