In 1859, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a young Belgian immigrant woman in Wisconsin named Adele Brise. Adele — 28 years old, uneducated, blind in one eye — was helping her parents carve a homestead out of dense forest.
As in many other Marian apparitions, Our Lady’s message to Adele began with an earnest plea to pray and do penance for the conversion of sinners. Specifically, she asked Adele to make a general confession and offer holy Communion for her errant children. “If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them,” she warned.
Then came an unexpected task: “Gather the children of this wild country,” Mary said, “and teach them what they should know for salvation … teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross and how to approach the sacraments; that is what I wish you to do. Go and fear nothing, I will help you.”
A simple but fundamental charge
It is curious that Our Lady did not ask Adele to convince a bishop to spend a lot of money to build a church, forge a medal or pray the Rosary every day to halt a devastating war. The American Civil War would begin only three years later, and Mary offered no hint.
Instead, Adele’s task was fundamental: Pass on the faith to the next generation. A deceptively simple charge echoing some of God’s very first instructions to the children of Israel: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise” (Dt 6:6-7).
Adele spent the rest of her life carrying out the mission given to her by Our Lady. She began by knocking on her neighbors’ doors, offering to teach their children the faith. After a few years, other women began to join her and a school was built where she could do her work in one place. There she stayed, teaching the children until her death in 1896. The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion stands on the site of Mary’s appearance in Wisconsin. Adele’s cause for canonization is in its earliest stages.
Adele’s mission is ours
The day we married, my husband and I promised to accept children into our family and teach them the faith. We’re no longer pioneers clearing forest for a homestead, but we are in a seemingly endless new frontier of distractions and perils. And time will fill, no matter how efficient our lives become. Now it is hours upon endless hours of practices, rehearsals, games, meets, matches, play dates, work, maybe some sleep and the like. My family of seven seems constantly on the move, and it takes an intentional “no” to many good things to allow space for the better part: time for God and for each other.
Adele’s mission is my mission, and the mission of every mother and father, both physical and spiritual. We still live in a “wild country” where there seems to be much to fear and a lot of ground yet to clear. And yet, Our Lady tells me as she tells you, “Go and fear nothing.” She can say this because she is with us and will help us. Our Lady of Champion, pray for us.
