For Remembrance (ed. Repplier, 1901)/The Society of the Sacred Heart

Very Reverend Mother Madeleine Sophia Barat,

Foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

Born, Joigny, 1779; Died, Paris, 1865.

"Ave et Vale, Bona Mater! Vive in Deo."

The Society of the Sacred Heart.

HE great revolution, in sweeping over France, carried away every external vestige of monastic educational orders; but their roots had life beneath the soil. In 1779 Madeleine Sophia Barat was born in the quaint old town of Joigny. Her parents, obscure and God-fearing, living by the soil they cultivated, were of the true Burgundian type, shrewd in native wit, strong in family affections and immutable in religious faith.

Sophia Barat was just fifteen when Robespierre's fall gave a date for the reactionary period. Her elder brother, Father Louis Barat, a learned young priest who had narrowly escaped the guillotine, took his sister's education as his special and rigid care. He taught her French literature, Greek and Latin classics, but, pre-eminently, Christian philosophy and Catholic theology. The austere training of this sternly loving tutor made her a scholar; the spiritual formation of his friend, Father Joseph Varin, made her a directress of souls. Their combined influence prepared her to be the head of a great educational body, and the guide of a vast religious community.

On the twenty-first day of November, 1800, with three companions only, Sophia Barat, at the age of twenty-one, pronounced the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, which Father Varin received in the name of the Church. The ceremony took place in the little Paris chapel of the "Fathers of the Faith." Two years later Sophia was appointed superioress over a community which numbered less than a score of members.

The first school was essayed at Amiens, and the success of the attempt suggested foundations at Grenoble, Poitiers, Niort, Moulins, Lyons, etc. In a few years the new academies were dotting France and rapidly springing up in Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Austria and Great Britain.

In 1818 Madame Philippine Duchesne led the first colony to America, establishing the houses which are still prospering in Missouri and Louisiana.

The astonishing growth of her work, and the veneration universally accorded to her own virtues, had on Mother Barat no other effect than to deepen her humility, and widen her charity. Effacing her own personality, she glorified the divine love which she perpetually proclaimed to be the vital principles of her order. Having attained the age of eighty-five, she lived to see her congregation widely extended and solidly established, without ever, in word or thought, attributing to herself the glory of seed, culture or harvest. The title of Foundress she rejected with something like indignation, and among the sisters holding herself to be the last and least, she sought, while serving all, to be forgotten. On the Feast of the Ascension, May 5, 1865, she passed to God, for whom her entire existence had been spent in toil and prayer. Her life, its labors and their crowning, can be summed up in this single line of the Magnificat: "He hath exalted the humble."

In the year 1900 the Society of the Sacred Heart possesses one hundred and forty-two convents, scattered over Europe, North and South America, Australia and Northern Africa. On the 21st of November it celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its foundation. There is, in the fact that the mode of commemoration was identical, in essentials, throughout all these establishments, a remarkable testimony to strength of organization, and a convincing proof that the order has just claims to its distinctive device: "Cor unam et anima una in Corde Jesu."