ST MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS, VIRGIN AND FOUNDRESS - 12 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 12th of January

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SAINT MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS, VIRGIN AND FOUNDRESS

Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys, a French religious sister and foundress of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal in today's Canada, was born on April 17, 1620 in Troyes, France, as the sixth of twelve children.

Attached to the monastery in Troyes was the confraternity of the Congregation Notre-Dame, which had been founded in 1597 by Alix Le Clerk, dedicated to the education of the poor. The canonesses of the monastery helped the poor, but remained cloistered. They were not allowed to teach outside the cloister. To reach poor young girls who could not afford to board within the cloister as students, they relied upon a sodality, whose members they would educate in both religion and pedagogy. Marguerite decided at about age 15 to join the sodality affiliated with the congregation.

In 1652 Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, the Governor of the French settlement at Montreal in today's Canada, visited his sister, an Augustinian canoness in Troyes. She directed the sodality to which Marguerite belonged. The governor invited Marguerite to come to Canada and start a school in Ville-Marie (eventually the city of Montreal). Marguerite accepted and set sail on the Saint-Nicholas from France, along with approximately 100 other colonists, mostly men. They had been recruited and signed to working contracts. While transportation to Ville-Marie was arranged. She declined the offer and spent her stay in Quebec living alongside poor settlers. The colony was so small that Marguerite would have soon come to know practically everyone. During these early years, she initiated institution building. In 1657 she organised the formation of a work party to build Ville-Marie's first permanent church - the Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours Chapel (French: Bonsecours), known in English as the Chapel of Our Lady of Good Counsel. In April 1658 she was provided with a vacant stone stable by de Maisonneuve, founder of Ville Marie, to serve as a schoolhouse for her students. This was the beginning of public schooling in Montreal, which Marguerite established five years after arrival. 

Soon after receiving the stable, Bourgeoys departed for France to recruit more women to serve as teachers for the colony. She combined this goal with housing and caring for the King's Daughters or filles du roi, as they are known in Quebec, after they arrived from France. These were young women who were impoverished or orphaned or looking to start a new life whose passage to Nouvelle France was paid by the Crown. François de Laval, the Apostolic Vicar of New France and its highest religious authority, ultimately issued an ordinance that gave permission to the Congregation Notre-Dame to teach on the entire island of Montreal, as well as anywhere else in the colony that considered their services as necessary.

Marguerite established a boarding school at Ville-Marie, so that girls of more affluent area families would not have to travel to Quebec for their education. She also established a school devoted to needle-work and other practical, artisan occupations for women in Pointe-Saint-Charles. Other members of the Congregation founded smaller schools in places such as Lachine, Pointe-aux-Trembles, Batiscan, and Champlain. In 1678, Marguerite reached out to Catholic Native communities, setting up a small school in Kahnawake, the mission village south of Montreal. Its population was primarily converted Mohawk and other Iroquois peoples.

During the 1680s, the congregation of sisters grew significantly and finally gained a strong foothold in the city of Québec. The new bishop in the colony, Jean-Baptiste De La Croix de Saint-Vallier, was impressed with the vocational school that Marguerite had established in Ville-Marie and worked with her to found a similar institution in Québec. Numerous sisters were brought to Île d'Orléans to help the growing community in that area. In 1692, the congregation opened a school in Québec that catered to girls from poor families. 

In 1693 Marguerite retired, but worked to help her sisters retain their characteristic spirit. She and her colleagues kept their secular character despite efforts by Bishop Saint-Vallier to impose a cloistered life by a merger with the Ursulines. On July 1, 1698, the congregation was "canonically constituted a community". Marguerite died on January 12, 1700. She was beatified in 1950 and canonised in 1982.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Bourgeoys

PRAYER:

Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that the venerable feast of Saint Marguerite may increase our devotion and promote our salvation. 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. Amen.