Part One Introduction Early Years Religious vocation

Part Two 1817-23 What kind of person was she? Founders 1823-42 Recall 1836 Cross purposes 1842-53 The End 1853-58 Farewell

Introduction

Nowhere and nothing could seem less connected than France in the times of the famous Revolution and Jesus in Palestine eighteen hundred years before. Yet, God’s choices are surprising. For example, just look at Jesus in spare outline. God chose for him such a simple life-setting. He was to spend most of his life in a village among ordinary Jewish people, known as the child of a local carpenter and his wife. When he began teaching as an itinerant preacher and collecting followers, he emphasised human openness, forgiveness, generosity, love to all and particularly to the poor or outcast, the high ideals of the beatitudes. He had no time for pushing the Jewish Law to a burdensome extreme. It was a dicey time in Palestine: political tension, risings and bloody suppressions. Jesus carefully avoided aligning himself with any religious or political movement. He was executed on a phoney charge of treason.

It is really extraordinary then, how close this is in its main lines to the origins and spirit of the Marist founders and many of their companions. Take, for example, Jeanne-Marie Chavoin, who with Jean-Claude Colin established the Marist Sisters.

Early years

Jeanne-Marie was born in 1786 in a rather out of the way village called Coutouvre to the north of Lyons in the Beaujolais (famous to us for its wine). Her dad was a tailor but he also worked a small parcel of land. The whole setting was quite traditional, but a restless spirit was abroad. In 1789 the King had to summon a special parliament, the situation exploded and in no time massive changes were underway in daily life, state and church.

Village life had circulated around the church and its feasts. Now the church was closed, the calendar changed, the priests on the run, celebrating sacraments secretly, the village school closed. All this made a deep impression on children. Such education as Jeanne-Marie got was at home.

When Jeanne-Marie was a teenager and in her twenties, Napoleon had come to power. Public worship and the Christian calendar were restored, but the freedom of the church was strictly regulated by the government. Pastoral renewal was urgent. Lyons diocese became the centre of a vigorous spiritual renewal. The parish priest at Coutouvre eagerly set about restoring parish life.

Jeanne-Marie joined enthusiastically in this revival of faith. She went for retreats in one of the few convents that were reopened, joined a pious association, found a spiritual director, developed a good friendship with another girl, Marie Jotillon, looked after her now widowed mother and busied herself in all kinds of help to the poor or needy. Finally Jeanne-Marie actually made a decision not to get married: she would devote herself to God and his people.

Religious vocation

Had she a religious vocation? She does not tell us what she was thinking. We can only follow the course of events. The Abbess of the convent where she went for retreats first invited her to join the community there. Though attached to the Abbess she turned this invitation down. Next, the formidable Archbishop of Lyons, Cardinal Fesch, Napoleon’s uncle, wanted her to found a convent. She dared to refuse. Then came another invitation, and another refusal, and again the Cardinal returned to the charge with just the thing for her, a foundation in Lyons. Once again she turned the invitation down.

Meantime, Jean-Claude Colin, the future founder of the Marist Fathers, was a young priest, a curate in his brother Pierre’s parish at the large village of Cerdon. Pierre had been a curate at Coutouvre, knew and esteemed the excellent Mademoiselle Chavoin, and arranged a meeting between her and Jean-Claude. It was 1817: Jeanne-Marie was now 31. Father Colin explained the Marist project, its purpose and spirit, and suggested she join.

We have no account of what took place at that meeting, at what made Jeanne-Marie, who had refused so many pressing and attractive invitations, accept this one.

In 1823, she, her friend Marie Jotillon, and another woman, also called Jeanne-Marie, established the first community of Marist sisters. Jeanne-Marie would eventually be known as Mother St.Joseph, become Superior General, rule the congregation until 1854, and die in 1858.

What kind of woman was Jeanne-Marie Chavoin? How did her ministry and spirituality fit into the Marist project? How did those years go for her between 1817, when she joined the Colins, and her death forty-one years later?

1817-23

The last number of Marist Links introduced Jeanne Marie Chavoin, Foundress of the Marist Sisters. She had met with Jean-Claude Colin. Just as she had been sure of what God did not want of her, so now and for the rest of her life, she knew in her innermost self this Marist project was what God did want for her.

Jeanne Marie joined Jean-Claude and his brother, Pierre, in the presbytery at Cerdon. For almost six years she would be their housekeeper but would also act as mother to two nephews and be helpful in the parish, especially among the very poor. Jean-Claude, a busy young curate, was also burning midnight oil, learning about religious life, reflecting and praying over a draft Constitution for the Society. Thus Jeanne Marie lived in daily contact and spiritual affinity with the Colin priests. Some of the original group kept contact with them, and already Marcellin Champagnat was training teaching brothers.

What kind of person was she?

The portrait of Mother St. Joseph in middle age shows a strong minded, intelligent, energetic and kindly woman. She had grown up in the chaotic revolutionary years and had not much formal education. She would be thirty-six before entering convent life, and would never acquire those refinements associated with convent training. In fact, sometimes she could be outspoken to the point of being blunt!

Jeanne Marie was intensely practical, engaged with people, but her energy and activity sprang from her deep sense of God’s presence. From her youth on, she would spend an hour every day before the Blessed Sacrament. Occasionally she would evince a certain mystical quality. Very much a woman with a mind of her own, Jeanne Marie could also bend in obedience to those who had the right to require it, but with whom she did not always agree.

Founders 1823-42

In 1823 the Bishop gave the necessary permission for Jeanne Marie, her girlhood friend, Marie Jotillon, and a third woman, to move into a separate house and live according to a religious rule. Soon she will be known as “Mother St. Joseph”. At first the community lived in a wretched cottage, but that did not prevent many candidates from presenting themselves for the new congregation.

In 1825 the Bishop called the whole Marist group centred in Cerdon to the small town of Belley where he himself lived. Talking with a Marist priest, Mother St. Joseph once said: “We were very hard up in our early days….Often we went ten days with only a few coppers in hand. I slept for a month in a room so cold that in the morning I was frozen and there was hoar frost under my bed. But how happy we were!…. Such happy times do not come again, they are blessings attached to the poverty of beginnings.”

A tremendous emphasis on prayer, simplicity, real poverty, reliance on God’s Providence, hard work accepted as a penance, these were characteristics of Jeanne Marie’s formation of the first Marist Sisters. The joy of the community was mingled with grief at the death of eight young women during this period, and of Mother St. Joseph’s life-time friend, Sr. Marie-Therese Jotillon. We might wonder if this was the inevitable consequence of excessive austerity, but we have to heed the witness of contemporaries, and take into account Mother St. Joseph’s good sense.

There was still no shortage of young women who wanted to be Marist sisters. They and their families were still attracted by the convent. Mother Foundress was no harsh, rule-ridden autocrat. If demanding, she was also motherly and attentive. She would sometimes say: “I prefer a spendthrift to a miser. I hate to see a person with a narrow, stingy outlook because this will also be her outlook towards God. She will treat him as she does creatures.”

Given Mother St. Joseph’s eagerness to help the numerous people in need during those years, and the many vocations coming in, we might wonder just why there were so few new foundations during these years, or why the Sisters did not also go with the other Marists to the missions of Oceania?

Recall 1836

The Marist Fathers are approved by Rome as the Society of Mary, with responsibility for the mission to Western Oceania. In 1842, Father Colin went again to Rome and submitted a draft Constitution for a whole Society of Mary. The Teaching Brothers and the Sisters, an integral part of the original Marist project, were included in these draft Constitutions submitted to Rome. Once again, the authorities turned down a three branch congregation under one Superior General.

Cross Purposes 1842-53

In 1842, while Father Colin was in Rome, there had been some friendly correspondence between him and Mother St. Joseph, but the next year there were signs of tension between them, sharp scoldings from the Father General, and a period of no communication. The old relationship of co-founders would never revive. What was all this about?

For Mother St. Joseph there lay behind the tension and disappointments of this change in relations with Father Colin a bewildering contradiction. On the one hand she always remained convinced it was God’s will that Father Colin provide the Constitutions which would define the Marist Sisters’ vocation. On the other hand, Jean-Claude seemed to insist on taking away from the Sisters so much of what she understood as being integral to a Marist sister’s vocation.

When Rome yet again refused to sanction the three branch Society of Mary of the original project, Mother St. Joseph urged Colin to continue the present interim arrangement and try again later when Rome might relent. The original project was part of her understanding of being a Marist. Colin went ahead with the separation.

Mother St. Joseph was dismayed by Father Colin’s insistence that the sisters should in future be “semi-enclosed: i.e. confined to their convents, not free to go out among people. She had spent her life, including her years as a Marist sister, in constant communication with the needy women and children around her. She considered and experienced this as the vocation of a Marist sister. Not so Colin. Thus, time and again, requests from various bishops and priests for the services of Marist sisters had to be turned down on the grounds of incompatibility with semi-enclosure. Hence, of course, no question of foreign mission in Oceania!

Father Colin also wanted the Sisters to be simply a diocesan congregation, one with a local bishop as their superior i.e. involving a further distancing of them from the missionary and pastoral vision of the original project. Father Colin then refused any reference to the Society of Mary in the name of the congregation, or even to permit them to call themselves “Marists”. Of course, Father Colin did not deny that the Marist Sisters had been part of his own image of the three branches, but he never seemed to envision any other occupation for them than to pray for the priests, and otherwise to busy themselves in house-bound occupations, suitable for devout women! He was certainly not prepared to accept from Jeanne Marie Chavoin any enlargement of his vision. Apostolic congregations of women were beginning to emerge at that time, but Father Colin was reflecting the thinking of the Church, which historically preferred to see religious women as cloistered and contemplative, rather than apostolic.

In this day and age, we find these proceedings difficult to digest. They are foreign to us, and they challenge the admiration and affection we want to have for Father Founder. But these were the 1840s: Father Founder was a man, a priest with knowledge and authority. Jeanne Marie might have virtue and courage but she was a woman lacking in knowledge or the social graces which lent some women a certain authority in dealings with men. So Father Founder instructed, reproved, decided … and called Jeanne Marie to obedience.

The End 1853-58

At the General Chapter of 1853 Mother St. Joseph resigned. The tension between the Founders could not continue. In any case, many of the sisters were content to be and do like sisters in other semi-enclosed convents. They elected an excellent woman who would do her best to carry out Father Colin’s demands. Meanwhile, after Jeanne Marie had passed an uneasy year trying to settle into a comparatively inactive life, the new Superior General kindly asked her to set up a new convent and a small school in the village of Jarnosse, in a remote and poor area of the Beaujolais.

Aged 69, Jeanne Marie went into the work with characteristic faith and energy. A bright young woman visiting Mother St. Joseph at Jarnosse leaves us this impression: “We went to see the Sisters, and I returned deeply moved. At the head of the new work is the Foundress of the whole order of Marist Sisters. She is already an old woman, she speaks bad French but after a few minutes with her, one can perceive beneath the rough bark a strong, generous soul and, above all, a heart filled with love …. I seemed to understand better the power of religion which can elevate to such a height what nature has placed so low. God alone knows the good they will do here…”

Mother St. Joseph built a much bigger convent than was originally foreseen, and with three other sisters, began an extensive pastoral work. (A new foundation was not bound to the enclosure). She also ran up a large debt, building a much bigger house than envisaged. That was a trying worry for a woman in her seventies, and again called up her faith in Divine Providence as never before. Difficulties abounded, but so did grace, and a memorable pastoral work was established to the great good of many.

Towards the end of July 1858 the village learned that Mother St. Joseph was very ill. Large numbers came to get her blessing. On the 30th she died, devoutly, quietly.

Farewell

Jeanne Marie Chavoin was one of those women in the nineteenth century, who had a prophetic role in the Church. She was denied the joy of achievement in her life-time. Her specific apostolic founding charism was blocked, but gradually the importance of her as a person and a witness was recognised. We can be thankful that most of the limitations Colin placed on the sisters were sooner or later removed. Officially “Sisters of the Holy Name of Mary”, everyone continued to call them Marist Sisters, even in Colin’s lifetime, and for long they have borne “SM” after their names as the priests and brothers of the canonical Society of Mary do. They became a congregation of pontifical right i.e. international. The semi-enclosure disappeared in the 1950s and the sisters engage in varied pastoral undertakings, as Mother St. Joseph wanted them to do.