Jeanne Jugan our Foundress

Jeanne Jugan's life and work were founded on two pillars:  faith in the fatherhood of God, and her love of Jesus Christ, who dwelled within her and who she recognized and served in the person of the poor. These dispositions are manifest in her words, which were passed on to us by the Little Sisters who knew her: God is our Father, let us put our trust in him!   My Jesus, I have only you.  We have been grafted into the Cross.  Let us sing the glory of our risen Jesus!   It is so beautiful to be poor, to have nothing, to await all from God.

In documenting the heroicity of Jeanne Jugan's virtues, the postulators of her cause for beatification observed that in her exercise of hope, we see the positive side of poverty, her principal virtue. Poverty in this sense is not essentially material deprivation, but the spiritual attitude expressed in the beatitudes. In his study of Jeanne Jugan's spirituality, Cardinal Garrone reflects,

' To be poor means to have nothing....  Someone poor is not merely someone who owns nothing, but someone who puts trust in God alone.... The spring, as it were, the heart of poverty is the fact of casting oneself on the Lord as Scripture says, of ·trusting· God the Heavenly Father once and for all to sustain our lives and give us our daily bread, and of consenting to our life's being uniquely dependent on him.... It means making God the sure foundation which we need if we are to keep on track and make progress along the road of life' (Poor in Spirit, PP- 25-27).

Abandoned into the hands of our heavenly Father, Jeanne Jugan advanced resolutely looking on events and persons with a living faith which arouses hope and works through charity.(Constitutions of the Little Sisters of the Poor, p.14).

In her activities as Foundress, Jeanne Jugan personified the teaching of Gaudium et Spes on the Christian's duty to be fully engaged in the earthly service of men. She began the Congregation with no material resources, but with absolute trust in God's Providence . Between the birth of the work in 1839 and the approbation of the Institute by Pope Pius IX in 1854, thirty-six foundations were made, including two houses outside France (in England and Belgium ).

She had no money, but she had a heart, common sense and her two arms. She put these at the service of the poor. And for the rest? This is where her hope took over. She asked God for the rest.

Jeanne would say, quite simply, 'That seems impossible, but if God is with us, it will be accomplished!'