Louise
was the daughter of Louis de Marillac, the Lord of Ferrières, a French
nobleman. She never knew her mother who died shortly after her birth.
Ordinarily there is something wanting in a child not brought up in a
mother’s care; in Louise, however, this privation in her own childhood
made her better understand the love necessary for the little motherless
beings that she would one day snatch from death. She was raised
partially by her father and partially by her aunt, for whom she was
named, a Dominican religious at Poissy.
Intelligent,
ardent and pious, she first wished to become a religious but at
twenty-two, under her confessor’s advice, she accepted marriage to
Antoine Le Gras, a young secretary to Queen Marie de Medicis. The couple
was happily married in February of 1613 and had an only son, Michel.
In
1619, Mlle. Le Gras came to know Francis de Sales who was to provide
her with great support and consolation in her future trials. Around
1621, Antoine contracted a chronic illness, believed to have been a form
of tuberculosis, and eventually became bedridden. Troubled by the
thought that she had rejected an early call to the religious life,
Louise took a vow in 1623 never to remarry should her husband die before
her. Antoine’s illness did, in fact, accompany him to his deathbed and
he died on December 21, 1625.
Francis
de Sales, the Bishop of Geneva, had introduced her to the spiritual
director of his religious of the Visitation in Paris, Monsieur Vincent
de Paul. Under his cautious and prudent direction after her husband’s
death, Louise gradually became involved in Monsieur Vincent’s works of
charity in the French capital. These charitable works were funded by
wealthy and pious aristocratic ladies; however, Monsieur Vincent and
Mlle. Le Gras both saw the need for a more formalized organization of
charity. In 1633 Louise invited four young women into her home where she
began to train them to serve the poor and the infirm. “Love the poor
and honor them as you would honor Christ Himself,” she instructed them.
The small group practiced in local hospitals where they were soon in
demand. This first nucleus developed into the religious institute of the
Daughters of Charity which received official approval in 1655.
Louise,
who had struggled with ill health all her life, led the Daughters of
Charity until her death on March 15, 1660, a mere six months before the
death of her beloved mentor, Monsieur Vincent. She was sixty-eight, and
left more than forty houses of charity throughout France. The order was
to spread throughout the world, her spiritual daughters universally
recognized by their “winged” white headdress.
Monday, March 15, 2021
St. Louise de Marillac
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