Jeanne Jugan, our Founder

THE LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR—ST FRANCIS XAVIER HOME for the Elderly MALAYSIA

Caring for the Elderly.

BLESSED JEANNE JUGAN—Our Foundress

Phone: +603-91311464

Fax: +603-91310838

Homepage : www.littlesistersofthepoor-sfxmy.org

E-mail: barbarasiow@yahoo.com

Jeanne Jugan was born on October 25, 1792 in Cancale (Ille-et-Vilaine), a fishing port on the north coast of Brittany, France. Her father was absent at the time, for he had sailed six months earlier for the fishing season in Newfoundland.

According to the parish registers of Cancale, she was baptized the same day in Saint Méen Church.

Less than four years later, Jeanne's father was lost at sea, like so many other sailors! At home, it was hard to make both ends meet. Jeanne, her brother and two sisters learned from their mother how to live poverty honestly and courageously, with faith and love for God.

A servant and kitchen-maid in a manor near Cancale, Jeanne was 18 when she refused a first marriage proposal. Six years later, she asked the young sailor who renewed his request to no longer think of her. "God wants me for himself. He is keeping me for a work which is not yet known, for a work which is not yet founded," she explained to her mother.

Jeanne probably did not realize the impact of these prophetic words. Many years were to pass before this call became clear to her.

In the meantime, she left Cancale for the nearby town of Saint Servan. A nurse at Le Rosais Hospital, a visiting nurse, then a servant, she desired only to serve God and others, especially the poor.

She was in this way faithful to the ideal of configuration to Jesus through Mary, that Saint John Eudes taught to the members of the Third Order of the Admirable Mother, an association founded in the 17th century which she joined around the age of twenty-five.

Saint Servan, 1839
One winter's evening, Jeanne opened her home and her heart to an elderly, half paralyzed blind woman who had suddenly found herself all alone. Jeanne gave up her bed for her.

This act committed her forever. Soon another old woman followed, then a third. In 1843, there were forty of them around Jeanne and her three young companions, who had chosen her as the Superior of their small association which was slowly taking the form of a religious community.

However it was not long before Jeanne was deprived of this responsibility. In the face of this injustice, she responded only with silence, gentleness and abandonment. Through her faith and love, she discovered in this decision God's plan for herself and for her religious family.

She then spent all her time collecting for the poor. She had witnessed this act of charity and of sharing as a child in Cancale, when a sailor's widow was in need. She was encouraged to do so by the Brothers of Saint John of God, from the nearby hospital in Dinan.

Time of Hidden Growth, 1852-1879
As the years passed by, Jeanne Jugan was buried more deeply in obscurity. The history of the beginning of her work was distorted. When she died on August 29, 1879, in La Tour St. Joseph, few Little Sisters knew that she was the foundress.

However, her influence on the younger Little Sisters, whose life she had shared for twenty-seven years, was decisive. During this long period, she transmitted to them the original charism and the spirit of the origins. Little by little the situation became clear.

In 1902, the truth became evident: Jeanne Jugan, Sister Mary of the Cross, who died in oblivion a quarter of a century earlier, was not the third Little Sister, as it was believed, but the first, the foundress.

Her tomb, in the crypt of the chapel of the Motherhouse, in La Tour St. Joseph (Saint Pern), attracts many pilgrims, as do her birthplace in the hamlet of Les Petites Croix, in Cancale, and the foundation's house in Saint Servan.

Recognition
On July 13, 1979, the Church officially acknowledged the heroic nature of Jeanne Jugan's virtues.

On October 3, 1982, in the presence of 6,000 pilgrims from all over the world, Pope John Paul II declared "BLESSED," JEANNED JUGAN" the most humble woman of Cancale, so poor in possessions yet so rich in faith."

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 un uniquely dependent on him.... It means making God the sure foundation which is what we need if we are to 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). Cardinal Garrone gives a portrait of Jeanne activity as Foundress:

What armed Jeanne Jugan above all for her activities was her simple, unconditional trust in Christ, whom she felt to be present within her, and whom she asked for whatever she needed; whom she saw present in the aged, and who made her capable of miracles in serving them. -. But the presence and intervention of the Holy Spirit, prompt, easy, perfect, divine as they are, are never intended to dispense human beings from the normal round of activity, nor from mobilizing all available resources in God’s service.

Her works speak for her. She tried to do the impossible, but this is because God assured her that this is what could be done. "She prays, she sees, she seeks the means, she persists, she achieves… She goes to her goal with resolute, patient wisdom… planning and putting into effect, trusting in grace at each stage to bring it to a good end." (Poor in Spirit, pp. 7 7-79).

The Informatio on the virtues of Jeanne Jugan summarizes her activity thus: “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!”

To contact us:

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Taman Sri Bahtera, Batu Lima, Jalan Cheras

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