Mass to Celebrate the Life, Work and Legacy of

Venerable le Marie Madeleine d’Houet

St Mary’s Cathedral, Middlesbrough – 5 April 2008

Welcome one and all for our celebration today. We come together to bless the God of all things who is the doer of great deeds everywhere. We bless him especially today for the life and work of Venerable Marie Madeleine d’Houet on this the 150th anniversary of her death. We give thanks also for the sisters of the order she founded, the Faithful companions of Jesus, who have been part and parcel of the life of this area even before the diocese of Middlesbrough, as such, existed. As we give thanks we also pray that the Lord’s mercy be faithfully with us and that he may redeem us in our time. Welcome one and all for our celebration today. We come together to bless the God of all things who is the doer of great deeds everywhere. We bless him especially today for the life and work of Venerable Marie Madeleine d’Houet on this the 150th anniversary of her death. We give thanks also for the sisters of the order she founded, the Faithful companions of Jesus, who have been part and parcel of the life of this area even before the diocese of Middlesbrough, as such, existed. As we give thanks we also pray that the Lord’s mercy be faithfully with us and that he may redeem us in our time.
We ask forgiveness for the lack of thanksgiving and praise in our lives:
Lord, you have heard the words of our mouth
Lord, have mercy
Your faithfulness and your love excel all we knew of you.
Christ, have mercy
Lord, how great is your glory.
Lord, have mercy.
I was recently reading a book by a reasonably well known contemporary spiritual writer – Ronald Rollheiser – called Seeking Spirituality – I thought it was about time I started! He was talking about the attraction of famous people, how we are drawn to their lives. He then began to speculate what the difference was between just being a famous one and being a holy one, a saint. He was using the interesting examples of Mother Teresa, Princess Diana and Janis Joplin.
There is no doubt that they are all famous and well known and certainly all attracted attention, sympathy and sometimes empathy. What was it that set someone like Mother Teresa apart from the other two? He quotes a famous philosopher and spiritual writer, Søren Kierkegaard who once defined a saint as someone who can will the one thing. Mother Teresa did just what Kiergegaard said, she willed the one thing, God and the poor. It was her spirituality and it made her what she was. It integrated her and everything that she did.
Janis Joplin was unable to will just one thing. She willed everything, all at once – creativity, performance, sex, drugs, booze. All this was coupled with the neglect of normal healthy rest and diversification. The result was that she lost all those things that glue human persons together and she broke apart under too much pressure.
Unusually in our age, Princess Diana is held up by most as an example of a person who is both attractive and spiritual. The attractiveness in her was obvious – she was widely admired for her beauty, spent millions of pounds on clothing, and was clearly no celibate nun. The spiritual part of her was also quite obvious. There was something in her which never allowed her to be completely comfortable with being a jet-setter. There was also her friendship with Mother Teresa and her concern for the poor. In her we see a very human combination of sin and virtue. Her spirituality was both her commitment to the poor and the “jet-setting” holidays…..and all the pains and questions in between. She was neither fully a Mother Teresa nor a Janis Joplin. She chose some things which left her more integrated body and soul and others which tore at body and soul.
Today we are celebrating the life, work and legacy of Marie Madeleine d’Houet, founder of the Faithful Companions of Jesus. Her life could hardly be described as straight forward. Descended from a noble family, most of her life was lived against the turbulent background of the French Revolution. She was married at the age of 23, and less than a year later her husband died tragically of cholera. She was six months pregnant at the time. Her son, Eugene was born three months later. Despite the tragedy and the difficulty of her situation all she sought was to do God’s holy will for herself and her son. The next fifteen/twenty years were a time for her of profound searching and listening, seeking to discern God’s will. Again, it was not easy or straightforward. However, she persevered, always homing in on what God was asking of her. Listening, waiting, pondering.
I am sure that you know the story of Marie Madeleine better than I do. However, eventually she founded the order of the Faithful Companions of Jesus. Due to the conditions in France caused by the Revolution the order began to look outward very much and among other places came to England and Ireland. After the death of Marie Madeleine in 1858, the work of the order continued and 1872 they came to Middlesbrough – as I said – even before this diocese as such existed. The work was hard the conditions were, to say the least, difficult, but fired by the same holy single-mindedness as their founder, the sisters battled on, and on, and on and here you are today in this Cathedral, surrounded by some of the beautiful fruits of the apostolic work of the Faithful Companions of Jesus. So many lives have been touched, so many spirits have been raised and encouraged, so many individuals have been supported, so many disappointed dreams regained and the gospel has been proclaimed to all. So many have been helped to discern and follow God’s holy will.
We heard in our second reading today: Let the message of Christ in all its richness find a home with you. Marie Madeleine allowed the rich message of Christ to find a permanent home in her heart, in her life. In the end, that was the sole thing that she sought to do. That is what integrated her life, that was her spirituality. She had four ideals – to live always in God’s presence so as to be one with him; to desire nothing but the accomplishment of his holy will; to remain tranquil and undisturbed in his hands; to be ever in his presence as an empty vessel ready to receive all that God would give. Together with the evangelical virtues of poverty, humility, obedience and gentleness, she continued throughout to be open to the message of Christ and to put it into action in her life and in her work. She willed the one thing.
If we are not careful, living as we do against the back drop of our world and contemporary culture, we can end up being torn apart, being fragmented by the many demands and expectations placed on us by society, our peers and ourselves. I suspect that most of us recognise this to be a fact in our lives; we are pulled left right and centre. We come to the end of the day feeling exhausted and weary as a result of all that we have been doing; but when we look back at the day, I think most of us feel that all we have been doing is running on the spot. So many desires, so many demands. Remember what we heard at the beginning, the saint is the one who can will the one thing. Marie Madeleine is a wonderful example for us still today. She willed the one thing all the way through her life.
She achieved much, she moved far, she was involved in the lives of so many, but what integrated and motivated her was the one thing; she allowed the rich message of Christ to rest in her and guide her and drive her on.
I pray that through her intercession her sisters today may have a share in that single-mindedness to seek and live out God’s holy will. I pray through her intercession all of us gathered here today will allow the message of Christ in all its richness find a home with us. That is the one thing. Through and in Christ, like Marie Madeleine d’Houet, may we desire to accomplish God’s holy will.