A Burgundian born on the 12 December 1779 into a family of wine-coopers, Madeleine Sophie Barat was the youngest of three children. The eldest, Louis, born in 1768 was destined for the Church but the French Revolution deferred his plans. After many difficulties, he was secretly ordained a priest in September 1795 and entered the Society of Jesus when it was re-established under the Restoration. The second child, Marie Louise, was married in 1793. She had ten children of whom only one had a family. This branch is extinct.

 

An unusually cultured woman thanks to her mother who was interested in the cultural fashions of the time, but above all thanks to her brother Louis, who, while waiting to be ordained priest, was a teacher at the college in Joigny. Sophie received an exceptional education for a girl of her time. She was grounded in secular and sacred studies and learnt ancient and modern languages. She arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1795 where her training, begun in Joigny, continued under Louis’ stern rule.

 

A woman of lively faith, Sophie was a pious child who when young decided to consecrate herself to God. Her family was Jansenist like many others in Joigny. Right at the end of the reign of Louis XVI, under the influence of Louis Barat, he family was won over to the devotion of the Sacred Heart. Madeleine Sophie Barat was deeply affected by the Revolution during which she lived under a government which, by disorganizing then forbidding the practice of religion, impeding the teaching of the faith and harrying the priest, sought to overturn the laws of God. She shared the anguish of her family over the fate of Louis Barat. After having retracted his oath of fidelity to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1792, Louis was imprisoned in Parish and escaped the guillotine by miracle, thanks to the fall of Robespierre.

 

The foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart, an international congregation which, at the present time, extends across all the continents into about forty countries and which numbers server thousand religious. Under the Director, Sophie Barat began, in prayer, to envisage a new congregation of women which, to honor the Heart of Christ and to spread the love of God, would be dedicated to the education of girls. This plan took shape thanks to Farther Varin to whom her brother Louis introduced her in 1800. Joseph Varin spoke to her of a recently founded congregation, the Dilette di Jesu, which had similar objectives to her own.

 

On November 21, 1800, Sophie Barat pronounced her first vows in Paris. The following year the apostolic activity of the new institute took off, thanks to the establishment at Amiens of its first girl’s boarding school. In 1804, for political reasons, the house at Amiens separated from the Dilette di Jesu. That same year Madeleine Sophie Barat was designated superior of the Dames de l’Instruction Chrétinne, the name that was that of the congregation until 1815, because it was impossible to refer to the Sacred Heart, understood, since the Vendean wars as the counter-revolutionary symbol. The new congregation was beginning to flourish, and Sophie Barat was named superior general in 1806, a charge she would bear until her death.

 

Henceforth the story of Madeleine Sophie Barat is merged with that of her congregation. The foundress traveled across France, then Europe. She founded new communities, she defined the activities by which her congregation would be seen in the world embodying their desire to discover and reveal the love of the Heart of Christ. Boarding and free schools were opened. Later, various establishments adapted to the needs of the time and local societies were started by the Religious of the Sacred Heart. Mother Barat also organized the work of “retreats,” offering spiritual accompaniment to married or single women. Throughout her life she directed the energy and sustained the efforts of her religious by an enormous correspondence. From 1818 the Society of the Sacred Heart began to make foundations outside France. Philippine Duchesne, canonized in 1988, left for the United States. In the same year the congregation went to Italy.

 

A courageous woman, Madeleine Sophie Barat showed herself capable of confronting adversity. Revolutions or the appearance of liberal regimes in Italy and Switzerland brought about the expulsion of the Religious of the Sacred Heart. Within the congregation the foundress was twice engaged in dispute: between 1809 and 1815 and between 1839 and 1843. In both cases the dissensions bore on the spirituality of the Sacred Heart and on the form of religious life that Mother Barat wanted to set up. Each time Madeleine Sophie Barat faced up to it with simplicity and humility, holding on in these trials by prayer that was profoundly rooted in Jesus Christ, knowing both how to forgive and how to maintain her work in its primitive spirit.

 

A woman open to the needs of her time

The foundress of the Sacred Heart seeking to respond as best she could stove to give women a role in the forefront of the reconstitution of the social fabric. She also revealed remarkable qualities of relationship, showing herself to be at ease with the important people of this world as well as with the children, their families and the poorest knew they would find welcome and support form her.

 

This woman who, in adolescence, had dreamt of entering Carmel, knew how to reconcile action and contemplation, throughout her long life. She created a new kind of apostolic life founded on interior life and union with the Heart of Jesus.

 

Madeleine Sophie Barat died in Paris, in the motherhouse on the Boulevard des Invalides on the 25 May 1865, the feast of the Ascension. She was beatified in 1908 and canonized in 1925. Her body is preserved in Brussels, in the provincial house of the Belgium-Netherlands province in the rue de l’Abondance.

 

 

Do you want to know more about Saint Madeleine Sophie?

M. Luirard, Madeleine Sophie Barat (1779-1865), Une éducatrice au coeur du monde, au coeur du Christ – Nouvelle Cité 1999