The Genius of St. Jeanne (Joan) Elizabeth Bichier


Jeanne (Joan) Elizabeth Bichier was born on July 1773 in La Blanc, France at the Chateau des Anges. Her father, Antony Bichier, was a public official; her mother was Mary Augier de Moussac, the daughter of a public official.

At the age of 10, she attended the convent school in Poitiers, where one of her favorite pastimes was building sand castles, While her parents had named her Joan Elizabeth Mary Lucy, she went by the name Elizabeth.

Elizabeth witnessed closely and was personally affected by the events of the French Revolution which rocked France when she was 16 years old.

When Elizabeth was 19, her father died and Elizabeth had to engage in a long legal battle with the National Assembly to keep the state from seizing the family property. She studied the law in order to provide for her own defense and won the case.

When she was twenty - three, Elizabeth and her mother left their family home to leave in a Paris suburb near Béthines in Poitou.  The local parish was in upheaval due to the Revolution and most priests were exiled from France. In order to keep the faith alive, Elizabeth gathered every night with the farmers and  their wives for prayers, hymns, and spiritual reading.  Soon she heard rumors of a priest saying Mass in a barn 25 miles away at Maillé. That priest was Saint Andrew Fournet, an underground priest who was forced to remain clandestine because he refused to make a pledge of allegiance to the government of the new republic. He soon became Elizabeth's good friend and spiritual advisor.

Following the death of her mother in 1804, Elizabeth entered a Carmelite convent at the age of 31. She later entered the Society of Providence to learn more about the religious life. Elizabeth, along with Fr. Andrew Fournet founded the Daughters of the Cross of Saint Andrew to care for the sick and the poor, and to help educate the people of rural France. Elizabeth was the first superior of the community, and by 1830 the community had sixty houses scattered throughout France. A men's congregation, Priests of the Sacred Heart of Betherran was formed alongside the Daughters. Elizabeth was canonized in 1947 by Pope Pius XII.

Lesson:

Elizabeth was a gentle, resolute women, who stood strong in the face of trials due to her faith in God. She helped to rebuild the faith in the shambles of the French Revolution. Let us imitate her by trusting in God in the midst of our daily trials and focusing on the needs of others, especially the neediest in the turmoil of our own times - in this culture of death -- those who are in need of spiritual assistance who need to hear the Truth. Let us help to rebuild the faith in our own time.

~ Jean M. Heimann
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