Dazzled by God: Madeleine Delbrêl's story

The religious journey of Madeleine Delbrêl (1904-1964) initially resembled that of millions of other children of this century: the daughter of non-practising Catholic parents, she was baptised and catechised as a child, but was an atheist by the age of 15, seeing life as absurd. In her early years of university, she met young Christian students who were intelligent, balanced, and enthusiastic about their faith, and had to admit that the existence of God was probably not as ridiculous as she had imagined. Honestly accepting that she had to ask herself the question of God's existence, she approached it by reflection and study, and finally decided to explore it through prayer. It was during this prayer, on 29 March 1924, that she was "dazzled by God", swept off her feet by the love to which she would henceforth devote her life.

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Les raisons d'y croire :

Madeleine Delbrêl was not an atheist out of indifference or ignorance, but out of conviction.

Her encounter with God was prepared by an honest intellectual search, in which rationality played its part.

At the same time, her conversion was not just a rational process: at the end of the intellectual search, it took the gift of supernatural grace, the gift of faith, received in prayer.

Through her life entirely given to others, Madeleine Delbrêl bears witness to the real fruitfulness of faith in our lives.

Synthèse :

Madeleine Delbrêl was born in 1904 in Mussidan, Dordogne (Southwest France). At first, her religious path was similar to that of millions of other people in this century (and today). Born to non-practising parents, she was baptised as a child and prepared for her First Holy Communion by attending catechism classes, where she even showed a certain fervour. Once she had completed her religious education classes, Madeleine moved to Paris as a teenager with her parents, but she soon abandoned the faith of her childhood. "At 15, I was a staunch atheist" (testimony published in La Question des prêtres-ouvriers).

But she went further in her atheism than most girls her age. She had not simply stopped believing in God: she wanted to go all the way to its logical implications and draw all the philosophical conclusions from the non-existence of God. At the age of 17, she wrote a virulent profession of atheism: "It has been said that God is dead. Since this is true, we must have the courage to stop living as if he were alive. We have settled the question for him; we must settle it for ourselves. As long as God lived, death was not a real death. God's death has made ours safer. Death has become the safest thing. You have to know that. We mustn't live like people for whom life is the most important thing." (text published in Dazzled by God).

For her, faith was not even an issue. "Until then", Madeleine Delbrêl would later testify (in Ville marxiste, terre de mission), "I had very few Christians around me. Their religion seemed to me to be a social behaviour of the same order of discussion and importance as other 'habits and customs' [...]. They posed none of the difficulties that a faith would have posed".

However, in the years that followed, the young woman who loved going out, dancing and playing the piano, began to socialise with a number of students, including several devout Christians. For Madeleine, these Christian students were an enigma: how could intelligent, balanced young people be believers? She goes on to say: "My classmates, on the other hand, only asked, and rudely, about the difficulties posed by faith. Yes, they were very much at home in all my realities; but they brought with them what I had to call 'their reality', and what a reality it was! [...] After meeting them often for several months, I could no longer honestly leave not 'their' God, but God in the realm of the absurd". Madeleine even fell in love with one of them, a man called Jean Maydieu, with whom everone assumed they would soon be engaged... but who eventually entered the Dominicans.

Madeleine could no longer ignore the question of God, the God she thought had no substance, yet who seemed so real to others. The young woman reflected, she read a lot, and the existence of God became a little less improbable. But she had to go further. "If I wanted to be sincere", she says, "God was no longer rigorously impossible, so I didn't have to treat him as surely non-existent. I chose what I thought best reflected my change of perspective: I decided to pray."

And on 29 March 1924, she had her first encounter with God, which she describes with great modesty: "From the first time I prayed on my knees for fear, again, of idealism. I did it that day and many other days, without setting a clock. Since then, by reading and reflecting, I have found God; but in praying I believed that God found me and that he is the living truth, and that we can love him as we love a person." Later, Madeleine Delbrêl would simply say that, on that day, she was "dazzled by God" (Nous autres, gens des rues).

From then on, Madeleine Delbrêl's entire life was a living testimony to God's love: after thinking about entering a convent, she chose to remain in the world, but as a single woman, entirely devoted to the love of God and neighbour. She set up as a social worker with a few companions in Ivry-sur-Seine, in the Paris suburbs, a working-class town that was largely communist, and remained there until her death in 1964.

Tristan Rivière

Au-delà des raisons d'y croire :

In addition to her work as a social worker, Madeleine Delbrêl also wrote mystical texts, in which she addressed an aspect that is rarely dealt with elsewhere: the place of humour in the spiritual life. Several of these texts were collected in Humour dans l'amour and The Little Monk, the 3rd and 4th volumes of her complete works. An amusing and original way of approaching the spiritual life.

Aller plus loin :

The Dazzling Light of God: A Madeleine Delbrêl Reader by Madeleine Delbrêl, Ignatius Press (July 26, 2023)

En savoir plus :

The Holiness of Ordinary People by Madeleine Delbrêl, Ignatius Press (March 29, 2024)
The Joy of Believing by Madeleine Delbrêl, ‎ Sophia Institute Press (October 17, 2023)
The Little Monk: Wisdom from a Little Friend of Big Faith by Madeleine Delbrêl, ‎ Crossroad; Illustrated edition (September 1, 2005)
We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2000)