Saint Marie of the Incarnation, "the Teresa of New France"

Synthèse :

Marie Guyart was born in Tours on 28 October 1599 into an honest family of little means. Her parents gave her a pious and virtuous upbringing: the virtue of faith and charity constituted for her "the good foundation" (Cl. Martin, ibid., p. 12-13), which would later prepare her for the highest mystical contemplation. This last grace began for her around the age of seven, when Jesus appeared and spoke to her. After kissing her, he asked: "Do you want to be mine?" A significant detail about the child's aptitude for mystical contemplation, which is an act of the spirit and not of the senses, is that she remembered Jesus' words very well, but not his bodily form at all. Now, words are closer to the mind than images. This germ of an exclusive vocation took shape around the age of fourteen: Marie felt drawn to the cloistered life of the Benedictine nuns at Beaumont.

But her parents pushed her to marry instead. In 1617, at age 17, Marie married Claude-Joseph Martin, a silk manufacturer. The latter died in 1620, leaving her with debts, a bankrupt factory and a six-month old son, also named Claude (1619 - 1696), who later joined the reformed Benedictines of the Saint-Maur congregation. After she was widowed, her parents advised her to remarry, but Marie, since her sacramental confession on 24 March 1620, wanted to give herself to Christ.

However, she had to provide for her son. At their invitation, she joined her sister and brother-in-law: they offered her a job working with them in their small river transportation business. Her organisational skills were rewarded, and she took over the management of the family business in 1625. However, it was for Christ that she wanted to spend her energy, and she took private vows, anticipating the religious state to which she aspired. She entered the Ursuline nuns in Tours on 25 January 1631, after entrusting her son, now 12, to her sister. Sister Marie of the Incarnation, as she became known, took her vows two years later.

During a dream, Marie glimpsed an unknown country: in one of the landscapes she saw, the Blessed Virgin was holding the Child Jesus. The identity of this country was revealed to her a few days later in an interior locution: it was Canada. So she obtained the Jesuit Relations (missionary reports) to try to get to know it better. She understood that Christ was calling her there, according to the vocation of her community, to make him loved by the young girls who lived there. How could she carry out this project, which, both materially and morally, was a challenge? She had no material means of her own, but she was firmly resolved to let Christ work through her. Soshe abandoned herself to Divine Providence. The support of John of Bernières and Marie-Madeleine de La Peltrie, with whom she sailed in 1639, enabled her to succeed. Two other Ursulines and one of Madame de La Peltrie's servants accompanied them.

The Ursulines settled in the lower town of Quebec. The small congregation led by Mother Marie of the Incarnation initially turned its attention to young Native American girls, but the nuns' efforts were not crowned with success. They also devoted themselves to the colony's French girls. By the end of 1642, the convent they had built in the upper town was ready to receive them. The constitutions adapted to life in the colony were drawn up with the help of Father Lalemant in 1646. But four years later, a fire caused by negligence destroyed the building. In a letter to her son Claude, Mother Marie blessed her "sweet Lord" in this ordeal. The Ursulines were taken in by Madame de La Peltrie until the reconstruction work was completed. The small community received novices, and the first Ursuline nun born in Quebec, Anne Bourdon, who was given the name Sister Anne of Saint-Agnes, pronounced her vows there in 1660.

Mother Marie of the Incarnation left this world on 30 April 1672, at the age of seventy-two, following an illness. Madame de La Peltrie had preceded her at the end of the previous year. Initially buried in the monastery cemetery, the founder's remains have been venerated in the former Sainte-Angèle chapel since 1968. Declared venerable by Pope Pius X in 1911, Marie was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980. Her feast day was extended to the universal Church by Pope Francis' decree of equivalent canonisation on 3 April 2014.

Au-delà des raisons d'y croire :

The French bishop and theologian Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet, in Les États d'oraisons - using the word quoted by Dom Claude Martin in reference to the great Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Avila - said of Mary of the Incarnation that she was "the Teresa of our time and of the New World".

Aller plus loin :

The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation by A. Religious of the Ursuline Community (Author), BiblioLife (August 18, 2008)

En savoir plus :

• Marie of the Incarnation: Selected Writings (Sources of American Spirituality Series) by Marie De I'Incarnation (Author), Irene Mahoney (Editor), Paulist Pr; First Edition (January 1, 1989)

• From Mother to Son: The Selected Letters of Marie de l'Incarnation to Claude Martin (AAR Religions in Translation) Annotated Edition, by Mary Dunn (Translator), Oxford University Press; Annotated edition (August 1, 2014)

• The ursulines of Quebec website presents a fairly detailed biography of the life of Saint Marie of the Incarnation. Tabs provide access to other online resources on the same subject. 

• Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishop's website, page on Canadian Saint / Saint Marie of the Incarnation (1599-1672)