Caracas (Venezuela), 10/10/2023, Sr. Nícida Díaz Leal.- The life of Marie Poussepin, her writings, and her work, leave between the lines that she was a woman inhabited and enabled by God. This reality certifies us that God called her for a special vocation. Found a work that dignifies life in the exercise of Charity.
A woman inhabited by God
From the moment of her baptism[1] God already inhabited her, consecrating her to Him, as a well-loved daughter in whom she would place her pleasure (Conf. Mt 3:17). Her Grace and her Spirit were upon her, moving her from a very young age to the things of God. And God sowed the seed of Charity in her tender heart; guarding the ground so that the enemy would not sow tares in it... And she bore fruit with perseverance because she listened to and kept the Word with a good and willing heart (Conf. Lk 8:15)
God embraced her with her Grace, her Grace was with her, because, “grace is the love of God and the way of being that people acquire when they are penetrated by the mystery of God.”[2]. Marie Poussepin was filled with this love; She practiced it with God and with her neighbor (Conf. R I), and proposed it as a practice for her daughters with a dedication of inviolable fidelity and, in this way, the Charity sown in her expanded in her community like the good smell of Christ.
Marie Poussepin proposes Charity as the soul of her community (Conf. R XL); because “grace, the love of God, we only find it incarnated, in another reality. The realities, people or things penetrated by the love of God, are the necessary support of grace, and the place where man discovers divine closeness.”( [3]. She and her community were concrete mediations of Charity in the daily life of her, in the people who accompanied and came to the community in search of consolation and a dignified life. “Grace, as the presence of God in my life, is also manifested "in" (not "next to" or "in addition to") my capacity for forgiveness, for selfless love, for joy in good things accomplished, for longing for justice. , in my fight against evil, in the joy of prayer.”[4].
A woman enabled by God[5]
This God who lives in her, mediates events to enable her and make her the worker of her Providence. Among the events we can evoke some that without a doubt were fertilizing the soil of her heart and, “Providence itself marked her life.”
In her childhood, adolescence and youth...
Her family home was impregnated with faith and Christian life, the religious instruction received at school, the testimony of the pious teachers of Haute Foulerie Street where Marie Poussepin was taught. Her devotion and her mother's service to works of charity in the care of the sick and poor, which she herself accompanied with self-denial.
The death of her mother and her responsibility in the care and education of her younger brother.
In her young adult stage…
Her courage and responsibility to assume the weight of her father's financial catastrophe and to be able to move forward with great sacrifices to lift the embargo and return to the laborious life of home. The death of her father… The industrial and commercial transformation in Dourdan, combined with the exercise of Charity; attention and dedication in the training of youth, stimulating professional education and social promotion through work.
In her mature adult stage…
The Confraternity of Charity, the harsh events that winter brought to Dourdan, the welcome into her home of Marie Oliver, a poor and sick woman, the presence of Father Mespolié, a man of great holiness, her membership in the Dominican third order , her comings and goings from Dourdan to Sainville... In all this, Providence was increasing and maturing Charity in her; preparing her to give the appropriate response to the harsh reality that she witnessed and heard in Sainville, which leads her to make the most heroic decision of her life, namely, the passage from Dourdan to Sainville, a place where the harshest realities that Poverty can bring…existential peripheries marked by illness, orphaned children and adolescents, youth “without asylum and without help reduced to begging” and subjected to all the exploitations we can imagine. Marie Poussepin was able to contemplate in that reality, the misery of the miserable and let her heart be moved and her insides shaken to put into motion what Providence was inspiring in her...There, she welcomes life and accompanies life to give life in abundance...A life where Charity acted in freedom and recreated itself in its entire being.
Throughout this spiritual human itinerary, God counted on the availability of Marie Poussepin, her entire life was inhabited by God and God Himself enabled her in the different events, mediating everything, to make the work dreamed of and prepared for the Church and for the world come true. world…
He enables her ears to welcome and listen deeply to God and his people... To listen where others have not wanted to listen...,
He enables her heart, where he keeps memories and cultivates the cherished desire that will first become a project and then become a fruitful action, in the abode of God…,
He enables her eyes to look beyond reality... To see where others have not wanted to see...
He enables her hands for the art of knowing how to extend them in asking and giving. To hold others, support, caress, hug and heal, release and resurrect...,
He enables her feet to walk the paths of solidarity, of fraternity and not lose the proper direction, to tread the paths and find Jesus where He awaits her...
We also, we have been inhabited and enabled by God to continue her work. Our availability is enough to abandon ourselves to his Providence on this path of restructuring that asks us to adapt our Charisma to the reality of the Church and the world.
Let us ask Marie Poussepin to help us to remain in the Presence of God with “courage, creativity and tenacity to give life to our deepest aspirations aroused by the attraction and love of God.””[6]. to be there, in community, where the Church calls us and our brothers and sisters need us, giving ourselves with inviolable fidelity to the following of Christ...