Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Saint Jane Frances de Chantal was born in Dijon in 1572.
Rich, beautiful, and accomplished, she was courted by many.
Her Father chose Baron Christophe de Chantal as her husband, and she fell madly in love with him.
He was seven years older than her, and they married at the end of 1592, when she was almost 21.
They had six children together, two of whom died in infancy.
A son and three daughters survived, and Saint Jane also had a fourth daughter to raise.
Claudine was a daughter of her husband, born out of wedlock, for he was occasionally unfaithful to his wife.
The Baroness was responsible for managing the family's houses and estates, and she proved quite capable.
One day in 1601, the Baron was out hunting with a friend, when the friend's gun strap caught on a branch and the gun went off.
An arquebus is a somewhat primitive weapon, but it's devastating at short range, so even though only some of the shot hit the Baron, he was mortally wounded.
He lingered nine days, during which he prepared himself and his wife for his death.
He urged her to resign herself to the loss, and to never speak against the friend who had been responsible for the accident.
This she did, although it was not easy for her.
Being widowed at 28 was devastating.
Her life was in pieces, and she couldn't fit them back together again.
She knew her life could never be as it was before and tried to understand what she should do now.
She felt called to religious life, so she made a private vow of chastity and began searching for a spiritual guide.
In 1602, in answer to her prayers, she had a vision in which she saw St. Francis de Sales, and was told that he was the one God had chosen to guide her, but she didn't know his name or where to find him, so she could only wait.
Later that year, her father-in-law demanded that she come to live with him if she didn't want to be disinherited.
This meant living in a house commanded by a servant who had become the old Baron's mistress.
She had five children by him and no knowledge of how to manage an estate.
St. Jane had to suffer this situation for seven and a half years, and when it began, she was still grieving her husband.
In 1604, her father invited his unhappy daughter to spend Lent with him in Dijon.
St. Francis de Sales, who had been the bishop in exile of Geneva for two years, was the preacher.
When she saw him for the first time on March 5th, she recognized him as the spiritual guide God had shown her two years before.
St. Francis had also seen her in a vision.
He wanted to start a congregation of sisters, and in a vision saw St. Jane and the other two women who would be its first members.
The two future saints were able to meet for a confession and spiritual colloquy at her father's house.
He immediately understood her and saw how her current spiritual director was guiding her incorrectly.
She explained that she felt called to give herself completely to God, and he taught her to dress more simply and how to pray with more fruit.
Although there were things to correct, he was very impressed with her.
He wrote, "I have found at Dijon what Solomon could scarcely find in Jerusalem. Madame de Chantal is indeed the valiant woman."
When she returned to her father-in-law's house, she was much the same externally, but people noticed a difference.
They said, "Madame's first spiritual director had her pray three times a day, and we were all annoyed. The Bishop of Geneva has her pray at all hours of the day, and this does not bother anyone."
She ate and dressed more simply, wore little jewelry, and bore the humiliations inflicted upon her by the Baron's mistress with more patience.
She kept contact with St. Francis by letter and occasionally saw him in person.
She wanted to consecrate herself as soon as possible, but there were many issues to resolve, and this took years.
St. Francis had to be sure that the aspiring sisters were truly called to the religious life.
St. Jane's children were still young, and something had to be done to ensure their care.
Furthermore, there was a large inheritance from the Baron that had to go to someone who would use it well.
More than five years after she met the Holy Bishop, St. Jane Frances and her two companions founded the Institute by beginning their year of novitiate on June 6, 1611.
They made their profession exactly a year later.
The essential element of the new congregation was to be charity.
Charity would guide them and unite them so that they would do everything out of love and nothing by force.
In this sense, the religious vows, which would just be simple vows, would almost be secondary.
Their observance would be the natural result of the charity that animated the sisters.
For the same reason, they wouldn't need a cloister or community penances.
They were called Visitandines because the Visitation of Our Lady to St. Elizabeth was to be their model.
There would be women of prayer who would pray the Little Office of Our Lady, and they would take turns going out in pairs to practice charity toward the needy as Our Lady had gone to St. Elizabeth.
Because this form of religious life was not as demanding, more people could be accepted, people who couldn't enter other religious orders.
And also, the spirit of the order was good, so vocations were numerous.
In 1612, a year and a half after the first three sisters made their profession, the community had to move to a larger building.
In 1615, they opened their first convent abroad in France, in Lyon.
The Bishop of Lyon was an expert in canon law, and when he saw the form of life of the sisters, he couldn't believe it.
They had no cloister and no solemn vows.
There weren't orders like this.
This was a form of religious life that had perhaps existed in the past but had been abolished in the 14th century.
He spoke to St. Francis de Sales, trying to reason with him, but he couldn't get him to agree.
The matter went to Rome, which in 1618 decreed that the Visitation would be an order with solemn vows and papal enclosure.
Such was the will of God.
It was not what the two holy founders planned, but in this form, the foundation bore much fruit.
When St. Francis de Sales died in 1622, there were 13 monasteries.
By the time St. Jane died 19 years later, there were 86.
By 1700, it had expanded to Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, and Poland.
In the following century, it spread to England, Austria, Syria, Spain, and Portugal.
And in the 19th century, to the United States, South America, and Czechoslovakia.
This order, whose central principle was to be charity, was the one chosen to receive the message of the Sacred Heart, for it was a Visitandine, St. Margaret Mary, who received the revelations between 1673 and 1675.
St. Francis de Sales had, in fact, suggested to St. Jane Frances de Chantal to put the Sacred Heart on the coat of arms of the congregation.
Founding all these monasteries meant finding suitable superiors who would preserve the spirit of the order, finding nuns, and ensuring economic support, since each monastery had to be self-sufficient.
It meant traveling thousands of miles on horseback or by carriage to visit existing monasteries and found new ones, and St. Jane did not have an iron health.
She worried that the order was growing too much in the branches and not enough in the roots, that is, that it wasn't deepening its spiritual foundations enough and was growing too quickly.
Famines and outbreaks of the plague caused further difficulties.
In 1618, the plague struck France, the Savoy, and Piedmont.
Those who could fled the cities, leaving the nuns without the benefactors that ordinarily supported them.
In 1629, the plague came to Annecy, where St. Jane was in the motherhouse.
Though she was encouraged to leave the city, she stayed and had her nuns pray for the plague to end.
They made hot meals for the poor, used the money at their disposal to buy grain and clothing for beggars, and her example encouraged others to remain and help the needy.
While she had the order and public calamities to worry about, her life was also punctuated by bereavement.
Her youngest daughter died at 10, just before she founded the order.
In the first years of the order, she lost her father and her father-in-law, and in 1617, she lost her beloved daughter, Marie-Aimée, who was only 19.
She had recently been widowed and made profession as a Visitandine.
In 1622, St. Francis de Sales passed from this world.
After this, she sought spiritual guidance from St. Vincent de Paul.
She had only one son, her eldest child, who worried her for many years because he had a habit of dueling.
At one point, he was even sentenced to death for this, but he managed to escape that sentence.
In 1625, this son died a Christian death on a battlefield, praying God to be merciful on his soul.
That left only one daughter, a happy wife and mother who outlived our saint.
In November 1641, at the age of 70, St. Jane caught pneumonia and died on December 12.
She was beatified in 1751 and canonized in 1767.
Praised be Jesus and Mary.