Catholic Activity: St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

A story about Love based on the life of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat.

DIRECTIONS

Madeleine Louise Sophie Barat became a child of God on the feast of St. Lucy (or Lucia, whose name means light) on the 13th of December, 1779. Her godfather was her older brother Louis, nine years old. She had been prematurely born when her mother was frightened by a fire and, when asked as a little girl of five (because they loved to hear her answer) what it was that brought her into the world, she invariably answered: "Fire."

It was fitting. She was to spend her life spreading the fire of Christ's love, and it was her brother Louis, later a priest, who trained this little girl so she grew up to be a saint. Her story is long and beautiful but we will tell only the least bit of it here, something from the beginning which was a sign of the end. It is a lovely story for children to hear after all the other stories are told, because it says in the simplest way what we are supposed to be about. St. Madeleine Sophie tells it in her own words.

"When I was a child, I once had a lamb that was very fond of me; when I called it, it came at once even leaving its food. One day it was lying quite still at my feet when my brother came into the room. He stood for a short time looking at it and then said: 'Look, Sophie, at your lamb and see what it is doing. It is loving.'

That is what we are supposed to be doing: loving.

Activity Source: Saints and Our Children, The by Mary Reed Newland, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, New York; reprinted by TAN Publishers, 1958