“Nothing happens by chance. It is always the disposition of God.”

Marie Rose Julie Billiart was born in Cuvilly, France, on July 12, 1751, as the 5th of 7 children. Her family was successful farmers and shop owners. Misfortunes slid her family into poverty, and she had to work long hours as a teenager, but still she made time to instruct others in the faith.

She knew she wanted to enter the religious life and at the age of 16, she became a teacher. She would sit on a haystack at noon recess and tell biblical parables to the workers.

She witnessed an attempted murder on her father at their store which traumatized her and plunged her into a mysterious illness. She was immobilized by a debilitating paralysis, and confined to a bed, but all of her pain and suffering she offered up to God.

She spent 4 to 5 hours a day in contemplative prayer, and received Eucharist daily. She made fine linens for the Church, taught both poor peasants from Cuvilly and noblewomen from Picardy, and prepared village children for their 1st Communion.

When she was 38, the French Revolution broke out and she conducted defiance from her bed. She helped protect a non-juried priest, refused to cooperate with a priest loyal to the government, and persuaded the entire village to boycott him. They came after her and with the help of one of her noblewomen students, she escaped to Compiegne in a wagon.

The stress and worry for her friends who risked their safety for her, the grief over the loss of her father and friends who were martyred, and 16 Carmelite sisters who were guillotined in 1794, resulted in another paralysis that took away her ability to speak.

She received a vision about founding a new religious congregation. Later in the year she was moved to Amiens where she met a nun whom she recognized from her vision. At first the nun was repelled by Julie’s disabilities and garbled speech but slowly came to love and admire Julie for her wonderful gifts of soul, deep faith, and loving spirit. Julie received therapy and regained the ability to speak.

During the Reign of Terror, she continued teaching, and along with 2 others, founded the Sisters of Notre Dame. After instruction to pray a Novena, she was cured of her paralysis, and her 1st vows where made at the age of 54, and soon established the order’s devotions.

The following year she received a vision of the congregation as a light of revelation throughout the world and it grew quickly. She viewed education as a basic human right, and teaching as the ‘greatest work on earth’. She brought the good news and hope in the goodness of God to a depressed and deprived generation.

She founded 15 convents and made 120 journeys but became ill. After 3 months of pain borne in silence, she died with the Magnificat on her lips on April 8, 1816.

“How good is the good God who tries us! If we live by crosses, we shall die of love.”

She is the patron saint of educators and teachers.

Her feast day is on April 8.

For God’s Glory.