St. Jane Frances de Chantal

St. Jane Frances de Chantal (1572–1641) was a wife, mother, widow, and foundress whose life shows that holiness can flower in every state of life. Born Jeanne-Françoise Frémyot at Dijon, France, the daughter of a distinguished magistrate, she married the Baron de Chantal at twenty and became the capable and cheerful mistress of his estate, restoring order to its finances and caring generously for the poor at her gate. The marriage was a happy one and gave her six children, of whom four survived infancy. Her world collapsed in 1601 when her husband was mortally wounded in a hunting accident, leaving her a widow at twenty-eight. She forgave the man responsible — eventually standing as godmother to his child — but she passed through years of grief, harsh treatment in her father-in-law's household, and interior desolation. Light came in 1604, when she heard St. Francis de Sales preach the Lenten sermons at Dijon. She placed herself under his spiritual direction, and their friendship became one of the most celebrated in the history of Christian spirituality. After providing for her children, Jane joined Francis de Sales in founding a new kind of religious community: the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, established at Annecy in 1610. The Visitation welcomed widows and women whose age or fragile health barred them from the austere orders of the day, emphasizing not extraordinary penances but humility, gentleness, and the little virtues of daily charity. Under her wise and tireless leadership the order grew astonishingly; by her death there were more than eighty monasteries across France and beyond. Her later years were marked by heavy losses — the deaths of Francis de Sales and of her own children among them — and by long interior darkness and temptations against faith, which she bore with a serene trust that impressed all who knew her; St. Vincent de Paul, her friend and advisor, called her one of the holiest souls he had ever met. She died at the Visitation convent of Moulins on December 13, 1641, while returning from a journey, and was buried at Annecy near St. Francis de Sales, where their relics are venerated in the Basilica of the Visitation. She was canonized in 1767 by Pope Clement XIII. Her memorial is kept on August 12, and she is a patron of widows, of those who have lost parents or children, and of the forgotten.