Console My People

‘Marguerite d’Youville appears to us as a woman who has heard the Lord say to her: “Console my people... prepare my way by going to look for the poorest, those whose lives are a long series of sufferings without a way out”. And here she is, a young widow, dedicated to the exclusive service of the poor of Montreal. Like her Lord who “gathers the lambs, carries them to his heart, and takes care of the sheep who breastfeed their young”, here she is seized by the dazzling light of the Father’s love.

... Saint Margaret of Youville, in the Advent of the Church, gives us with all the saints an image of the new world where Love, Truth, Justice, and Peace reign. St Peter says: “What we expect, according to the Lord’s promise, is a new heaven and a new land where justice will reside”. In her daily devotion, Marguerite brings to the most needy a little of this novelty: a community of love where the little ones are respected because the Lord is close to them, because he is present in their hearts. For the saint we honor, it is the concrete charity of each day that makes justice triumph according to God and reveals the presence of the new world: “His salvation is close to those who fear it and glory will inhabit our earth”.

...In God, Marguerite saw the Father who “loved the world so much that he gave his only Son”. In union with Our Lady of Providence, as she called the Mother of the Saviour, she would prayerfully contemplate the mystery of God’s universal fatherhood; she came to understand that all men and women are truly brothers and sisters, that their heavenly Father would never fail to be close to them, and that his love called them to an active life of service to others.

We thank God for the figure which he sets before our eyes this morning. Yes, we give him thanks. For the first time in history, a woman of Canadian birth is inscribed among the saints whom the Church has raised to the glory of the altars’.

from the homily at the Canonisation Mass, 9 December 1990
of St Marguerite d’Youville, 1701-1771, by Pope St John Paul II, 1920-2005