May 25th, 1961. It was the day when President John F. Kennedy addressed a special join session of congress and asked our whole nation for the money and commitment necessary for “achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. … I believe we should go to the moon.” They were famous words, now with greater emotional weight than they had when he slowly and solemnly delivered them, stemming both from the success of that risk, and his being assassinated a year and a half later.
But I would like you to focus on a different event that took place on the same day. Across the Atlantic Ocean, in a town near Paris, an expert in latex molding, Mr. Rampeau brought to market a little rotomolded rubber giraffe painted with brown spots and black eyes and sold it as a teething toy for little babies. It was a hit. 50 million of the hand-crafted squeezable and chewable figures have been sold since, in many years more of the toys are sold than new babies born in France (and its popularity has now spread around the world). It was called Sophie the Giraffe because Mr. Rampeau was a Catholic, and he sold the first one on St. Madeline Sophie Barat’s feast day in that year of 1961.
It had been almost exactly one hundred years before that Madeline had passed away in the generalate of the Society of the Sacred Heart not so far away in the middle of Paris. She knew her popularity and had refused photographs to be taken of her, so we only have pictures from her deathbed and portraits painted after her death. Still, she was a kind and holy woman, and her countenance reflected those qualities. Yet her story is one that stretches beyond a worldly kindness and into the extraordinary charity of a saint.
She was born on December 12th, 1779, actually about two months premature because her mother went into labor amidst the chaos of a house fire next door. She was baptized immediately given how small she was, necessitating pressing into service a local woman who just happened to be going to Mass that morning and her 10 year old brother Louis to stand in for her godparents. It was the beginning of a life that would be often marked by God’s grace in the midst of chaos. Her brother, Louis, had returned home from his seminary studies because he was not yet old enough to be ordained a deacon (he was a precocious student), leading to his becoming Madeline’s tutor and giving her an extraordinary education in philosophy, theology, languages, natural science, and rhetoric. When she was only 10 however, he was arrested as a seminarian during the beginnings of the reign of terror. He would eventually swear the required oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, a year later renouncing his oath once the Pope had condemned it (and being imprisoned again, barely escaping the guillotine).
Those same years were ones in which little Madeline grew up in a home tilted towards Jansenism in its practice of the faith. That heresy is notoriously difficult to pin down (especially given its existence for multiple centuries during this time, and the fact that its adherents ferociously rejected that pejorative title to name their standpoint). In general, it stemmed from an over-emphasis on the absolute holiness of God and a related over-emphasis on human sin, depravity, and unworthiness of grace. It led to a rigid and harsh life of faith and a reading of human weakness as a sign of moral depravity. The Little Flower is perhaps known as the best response that God gave to this perennial temptation, but I would like to propose Madeline as another one.
As she grew, she found a growing desire to become a Carmelite. Sadly, with religious communities of all sorts abolished in 1790, this dream would never be realized. As often is the case though, it is these setbacks that actually grow our trust and openness to God and such was the case with Sophie. The rigid version of grace and tendency to seek to earn God’s love by hard work (and perhaps the hardest vocation she could think of) melted into a decision to begin a new congregation, the Society of the Sacred Heart, dedicated to the education of girls. They gained followers, and opened more and more schools – always making sure to offer a free education to poor girls alongside of the exceptional education they offered to the better-off young women. Their highest priorities were to love the girls and teach them how to carry love into the rest of their lives. She guided the order for 65 years, passing on Ascension Day in 1865 with more than 3500 members as part of that congregation.
50 million babies have been comforted Sophie the Giraffe. 650 million people were inspired by watching the moon landings. 1 million young people have been directly educated by the Society of the Sacred Heart, but how many more have been impacted by that message of love?
– Fr. Dominic is heading to Washington DC as he writes this for a quick visit to a place I will return this fall to study God’s love, and how human love reflects it. Here’s to continuing the mission!