Working despite her anguish

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

	St. Jane Frances de Chantal When: 1572-1641 Where: Born and worked in France. What: Founder, with St. Francis de Sales, of the Sisters of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary. Feast: Dec. 12 Canonized: 1767

Sorrow and pain often lead - or even force - us to change. Such was the case with St. Jane Frances de Chantal. Her father was Benigne Frémyot, the president of the Burgundy parliament, and he raised the children after his wife died.

Twenty years later, Jane married Baron Christopher de Chantal, an army officer and former duelist. The couple quickly had seven children, three of whom died. After nine years of marriage, the baron was killed in a hunting accident.

After a year of mourning, Jane and the children moved in with her father-in-law, who was a difficult, elderly man. Two years later, she visited her father in Dijon during Lent so she could hear St. Francis de Sales preach. She realized immediately that she had seen him in a vision and begged him to become her spiritual director.

She followed a strict life under Francis' guidance, caring for her children, father and father-in-law, as well as poor and sick people in the area. Once, Francis noticed her jewelry and asked if she intended to remarry. After she assured him she had no such intentions, he asked, "Why not lower the flag then?"

Finally, in 1607, three years after she first heard him preach, Francis told Jane of his dream to start a new type of religious congregation that would work in the community, instead of living in a cloister.

Three years later, Francis and Jane co-founded the Sisters of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary. Soon the original four sisters were joined by 10 others.

Because this different type of order upset many influential people, Francis changed it to an enclosed community and wrote a spiritual classic for them to follow, On the Love of God.

Jane experienced more hardship in 1622 with the death of Francis and the death in 1627 of her son while fighting against the English and Huguenots.

When a plague broke out in 1628, Jane put the resources of her convent to work helping the afflicted and convinced town officials to do the same. As she watched more friends and relatives die over the next few years, she suffered from interior anguish and spiritual dryness. But she continued to work and over a two-year period visited all the order's 65 convents.

She died at 69 on Dec. 13, 1641, while returning from a visit with Queen Anne in Paris. She was buried in Annecy near St. Francis de Sales.