Jeanne Jugan began caring for the elderly in Brittany when she gave her own bed to a blind old woman. She founded the Little Sisters of the Poor to serve aged people who had no one else.
Life
Saint Jeanne Jugan was born in 1792 in Cancale, in Brittany, France, the daughter of a poor fisherman. Having lost her father at sea when she was small, she worked as a servant and nursing aide and helped the poor for many years.
In the winter of 1839 she brought a blind and infirm elderly woman into her home and gave her own bed, and this was the beginning of the Little Sisters of the Poor. She went from house to house with a basket, begging for the elderly in her care. As the community grew, she was set aside from leadership and lived a quiet, hidden life for more than twenty years. She died in 1879 and was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.
Spirituality
Saint Jeanne Jugan's spirituality is humility and wholehearted love for the poor. She welcomed poor elderly people as Christ himself, and when she was forgotten in the very community she founded, she did not complain but quietly passed on to the young sisters a spirit of littleness and gratitude.
Reflection
The Little Sisters of the Poor care for the elderly in many places across the United States. Like Saint Jeanne Jugan, why not practice some small act of giving up your own place for another today?