June 6, 1610 – The Founding of the Visitation Order

Live + Jesus!

We share the following from our “Mission and Spirit” on the origins of the Visitation Order. Please unite with us with hearts and hands uplifted in prayer of praise and thanksgiving.

 

The Founders

On 5th March, 1604, St Francis de Sales met the Baroness de Chantal [Jane de Chantal] for the first time in the Sainte Chapelle at Dijon. On 24th May 1610, he wrote to Father Pollien: “. . . our Congregation is the fruit of the journey to Dijon.”

By a process of mutual intuition, these two souls meet and merge in a holy union.

On 26th April 1604, the Bishop sent Jeanne de Chantal a brief note: “God, it seems, has given me to you; every hour makes me more sure of it.”

In May 1605, she went to see him at the castle of Thorens — “O my God! My Father! Are you not going to uproot me from the world, from my own self?”

— “Yes, I will,” he said, “one day you will leave everything, you will come to me and I will help you to live stripped bare of all you call your own, to live for God alone.”

On 4th June 1607, he revealed his God-given plan to her, — “Well, my Daughter, I have determined what I want to do with you.” — “And I, for my part, Monseigneur and Father,” she replied, “I have made up my mind to obey.”

On 28th May 1610, he gave her an outline of the sublime programme in which their two souls will for ever be united. — “O, my Daughter, how deeply I long for us to be completely annihilated in time to come so as to live only for God, and for our life to be hidden with Jesus Christ in God! O, when shall we live ourselves,  but not ourselves, and when will Jesus Christ live wholly in us? I shall go and pray about this for a while, pray to the Saviour’s royal Heart for our heart. In Jesus Christ I am more then ever yours…”

The Foundation

On 24th May 1610, the Founder wrote to Father Pollien: “. . . knowing how many girls want to leave the world and cannot find a retreat in already exisiting Orders, . . . I am opening up for them the doors of a little assembly or Congregation of women and girls living a common life . . .”.

On the feast of the Holy Trinity, 6th June 1610, Mother de Chantal and her two first Daughters entered the place “of their delight”, the little house called La Galerie.

“. . . he put into our blessed Mother’s hands a summary of our Constitutions written out in his own holy hand: ‘Follow this way,’ he said to her, ‘my very dear Daughter, and make all those follow it whom heaven has destined to follow in your footsteps.'”

The Visitation had been founded.