How can we live in these troubled times?  We take comfort in knowing that people of good will throughout history have asked this same question.  Each listened to the divine guidance in their own heart and came up with their own unique answer. Such a person was Little Sister Magdeleine, who offered her life to disenfranchised people all around the world.  She and her Sisters lived and worked among the poorest of the poor, adopting their language and customs, becoming one with them in the hard realities of life.  Her example shows us the breadth of gratefulness, which goes beyond merely being happy with all that we have.  Rather, the gift of life itself begs us to recognize the lives of our brothers and sisters as no less valuable than our own. Gratefulness expresses itself through peacemaking, redressing the imbalance between rich and poor, respecting other people’s ways of life, offering courageous compassion.  In making gratefulness our own, we are blessed to have shining lights like Sister Magdeleine for inspiration. 
-- Patricia Carlson

"I would like to pass on to my little sisters the important ideal of a holiness which is human. I want them to fix their eyes and their heart on the life of Jesus which was so simple, so that they can get the taste for the extraordinary out of their minds forever, unless, of course, it's a taste for the extraordinarily simple. Then, onto this humanity, we must graft divine love, a love without measure."

While growing up in France, Madeleine Hutin felt a powerful devotion to Jesus, but she could find no religious congregation that reflected her sense of vocation.  Then, in her twenties, she happened upon a biography of Charles de Foucauld, the French explorer, priest, and finally desert father who died in North Africa in 1916.

Foucauld had envisioned a new kind of contemplative life, rooted in the world of the poor and based on the “hidden years” that Jesus spent as a carpenter in Nazareth.  In his hermitage in the Sahara, he had conceived of a “fraternity” of men and women who would live among their Muslim neighbors as brothers and sisters, embracing poverty, manual labor, and a spirit of prayer.  Thus, they would proclaim the gospel, not with their words, “but with their lives.”  For many years Foucauld had patiently prepared the way for followers who never came.  In the end he died alone, his message bequeathed to the appreciation of a later generation.  Decades later, it was discovered, among others, by Madeleine Hutin.  Upon reading his biography she decided immediately to adopt Foucauld as her spiritual guide and to make his vision her own.

Because of poor health and family obligations, Hutin was not able to make a beginning until 1936 when, at the age of thirty-eight, she finally set sail for Algiers.  She embarked with few if any plans, determined to trust herself entirely to providence.  Soon she was introduced to Father René Voillaume, who had been converted by the same biography of Foucauld and whose Little Brothers of Jesus had been living in the desert since 1933.  When she had confided to him her sense of vocation he responded with encouragement as well as invaluable assistance in obtaining the support of local church authorities.  In 1939 the new congregation, the Little Sisters of Jesus, was finally established under the leadership of Little Sister Magdeleine, as she was henceforth known.

The word “Little” had special meaning for Magdeleine.  During the early years of her vocation she had experienced a number of intense visions inspired by her meditations on the Infant Jesus.  The humility, weakness, and vulnerability of a baby were the disguises under which he first appeared.  And it seemed appropriate to her that this baby should also be the inspiration and model for those who wished to bear witness to divine love among the poorest and most powerless of the world.

It was years before the congregation was fully recognized by Rome.  Along the way it was necessary to overcome many doubts and criticisms arising from the originality of Magdeleine’s vision.  Her Little Sisters were neither enclosed contemplatives nor were they engaged in traditional apostolic activities.  They lived in small “fraternities,” some consisting of not more than a couple of Sisters.  While maintaining an intense commitment to contemplative prayer, they endeavored to enter fully into the life and culture of their poor neighbors.  Among other things this meant they wore a simple denim habit adorned with a cross.  What was essential to the Little Sisters was that wherever they lived they should find themselves among the very poor.  As for misunderstandings, she noted that “the world looks for efficiency more than the unobtrusiveness of a hidden life.”  Thus, “Bethlehem and Nazareth will always remain a mystery to it.”

In the beginning, basing her vision on the literal model of Brother Charles, Magdeleine had conceived of the mission of the Little Sisters exclusively in relation to the Muslims of North Africa.  It was there that the congregation took root and flourished.  But gradually, Magdeleine enlarged her vision to conceive of a universal mission.  Hence the fraternities spread throughout the world, attracting women of all races and nationalities.

By the time of her death there were 280 fraternities with 1,400 Little Sisters from 64 different countries.  These included Little Sisters who traveled with gypsy caravans in Europe, who lived with nomadic circus troupes, and who even volunteered as prisoners.  There were communities among the pygmies of Cameroon, in remote Eskimo villages in Alaska, among boat people in Southeast Asia, and in the slums of London, Beirut, and Washington, D.C.  In her later life Magdeleine felt a special call to bear witness in the communist countries of the Eastern bloc.  Driving in a converted minivan, she made dozens of trips throughout Eastern Europe, including eighteen trips to Russia.  Quietly she was able to establish fraternities in a number of these countries.  Whatever the setting, the aim of the Little Sisters was not to evangelize in a formal sense but to serve modestly as a kind of leaven in the midst of the world, imparting a spirit of love.

In 1949 Little Sister Magdeleine formally relinquished leadership of the congregation.  She preferred to play an informal role as mother to her Sisters, traveling constantly around the globe rather than confining herself to the administration of a growing congregation.  Although she had been sickly in her youth, she remained remarkably robust into her old age, continuing to do manual labor well into her eighties and undertaking her final exhausting trip to the Soviet Union at the age of ninety-one.  She died later that year on November 6, 1989.

Additional Resources

See:  Kathryn Spink, The Call of the Desert:  A Biography of Little Sister Magdeleine of Jesus (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1993)