Élisabeth Leseur
1866-1914 19th century
Silent radiance: loving without preaching, and letting an offered life speak in one's stead.
Who was Élisabeth Leseur?
A Parisian woman of the upper middle class, married to an atheist doctor and journalist, she found her way back to faith around thirty, in a drawing room where the Church was mocked. Never preaching, she chose to love more, and entrusted to her Journal the silent offering of her illness and her griefs. After her death Félix discovered her notebooks; shaken, the former atheist became a Dominican priest and published the Journal, translated throughout the world.
In their own words
Every soul that rises lifts the world with it.
Silence is sometimes an act of energy; so is a smile.
I want to love with a special love those whom birth, religion or ideas set far from me; it is they above all whom I need to understand, and who need me to give them a little of what God has placed in me.
Why do we put off doing good until tomorrow? Why do we wait to be rich before giving? Is there not a gift of oneself better than money, and does a day or even an hour go by without our being able to give a tear or a smile to someone who suffers?