Jeanne Jugan
1792-1879 19th century Feast day: August 30
Chosen littleness, which awaits all from God and serves the forgotten.
Who was Jeanne Jugan?
A Breton fisherman's daughter, servant then nurse, she took in one winter evening a blind old woman and gave her her own bed. From that gesture were born the Little Sisters of the Poor, devoted to the destitute elderly and living themselves by begging. Pushed aside from the leadership of her own congregation, she spent her last twenty-seven years in obscurity, unknown to the young sisters she was forming.
In their own words
It is so beautiful to be poor, to have nothing, to await all from God.
Be little, stay little. Keep yourself very small before God.
To make the aged happy, that is what matters.