World Day of Consecrated Life – February 2, 2024
In 1997, Pope Saint John Paul II instituted a day of prayer for women and men in consecrated life. It is celebrated on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. This special day is meant to highlight the gift of consecrated persons for the whole Church just as Mary presented Jesus in the temple.
We, Sisters of Providence, are eternally grateful to Blessed Emilie Tavernier Gamelin, our Foundress, who in the same way offered herself in service to God.
As a young child, Emilie, was initiated by her mother to welcome beggars and all those who knocked at the door and asked for “charity for the love of God.” She was always attentive to God’s will for her. She married, at the age of 23, Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, who was 50 years old, and the owner of an apple orchard, and known for his love and generosity towards the poor.
Three boys were born from this marriage but Providence had other plans for Emilie and childhood illnesses took these three little angels away from the grieving mother. Emilie also saw her husband die on October 1, 1827, after only four years of happiness.
What will become of Emilie? She is 28 years old, young, full of energy, and always animated by the desire to give of herself. Her spiritual director, Father Bréguier dit Saint-Pierre, p.s.s., encouraged her, and invited her to pray to Our Mother of Sorrows! After prayer and reflection, Emilie found her way… she devotes herself to the aid of those living in misery and becomes involved in various charitable associations that are already well organized in Montreal. She visits the elderly, the sick and the needy in their homes.
Then one day, she opened her own shelter for elderly, sick and abandoned women. For fifteen years, from 1828 to 1842, she devoted herself to this suffering population.
Monsignor Ignace Bourget, then Bishop of Montreal, while traveling in Europe, was inspired to ask the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, to come to Montreal to take charge of the work of Emilie Gamelin, for if she were to fall ill, what would become of this work that was so necessary.
Upon his return, he discussed this project with his “faithful parishioner” and, far from being offended by this decision, which seemed to want to take away from her what she had started so willingly and which had been progressing for 15 years, she encouraged it though Emilie wondered about her own future. For her, religious life is not what she is called to, but she wants to continue to give of herself to others!
She met with Bishop Bourget, they prayed together and Emilie found the path to which she believed herself called, and which her bishop approved: she committed herself by vow to continue to give herself to others…
And on February 2, 1842, when she was almost 42 years old, she made a private vow, in the presence of Bishop Bourget, to “continue to serve the poor as long as her strength would permit”.
On this day of Consecrated Life, instituted by Saint Pope John Paul II, we will surely be happy to renew our own commitment as Sisters of Providence, while thanking the Lord, with Emilie who herself wrote: “I thank you, O God, for the great grace of religious life; it is you alone who inspired me to this purpose.” Jubilate Deo!
Yvette Demers, SP †
deceased in August 2023,
former vice-postulator of the Cause Emilie Gamelin