Our congregation was founded in Lyon [France], by Claudine Thévenet [1774-1837], the daughter of a silk-merchant, together with André Coindre [1787-1826], a diocesan missionary who later founded the Brothers of the Sacred Heart [1821]. From the beginning of their partnership in mission to the urban poor in the aftermath of civil war, Claudine and Father Coindre moved beyond a small parish venture to ministries with a universal dimension.

Origins

At the age of nineteen, Claudine witnessed the brutal death of two of her brothers during the French Revolution. From that time on, she dedicated her life and resources to alleviating the moral and physical ravages left in its wake. She came to believe that the greatest misfortune was to live and die without knowing God. Under the guidance of Father Coindre, her spiritual advisor, she gathered friends around her to offer shelter and basic education for poor girls, whom she considered the "weakest, the most shameful, the most deprived" of post-Revolutionary French society.

Originally a parish-based pious association of laywomen, with the foundress as its president, the sisters began to assist orphans and the daughters of impoverished silk-weavers of the Lyon region in workschools known as "providences." Later, they directed boarding schools for young ladies of more affluent families.

At Claudine's death in 1837, her institute seemed to be in decline: of the five establishments she had founded, only three remained, all within a thirty-mile radius of Lyon. Yet, by 1842, a small band of sisters left for Agra, India, inaugurating the international and missionary character of the congregation, and thus ensuring papal approbation of its Constitutions in 1847.

Growth and Expansion

Foundations followed quickly in Spain [1850], Eastern Canada [1855], England [1860], the USA [1877], Switzerland [1893], Italy [1896], Mexico/Cuba [1902], Ireland [1912], Argentina [1913], and Germany [1922]. A second wave of expansion occurred in the '50's. By 1968 the congregation's membership reached a peak of over 2600 sisters, in 142 establishments worldwide. In 1959, it absorbed a small Belgian institute, the Sisters of St. Juliana of the Blessed Sacrament. At the time of Vatican Council II, Religious of Jesus and Mary had expanded their apostolic presence to include Latin America [Colombia, Bolivia, Uruguay] Africa [Algeria, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea], Lebanon and New Zealand. The province of Pakistan was formed after the partition of India in 1949.

After Vatican II [1962-65]

Since Vatican II, the Congregation has experienced institutional decline and numerical diminishment, while extending its services more broadly. Sisters have returned to Cuba, and have made foundations in Cameroon, Ecuador, Haiti, Nigeria, Peru, Rumania, Scotland and Syria. A project is under way to unify the provinces of Europe. At their most recent General Chapter in 2001, the delegates of the Congregation made a special “option for Africa,” dedicating the resources and personnel of four provinces to the growth and expansion of RJM as an African delegation.

In 1981, to mark the beatification of Claudine Thévenet, the Congregation explored the formation of an association of lay people who would share the gifts and spirit of the foundress. In 1983, the Family of Jesus and Mary was approved by the General Chapter, and groups began to form throughout the world. Statutes were drawn up and studied by representatives of the FJM. A final text was presented and approved at the General Chapter of 1995. On November 15th of that year, a church decree recognized the FJM as an Association of lay faithful.

As of 2002, there were over 80 groups of FJM in 18 countries, numbering over 1600 members.

St. Claudine Thévenet [Mother Mary St. Ignatius]

The second child and eldest daughter of a bourgeois silk-merchant’s family, Claudine Thévenet was born in Lyon, France on Thursday, March 30th, 1774 and was baptized the next day, Good Friday. Her life began in the security of a pious and well-established Christian family, but was radically changed by the social and religious upheaval of the French Revolution [1789-1801].

In 1795, the “Reign of Terror” struck the teen-aged Claudine – known in her family as “Glady,” -- in a deeply personal way, when she witnessed the brutal execution of two of her brothers, accused of taking part in the resistance Lyon had mounted. This devastating event became a call to radical Gospel living, through the final words her brothers spoke to her: “Forgive, Glady, as we forgive.”

We have no personal written accounts to reveal Claudine’s thoughts and feelings as she looked out on her shattered world and heard the echo of her brothers’ plea for fogiveness. She seems to have been a woman of deeds rather than words. One account describes this event as a turning point in her young life. It was a sorrowful en encounter with Christ crucified, whose dying words of forgiveness were “a light and support for her broken heart.” We do know that once the brothers’ betrayer was discovered, the family chose not to pursue his indictment. The gift of forgiveness was indeed received and offered.

From that time on, Claudine was a faithful witness to pardon, in her work and her humble devotion to the Sacred Heart, from whom she learned active goodness and compassion. Her apostolic vision focused on young girls, whose desperate needs moved her to action. The evidence of her graced experience is seen in what shaped her life and ministry: the conviction that “the greatest misfortune is to live and die without knowing God.”

Claudine emerged as a leader in St. Bruno Parish, in the silk-workers’ district of the city, assuming the presidency of a lay sodality, the Pious Association of the Sacred Heart. Its members, young women of the bourgeoisie, were dedicated to works of piety and charity toward the poor. Under the direction of Father André Coindre, they organized a network of assistance to the needy of the city, through catechetical instruction, almsgiving, visiting hospitals and helping people to know God.

On October 6, 1818, at the age of 44, Claudine left her elderly mother and moved to a small apartment in Pierres-Plantées, with a silk-weaver, an orphan and a loom. So began her leadership as the founding superior of a new women’s congregation, known at the time as the “Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.” At the first vow ceremony in 1823, she took the name of Mary St.Ignatius, in honor of the Jesuit founder who inspired her spirituality and shaped her apostolic style.

Three years later, the small group of sisters moved to the hill of Fourvière, where they began a flourishing providence and boarding school for girls. In time, there were five such institutions in the region. But struggles of every kind seemed to hamper the growth of Claudine’s congregation. When she died on February 3, 1837, her identification with Christ crucified and abandoned was complete. Only three communities remained to carry on the apostolic work she had begun. Her last words, “How good God is!” were an expression of her trust and an echo of Christ’s own cry of surrender.

Claudine Thévenet was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 4, 1981, and canonized on March 21, 1993, the day after one of her Canadian daughters, Dina Bélanger, Marie Ste-Cécile de Rome [1897-1929], was beatified.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CLAUDINE:

Bonet, Antonia, RJM [ed.]. A Missionary Epic. Letters of M. St.Thérèse [Marie-Claudine Motte, foundress of Indian mission, 1842]. Rome: Religious of Jesus and Mary, 1992.

Farnham, Janice, RJM [ed.and trans.]. Letters of Claudine Thévenet. New York: Jan Press, 1977.

_______ and Rosemary Mangan, RJM. Claudine Thévenet. A Spiritual Profile. Hyattsville, MD: 1974.

Horny, Jeanne-Marie, RJM. Claudine Thévenet, 1774-1837. Translated from the French by Thomas More Borrell, RJM. Rome: Edizioni Vivere, 1993.

[Hugon, Eugénie]. History of the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary According to Contemporary Witnesses. Translated by Thomas More Borrell, RJM, and expanded from the original edition of 1896. Pune: Anand Press, 1992.

Montesinos, Gabriela Maria, RJM. The Life and Times of Claudine Thévenet [Mother Mary St. Ignatius]. Translated by Catherine M. Dell. Pune: Anand Press, 1973.

Dina Belanger/ Mother St. Cecile of Rome
A Hidden Way of Suffering and Prayer

Dina Belanger’s life was one of great simplicity. Outwardly, nothing extraordinary happened; inwardly she was led to the depths of an intimate relationship with Christ and His Mother Mary. Her extraordinary gift of contemplative prayer opened her to receive revelations that have become her heritage to the People of God.

Born on April 30, 1897, in Quebec, Canada, Dina was the only child of affluent parents. As a child, she was known to be self-willed and tenacious, but even at that early age, she exhibited a remarkable sensitivity to the spiritual life.

Upon the completion of her secondary education, Dina moved to New York City, where she studied music and piano performance at what would later be known as the Juilliard School of Music. During that time, she stayed with the Religious of Jesus and Mary, the congregation she would enter in Sillery, Canada, in 1921. She took the religious name of M. St. Cecile de Rome, the patroness of musicians.

After her first profession on August 15, 1923, Dina taught music for a few months. However, in the first months of her ministry she was plagued by illness. She contracted tuberculosis and died on September 4, 1929, at the age of thirty-two.

Love and Let Jesus and Mary Have Their Way

Early in her religious life, her superiors recognized that Dina experienced profound union with God and had private revelations from Jesus. They asked her to write an account of how God had been leading her.. At great cost to herself, Dina set down what came to be known as her spiritual autobiography, The Canticle of Love. In this book, we come to see the depth of Dina’s love for the Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist and her great devotion to Mary.. She also felt a special call from Christ to pray and suffer for priests and all in consecrated life. Like Therese of Lisieux, whom she admired, Dina wrote of her deep desire to be a “beggar of love” for the suffering world. Her Canticle of Love has been translated into several languages, spreading that love to many peoples and fulfilling Christ’s promise to Dina that she would do good by her writings.

Dina’s motto, “Love and let Jesus and Mary have their way,” sums up the whole desire of her life. Dina was beatified by Pope John Paul II on March 20, 1993, the evening before the foundress of the Congregation, Claudine Thevenet, was canonized. By declaring Dina among the BLESSED, the Church proclaims that her simple, hidden life put no bounds to love, and, in the Christian dispensation, love is the only measure.

RELIGIOUS OF JESUS AND MARY [RJM] IN THE UNITED STATES

The American experience of Religious of Jesus and Mary mirrors this nation's evolution within a multi-cultural and heterogeneous population. In 1877, four sisters from Québec, Canada, arrived at Notre Dame Parish in Fall River, MA, where they opened an elementary school, an orphanage and a night school to meet the educational needs of a growing population of French-Canadian mill workers. From there, they branched out to staff other parochial schools, to direct private boarding schools at elementary and secondary levels in New Hampshire [1881], Rhode Island [1884], and New York [1904], where they had already opened a residence for working women in lower Manhattan [1902].

Growth and Expansion

With the expulsion of religious congregations from Mexico during its decades of persecution and civil war [1917-39], sisters arrived in the southwestern U.S. to start a boarding school in El Paso, Texas [1926]. They moved into border towns of New Mexico and southern California, where they ministered to Hispanic communities, staffed a women's residence in San Diego [1937] and taught in several parish schools. The expatriates also opened a novitiate for Mexican candidates to the congregation.

Communities in the eastern U.S. formed part of the Canadian-American province until 1948-49, when they became autonomous as the Eastern-American province. The post-war influx of novices and other circumstances led the provincial, Mother Vincent Ferrer Ducharme [1895-1955], to move the province's headquarters from Highland Mills, New York, to Hyattsville, Maryland, in the newly-formed Archdiocese of Washington, DC.

In August of 1955, sisters took up residence in yet-unfinished buildings, and opened a private girls' high school on the property, where the novitiate and infirmary were also housed. Communities in the southwest were dependent on Spain and Mexico until 1960, when they were established as the Western-American province. In 1968, both U.S. provinces were united, bringing together 341 sisters in sixteen educational institutions. Throughout the twentieth century, sisters have been sent from the U.S. to Europe and Canada, as well as to missions in India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Colombia and Bolivia.

After Vatican II

Since Vatican II, the Congregation has experienced institutional decline and numerical diminishment in Western Europe and North America, while extending its services to broader educational and pastoral needs in various part of the developing world. Sisters in the U.S., numbering 109 in 2004, have closed many schools and convents. But they have multiplied their ministries by collaborating with other religious congregations, lay colleagues and associates at every level. Since 1971, they have sponsored and directed QUEST, a project of volunteer-communities in service to the urban poor. In 1977, they initiated the first of several "Christian communities" in the province, where sisters and young adults share prayer, life and ministry.

In 1997, following a unanimous decision of their provincial chapter, three sisters began a ministry in Gros Morne, Haiti, in the diocese of Gonaives, as partners with the Montfortian Fathers there. In 2002, a second mission was opened in the mountains of Jean Rabel. The Haitian mission has been supported by the HAITI-QUEST volunteers, as well as the contributions of many generous benefactors.

Sophia House, in Arlington, Massachusetts, will open its doors in October of 2004. Sponsored by the U.S. province, it will offer a community setting for four women in active discernment about a possible vocation to religious life.

The charism of the foundress, threatened with extinction at its origin, seems to have found new life once again in a flourishing lay association, the Family of Jesus and Mary [FJM], which numbers over 1900 members worldwide. There are four groups of associates in the United States: in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and New Hampshire.