Pauline Jaricot

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In October of 2019 I threw out the crazy goal of 10 thousand people praying the Rosary daily by means of this podcast by August 22nd of 2020, and then a million by the end of 2025. The Little Sisters of the Lamb, a wonderful religious order in KC, let me know that someone had already done this. A 19-year-old lay person in the early 1800’s. They insisted that I come to their monastery so that they could give me a book about this young woman - Venerable Pauline Jaricot. She died on January 9, 1862 and she already has one miracle attributed to her intercession so it is likely se will be canonized one day and the day of a saints death often becomes their feast day. But we missed it Saturday so I share her life with you today.

She was born in 1799 in Lyon, France and created the Living Rosary movement there. Her brother Philéas had become a missionary priest to Asia, which had its headquarters at the foreign mission society in Paris. Though founded in 1622, it had fallen on dire financial times and they were unable to spread their mission. It was at this moment in 1818, when Pauline was just 19 years old, that she had an inspiration.

In her diary she writes, “One evening, while my parents were playing cards and I was sitting by the fireside, I asked God for help, or should I say for an appropriate plan. A clear intuition of this plan came to my mind, I understood just how easy it would be for each person that I knew well to find ten members who would donate one frank a week for the propagation of the faith. At the same time I saw how suitable it would be to choose from the more efficient of the members, those who seemed the most trustworthy, and get them to collect the member’s funds from ten leaders of groups of ten. It would also be useful to have one leader who would collect the funds from ten leaders of groups of one hundred and deposit them in the central fund.

“Lest I should forget this way of organizing things I wrote it all down at once and was amazed considering how easy and simple it all was, that no one had thought of it before me.”

With this inspiration she began to collect the equivalent in our time of 20 dollars a month from people, to fund not only the evangelization of Asia but also to fund the evangelization of America, for this was not long after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. What she was inspired to create at this moment in 1818 became the Pontifical Mission Society, which funds evangelization to this day across the entire globe.

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What Pauline started was good, but there was something more powerful to come. In 1824, her spiritual director ordered her to retire from the active life and devote herself to a hidden life of prayer, taking care of her elderly father and being a simple member of the parish while relinquishing the leadership of the Propagation of the Faith. She obeyed, and she then witnessed that most parishioners had little or no prayer life and very little knowledge of the faith, so she began again to think. At first she helped missions in foreign lands. But her own town, her own land, her own family friends, that’s where the real mission field lay.

She lived in the secular world of the post-French revolution that suppressed the Catholic faith. Witnessing this, she was inspired to see that the only antidote to radicular secularism and atheism was prayer. And it seemed to Pauline that the Rosary was the miraculous solution to the spiritual problem of her day, it was the only thing that could turn a radically secular society back to Jesus.

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The founding of the living rosary.

In 1826, Pauline started to form groups of fifteen people, with each member of the group committing to recite one decade of the rosary each day, but on the condition that they actually mediated on the life and teaching of Jesus, not just saying the words. In that way, all fifteen mysteries were prayed each day by the group. Then, Pauline encouraged individuals and families to invite others to join them to make up the groups of fifteen, which she called the Living Rosary.

Pauline wrote, “The rosary groups should invite anyone, the good, the mediocre, and others who had nothing to offer but their good will. Fifteen pieces of coal, one is well lit, there are four or five that are half lit, and the rest not lit at all. Put the fifteen together and you have a blazing fire.”

So each undertook to invite five others in the living rosary movement who in their turn would bring five more. And in ten years there were one million members in this living rosary. And by 1862, two and a half million members in France alone. With no social media.

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What grew out of the Living Rosary groups were deep friendships among people. Then Pauline realized the need to create and distribute good reading content to give people something to reflect upon and discuss, to foster good conversation and a desire to learn more about the Catholic faith.  She wanted form those who would form others in the faith and created and distributed great content. So what did she do? She asked for monthly support to make it happen. She wrote, “Lift up your hearts, let us no longer be concerned with our petty personal interests or be sad over trivial things. Let us embrace the universe in the resolutions we make. Jesus died for all men, why weaken our hearts by restrictive desires?”

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Venerable Pauline wanted form those who would form others in the faith, especially by friendship, good conversation and the Rosary. The movement she began made it to Poland. And there a young man named Karol Woytyla met Jan Tyranowski in February of 1940.

During WWII the parish of Karol Wojtyla was

·       St Stanislaw Kostka at Debniki, in Kracow

The Parish was run by the Salesians

·       Who were deported by the Nazis

·       to the Dachau concentration camp

Before they were taken away

·       the Salesians entrusted their work

·       of forming the young people to a layman - Jan Tyranowski

Tyranowski was an introverted tailor who heard a sermon in which the priest said,

·       It is not difficult to be a saint

Tyranowski took this as the TRUTH

·       So he got serious about learning his faith

·       his prayer life - a life of meditation

·       the practice of virtue

·       and he became a living saint

Tyranowski created “Living Rosary” groups

·       Groups of 15 young men,

·       Each group led by a more mature young person

Tyranowski picked Karol Woytyla to lead one of the Living Rosary groups

·       So he was formed personally by Tyranowski

Tryanowski taught them

·       The Fundamentals of prayer

·       and the spiritual life

·       And how to develop a life of virtue

He introduced Karrol to

·       St John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila

·       the Doctors of Prayer

·       and helped him understand their works

·       and discern his vocation to the priesthood

Karol Woytla became St. John Paul II

One Layman formed one young person

·       And the whole world was changed

You are a Christian and still on this earth because God has a mission for you to help other people to know Mary and through them – Jesus.

Are you willing to fulfill your mission or are you still under the illusion that someone else’s job