Little Sister Magdeleine of Jesus
Madeleine Hutin, taking the name Little Sister Magdeleine of Jesus (April 26, 1898–November 6, 1989), founded a Roman Catholic community of religious sisters, the Little Sisters of Jesus, on September 8, 1939 in Touggourt, Algeria. She was inspired by the life and writings of Charles de Foucauld (also known as Father de Foucauld or Brother Charles of Jesus).
Little Sister Magdeleine began by sharing the life of semi-nomads on the outskirts of a Saharan oasis. Little Sisters of Jesus now live in sixty-three countries throughout the world.
Elisabeth Marie Magdeleine Hutin was born in Paris on April 26, 1898. Her family came from Lorraine. Madeleine was the youngest of 6 children. Already as a young child, when on holidays with her grandmother in Seuzey, only 30 miles from the German border, she experienced the growing tensions between France and Germany. She thought of religious life from an early age and was always very attentive to those she saw to be less fortunate than herself. Through her father she learnt to have a great love for Africa and for the Arab world. As a young army doctor in Tunisia, injured in a fall from a horse, he nevertheless jeopardized both his health and his career by riding fifty kilometers to collect some serum to save the life of a small Arab child ill with diphtheria. The effort left his disabled and forced to retire, but he never regretted what he had done.
She enrolled at a boarding school run by the religious of the Sacred Heart, but in 1907 the French government closed all religious schools and the Sacred Heart Sisters transferred their students elsewhere. Magdeleine wound up in a boarding school in San Sebastian, Spain and later in San Remo, Italy.
She was 16 when the 1914-1918 war broke out, and the family took refuge in Aix en Provence. Suezey was destroyed by the German army and when her grandmother refused to leave her home, she was shot. Her two brothers died in the battle in 1916 and her sister died of Spanish flu. Magdeleine herself contracted pleurisy, complicated by tuberculosis.
With her father Madeleine discovered the life of Father de Foucauld written by Rene Bazin in 1921. "Brother Charles represented for me what it means to live the Gospel. In embracing absolute poverty and in abandoning himself to the utterly abandoned, he lived the fullness of love." Reading the life of Charles de Foucald, who died without a follower, Madeleine was convinced that God was calling her to become one of the ‘little sisters’ that Charles so longed for.
Her father died suddenly and Madeleine, who was 21, could not leave her mother. She would still have to wait to be able to leave for the Sahara to follow in the footsteps of Charles de Foucauld. Meanwhile, she worked in Nantes for 8 years as headmistress of the Sacred Heart Convent School. Although she suffered from deforming arthritis she was determined to pursue her goal. For her Jesus was the ‘Master of the Impossible’. Any treatment she followed made no difference and in despair a specialist encouraged her to leave and go to live in a completely dry climate: "like the Sahara", he added. Never could she have dreamt of receiving such advice. She had waited 20 years to go to the Sahara. It was clear to her that God was leading her life: ‘God took me by the hand and blindly I followed.’
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