Blessed Marie of the Incarnation: A Saint for Our Times

Debra Black shares the story of Blessed Marie of the Incarnation, a little-known wife, mother, and friend of all.  

Too often we think of the saints as being role models of sanctity which we cannot ourselves achieve. Or we look for a saint ‘like us’, one that lives a normal life, but only find saints that lived in extraordinary circumstances. However, if April 18 were not Good Friday this year, we would be celebrating a saint who had all the ordinary challenges of life as a wife, mother, and friend in love with her God and her Catholic faith.

She placed her hope in our Lord and her many sufferings in His crucifixion as she experienced her own type of passion enduring a cruel childhood followed by a riches-to-rags-to riches adult life. It is fitting that this stigmatist’s feast day falls, this year, on Good Friday. 

Blessed Marie of the Incarnation 

Known to us as Blessed Marie, she was simply Barbe to her contemporaries. However, the 16th-century Blessed Marie of the Incarnation should not be confused with Saint Marie of the Incarnation, a 17th-century woman recently canonized by Pope Francis. Our Blessed Marie lived a holy life as wife and mother in Paris, as well as being a dear friend to Saints Francis de Sales and Vincent de Paul.   

A mystic who eventually received the stigmata, her husband Pierre “was a hot-headed adventurer, indolent, and critical," jealous of her spiritual growth, even maligning her with priests. Eventually Pierre was exiled for his defense of the Church and, unfortunately, his lack of prudence left the family near poverty. All children were sent away to various relatives and boarding schools, she went to live with a cousin, and their possessions were sold.

However, her prudent management resulted in sorting out her husband’s various legal and financial issues, and the family was able to reunite once again. It is said that “Barbe never criticised her husband for his reckless ways and her love for him never faltered in spite of all the hardship he had caused her.” She didn’t malign her husband but, rather, focused on raising children of honesty, virtue, and character.  

Her own home was open to clergy needing respite and to give spiritual advice to those who sought it. She opened monasteries in France for both the Discalced Carmelites and the Ursulines, opened a refuge for prostitutes and was known for her charity to the poor. Of their six children, three daughters became Carmelite nuns and their son a priest; at the end of her life (after her husband’s death) she joined the Carmelites as well.  

She is patroness:  

• against impoverishment, 
• against loss of parents, 
• against poverty, 
• of parents separated from children, 
• of poor people, 
• and of widows.

Blessed Marie’s prayer is most pertinent to our needs today. May we pray this together in communion through our Lord Jesus Christ:  

Prayer of Blessed Mary of the Incarnation  

Lord Jesus, conform my spirit to your blessed humanity, filling my mind with knowledge and my memory with a continual recollection of You, my will with an ardent affection for your Majesty, [conform] my soul to your very holy soul... Enlighten me inwardly with the light of your Divinity, all the more so as I believe, by it, that you are totally within me. By this means, I very humbly beg you to look from now on through my eyes, speak by my tongue, and accomplish by all my members and senses the things which are agreeable to you. Amen.  

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Copyright 2025 Debra Black
Images: (top, bottom) Canva; (center) iStockPhoto.com, licensed for use by Holy Cross Family Ministries