Evangelizing Every Ordinary Day

Sr. Margaret Kerry, FSP, describes the life of Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl, whose spirituality invites us to bring the Gospel to our ordinary circumstances.

A publisher asked me to endorse a book of Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl’s writings coming out in the spring. I reflected that God provides saints when needs arise. God surprised us with Madeleine Delbrêl. She found a way to clarify and unclutter our call to evangelize.

Delbrêl was no stranger to our desacralized world. Her conversion came about through Christians witnessing joy in their faith. Her spirituality invites us to bring the Gospel to the most ordinary circumstances.

Riding the subway, taking up the broom or the pen, answering the door, sewing or caring for a sick person—Jesus in us continues to be sent.” (Madeleine Delbrêl, We the Ordinary People of the Streets)

Jesus in us! That is the gift of our Baptism, where our call to evangelization originates. We are the body of Christ. Christ continues to be sent by the Father. We are, to paraphrase St. Teresa of Avila, the hands and feet of Christ.

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Her childhood was without faith, and she became an agnostic. When her parents separated she continued to minister to her psychologically fragile father. She suffered from depression and debilitating migraines. At the age of 15, Delbrêl became an atheist.

Friendship with Christians brought her peace. Pope Francis describes her search of God as giving voice to a profound thirst that she felt within and came to learn that the “emptiness that cried out her anguish in her,” was God who sought her (Pope Francis General Audience, Nov. 8, 2023). “By reading and reflecting, I found God; but by praying, I believed that God found me and that he is a living reality, and that we can love him in the same way that we can love a person” (The Holiness of Ordinary People; Ignatius Press release in Spring 2024). At the age of twenty Madeleine gave her life to Christ.

When it became clear that she could not enter the Carmelites, Delbrêl assumed her call to bring the Gospel by, “living the friendly presence of a disciple of Christ.” United to Christ, “waves of God’s charity could go to the ends of the world and until the end of time.” She trusted that nothing in life is accidental: “God does not leave anything to chance; the pulsations of our lives are immense because he has willed them all. From the moment we wake up…” (The Holiness of Ordinary People).

For Delbrêl, “the obedience of faith consists in loving God more than anything else.” For her the daily circumstances of life are a call to obedience as to our superiors. “Every action is an immense event in which Paradise is given to us, in which we can give Paradise” (The Holiness of Ordinary People).

Madeleine believed that the Church’s mission depends on each one of us, no matter who we are or what our state in life.” (Archbishop José H. Gomez)

Delbrêl knew that “mission means doing the very work of Christ wherever we happen to be. We will not be the church, and salvation will not reach the ends of the earth, unless we help save the people in the very situations in which we live” (Delbrêl, quoted by Archbishop José H. Gomez).