Saint Julie Billiart: The Smiling Saint

During the French Revolution, Saint Julie Billiart began her own revolution. With a good friend she opened schools for poor girls and founded the Sisters of Notre Dame, a religious community that departed from traditional ones. Although paralyzed for twenty-three years, she was consumed with zeal for teaching the faith to people who had been deprived of it for years. While suffering physically, persecuted by revolutionaries and clergy, and criticized by her own Sisters, Julie never failed to proclaim, "How good is the good God!" Remarkably, after a miraculous healing at the age of fifty-two, Julie made 120 journeys, often on foot, to found houses and schools in France and Belgium. Her entire life is nothing short of a miracle.