Saint Catherine Laboure: a humble, everyday life type of holiness

Is Saint Catherine Labouré (1806-1876), the visionary of the Virgin Mary at the Rue du Bac (Paris) admirable because of the prestigious nature and fruits of her apparitions? Is it not rather her service to the poor, whom she called, after St Vincent de Paul, "our masters"?

She knew how to approach them on their level with dignity. She mended their clothes with as much care as she mended her own and kept them impeccably clean, witnesses said. [...] She wasn't self-conscious. She dared to talk about God to those she helped. Giving God and giving bread, giving Our Lord and giving her own affection to those who were suffering, all went together, all came from the same heart.

Like Bernadette, she disappointed those who hoped to be impressed and expected to see a highly mystical person. Catherine's own brand of "mysticism" was evangelical simplicity and openness.

With Catherine Laboure, at the dawn of the 19th century, the Holy Spirit was beginning to forge, for a new era, a new type of holiness rooted in the sources of the Gospel: a humble, everyday life type of holiness.

Fr René Laurentin, Life of Catherine Labouré