Sister Liz Tiernan reflects on how St. Julie Billiart's echoes the words found in National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's poem "The Hill We Climb."
The beautiful, challenging poetry of Amanda's wondrous presentation, as well as her delivery, her cadence, her expression, the use of her hands, her body language, were a compelling message to the whole world, and those who heard her that day in Washington were moved to stunned silence.
Her closing words especially, reminded me of St. Julie Billiart, the Foundress we gather to honor today.
"When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame,
And unafraid, the new dawn balloons, as we free it.For there was always light.
If only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it."
And St. Julie, growing up in the troubled time of The French Revolution was "brave enough to see it," was "brave enough to be it."
Born in 1851, she spread this LIGHT first in the tiny village of Cuvilly, France, where she found within herself a love of God and his goodness which animated her entire life.
How amazing that this young girl, Marie Rose Julie Billiart, in many ways an ordinary child filled with love and laughter, would put her great love of the GOODNESS of God into a vision that would spread throughout the world and endures today.