Saint Julie Billiart, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur 

Julie simply named her institute after Our Lady: what she was and is in her essence, her inner self, her life. The French peasant saint looked toward the Virgin Mother of God and saw all that she wanted her Sisters to represent. She saw a woman wholly open and given to God in a constant yes which changed history when it accepted Gabriel’s message and remained steady and faithful through all the darkness and light, suffering and joy that followed. She saw one who received the Word, gave birth to the Word and kept the Word in her heart. She saw the Mother who lived the long, silent years at Nazareth in sheer faith and ordinariness: the human example that Jesus had before him of care, generosity, courage and hope in daily life. From whom but his Mother did he get practical experience of lost coins, leaven in dough, unseasoned patches and wineskins? Who, if not she, was the image in his mind when he described the blessed person in the beatitudes? Julie saw in Our Lady the one who lived the gospel before the gospels were written; who accompanied her Son, deeply and intimately involved in the incarnation and redemption; who accepted the personal suffering of growing from being physically the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth to being spiritually the Mother of the Lord of Glory and of the church. Julie was struck by one who knew how to act promptly, as she did [for Elizabeth] and at Cana, but who could also stand steadfast waiting at the foot of the Cross and who was content to remain in the wings of her Son’s drama for by far the greatest part of her life. Assumed in glory, Virgin of Israel, Image of the Church, Our Lady was not just a historical figure for St. Julie, any more than God was just a theological proposition. She was rather a living person of exquisite loveliness, full of tenderness and strength, holy with the holiness of God and, for that very reason, intimately close on the daily journey of life to all those who had been given to her, and to whom she had been given, in her Son’s last gift of love.
Julie was concerned primarily with the inner self of Our Lady: her heart and her spirit. Julie wanted her Sisters to be a presence of Mary for God, for the Church and for others in such a way that the divine love could work through them for the salvation of all, as it did through Our Lady.