Mother Mectilde

Catherine de Bar (1614-1698)--in religion, Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament--stands out among the luminous spiritual masters of seventeenth-century France as one of the great teachers of the interior life, a woman of the stature of St Gertrude the Great or St Teresa of Avila. Living in a period marked by superstition, sacrilege, and war, Mother Mectilde responded with a call to faithful reparation, self-abandoning adoration, frequent Communion, and total adherence to the Eucharistic Lord. Even while she suffered exile, illness, poverty, dangers, and uncertainties on all sides, she offered counsel and comfort to men and women in every state of life, teaching them how to surrender to Divine Providence and how to become ever more united with Christ. 

By her death in 1698, Mother Mectilde had overseen the foundation of seven houses of her Institute. Today, there are over thirty monasteries of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration around the world. Mother Mectilde's English speaking progeny includes monks, nuns, and lay oblates across Ireland, Great Britain, the United States, the Netherlands, and Uganda.