Barbe Avrillot, who became the wife of Pierre Acarie at the age of sixteen and a half, shows during his thirty-two years of marriage that the highest mystical life is not incompatible with any of the obligations of family and social life.

In this heart wholly in God, maternal love will know how to be tender and firm. A seasoned educator, Madame Acarie brings up her six children without weakness or harshness: by turns cheerful and serious, she is the adviser to her three sons and three daughters.

Woman of influence in a prominent milieu, belonging to the Parisian « haute robe » by her birth, her alliances and her fortune, she is held in consideration in the circles of power, at the Court, and even by the Sovereigns, thanks to its sole human and spiritual influence. It testifies that POWER IS A SERVICE.

Helping in any distress, people come to consult her from all sides, attracted by her prudence and her supernatural enlightenment. His individual action, however fruitful it may have been, does not equal what we would today call his « social » action.

The sense that she had, in fact, of the need to combine forces to make them more effective, made before the date a model of member of Catholic Action: she was the initiator of all the great Parisian works of her time. time, and she responds to all the distresses encountered on her way.

Her best claim to fame is undoubtedly having been the introducer to France of the daughters of Saint Teresa of Avila.

Prepared by sufferings of all kinds, Madame Acarie will know how to respond fully to the divine mission. When Saint Thérèse appeared to her twice, ordering her on behalf of God to implant her Order in France, this woman, so flexible to God and to men, had for a long time, without knowing it, a Carmelite soul and heart. .

At this time of strong political tensions, Madame Acarie therefore sent a group of people to Spain, in order to obtain the arrival of several Spanish Carmelites to found a first Carmel in France. It is done, October 18, 1604, in Paris.

Her best claim to fame is undoubtedly having been the introducer to France of the daughters of Saint Teresa of Avila.

Prepared by sufferings of all kinds, Madame Acarie will know how to respond fully to the divine mission. When Saint Thérèse appeared to her twice, ordering her on behalf of God to implant her Order in France, this woman, so flexible to God and to men, had for a long time, without knowing it, a Carmelite soul and heart.

At this time of strong political tensions, Madame Acarie therefore sent a group of people to Spain, in order to obtain the arrival of several Spanish Carmelites to found a first Carmel in France. It is done, October 18, 1604, in Paris.

Illnesses, family hardships (husband, children, elderly father), reverses of fortune and all kinds of work carried out with courage and abnegation made his life a long way of the Cross.

From the age of 27, she received the stigmata, a grace of configuration to the Suffering Christ. She is the first French woman whose veracity of the stigmata – although invisible – has been attested by eminent figures.

When the news of the death of Sister Marie de l’Incarnation spread in the city (Pontoise) on April 18, 1618, people said : « The Saint is dead ! »

It is not a question here of recalling the miracles, there were many, nor of speaking of the testimonies of veneration which manifested themselves at his burial, and then around his tomb, but the fact that his own son, Pierre Acarie, challenged by these astonishing facts, demanded the opening of the investigations which could lead to the beatification, from 1622.

These surveys, completed in 1632, were not taken into consideration in Rome until the end of the 18th century. The Beatification was celebrated at Saint Peter’s in Rome on June 5, 1791.

Madame Acarie was beatified by the Church two hundred years after her death, and her canonization process is underway.
Today, it requires a miracle recognized by the Church to succeed.
Will the recognition, today, of the holiness of Mary of the Incarnation, extending her worship to the whole Church, come to fill with new joy the Christians of the third millennium after the Incarnation of the Savior?
The new saints can only enrich the Church. It is to love the glory of God to rejoice in the holiness of his servants.

Prayer to request canonization :

O most holy and admirable Trinity, who deigned to grant to your Servant, the Blessed Mary of the Incarnation, an ardent interior life, joined to an intense activity entirely devoted to your glory, teach us to do your will and give – us to be able to extend the reign of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ Our Lord. Draw us to You to burn us with the fire of your love and deign to hasten the hour of the glorification of your faithful Servant by granting us the grace that we ask of You today through her intercession. Amen.