Saint Julie is the smiling saint. In almost every portrait and statue we have, she’s smiling.

Why, though, in the midst of family bankruptcy, prolonged incapacitation, pain and persecution, threats against her life, would she be this smiling saint?

Because in every difficulty, Julie opened the doorway of her heart to the presence of God.

Julie knew the presence of God in the Eucharist, in her prayer and contemplation, in her miraculous healing from paralysis, in the vision given her of a worldwide congregation of Sisters.

She smiled because she experienced all these doorways to God.

But I believe Julie knew another doorway, another reason that lifted her heart and energized her body. It was simply finding God through people.

In ancient times people worshipped idols, often of animals or mythological creatures. They prayed before statues of demigods and pharaohs. They thought of these statues and images as links through which they could encounter their gods.

In Hebrew, the word for this link was tselem (in Greek, icon). But with a very different meaning. In the Book of Genesis, the word tselem did not mean encountering God through an inanimate object or image. Instead, tselem meant the human being standing next to you. The doorway to God – the link – was our neighbor.

To connect with God, to find the nearest doorway to God, we have only to turn to our neighbor. To appreciate our neighbor is to appreciate God. To love our neighbor is to love God. The most powerful way to find God’s presence in our life is to walk in our neighbor’s shoes.

When Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he identified simply and certainly the stranger robbed and left bloodied by the roadside. In other words, whoever is hurting and in need.

Julie knew this. She ministered tirelessly to people in need, the hurting, the abandoned. And always with a smile. Because in these individuals – these neighbors – she found the doorway to God. This same doorway stands open to all of us. The doorway may be a little girl in Cincinnati learning to read; or a blind boy in Kenya receiving an education; or parents struggling in the Democratic Republic of Congo to provide clean, disease-free water for their children. The doorway may be a friend or co-worker once independent and strong but now dependent and afraid.

And this doorway swings both ways. Walking through it, you find God. And the person on the other side also finds God – in you.

We Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur find God in you. It’s your partnership with us that is both a doorway unto itself and a means through which we have doorways to others. You are the link that builds the schools where children learn what they need for life, that makes education possible for children who are blind or deaf, that digs the wells providing safe water.

Your support keeps our ministries strong. Schools, good works, ministries abroad, ministries here.

How can St. Julie not be smiling with us?

Please support us as you’re able, and know we are praying for you.

Sincerely,

Sister Kathleen Harmon, SNDdeN
Provincial