Saint Mother Mary of Jesus Deluil-Martiny
Foundress of the Daughters of the Heart of Jesus
(1841-1884)

Marie-Caroline-Philomène Deluil-Martiny was born in Marseille on May 28, 1841. Her father, a distinguished lawyer and devout Christian, had earned the esteem of his fellow citizens who appointed him deputy municipal councilor and hospital administrator. Her mother, Annaïs de Sollière, was the great-niece of the venerable Anne-Madeleine Rémusat, the pious Visitandine who inspired Bishop Belzunce with the idea of consecrating his diocese to the Sacred Heart during the plague of 1720.

Remarkably precocious, Marie showed from her earliest years, through her qualities of heart and mind, her energy and charming spontaneity, what she would one day become. The youngest in her class and the most advanced, she achieved brilliant academic success. Her zeal for God led her to create with her companions, as a form of play, a miniature order that she named "Oblates of Mary." She completed at the Sacred Heart of Lyon the studies she had begun at the Visitation of Marseille, and there too she won all hearts. "One could not see her without loving her," one of her companions would say of her. At her end-of-studies retreat, she wrote: "O Master, You will be my Master always! Do with me as You please; but I beseech You that it may please You to enclose me in Your Heart and make me suffer there something for Your greater glory and Your pure love."

Upon returning to her family, Marie became an apostle of the Sacred Heart. In 1864, a Visitandine nun introduced her to the Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart: "We will succeed one another hour by hour to glorify, love, console the Sacred Heart, to gather in spirit the Most Precious Blood and Water that came from His Wound and offer them to God in reparation for sins." This work fully responded to the secret aspirations of the young woman, and she became its ardent promoter, distributing tracts and medals, composing hymns.

The Foundress

"The Heart of Jesus is an infinite treasure of love, wisdom and power. Let us allow Him to trace the path He wishes," she wrote at that time. Under the spiritual direction of Fr. Calage, S.J., she formed herself in prayer and solid virtues, and made a vow of virginity, thus marking her desire to belong entirely to God. Her attractions became more precise: "I have only one occupation in my prayers," she said, "to offer Jesus with all His blood, to offer Him ceaselessly for priestly and consecrated souls and to offer myself with Him."

In 1868, she undertook a pilgrimage to La Salette and noted upon her return: "The Blessed Virgin is going to form a new family that She will place as a rampart of love before divine Justice. It is destined to heal the wide Wound of the Heart of Jesus." Her director approved this project: "Yes, God is preparing a generation of victim souls. He has been working on this for a long time." For his part, Bishop Cruize of Marseille, deeply moved by a sacrilege committed at Saint-Giniez, urged the realization of her undertaking: "It will be the Carmel of the Sacred Heart," he said.

However, trials descended upon her; her three sisters and her brother died one after another. She remained alone at home with her parents who were ill and struck by financial setbacks. She also felt cruelly the effects of the war of 1870. "My crosses are a consequence of the act of oblation that Our Lord had me make," she judged.

Monsignor van den Berghe, a Belgian prelate, obtained from Pius IX a brief of encouragement for the new Institute and presented her to Cardinal Dechamp, Archbishop of Malines. The young woman explained her project to him: It would be the adoration of the Most Holy Trinity through the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, the only true Adorer worthy of the divine Majesty; it would be souls taking possession of the perpetual adorations of this Sacred Heart to adore the Most Holy Trinity. The cardinal encouraged her in this path and urged her to establish the foundation in his diocese. "I have seen the Teresa of our time," he said after this interview. It was at Berchem-lez-Anvers that on June 20, 1873, on the feast of the Sacred Heart, the first house opened with four postulants and four religious wearing the habit. The Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Jesus was born.

The Mass: Center of Life

From the fundamental principle of the Spiritual Exercises, Mother Marie of Jesus had deduced the purpose of her Institute: "The Glory of God is to receive unceasingly the oblation of His Son and in His Son that of all men." — "Perpetual offering of Jesus Christ to the Most Holy Trinity! Union of love: His life in me, my life in Him." She observed, with a heavy heart: "He is not offered... He is there like a precious treasure that souls do not value."

The contemplative order that Mother Marie of Jesus wanted to establish would be devoted to Perpetual Adoration. The Daughters of the Heart of Jesus would never cease offering Jesus to His Father and offering themselves with Him. She herself consecrated herself to Jesus: "O my most sweet Jesus, united with all my heart to the dispositions of Your holy Mother on Calvary, through Her and with Her, I offer You to Yourself and to the adorable Trinity as a most pure oblation... O Jesus, receive me now from the hands of the Most Blessed Virgin and offer me with You, immolate me with You."

Her Institute would be entirely devoted to those who must be holy, innocent, without stain, and would supplement through its prayers and immolation what is lacking in the priestly spirit of certain priests. It would repair the offenses that most painfully wound the Heart of Jesus. For these intentions, the great Office would be recited daily. But she also knew that the Christian must participate in the spirit of the priesthood. The Eucharistic souls she dreamed of would live in perpetual communion with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which, from sunrise to sunset, never ceases. "Every morning, I give in advance to Our Lord each beat of my heart as so many acts of union with the altar, so many acts of offering His Precious Blood through the hands of Mary and all priests from altar to altar; so many acts of offering my whole self as a little victim to be immolated with Jesus."

Mary, Model of Priestly Life

One will have already noted the great devotion of the foundress for Our Lady. She loved to repeat to her daughters: "Mary is your Mother, your Patroness, your Model. The works that you do, She has done them; your fatigues, She has known them; your concerns, She has had them; but what perfection She put into these acts that seem so common, so ordinary, so simple! ... Take on Her spirit." And this spirit, for her, is above all the priestly spirit.

"And as it required hands without stain to receive the Son from the bosom of the Father and to return Him and offer Him to the Father as the sublime gift and sacrifice to the world, God chose the Virgin Mary. She is the golden channel that carries this divine gift... She brought Him to the priests and seems to take Him from their hands to offer Him Above... God, having once given Jesus to the world through Her, gives Him ceaselessly through Her and receives Him from Her when the earth offers Him anew. This is why the priest must commune with the soul and spirit of Mary."

Thus her Daughters will unite themselves with the Virgin Mary to offer Jesus hour by hour wherever He immolates Himself on an altar. Mary offering Her divine Son, such is the powerful attraction that the feast of Christmas had aroused in her. But it is especially at the Cross that the Marian priesthood appears. At Calvary, She offered the sacrifice without any intermediary other than the soul of the Sovereign Priest Jesus, Victim and Priest at the same time on the Cross. If the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass summarizes the great dogmas of our faith, it also traces for us a program of life: communion does not come without immolation. If therefore the Daughters of Jesus belong to the "race of Mary," they will be "living hosts."

The Cross is still raised on the Eucharistic Calvary. Jesus offers and immolates Himself always, but in a mystical manner. It is we who must be in some way the victims of this sacrifice. We must bring to Jesus our heart, our soul, our body immolated, so that He may offer them with Him in His perpetual sacrifice... To love one unites oneself by love; but to sacrifice one unites oneself only by sacrifice. Such will be the proper fruit of consecration, such will be the grace that priestly souls must urgently request. The human is absorbed. There is only Jesus alone:

"O Immaculate Virgin," prays the venerable foundress, "Your heart has been the mirror where the features of Your Son were reflected. Ah! to reveal to us the Heart of Your Son, You have only to reveal Yours to us. You have ravished the Heart of Jesus to give it to us, ravish our hearts to give them to Jesus. Ah! Immaculate Virgin, give Jesus; give us love. Amen!"

The first at the chapel, the Superior is also the first to take upon herself the humblest domestic occupations: serving at table, digging, sweeping... totally forgetful of herself, totally renounced... Of a lively and ardent nature, she had acquired great self-mastery. But what she demanded most was the abnegation of self-will, the practice of obedience. Her goodness especially did good.

The Gift of Blood

After Antwerp, Mother Marie of Jesus opened, in 1877, a second house in Aix-en-Provence, which moved to Marseille two years later, to the family property, according to her mother's wish. It was there that she would consummate her final sacrifice. As if foreseeing this, she had written: "Oblation, immolation, communion, my heart is full of these great things. My soul overflows and has such a thirst to spread them in the world that it would accept being crushed, plundered, annihilated, provided that this secret of love becomes better known... O God, if the sacrifice of my miserable life can serve to propagate this secret of love, take it and raise up souls who will understand it and be nourished by it."

Toward the end of 1883, the Mother had accepted on recommendation a gardener's assistant who soon showed himself demanding, vindictive, and closed to the Sisters' attentions. One evening, he disappeared, refusing to run an errand to the train station. Four days later, during the recreation period following lunch, he burst into the garden where the Superior was talking with her assistant. Suddenly, he seized her by the wrists and discharged his revolver against her. Before dying, the foundress murmured these words: "I forgive him!... For the Work, for the Work!" A victim was needed. God had chosen the foundress.

"To love is to give oneself; to love is to surrender oneself; to love is to sacrifice oneself; to love is to chain oneself to what one loves; to love is to burn; to love is to be consumed; to love is to refuse nothing; to love is to abandon everything to love; to love is to have such an ardent thirst to see what one loves being loved that nothing costs too much to obtain it; to love is to seek everywhere a thousand lives, a thousand hearts to sacrifice them and set them ablaze, and to throw them under the steps of the victorious Beloved."

Translated from the French: R.P. J. Lepintre, S.J., Messager du Cœur de Jésus, 1956, Tome CXXXI, 96e année, Apostolat de la Prière, Toulouse.