Living in French society in the later years of the “Ancien Regime”, Henriette receives an education in the religious values of the French tradition and the somewhat superficial formation considered appropriate for a woman.
She experiences the impact of social and religious persecution. Seeking meaning for her life, after encountering God in prison, she is led to the Society of the Sacred Heart, to Father Coudrin, her guide and to the group of “Solitaries” with whom she will begin to journey. This is the first nucleus of the Congregation.
From that time on she gives herself to forming the Congregation. Around her gather the Solitaries and other women who are looking for an opportunity to consecrate themselves after the destruction of religious life during the terror. Her innate gift for leadership allows her to grow into a foundress and even more, a mother. Her goodness along with a strong, lively and sensible character made her mother and foundress in the sisters’ branch as it grew rapidly in those first years.
One of the dilemmas we find in the life of “the Good Mother” is the conjunction of aspects that are seemingly contradictory. Her deep mystical life led her to spend hours in adoration, in continual union with God and to the experience of mystical phenomena that she herself was unable to explain but which Father Coudrin took advantage of to know the plan of God for the young Congregation. Joined to her mystical side was tireless activity. She made more than twenty foundations in different parts of France, attended to the sisters’ formation and supported the superiors she appointed to local communities.
Henriette had the practical responsibility for all the material aspects of both branches. She was a true mother in her love and her concern for all. And we must also mention the incomprehensible need she felt to do penance that today we would consider excessive. Add to that her travel and long hours of night adoration, the life of the Good Mother is ”a constant miracle,” as the Good Father said.
Her correspondence with both brothers and sisters, her short “messages” for the Good Father, what we call her “billets,” and the witness of those who knew her, speak to us a strong and sensitive personality, a woman of action and also deep feeling, a woman with common sense who was also a contemplative like the great mystics. She was a complex and rich woman of God and mother of many, the “Good Mother.”
