St. Colette

St. Colette was born in 1381 at Corbie in Picardy, France, the daughter of a poor carpenter, and died on 6 March 1447 at Ghent. Orphaned young, she lived for a time as a solitary recluse in a cell beside her parish church, given to severe penance and prayer, until she became convinced of a call to restore the Order of St. Clare to the primitive rigor and poverty of its foundress, which had been relaxed in many convents.

Overcoming great opposition and armed with the authority of the Avignon claimant to the papacy whom she then obediently followed, she reformed and founded numerous monasteries of Poor Clares across France and the Low Countries, whose members came to be called the Colettine Poor Clares. A woman of deep prayer, marked by devotion to the Passion of Christ and by mystical graces, she labored tirelessly for the renewal of religious life until her death, and she is commemorated on 7 February.