March 6 + Saint Colette

Colette was born in 1381 in the French village Corbie. Her father was a poor carpenter at a nearby Benedictine Abbey. Colette’s parents were very old and had been married for many years but remained childless. After praying to Saint Nicholas, her mother finally gave birth to Colette at age sixty. Colette’s parents named her Nicholette after Saint Nicholas and her name was eventually shortened to Colette.

When Colette was seventeen, both of her parents died. Colette distributed her inheritance to the poor and sought to fulfill her vocation to religious life. Colette became a Franciscan Tertiary and lived the ascetic life for four years under the direction of the Abbot of Corbie. She soon began to have visions and dreams, which led her to realize that God was calling her to reform the Poor Clares, to return the order to its original ideals of poverty.

Colette began her work of reform and in 1410, she opened her first monastery in a house of Urbanist Poor Clares which was almost abandoned. She went on to establish seventeen other monasteries and to reform several others. She faced great opposition in her work of reform, but she persevered in her efforts.

In Colette’s monasteries, she instituted extreme poverty, wearing no shoes, and perpetual fasting and abstinence. Additionally, her convents followed special constitutions that were approved by Pope Nicholas V, and were later approved by both Pope Pius II and Pope Sixtus IV.

Colette became well-known for her holiness, as well as for her ecstasies and visions of Christ’s Passion, and prophesied her own death. She died in Ghent, Belgium in 1447 and was canonized by Pope Pius VII in 1807. Her biographers attribute several miracles to her intercession, both before and after her death. She is the Patron Saint of women trying to conceive, expectant mothers and sick children.