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A poorly repaired plaster Jesus lay on a cushion, beneath which was a note. Little Sister Magdeleine, foundress of the Little Sisters of Jesus, had carefully written: "This infant Jesus is a precious souvenir of the beginnings of the foundation. He has brought numerous graces. Let us keep him, even if he isn't very artistic."
I came upon the broken doll in what had been her room, in Sidi Boujnan, Algeria, where I was doing research for her biography. The message it symbolized—that God exalted our frail human nature by taking on our humanity out of love for us—was at the heart of Sr. Magdeleine’s relationship with him and with other people. It led her into a hidden, humble, but radically evangelistic life of reflecting Christ’s loving presence in the most unlikely places.
Master of the Impossible. Madeleine Hutin, as she was called, was born in France in 1898 to devout Catholic parents. Through her father, who had served as an army doctor in North Africa, she felt an early attraction to the Muslims of the Sahara. Their deprivation had touched him deeply, and he kept in contact with some of them on…
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