Students at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart celebrated St. Madeleine Sophie Barat's feast day with a statue blessing, a Mass and a congé on May 25. The French saint founded the Society of the Sacred Heart, which today maintains a network of 25 Catholic schools in the United States and Canada, including Stone Ridge, an all-girls school in Bethesda, Maryland which serves students in grades 1-12, with a co-ed early childhood program. Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory celebrated the feast day Mass for the school community.
Lulu Schropp, a Stone Ridge senior who will attend the College of William & Mary in the fall, reflected on why St. Madeleine Sophie Barat's feast day is significant to her.
“Personally, I think today is probably one of my favorite days of the entire year ever, like not only the for the school but also in general, it’s like our Women’s Day in a way, we’re all celebrating being women all together,” Schropp said.
Students from Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart attend a May 25 Mass at the Bethesda school celebrated by Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington. (CS photo/Andrew Biraj) Before celebrating the Mass, Cardinal Gregory blessed the Mater Admirabilis statue, which depicts a youthful Virgin Mary and is located in the school's Mater Center. The school commissioned sculptor Harry Weber to create the statue, which is based on an 1844 fresco painted by Pauline Perdrau, who was a Religious of the Sacred Heart postulant at the time.
Before celebrating a May 25 Mass at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory blesses a statue at the school’s Mater Center depicting Mater Admirabilis, a youthful Virgin Mary. Standing next to the cardinal is Catherine Ronan Karrels, the Head of School at Stone Ridge and a 1986 graduate of the all-girls Catholic school in Bethesda sponsored by the Society of the Sacred Heart. (CS photo/Andrew Biraj) During his homily, Cardinal Gregory discussed St. Madeleine Sophie Barat’s life and the recent shootings in Uvalde, Texas, Laguna Beach, California, and Buffalo, New York.
“She was a woman of the time of the French Revolution, and she lived in a society that was filled with violence, as governments were being restructured and sometimes overthrown, and people lost their lives with great regularity. Sound familiar?” Cardinal Gregory said. “It is very much like the world we live in.”
The cardinal went on to explain that the saint was calm through the chaos of her time.
“She was a woman of incredible faith and strength,” Cardinal Gregory said.
Stone Ridge students lead the singing during Cardinal Gregory’s May 25 Mass at the Bethesda Catholic school. (CS photos by Andrew Biraj) Students bring up offertory gifts to Cardinal Gregory during his May 25 Mass at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart. The Gospel reading for the Mass was from John 15:1-12, when Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” Cardinal Gregory added that since St. Madeleine Sophie Barat came from a family involved in the cultivation of vineyard, she had a deeper connection to the Scripture.
“It was also a time when the United States of America, that had its own vineyards, sent vines over to France, at a time when French vines were dying of this blight, and by grafting the American vines onto the French vines, they grew robust again,” Cardinal Gregory said. “The American wine making community helped to save the French wine making community, they came together in union.”th century, when the vineyards in France were destroyed by aphid insects.
Cardinal Gregory compared the link between the winemaking communities of the two countries to how people must create productive friendships with one another.
“If we collaborate with each other, we will produce wonderful harvests, and if we stay united in Christ, as the healthiest of all of the vines, we will be even more bountiful because we will, with Christ, give a witness of joy, and hope, and happiness to the entire world,” Cardinal Gregory said.
Stone Ridge students offer each other the sign of peace during Cardinal Gregory’s May 25 Mass at the school. (CS photos by Andrew Biraj) Cardinal Gregory smiles as Catherine Ronan Karrels, the Head of School at Stone Ridge, speaks during the May 25 feast day Mass honoring St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, the foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart that sponsors the all-girls Catholic school in Bethesda, Maryland. After Mass, students celebrated their traditional congé, which means vacation or “formal permission to depart” according to the dictionary. This is when students are dismissed from class to gather in recreation. This was the school’s first congé since 2019 due to the pandemic.
Lina Vuga, a sophomore at Stone Ridge, said the day marked her first congé at Stone Ridge.
“The first congé was just upper school, this congé is the entire school, so my class at least, has been paired with students from the lower school to spend the day with, I’m really interested in...having a pseudo, smaller little sister,” Vuga said. She was paired with a second grade student.
Students were divided into smaller groups to participate in events such as an egg hunt, a “nun hunt” (photos of women religious were hidden around campus and students were given clues to find them), and a dance instruction that culminated at the end of the congé with all of the students dancing together to the song “We’re All in this Together” from High School Musical.
