The vision of Adele Brise

Mary O’Regan on Our Lady of Good Help

One day in 1859, in the woods of Wisconsin in the United States a young woman called Adele Brise saw an apparition of an extraordinarily beautiful lady. An immense bright light surrounded the lady and she was dressed in white with a gold sash around her waist. The lady had thick, fair hair that fell around her shoulders, and a perfect oval face.

Adele was stunned by the lady's beauty, but she couldn’t fathom who she might be. When she reached home, she asked her family and they suggested it might be a soul in Purgatory in need of prayer. Her family were pious Belgian Catholics and they had brought their faith traditions to America, where they were making a new home in the wilderness. Adele had not wanted to move to America; she had wanted to become a nun in the Foreign Missions, and when her parents asked her to cross the Atlantic with them, she had been thrown into a quandary. Her priest had counselled her to emigrate with them, and assured her that if it was God's will then she would become a nun in America. His words were prophetic.

At the time of the first apparition, however, Adele was just a farm girl who was blind in one eye and not especially learned.

‘What do you want of me?’

Sometime after that first apparition, Adele found herself on the same earthen path. For a second time, she saw the beautiful lady. She sought a priest for counsel, and he instructed her that were the lady to appear again, Adele should try to speak to her. Sunday came and Adele and two friends were returning from Mass when the beautiful lady appeared again. This time Adele summoned the nerve to ask: "In God's Name who are you and what do you want of me?" The lady answered: "I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning and that is well but you must do more. Make a general confession and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not repent my Son will be obliged to punish them."

Adele's friends could not see Our Lady, but they believed and knelt in her honour. Our Lady looked at them and said, "Blessed are they who believe without seeing." Our Lady then gave Adele a precise mission, "Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation: their catechism, how to sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross and how to approach the Sacraments."

News of Our Lady’s apparitions spread among the humble community of settlers. Adele’s father built a wooden chapel, the size of a shed, on the site of the apparitions and it was called Our Lady of Good Help. Adele went from door to door offering to do all the household chores for those would allow her to teach their children the Faith. They readily agreed. Adele was their drudge and in exchange they let her be their children’s catechist. If you are a home-schooling parent, imagine your joy if an amiable young woman helped you and your friends as Adele helped her neighbours.

In time, Adele founded a little school, so she could teach more children. When other women came to work with Adele as teachers, they were led to form a community of sisters.

Patroness of home-schooling

Our Lady of Good Help ought to be a patroness of home-schooling and of new Catholic schools founded with the aim of forming children in the Faith. As Adele helped the children of her neighbours, she may help you from her heavenly home to instruct your children in the Faith. I proffer Adele as an intercessor and Our Lady of Good Help as a patroness. And we may pray to Our Lady of Good Help for the many, many people who are new to home-schooling. Never has the mission given Adele been of greater relevance. In the wake of Covid 19 many, many people are homeschooling their children, and kitchens and living rooms all over the globe became classrooms when schools and universities closed.

If I may indulge a prediction, I believe many parents are discovering the benefits of home-schooling. I used to be prejudiced against homeschooling. But the damage done to children in conventional schools is not often made good by the education they receive. Many of my peers have decided to home-school their own children for precisely this reason.

Traditional Catholics have been stalwarts of home-schooling, and now their ranks are swelled by masses from different walks of life, who may not share the Faith with us as of now, but who will be like-minded as regards home-schooling. We need to pray to Our Lady of Good Help for these parents. May they have an Adele in their lives.