Vol 10 France

REGINA Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

The Secret Catholic Insider’s Guide to

France

Volume 9 | October 2014 www.reginamag.com

Choir Boys of Chavagnes International College

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Editorial Editor: Beverly De Soto Associate Editor: Rosa

Kasper Webmaster: Jim Bryant

Writers

Donna Sue Berry Harry Stevens Teresa Limjoco, MD Beverly De Soto Ed Masters Meghan Ferrara Penny Silvers Tamara Isabell Christine L. Niles Sequoia Sierra Dan Flaherty Losana Boyd

Translators Penny Silvers Ferdi Mc Dermott Monique Mirouze Claudia Sperlich Daniel Rabourdin Photography

Harry Stevens Teresa Limjoco, MD Ferdi Mc Dermott Joseph Shaw Yume Delegato Jerilynn Marlow

Special Thanks Theology of the Table The Hidden Rebellion Navis Pictures Chavagnes International School Schola Sainte Cecile Monastère Saint-Benoît The Monks of Le Barroux The Abbot of Fontgombault Henri De Villiers Louis Benatier The Parish of St Eugene, Paris The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest Julie Hill

Advertising Contact

Designer Helen Stead

tamara.isabell@reginamag. com

Volume 9 | October 2014 www.reginamag.com REGINA MAGAZINE is published five times a year at www.reginamag.com.

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Contents Passion Courage Glory.............................................................. 04 Silent Fingers Pointed to the Sky..............................................12

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Understanding Catholic France................................................24

Silent Fingers Pointed to the Sky

Why We Need to Make Like the French.................................32 La Grand Journee...................................................................... 46 Effortless Chic...............................................................................66 La Madeleine................................................................................68 St Martin.........................................................................................84 French Spirituality.........................................................................92

Le Grand Journee

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Little Sisters....................................................................................98 How the Black Death and the Best Wines created the House of God......................................................104 French Indochina.......................................................................112

134 Louis Speaks

The Secret of Sainte Menehould...........................................118 The Liturgy is not about us......................................................128 Louis Speaks...............................................................................134 St Giles.........................................................................................156 In a Hidden French Valley........................................................160 Pilgrimage...................................................................................174 We the Ordinary People...........................................................184

What Eton & Oxford Might have Become......................................246

The Unknown Catholic Genocide..........................................202 I Will Build It................................................................................216

They Were Not Human Voices........256

St Margaret Mary.......................................................................226

Notre Dame Loves La France..........260

Singing Their Way to the Guiliotine......................................240

Passion, Courage, Glory

By Beverly De Soto

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The Secret Catholic Insider Guide to France

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aris, 2014. We are a couple of American journalists in a tiny Audi, prepared to part ways and head out of town. The SAT NAV assures us it will be 21 minutes to our hotel.

Almost three hours later, we arrive. The problem?

Animal rights protesters -- thousands of them, swarming all over the city, with police regulating their movements by cordoning off 4

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tiny streets and big boulevards.

Our SAT NAV kept insisting we had to go where we couldn’t go. Most protesters are teenage girls who arrived on the back of their boyfriends’ motorbikes, now weaving insouciantly in and out of traffic. My right arm ached, sweat was pouring down our faces -- and I still had a 6 hour ride home.

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But, no matter. My intrepid fellow journaliste jumped out, and I took off. Almost four hours later, deep in the French countryside, suddenly a trouble light appeared on the old Audi’s dashboard. By now it was dark, and I was thoroughly exhausted and a bit wary; there are no motels at freeway exits in France.

BUT the Iphone cheerfully assured me there is a ‘Le Relais’ hotel not 6 kms away. So I exit the A4 into the fallow fields and dark villages, follow its instructions, and wind up in a dark village, with no hotel of any kind in sight.

Then God sends a tiny angel, in the shape of a tattooed French farmer whose gold teeth glint in the streetlight. I have pulled up outside his house. He looks dodgy, I am dog-tired, but as usual when God calls the shots, the outcome is amazing.

With a few words of broken English and French we manage to establish that there is a ‘Hotel Mermaid’ in the next village. This is confirmed by his father and his brother, who also appear outside, smiling broad gold smiles and nodding enthusiastically.

Hotel Mermaid is very easy to find because it is the only game in town. It’s also lit up by a huge swathe of green neon, and there are lots of cars parked outside -- because there is a wedding inside.

The proprietor and his family are working at full tilt, and in response to my pleading tell me there is only one room in the rambling old building. The old lady who resides in the next room ‘sometimes take the telephone and is loud because she cannot hear’ he warns me. No matter. I want a glass of wine.

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The hotel resembles something one might find near a railway station in the Old West -- huge ceilings, lots of wood, stuffed wild animals everywhere. The furniture is from the 70s and 80s; the wine is decent.

I sit in the hotel bar and watch the people around me -- farmers’ families with the hallmark of the truly French: courteous, well-behaved, and decently dressed. No drunken stumbling around. No skin-tight dresses on fat ladies. No raucous ‘We Are FAMILEE’ stuff.

My Iphone can’t get a signal, so I head to bed. The room is clean, if a bit bare. The old lady is not just deaf, though. She also has dementia and intermittently roars away at unseen foes, an un-nerving, animal-like sound. I kneel and pray a decade of the rosary for her, though and she quiets down enough for me to fall asleep --- for a few hours anyway until she begins roaring at 3 am. I sleep fitfully after that, waking in the grey morning to an excellent croissant and coffee.

In the daylight, I realize with a shock that the village is surrounded by the killing fields of World War I. I am in the Verdun, a name that sent shivers through our grandparents. This is because for nine months in 1916 the longest battle in history was waged around this hotel, a command headquarters for the Allied forces. The flower of Western manhood -- French, English, American and German boys -- was systematically cut down in hellish machine-gun fire.

The giant John Deere tractors of local farmers still unearth human bones, I am told.

Passion, Courage, Glory

The Battle of Verdun was one of a series of bloodbaths that were set in motion by the French revolution 125 years before, when the ideologues of the Enlightenment used guillotines and massacres to annihilate the old King and the old Faith.

The bloodbath was spread through Europe by Napoleon, whose French armies sent nuns and monks fleeing from their monasteries. They grabbed the gold plate and sold the properties cheap to the local nobility -- who retain them to this day.

Napoleon’s armies ended up dead, their frozen corpses stacked in the Russian snows. Their brilliant general who famously sneered ‘how many divisions does the Pope have?’ died a reputedly horrific death by poisoning, in exile from the Europe he had looted and tried to make ‘modern.’

The chaos and killing continued, however. 1848.

1870. 1914. 1939. 1968. Generations of European thinkers launched their ideologies designed to replace the Faith, and all hell broke loose. Communism, Socialism, National Socialism -- each had their day, killing innocents and sending huddled masses yearning to breathe free to Lady Liberty in New York harbor. (In a superb irony that every Frenchman would acknowledge, it was the French who designed the Statue of Liberty to welcome the people fleeing from the fallout of the Enlightenment.)

It is now nearly a century since the Battle of Verdun, and Europe has enjoyed its longest period of peace and prosperity since France’s bloody Revolution and ‘Enlightenment’ unleashed the forces of Satan onto old Christendom. In a feat of audacity and prop-

aganda that even Napoleon would have admired, the French (and German) ideologues of Vatican II pushed through their modernizing agenda in the 1960s.

Why? Without getting lost in the weeds, it is necessary to understand one crucial thing about French politics: though the French Left was and is splintered, the differing factions have always agreed on one thing -- the Church was and is the Enemy. And it was the brilliant and apposite insight of a small cadre of French clerics after World War II that they had the opportunity to forever alter this bloody course of history – by altering the position of the Church in society.

Voltaire’s ‘La Infame’ was to become a bastion of the Left. Her ancient teachings would be gradually subsumed under a blanket of neo-Marxist ideology.

A new iconoclasm became the order of the day, as the hated ‘sentimental’ church art would be stripped out of France’s venerable churches and sold in junk stores. Her Liturgy would be similarly denuded of its dignity, and in a bow to the ever-growing consumerist culture, her Sacraments reduced to rites of passage requiring lavish gifts.

The windows of the Church would be flung open, and a fresh wind would blow through, clearing away the cobwebs and bringing the Church into the modern age that France’s Left had fought so long and so hard for. This ‘wind,’ as we all know, has turned into a deadly hurricane in the last 60 years. Vocations plummeted. Catechesis collapsed.

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Passion, Courage, Glory

A recent poll showed that a majority of French people affirm that they are ‘Catholic’ – and in an irony that is at once hilarious and tragic, most also affirm that while they do NOT believe in God, they DO believe in reincarnation. (Is there a link to the animal rights movement here, one wonders?)

Today, there is one priest for every 30 parishes in much of France. Most of these are imported from elsewhere. Aging French clerics are divided. A few are ideologues brought up on the milk of the ‘Spirit of Vatican II,’ still insisting against all evidence that this state of affairs is, in fact, ‘the New Evangelization.’ The vast majority, however, are simply administrators presiding over a dying Church.

Country churches stand shuttered, in various stages of neglect and disuse. Meanwhile, France’s cities are now ringed by decrepit Muslim suburbs, in the main hostile to the larger culture. Often, their youths incite violence against French people unlucky enough to be caught alone on subway stations or in the street. Sometimes they explode into rounds of car-torching. Sometimes they send their sons into battle as jihadists.

Many French people are deeply worried about what to do when that battle comes to France. The authorities warn them not to discuss such things.

The extreme Right runs strongly on anti-immigrant platforms. The Left, drunk on its almost-complete hegemony over French political discourse, has no idea what to do about any of this.

It has moved on to bigger and better battlefields, however. In what just may be a final, decadent stage of Enlightenment thought, the old Marxist Left has now morphed into the Sexual Left -- an ideology cobbled together from the fragments of French libertinism, existentialism and Marxism.

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Basically, this all-new, ‘new Left’ teaches that there is no God, and no point to anything, anyway. Liberte’ is now defined as the right to have sex anytime, with anyone, and under any circumstances that one finds titillating – and woe to anyone who dares to disagree. (And if all of this is too depressing for words, of course suicide is the new Sacrament.)

To outside observers, this breathtaking combination of French effrontery and nihilism sounds a familiar note; we all recognize this battle song. But what may not be evident to most outsiders is this: there is another France, apart from these extremes.

A staggering 1.4 million French people peacefully jammed the streets of old Paris on May 26. They were there to show their opposition to the agenda of the Sexual Left. Old people and children in strollers were set upon by French riot police, beaten and tear-gassed. Amazingly, they are set to do it all again, in Paris and all the major towns in France on October 5th. If you have not heard about this huge news story, there is an historical reason. In the wake of World War II, in order to establish peace in a society dangerously on the brink of more (this time, Communist-led) violence, Charles De Gaulle bought time for France.

De Gaulle ceded control of the economy to the Right. French industry, banks, insurance, agriculture – it has been these economic conservatives who have joined with Germany to create the prosperity and peace of the European Union, quietly profiting therefrom. The price for this, however, was that the Left should control the (taxpayer-funded) media and after the 1968 riots forced their hand,

FUNERAL MASS FOR A FRENCH KING: The French say farewell to the man who would have been King.

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the state-supported universities. Today, comfortable jobs for Left Wingers are secure, and unwelcome news stories simply do not appear.

French and foreign. The French monasteries are proving, once again, to be strongholds of the Faith – quietly outgrowing their buildings and sending out new shoots to places like Clear Creek, Oklahoma.

But now there is the internet, which the French are utilizing to the utmost. Of the top most-frequented websites in France today, the top three are orthodox Catholic sites. They have led the way for the entire world in organizing protests about and help for the persecuted Christians in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the French have turned back the tide of the trending demographic winter in the rest of Europe.

In France, having babies is tres chic.

Even the moribund bishops are slowly starting to participate, as in the provinces some parishes are being reinvigorated by the Institute of Christ the King and the Community of Saint Martin. In her ancient cities and beautiful countryside, in scattered villages from Brittany to Provence, and with a brave new generation as her champions, the Eldest Daughter of the Church is awakening from her long slumber – as you will see in ‘The Secret Catholic Insider Guide to France.’

Moreover, against all odds, the old Faith is still alive in France. There is a dawning rapprochement of traditionalist and charismatic Catholics, pragmatically recognizing their common ground. In the heart of Paris’s Left Bank, Masses are full – both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Forms draw young and old,

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Regina Magazine | France October 2014

Beverly De Soto Editor, Regina Magazine Paris, October 2014

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Silent Fingers Pointed to the Sky The Monks of the Abbey of St Mary Magdalene October 2014 France | Regina Magazine

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ather Cyril is a monk of the monastery of Le Barroux in Provence. These cloistered Benedictines in this remote mountain hamlet of 615 souls have grown so rapidly in recent decades that they have outgrown their (new) quarters – and still the young vocations keep coming. In this revealing interview, Father Cyril takes us into the story of his vocation and the lives of the more than 60 monks in this extraordinary monastery.

Q. What attracted you to the cloistered life?

I was drawn to the cloistered life by the desire for a true interior life lived as a friendship with Christ present in the Eucharist, “Christ, the Life of the soul,” of whom Blessed Columba Marmion had given me the taste.

There was also the prospect of Trinitarian life present in my soul to teach me to gradually “forget myself completely,” in the words of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity.

What further attracted me was the fraternal life I discovered in picnics with brothers who proved wonderfully helpful and charitable. I have not been disappointed since then.

Q. What drew you specifically to Le Barroux?

Even more than the endearing personality of Dom Gerard, it was the prospect of a traditional Latin liturgy lived in a setting of breathtaking beauty and elbow-to-elbow in an enthusiastic community.

Q. When did you first feel called become a monk? Was it sudden or had you always felt the call?

As soon as I came to the monastery for the first time, I realized that this was where God wanted me. The question did not even arise before then. It was very sudden, although I felt called to give myself to God from a young age, not knowing how or where.

Q. Before joining the convent, did you consider yourself a “traditionalist,” that is, did you attend primarily the extraordinary form of the Mass?

Yes, I considered myself a “traditionalist” before coming and that’s why I did not go into other monasteries I had visited before Le Barroux. I did not feel at home.

The “traditionalism” was a choice we made as a family when I was 12. We were then still seven children at home and we led our parents to tradition rather than the reverse: the traditional liturgy fascinated us with its ritual and sense of the sacred.

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I was drawn to the cloistered life by the desire for a true interior life lived as a friendship with Christ present in the Eucharist.

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Prior to the academies of science and crossroads of civilization, monasteries were silent fingers pointed to the sky, the stubborn and defiant reminder that there is another world of truth and beauty, of which the monastery is the announcement and foreshadowing.

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The monks created Christendom, but they did not mean to.

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Personally, I loved, for example, the smell of incense, the service details of Mass, the Latin hymns, etc. Mass in French bored us. When we discovered devastating liturgical “lucky find”, we revolted. Could one believe in the real presence and behave with such carelessness vis-à-vis the Eucharist?

However there are several monks here today who did not know a word of Latin and had never attended the Extraordinary Form. They discovered this staying at the abbey and were conquered.

Q. What is it about Le Barroux that distinguishes it from other convents?

There certainly is the traditional form of the liturgy and monastic uses, but several other monasteries also practice these as we practice them.

Over and above this, there are certain characteristics of our history. Le Barroux has a monastic tradition that connects us to the re-foundation of monastic life by Father Muard in 1850 at the Pierre-qui-Vire, to Dom Romain Banquet at En-Calcat, and finally to Dom Gerard Calvet, a monk of that same monastic family, who founded our own community in 1970, alone, in Bédoin.

In this “monastic adventure” we retain a contemplative monastic family character, but with some external apostolate and a young and enterprising spirit, which is also not entirely without danger to monks.

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Silent Fingers Pointed to the Sky

Q. Why do you have so many vocations where other convents and orders are endangered?

It’s certainly not because we are better than others. The fact that our community has a young median age and its traditional state of mind certainly plays a part. “Tradition is the youth of the Church”, Dom Gerard liked to say. There is also a dynamic acquired: novices attract novices.

But beyond these obvious causes, we must first leave some room for the mystery of the Holy Spirit, which “blows where it wills.”

Q. What is the main thing that you would want Regina Magazine readers to know about Le Barroux?

I defer to Dom Gerard, our founder, who has perfectly summarized our core purpose: “When we discover the story of the thousands of monasteries that once covered the Christian world as a” white coat,” one cannot help but ask what would motivate millions of young men -- often bright and full of promise -- to leave the world and burrow into the poor and hidden life of a monk? Saint Benedict gives the reason in his rule: it’s a thirst to be nothing, that God may be all; a weariness about what is not eternal, the desire for a face to face with God. His Rule asks indeed one thing of the young man who wants to be a monk, “he truly seeks God “(Chapter 58).

The monks created Christendom, but they did not mean to. Prior to being academies of science and crossroads of civilization, monasteries were silent fingers pointed to the sky, the stubborn and defiant reminder that there is another world of truth and beauty, of which this world is the announcement and foreshadowing.”

If, in our turn, we have realized this ideal, so our lives are a success.

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Understanding Catholic A Conversation with a French Country Priest

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c France:

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rance is a confusing place for outsiders, especially when they don’t speak French and they are trying to understand the position of the Catholic Church there. Thankfully, a chance encounter with an English-speaking country priest with a broad and deep education led Regina Magazine down a fascinating path. Here’s Harry Stevens’ interview with Pere (‘Father’) Gregoire Cieutat:

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Where are you from, Pere?

I was born in 1971 in Nancy, in Lorraine, the fourth of five children. My parents separated when I was 2 years old. I was baptized as a baby but faith was not a part of our family life.

At age 21, as a student in an engineering school, I met a family whose testimony of luminous faith led me to live a personal encounter with Jesus Christ and through Him with the Holy Trinity , Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It was a complete and radical reversal of my life in this atmosphere of charismatic renewal.

The family that led me to the Lord was a member of the Catholic Community of the Beatitudes, founded in 1973 in France during the Charismatic Renewal. This Community’s life involved intense prayer; their apostolate for the new evangelization included families, priests, religious and lay single people. I made my first commitment to this community in 1993 and the next year, armed with my engineering degree, I had a missionary experience in Africa, in Bangui.

What is your training?

In 1996, I began studying at the seminary in Rennes. In 2000, I had one year of pastoral internship in the Vendee, Les Sables d’ Olonne, a chaplaincy for students. In 2001, I was sent for one year to Israel to study Judaism and the history of the Church, in contact with the holy places of our Christian faith. From 2002 and 2005, I studied theology at the Catholic University of Toulouse where I was ordained a deacon in June 2005, after which I was posted in Lebanon for one year to the Pontifical University of Kaslik Maronite, where I supervised the studies of some seminarian. I was ordained August 4, 2006 in the Basilica of Lisieux by Mgr. Square, my titular bishop.

You have some experience in the New World as well, don’t you?

A month after my ordination, I was sent to Peru to join a parish entrusted to the community of the Beatitudes, as vicar from 2006 to 2007. Then, having learned Spanish, I was sent to Denver, Colorado, to another parish entrusted to the community of the Beatitudes to take care especially of the Hispanic community which represented 25% of the parishioners.

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I stayed from July 2007 to May 2011 in the parish working with both the Anglo - American and the Hispanic communities. The approach of these two communities of faith may be different, but I can say the common thread is a public expression of faith without complexity and a commitment of time, talent and financial hardship.

In America, faith is very much part of everyday life and the Christian understands he supports his own parish by his personal commitment to follow Christ. Through the Ministry of perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in this parish, I can attest to the power of prayer that unites the Anglo-American and Hispanic Catholics beyond the many differences in their communities of origin.

It sounds like you were impressed with your experience in Denver.

The Diocese of Denver overall is very attached to the great Tradition of the Church and therefore also very involved in the new evangelization. The professionalism with which the parishes work impressed me. This is largely due to the fact that the secretaries, heads of key ministries of evangelism (marriage, youth , etc) are employed by the generosity of the parishioners.

So, my parish in Denver was very average size and yet it could pay salaries of four people plus three priests who worked there. In France, this is unimaginable because the mentality linked to the history of the Church in relation to the state is very different. I was able to get training in preparation for the sacrament of marriage -- the quality is very high and it’s requirement for couples.

We have the impression of polarization -- that there is a Catholic France, and an anti-Catholic France.

Most people outside France are only aware of the secular, liberal France.

The effect of the French Revolution of 1789 as a result of the age of “enlightenment” actually created a divide in French society between Catholics and non-Catholics. It seems to me that one cannot understand this divide without mentioning the omnipotence of the ‘marriage’ between the absolute monarchy in France under Louis XIV and the Church.

This created ‘Gallicanism’—wherein the Church in France actually stood apart from the authority of the Pope in Rome. This very overwhelming power provoked the religious wars of the seventeenth century; Catholicism triumphed with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the rejection of the Protestants.

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The absolutism of the French monarchy, to which the Church was compromised, aroused the hatred of an entire section of French society towards the Church. This hatred erupted violently with the events of the French Revolution, which then crystallized this social divide between Catholics and anti- Catholics.

Most people outside France have no idea of the thriving Catholic life there of the many Church ‘movements.’ What are some of these and why would you say they are so important to the French?

These movements are mainly movements of community life with a strong attachment to the life of prayer born with powerful breath of renewal in the Spirit -- the “springtime of the Church” in the words of John Paul II following the Second Vatican Council. Some examples are the Emmanuel Community, the Chemin Neuf, the Beatitudes, Point heart, Arch Jean Vannier, etc. They are so important in France, precisely because the anti-Catholic hatred unleashed during the French Revolution of 1789 shed so much blood of martyrs of the Christian Faith.

This blood of the French martyrs was the seed for an extraordinary revival of holiness and missionary spirit in the nineteenth century, to the point where France was sending missionaries, priests and nuns -- more than any other country around the world – to the colonies in Africa and Asia. At the same time, inside of France, many communities of nuns and monks who founded schools and hospitals to care for the poor were created.

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In the early twentieth century further violent persecution broke out against the Catholic Church, which once again strengthened Christians in God’s strength. The current trends are from this tradition of testimony and adapting to adversity and persecution.

We often hear French Catholics say that they are royalists or monarchists. What is the emotional connection between these ideas for some French?

There is indeed a royalist and Catholic power in France; however they are a minority among Catholics. But it is important because the Republic was born in significant anti- Catholic violence. By cutting off the head of King Louis XVI, the Revolution fueled this nostalgia for royalty for some Catholics.

We have met several young people very much on fire for the Faith associated with the Boy Scouts in France. Do you have experience of the Scouts and what role they play in French Catholicism?

From 1960 until today, the French government has greatly reduced the freedom of religious education in schools. By increased taxes, the state took more control of the management of schools, rejecting more faith outside of schools. Today the Scout movement is the one that has the most guarded values of education ​​ and transmission of the Faith. That is why it is so important. Last May 26 more than a million people marched for marriage and life in Paris, and there was a virtual media blackout about this. Are there no media outlets in France where the truth can be heard?

The demonstrations in defense of traditional marriage in France have shown how the French media is controlled by political power. Unlike the USA, there is only one mainstream media in France and it is dominated by liberal ideology and anti- Catholic. It is called AFP ( Agence France Presse) and all large public television and newspapers draw their information from there. Whereas in the USA , for example, there are two main different currents represented by Fox News and CNN, unfortunately the opinion of the majority of French is managed by the dictatorship of a liberal media which is both political and anti- Catholic. By cutting off the head of King Louis XVI, the revolution fueled this nostalgia for royalty for some Catholics.

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Why Catholics Need To Make Like the French – And Eat Together!

By Teresa Limjoco, MD

And other wisdom from EWTN’ s ‘Theology Of The Table’ Host Daniel Rabourdin Where do you come from?

The Provence region in France, I call it the 'French Tuscany'.

My family lived there for generations. I was able to know my grandparents and great-grandparents and the social fabric was very stable. It is important to have roots in a place.

Why do you think this?

Life was not perfect, but if the children had disagreements with their parents, they could find comfort with their grandparents or great-grandparents in the same house or town.

For me the importance of roots is in the transfer of the experience of thousands of people before you. From generation to generations… If you do not have that you have less intelligence.

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Have you always been so devout?

I grew up a Catholic but between the ages of 24 and 32, when I came to the USA, I became agnostic.

But I think that going through this is almost necessary in order to pick up an “adult faith”, because it becomes a conscious decision. I came back to Christianity due to the fact that this Church was not just one more ideology; it had charitable love. That’s beyond all systems. So we better practice it. Religions should absolutely not be a “ritualistic” activity.

You are a graduate of the Sorbonne, right?

Public school in France was a good quality education with strong discipline - you could not talk in class. But there was already an ideology against Christianity. Later, I went to a Catholic college created by lay people.

There were almost no good schools in the hands of the clergy. My school was specialized in Thomist philosophy [of St Thomas Aquinas] and I received my Masters in Philosophy from the Sorbonne at 21 in 1983.

How did you come to EWTN? While studying TV in America and Europe, I was a freelance writer for the French press. When I went broke because most of those jobs do not pay well, Father Fessio of the Ignatius Press told me to “knock on the door” of EWTN, and I was hired almost on the spot. I was TV producer there for 17 years. [See ‘Joan of Arc: Maid for God’ (2013).]

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I​n the Puritan environment, pleasure only means gluttony or promiscuity. Between the over-tyrannical and the over-indulgent they do not see a balanced way to enjoy life.

Photo, courtesy of 'Theology of the Table'

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What did you eat growing up in France?

As my great grandfather used to say: “I ate of everything, a little”. My own father was into organic and fresh food. Each day we had homemade soup, or whole wheat pasta and sourdough bread without chemical leaveners. Chicken, fish or rabbit, on Sundays. Twice a year maybe red meat. We had lots of dairy products - yoghurt and cheese. Lots of butter, lots of olive oil. And always all fresh. Never ever processed food. For adults, a glass of red wine every day. Food had to taste good and be healthy at the same time.

What’s the link between Thomism and the table?.

Thomistic philosophy has a strong wisdom about the non-separation between the mind and body.

St Thomas Aquinas said that there are two major earthly and natural desires in man: one allows the species to survive (the sexual interest), the other allows the individual to survive (it is the interest for food).

But all natural desires need to be progressively shaped by good habits, by manners also called “virtues”. In order to have a good life, we must descend in conscience and with the Grace of God into the life our desires.

It we do not do so we are but animals or worse. But this will never deny our body desires. It will only place them in harmony with the rest of ourselves and of the world.

What do you mean by ‘virtue’ with regard to eating?

I mean for example that the opposite of gluttony is temperance and that is a necessary virtue to have a good life. We need to know when to stop eating.

Doing so is like looking intelligently to the future ourselves. This means that if we are 20 years old, we care for the “ourselves when we will be 60 years old”. We take care of ourselves with proper food, exercise and lifestyle.

The wisdom of the generations should teach us that, for instance, purified sugar is not good. There is enough sweetness in figs or raspberries. And in figs or raspberries there are mineral and vitamins. Sweetness is a smart way in the universe of food to make us eat what is good for us. But if we eat quasi pure sugar such as in white flour cookies, we do not eat a sustaining food.

That “good habit” of eating fruits instead of pure sugar can be transferred to children in a traditional upbringing. Grandparents who have learned with time that pure sugar leaves them tired and depleted of nutrients can tell the children.

If children do not hear about this and thousands of other things about food, they start their lives deprived of thousands of years of knowledge. I will be a bit strong here but I think that this is a little bit like going back to the Stone Age. All knowledge is to be acquired again.

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So a traditional upbringing teaches children how to eat properly?

So much… As children and if we have to good parenting, we prefer to eat the chicken and French fries instead of the spinach and Kefir yogurt. We eat the ‘easy’ food even if it is going to hurt us in the future.

Gluttony and greed is like that, to be a child without parents is like that, to be a twenty years old who did not hear his grandparents is like that. Another good habit of eating is that food should both taste good and be good for you. And all of those principles should be learned with fun.

Here is a ‘trick’ that my father used with we children. He may serve us some sautéed garlic, carrots and parsley on our plates. (The goal is to teach the children to eat the most diverse and healthy foods. This is so that they keep eating that way in the future).

We children were appalled at those carrots.

But my father would not force us. He would just take that food back for himself and eat it all with exaggerated enjoyment. So us children reacted in saying, ‘We want of that too if you like it so much!’ My father did not impose, he used fun. But he cared to transfer knowledge to us: eat as diverse as possible, as fresh as possible and keep extending your experimentation of food.

What do you think of the way Americans eat?

I have been in a state of shock for a few years (laughter). In my early years here, I would hear people say with guilt “this is such a rich food” or “this is such a decadent food”. And I was startled. Isn’t food meant to ‘enrich’ us?

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Photo, courtesy of 'Theology of the Table

Here is another story. A few years ago, I was seeing a nice American girl and discovered progressively that she had depression. She was also anorexic. So she ate very little. If she visited me and it was time for dinner, I would cook for her and me but I was basically the only one to eat. She just had one spoon of food.

But one night, when the food was better-tasting and better-looking, I put five spoonfuls in her plate. To my surprise, she ate them all! I was so happy. I asked her what had happened. She said that I had cooked with love for her. Served with love, she had eaten. I had to understand; her parents had both been intellectuals who traveled and left her to nannies. Her mother had almost never cooked for her. Why would she eat? But now I cared for her and she sort of came back to life by eating. Food was giving her love and food was giving her life.

It brought tears to my eyes.

Why do you think so many Americans have problems with food?

In America, we live in a rather Protestant culture. “By faith alone” tends to make the works of this earth count for nothing for Heaven. It puts an abyss between faith and real life on earth. So people pray one way but work in other way. From this duality, we get the expressions of “business is business” or “war is nasty anyway”.

But a Catholic culture wants the grace to save this real body, this real life. It wants grace to fall like rain on earth and go deep into it. And it embraces the works of people to participate to the salvation of Christ.

That participation should be in business, in politics, in arts and in the way we eat too. And remember that this “eating act” is major: that is the way we survive as individual.

We need to make people conscious about applying love and soul to the way they eat too. “Food is not that important’, many think. But why then do they run for the fridge when, lonely, they arrive at home in the evening? This is a mirror of what Mother Theresa had told us: “the poverty of the West is that we are not wanted”. So not being loved, not being wanted, we resolve most of the time to over-eat bad food.

To many, food is like pornography. It is high in sweetness, high in salt, high in quantity. But it does not feed them.

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What do you think people should do?

I think that one untold smart thing to do is that we should ‘talk’ to our urges for food kindly -- like a big brother talks to a young brother, not like a tyrant talk to a slave. We may for example have at 3 pm, a craving for sugary food. The tyrannical way to address the problem would be to say absolutely “no” to the craving.

But this does not ever work.

But the kind big brother method is always more effective. Instead of saying “no” we should prepare for the craving moment with alternative healthy foods that have a sweet side: baby carrots, apples that transport well, dried figs etc... We should have a lunch bag always full of those. What I am saying is that we should not be a ‘tyrant’ to our emotions. If we have a liquid chocolate diet for months (which is boring and tyrannical) our craving will come back with a vengeance and we will pack on the pounds even more than before!

What works is a progressive, patient and loving method. The “kind big brother” method. What does not work is the tyrannical method, the ‘master to slave’ method. It only brings pain, frustration and later on a revenge from the “younger brother in us”.

Why do so many people have trouble controlling their appetites in America?

This culture has a rather Puritan inclination: it condemns fun and pleasure all together. It cannot imagine that there is a civilized way to have fun or pleasure. That civilized way to have entertainment is walking hand in hand with virtue. Like Jesus at the wedding at Cana who accepted to have more water transformed into wine.

In the Puritan environment, pleasure only means gluttony or promiscuity. Between the over-tyrannical and the over-indulgent they do not see a balanced way to enjoy life.

But if we are loving ‘kind big brothers’ to ourselves we are not destructive nor immoral.

You have spoken about the need to get back to the family or communal dinner.

All the time… We must bring back the communal dinner.

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Why Catholics Need to Make Like the French I think it can take the following path. First of all, women must let men take back their place in the home, in the education of the children. They complain there are not real man anymore but they keep reproaching the men to be men with their children. We need to let men (just and balanced men) bring the just strength necessary to implement what is good in the home. Such as respecting a time to eat dinner together.

And it is time to rediscover what it is to be a nurturer. We have the deep meaning of the nursing of children by their mother. Why not continue with the way we cook?

And in this, real love asks us to give real food. Real love asks us to not give ‘Cheetos’ but to give mashed sweet potatoes. Real love asks to give real butter -- not margarine. Real herbs that have antioxidants, not fibers in cereals...

It is about quality over quantity.

What is happening in terms of culture and religion in France?

The good news is that there are the New Communities, the Emmanuel Community or Taize movement or the Beatitudes. They are slightly charismatic. They are like the villages growing around monasteries in the early middle age while chaos is all over the rest of the land. In these communities, there is a social loving life. People in there have different roles as leaders, priests, members. New chanting is created, new art, new housing and new crafts. And other people can see that from outside as a place of joy and acceptance. There are also the Latin Mass parishes. They share a meal after Mass. People on the outside see how they love one another.

All of those are like ‘bubbles of love’, where the heart is visible to others. Certainly, in France, they still know how to eat well. But in my opinion, people have often lost the memory of how to work well, which is still strong in the Protestant cultures.

In America, I enjoy so much the encouragement of initiative, the respect for success. There is so much more positive thinking here. In some ways, I come to the conclusion that there is in France a sort of Puritanism towards success, toward prosperity. More often that here, people ‘pooh-pooh’ winners. It is a leftover of Marxism I think. But that is as hypocritical as the puritanism toward the flesh. Because at the end of the day, French people still enjoy their nice shoes, nice pastries, and nice vacations. Each of those need prosperity, need someone to be successful at those and to be rewarded for it.

Different countries and nations have their strengths....

What do you think is the link between Catholicism and the right use of nature and the food we draw from it?

Here again, I think that we should not have a divide between faith and real life. I think that we should believe that this earth can be brought back in the initial plan of God with Grace and the works of men. And as we should love our body and elevate it with the works of virtues, we should love nature and care for it. There is for example a mishandling of animals. Packing chicken as we do is not right. Feeding cows grain instead of grass is not right. And at the end we end up suffering from it too: our food is of lower quality. Personally, I think that a lot of the meat I eat does not smell right.

I say we should give those animals a better life. I know that the food they will give will be more expensive, but we will just eat less often of it. It will healthier for us anyway. Again, this means more quality and less quantity. By this less with more quality, we will be healthier.

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But I do not believe in forcing the industry to do so. If we, the customers, buy the higher quality, less often we influence naturally the economy.

Where did you get these ideas?

There was a dialogue that started in me, about my father and mother. My father was a ‘health nut’. My mother who was under hardship and had a big heart would too often go for the quick food. It hurt her, she died earlier and I kept thinking about it. Once I dove in the American life, I had to articulate a response to the way of life I saw here. And here too I cared for people. Then friends told me I had to write those ideas. Some others said that I made them discover a whole new universe: the one of true and good food. And I must tell you that seeing the face of somebody who tastes your food that is tasty and healthy, is worth a million Christmas gifts. It is so beautiful. Besides, I just articulate a way of life that was given to me. I do not invent anything.

If the French way of eating (or Italian, or Spanish, or Lebanese after all) has been shaped by 16 centuries of Catholic faith, it cannot leave the people unformed by it. It gives time to develop a good tradition of food.

But that is not only Christianity. It is the natural wisdom of people that is passed onto us. Only in modern times, did we cut ourselves from our past.

How did the show, “Theology of the Table,” come about?

I was sitting with an older couple at their table and we were speaking about the way we eat and the way we believe. My friends told me to write about it, to produce a TV show about it. It took about two years of brainstorming and campaigning at EWTN for the program to be finally produced. I had to start to write a book at the same time, still unfinished… All Christians should see a clear link between their suppers, the Passover Supper, the Last Supper, Crucifixion and The Holly Mass. Jesus gave us the highest Sacrament there is in the form of a meal: the Eucharist. It is a re-enactment of the Crucifixion, but it is in the shape of a meal.

Why on earth and Heaven did God in His infinite wisdom choose a meal for the highest Sacrament? He could have chosen a different human act, carpentry, playing sport, walking … But instead he chose the common meal of man. There must be a lot of good things in the common meal, no?

Is there a link between the Mass and our meals?

We have forgotten about our faith even in the Mass. We say, “the bread of life” about Holy Communion, but we don’t live it. When we get Communion, do we really go to receive the Bread of Life that is Jesus as food?

All of this is only understandable and lived if we rediscover the value of eating together true food.

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What is your hope?

I just offer solutions. People can apply them or not. And I am only one voice among many.

When people say, ‘I do not have time to cook’ I see a solution. For most of us, time is absorbed by watching TV, and driving children to sports activities. TV can be replaced by speaking together at the table. Playing sports, every day with a professional goal can be replaced with playing sport three times a week just to enjoy it at hours that do not compete with the family meal.

How is your book on the ‘Theology of the Table’ going?

I hope it will be done by next summer. Right now, I am working 100% on the docudrama ‘The Hidden Rebellion’.

Are you thinking of producing future TV shows for EWTN? Yes, they are open to suggestions. But I can also venture in food channels. It takes first a lot of sponsors, lots of work, and about $200,000.

WANT TO SEE MORE OF DANIEL RABOURDIN? Click here for a DVD of ‘Theology of the Table’

October 2014 France | Regina Magazine

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DANIEL RABOURDIN: Why on earth and Heaven did God in His infinite wisdom choose a meal for the highest Sacrament?

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Spain ireland poland France Holy land italy Greece portuGal October 2014 France | Regina Magazine

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La Grande JournĂŠe Penny Silvers takes Regina Magazine to Paris on the Grand JournĂŠe, in honor of the 800th birthday of the saintly and Most Christian King, Louis IX.

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A Regina Photo Essay We began the day with a Solemn High Mass at the parish church of Saint-Eugene in the 9th Arrondissement.

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Featuring Propers of the Mass of St. Louis and the Ordinary from the Mass Gaudete Domino from the Coronation of King Louis XVI, the Schola Sainte-Cecile lifted the Mass of the Ages with sublime music.

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After Mass, we gathered in the place at Saint-Eugene to begin the long promenade.

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Preceded by the processional crucifix, the clergy in golden vestments lead us.

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The magn Sepulchre with the J and the K

nificent statue of Saint Louis IX, carried aloft by squires of the Order of the Holy e of Jerusalem, followed by the Order of Malta cloaked in black mantles emblazoned Jerusalem and Maltese Cross insignias. Â The Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre Knights of Malta file in solemnly.

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The medieval troop Teutonic Order dressed in their chain mail call to mind the Crusading movement so much a part of our Catholic identity, long maligned and deserving of reconsideration in the light of current events.

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While St. Louis’ two Crusades failed in their mission, the king was always solicitous for the weak and wounded. Louis ultimately gave his life, succumbing to an illness during the second crusade.

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Christus Vincit! Christus Regnat! Christus Imperat! The chanted words ricochet off the walls of Paris’s beautiful buildings. We are over one thousand strong, in a Grand Promenade.

Brightly colored flags of fleur-de-lys (the royal symbol of France) and the Sacred Heart, plus the joyful singing signal to curious motorists that we are not the usual crowd of demonstrators.

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A banner posted outside a restaurant greets us: "A King for our times.”

A heckler's invective spurs the Choeur de Montjoie Saint-Denis to lead us in singing "L'Appel de Roland" in response., singing Roland, sonnez votre cor! (“Roland, sound your horn.”)

The Choir has become an emblem of the singing tradition of France, preserving in song her religious, military, and political history. Rue after rue we are buoyed by the songs, the chants, and the litanies making present for the city and her dwellers of the deep Christian heritage, of which we are the heirs.

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Begun in 1239 and consecrated in 1248, the Rayonnant Gothic Sainte-Chapelle is considered one of the highest achievements of Gothic architecture. The Holy Chapel was designed to house the collection of the Passion relics -- most importantly, Christ’s Crown of Thorns.

The collection of the relics of the Passion was purchased by St. Louis from Baldwin II, Latin emperor of Constantinople and transferred from Venice in 1239 by two Dominican friars to France. For the final stage, St. Louis carried the relics himself, barefoot and dressed as a penitent into Paris.

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A Regina Photo Essay

Filing past the Hotel de Ville and over the Bridge of Arcole, we arrive at last at the portals of the great Notre-Dame de Paris. Â 62

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The Rector of the Cathedral, Monsignor Jacquin greets the Prince Louis de Bourbon and Prince Henri d'Orleans at the portal doors of this great cathedral, so long a site of pilgrimages up to the present moment.

We process in to the glorious sounds of brass and organ. The Schola Sainte-Cecile sing once again to accompany our final procession to venerate the Crown of Thorns resting on a red velvet pillow and the relics of St. Louis in a golden reliquary at the foot of the altar.

The chants of Victimae Paschali Laudes and Vexilla Regis Produenti with their fitting words of mortal duel and victory remind us that through the Passion of Christ we win a participation in the glorious and majestic heavenly realm. Â

It was this telos which St. Louis always kept in mind, the goal of heaven and the abhorrence of sin which led our dear Savior to suffer the cruelties of the Cross. In his instruction to his son, "to love thy God with all thy heart, and to desire rather to suffer than commit one mortal sin" Louis expressed the grand motivation behind his deep devotion to the Catholic Faith and all his actions of justice and prudence, his benevolence to the poor. Â A king indeed for our times.

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Catholic Trivia Game

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The Epitome of Effortless Chic

By Sequoia Sierra

P

erhaps it has something to do with Paris having been the Fashion Capital of the world for over a century, or perhaps it’s just a French ‘thing’; either way it is undeniable that the quintessential French woman, particularly the Parisian, has mastered the look of the ‘Effortless Chic.’

There are three main elements to achieving the effortless chic look, and three words come to mind when breaking it down: Simple, Tailored and Detailed.

Simple

Tailored

Detailed

In its beauty and elegance, “effortless chic” is never flamboyant or over the top. It is ideal and sturdy for every day wear while still embodying feminine delicacy and charm.

Now this is true of most Europeans in general, but is certainly true of the Parisian woman’s look. You will never catch her in ill-fitting clothes, something which sadly seems to be an American phenomenon -- and one that needs to change! Fitted or tailored clothing does not imply that something is tight, but rather that it “fits well” that it is the person’s size. If sleeves or pants are too long, they need to be tailored and hemmed to fit the person who wears them.

If something is too large, it is taken in so that instead of drowning the individual it compliments their body and shape.

You may think that if something is simple, than how could it also be detailed? Simple does not mean boring, and detailed can simply mean that a nice jacket has beautiful buttons on it, or a little black dress is worn with a beautifully flowered silk scarf, or that an outfit is worn with a statement piece of jewelry such as a necklace or earrings. That is detail.

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So to achieve the “Effortless Chic” look of the French Woman keep in mind the three elements needed to achieve it: Simple, Tailored, and just a touch of Detail!

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22

La Madeleine ~

A Short Story

I

t was a bit of a shock. It had been a long time since I had seen myself in a mirror.

Though I am still tall and slender, my once flame-red hair is now a bit dulled.

But my eyes are still the deep brown of the Jewess I was born 37 years ago, in a Galilean village.

I stood looking into the depths of the glassy Mediterranean, on the deck of a ship bound from Ephesus in Asia Minor to Marsalis, the port in southern Gaul. I was no sailor after the horrors of the wreck twelve years before that eventually brought my brother, my sister and me to be shackled and sold as slave tutors on the quays there.

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La Madeleine

A

s Jews, we could read and write. And the local winemakers were rich enough to afford tutors for their children. This is how we came to find ourselves valuable commodities as we stood squinting in the Mediterranean sun.

We were just grateful to be alive.

We’d barely escaped with our lives. The persecutions after Cephas’s speech in many tongues was heard by more than 3000 people in Jerusalem that day were fierce.

Disastrously, our fame as the Master’s friends had already spread from Bethany to Jerusalem. Just a few denarii and a judiciously-placed threat to their families had easily persuaded our neighbors to disclose our whereabouts.

We’d fled Jerusalem under the protection of brave Joseph, the Arimethean. Because everyone knew he’d grown wealthy in the tin trade, Joseph had to pay dearly for people’s silence. But he paid gladly, and we managed to sail under cover of darkness, from Sidon.

But we three were alone. Joseph was so closely watched he could not risk having us accompany him on his chartered ship. The few disciples he could save were not notorious friends of the Galilean, like we were.

Joseph’s destination was a safe haven provided by his business connections in far-off Britannia. He did find us another, smaller ship, however. We were to rendezvous with him at a quiet cove near Tarsus in Asia Minor.

Thankfully, the Spirit was with us that day, and we all shared an onboard supper with deep joy. Joseph broke the bread and blessed the wine. He told us how the west of Britannia was foggy and cold, an uncivilized place with rough natives -- but blessedly out of reach of both the Romans and the Jews. The next morning both ships set out across the sea, our smaller ship following his.

We could not know we would never reach there – or indeed ever see Joseph again.

The midnight storm that separated us was so ferocious that all these years later, I still shudder at the 70

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memory. Terrified, our sailors threw everything overboard to lighten the ship, to no avail.

At last we discerned that they were set to throw us, their passengers, overboard too – this time as propitiation to their savage gods. We three were shackled to the mast and we held fast to each other, praying fervently and crying aloud for deliverance in the name of the Master.

Just then, a massive wave came howling out of the wild darkness and smote the ship. The freezing waters swept all around us, carrying off the sailors and indeed the huge mast itself, snapped like a toothpick.

When the sun rose the next morning, the sea was grey and restive. We were the only people alive, adrift and rudderless. Joseph’s ship were nowhere in sight, and to our horror there was fresh danger on the rocky coastline we could make out through the morning haze.

Now, I should mention that my brother Lazarus has never been the same since the incident in Bethany which brought us such unwanted notoriety. Nor have I, really, since the morning I first saw my Master alive outside Joseph’s tomb.

This is why we were not too shocked when our shackles simply unlocked. And when Martha spotted the other ship, we all signaled frantically, overjoyed at our good fortune.

So that is how we came to be sold as slaves by the sailors of the ship that ‘rescued’ us. As they counted their money in the slave market, Martha and I were especially relieved to see the last of those sailors.

They had not restrained themselves while we were in their captivity.

I suppose this is where I should talk about our past – my past, to be honest.

The tiny village of Magdala had seemed so hopeless when our parents both died of a fever that swept through Galilee. All we’d ever known was rural poverty, but we nevertheless sold the farm and journeyed to our aunt and her son in Bethany near Jerusalem.

Lazarus felt he could find work there.

Martha was happy to be a household servant for our imperious aunt.

But at eleven years old, tall and coltishly comely with freakishly red hair, I became the subject of the unwanted attentions of our cousin. He was 26 years old, married with three children. When he caught me in lonely places, I dared not say anything. My siblings and I literally had no place else to go.

There is a peculiar thing that happens to young girls sexualized before their time. A deep cynicism took hold of me. Though my family was outwardly pious, I accompanied them to worship with a deeply wounded soul in my breast, laughing to myself at their pious pretensions. This God they spoke of was obviously a cruel master – or non-existent, a myth for children.

And I was no longer a child. In the ensuing years, as my shining red hair and full-breasted figure developed, I discovered that sinning could be lucrative.

It was not long before word got around that I was available for short assignations – under a wooden walkway, behind some stone steps. There were boys at first, and then the men started to come. I secretly amassed a small trove of denarii, which I guarded zealously.

But not carefully enough, for when he discovered my trove, my cousin went wild with jealousy. It was easy to exact revenge; he put a stop to my secret trade simply by showing my aunt.

Lazarus, who’d returned wearily from his work in a nearby tavern, was caught unawares by a screaming tirade. My aunt hurled epithets at me, using street

language that I had no idea she knew. I cowered behind my brother, thinking fast. Martha sobbed in a corner, terrified that we would be turned out into the street, or worse.

Afterwards, Lazarus was shaken. He left the house again without another word. Martha glanced at me reproachfully, but went about her work. I was fourteen years old, but I knew the law. Girls like me could be taken outside of the village walls and stoned to death.

Later that night I slipped out of the family home into the dark streets of Bethany. One of my admirers was waiting for me, overjoyed at the prospect of free favors. It wasn’t long before he discovered that I could be a very lucrative investment, too, sinning under his protection in cosmopolitan Jerusalem.

Now, before you laugh at that description – for of course Jerusalem is a holy city – you should know what all public sinners know: that men with a religious profession are still men. So I lived from their sinning for six more years, amassing a far bigger hoard than my family could ever imagine. It was from that hoard that I purchased the costly ointment with which I anointed the Master’s feet some years later, when He pulled me out of that life and gave me a new one.

But I am getting lost in the past, as I sometimes do these days. My point was merely to say my hoard sufficed to pay off the sailors for some time aboard that ‘rescue’ ship – but it didn’t last forever.

Eventually they had their way with us.

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It was from that hoard that I purchased the costly ointment with which I anointed the Master’s feet some years later, when He pulled me out of that life and gave me a new one.

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La Madeleine

It wasn’t so bad for me. I was adept at taking my mind off somewhere else while my body was being violated. Martha was not, however, and days later she continued to sob in the slave marketplace, the tears disfiguring her face and driving away potential buyers. No one wanted an emotional slave.

Lazarus prayed silently the entire time. I watched and prayed with him. Soon Martha ceased weeping, lapsing into a grim silence. A Roman woman approached her and asked in Greek what her skills were; Lazarus answered in the tavern Greek he knew.

When she learned that they were brother and sister, she bargained shrewdly for them both, knowing that the slavers would have trouble selling a sullen woman without any Greek.

She was correct. Triumphant, she walked away with her purchases, despite Lazarus’s impassioned plea in halting Greek to buy me too. Her silent appraisal told me all I needed to know; she didn’t need a woman who looked like me in her house. Most Roman women preferred that their husbands kept their playthings elsewhere.

To my immense grief, my brother and sister were led away, still shackled.

The man who purchased me, ostensibly to tutor his children, was a type I had come to recognize from my days in Jerusalem. He was a Roman, a wine-grower with a cowed wife and a small horde of unruly offspring.

My new master clearly had other duties in mind for me, however. He unshackled me, smiling. I prayed silently.

So that is how I came to be sold into slavery in the busy seaport of the Romans. My master and his family were actually Romanized Gauls, to be precise.

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wine throughout the thirsty Roman world, and had profited immensely from the trade.

They were Epicureans, of a sort, too and the Master didn’t hesitate to partake of the grape. This made him both amorous and careless, and late one night a few weeks later I snapped.

He’d fallen asleep in my bed, heavily drunk. I crept out of my tiny room and wrapped myself in a hooded cloak stolen from my mistress. Then I ran, silently and swiftly, out into the dark, deserted streets of Marsallis -- but this time there was no admirer to take me in. Wondering at my own energy and daring, I made for the quayside, the last place I had seen Lazarus and Martha.

Panting heavily, I hid in the early morning shadows as drunken revelers passed me by, praying silently all the while for deliverance from the Master. Where was He? Why had He permitted these calamities to overtake us? We had passed from being wanted criminals in Jerusalem to thoroughly anonymous slaves on the other side of the Empire. We were lost, and we were invisible.

Except my red hair made it almost impossible to be invisible. Roman women prized red and blonde hair, it seemed. My master had my hair washed and brushed by another slave for his enjoyment.

When my mistress learned this, she was furious. She informed me in hissing tones that she could get a great deal of money for my hair. Later that day, however, her plan was foiled when her husband objected.

Now, of course, she hated me even more.

But this was all behind me I skulked outside the small wig-maker’s shop by the Marsallis docks until the proprietor, a woman, appeared. When I approached her, she looked at me uneasily until I pushed back my hood, and the long, well-tended

cascade of shining red hair fell over my shoulders.

Her eyes lit up, and she invited me into the shop.

I emerged an hour later, my tresses shorn. But I had a pocketful of denarii and the wigmaker – Deborah, a Jew like me, as it turned out, with quite good Aramaic – had obligingly dyed my now-short hair and unruly eyebrows a deep brown color. She’d accepted my offer to trade the cloak, too, in exchange for the simple clothes and head covering of a married Jewish woman.

“Where will you go now?” Deborah asked, eyeing me apprehensively as I emerged from her back room in my new guise.

I honestly had no idea – just a vague plan to find my siblings and somehow book passage for Brittania. I described the woman who had bought Lazarus and Martha, in the slave market, but Deborah did not know her.

“Some of these women like to send their Jewish slaves to the synagogue to worship,” she shrugged.

“They think it makes them more tractable. Perhaps your brother and sister will be sent there?”

It was a long shot, but I had nothing else. Deborah kindly sent me to the home of Rebecca, a poor Jewish widow who would take in boarders at low rates.

There in my tiny but clean room on a forgotten back street, I waited for the Sabbath.

Rebecca could speak a little Hebrew, so we managed to communicate the basics. I was from Jerusalem, I told her and her eyes grew wide. But she mustn’t tell anyone, I cautioned, with low urgency in my voice.

She nodded, and I had the feeling I could trust her.

The rent I was paying would feed her

children, after all.

Deborah was right, as it turned out. Lazarus and Martha appeared at the synagogue at the next Sabbath services. I stayed in the shadows in the back of the room, as inconspicuous as I dared. But they walked right past me, not recognizing me at all.

Delighted that my disguise was so effective, I held back during the services, praying fervently that the Master would find us a way out of our difficulties.

And that is when a sort of trance came over me.

I could hear my own breathing and the beating of my heart, but everything around me receded as if to a very great distance. As if in a dream, all I could see before me were the dust-colored streets of Jerusalem in the glowering gray clouds and semi-darkness of those last days.

I turned and to my utter joy, saw the Master. He was gazing at me intently, and I was once again overcome with the giddy love I had felt for Him in those days.

I grasped His hands and together we started down a flight of stone steps, when He halted suddenly.

“It does seem as if it is the end of the world,” He said to me intently.

I nodded, waiting.

“But you know that it is not,” He went on.

I nodded, again.

Yes, I thought. It is not the end of the world.

Suddenly the vision cleared. I was back in the shadows of a provincial synagogue in the south of Gaul, and I was utterly bereft, again. The Master was gone.

A few minutes later, Lazarus and Martha passed me as they made their way out.

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"My master and his family were actually Romanized Gauls, who had marketed their wine throughout the thirsty Roman world, profiting immensely from the trade."

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La Madeleine

This time, our eyes met and they both recognized me. My sister opened her lips as if to speak, but Lazarus quickly shot her a warning glance. She dropped her eyes and followed him outside.

But as I carefully made my way through the chattering crowd outside the synagogue, I felt a hand on me – it was Martha’s hand, surreptitiously passing me a note. In an instant, she was gone.

The note said that Lazarus was employed as a jack-of-all-trades around his master’s house, and that he had the freedom of the town. Martha was the governess and tutor to the family’s small children. They were well-treated, it seemed. Furthermore, they had found a friend.

Maximin was a fellow slave, but an educated Greek held in high esteem by his owners. He was on the verge of being given his freedom, in fact, after twenty years of faithful service. Lazarus would send Maximin to me, he said. He would know what to do.

I was doubtful about this, schooled as I was in the deep mistrust of men. But I plainly had no other choice. I turned towards Rebecca’s house, intending to wait there for further word.

But it was not to be. For some reason, I found it impossible to retrace my steps. Every corner I turned led me to an unfamiliar street. I crossed and recrossed the same intersection of narrow streets several times, mystified. As the Sabbath sun was sinking low, I started to worry. Where was that house? People were starting to notice me, too.

Fighting a mounting sense of panic, I stepped into a small shop to collect my thoughts. While I was examining the pomegranates on display there, I overheard gruff voices questioning the shopkeeper.

My Greek was not very good, admittedly, but I could pick out the words sklávos and kokkinomálli -- ‘slave’ and ‘red-headed.’ Two rough-looking men glanced at me briefly as I left the shop, my heart beating wildly.

But the hair that showed under my head-covering was dark brown, and I prayed fervently that they were not looking for a dowdy, married Jewess.

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A few steps from the shop, I tried desperately to keep from breaking into a run, watching my feet carefully to keep from tripping on the uneven pavement. I didn’t see the burly man as he rounded the corner until I had run into him with full force.

The impact was such that I would have gone sprawling into the gutter if he hadn’t caught me in the nick of time. I gasped loudly, and looked back to see the slave hunters step into the street and look our way. I was nearly sick with terror.

“Marina!” the man shouted at me in Greek, grasping both of my shoulders. He gave me a good shake as I stared at him, wild-eyed. “We’ve all been waiting for you!”

Something in his eyes made me suddenly understand that he was not crazy. I gulped and managed a weak grin.

“Such a wife to have, late even for her own Sabbath dinner!” he said half-jokingly, and putting a warm, strong arm around my shoulders, propelled me around the corner, down the side street, and safely out of harm’s way.

It was Maximin. He had just come from Rebecca’s house, where the slave hunters had already been. The elegant hooded cape had led them to Deborah the wig-maker, who’d pointed them in turn to a terrified Rebecca. Since neither woman knew anything about me, they could disclose nothing. Both had stoutly defended their right to do business as they saw fit; neither had mentioned my altered appearance.

“So they’re looking for a fugitive red-head?” I whispered faintly. My panic had ebbed away, replaced by a throbbing headache. I felt weak.

“Yes,” Maximin said grimly, ‘but I know those two.

They are clever, thorough and brutal. They are also expensive – your master must want you back very much.”

So it was that very night that I was spirited out of Marsallis. After a brief repast, Maximin himself led me through a little-used entrance out of the city, behind the back gardens of the poor.

“We traveled all night and slept by day, keeping to the cart-roads used by the peasants driving their herds.”

We traveled all night and slept by day, keeping to the cart-roads used by the peasants driving their herds.

Doubting the trustworthiness of innkeepers, we slept in the fields and bought our food from the farmers, who asked no questions in return for hard Roman currency.

Maximin remained vigilant, however. Although I slept, exhausted, every day, it seemed whenever I awoke he was there, silently on the alert.

After three days walk, we were in the mountains. As we picked our way through the bare gray rocks interspersed with shrubs and stubby trees, I could see that Maximin was beginning to relax. We were traveling by daylight now.

“This is my country,” he explained, as he led me expertly through the lonely ravines. We hadn’t seen a human being all day.

“Are you not a Greek?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yes, I was born in Greece and educated there,” he said briefly. “But when the Romans invaded, my whole village was sold into slavery. My master has a farm here, and I spent my young years as a shepherd in these hills. That was before he married and had children to be educated – and had need for my services as a tutor.”

“Where are we going?” I asked for about the hundredth time. Though he’d brushed off the question up until now, this time he smiled.

“We are very near your safe place,” he said. “No one will find you here, and Lazarus and Martha will be able to visit you there.”

Maximin’s ‘safe place’ turned out to be a huge cave hidden in the massif of southern Gaul. Inside, the cave was warm and dry, and surprisingly well fur-

nished, as well. There were rope beds, with rough woolen coverlets, oil lamps and even a few pieces of provincial furniture.

Outside, honey-colored cliffs shielded a small verdant valley, through which an azure blue stream ran.

We sat at the cave’s entrance and watched the sun set as we dined on fresh-caught fish wrapped in wild thyme.

“Why is this cave so, well, not like a cave?” I asked.

“The Gauls have centuries of experience living in caves,” he explained. “The old shepherd to whom I was apprenticed had lived here for years. I was terribly homesick for my old life as a student, and I didn’t really want to have much to do with the master’s other servants – a rough lot. At least the old shepherd was kind.”

“And your master?” I asked, wondering what sort of man would allow his slave so much freedom.

“My master is a good man,” Maximin replied. “He inherited this estate, and though he himself has only a basic Roman education, he has great respect for learning. Martha is now tutoring the youngest children, and I have the care of the oldest.”

“I saw his wife in the slave market,” I ventured slowly.

He nodded sadly.

“She is not as good as he. Fortunately she loathes the country, and so years usually go by without her visiting this estate. She is occupied by parties and salons in Marsallis.”

“And Lazarus?”

“Your brother is an exceedingly good man,” Maximin sighed. “In fact, I have never met anyone like him.

He has this extraordinary certainty – a tranquility -about him.”

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Eventually, as my command of both the Greek of the educated classes and the Gallicized Latin of the locals grew stronger, I began to tell the story of the Master.

I nodded, but said nothing.

“You have this quality also,” he said, regarding me closely. “Most women would have broken under what you have had to endure, but here you are…”

I sighed.

“Maximin, you are a good man,” I said in my simple, broken Greek. “You have risked everything to help an escaped slave, a foreigner. I wish my Greek was better so I could tell you what happened to me.”

So that is how I began my new life, learning Greek in a remote cave called ‘la Baume.’ Eventually, as my command of both the Greek of the educated classes and the Gallicized Latin of the locals grew stronger, I began to tell the story of the Master.

As the months and years wore on, I became known to the shepherds in the area, and I taught them and their wives and children this story as well. Martha and Lazarus eventually converted not only his master and his household, but indeed most of the Jews in the Marsillus synagogue, including Deborah the wigmaker and Rebecca the widow. (Once a year I sent a length of my flaming tresses along to Deborah, who could always fetch a good price for it – more than enough to provide for my scant needs, with enough left over to feed the poor.)

Martha and Lazarus were given their freedom, of course, and along with Marsillus began to teach throughout the countryide, in the houses of converts and in the streets when they dared. Lazarus even began converting the poor lepers who lived -- like me -- in caves in the countryside.

My cave became a sort of home for us all, however.

And I would have never left it if it hadn’t been for the message, a summons from John at Ephesus in 80

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far-off Asia Minor. The Master’s mother, she whom I had considered my own mother in the three years I followed her Son, was asking for me.

Despite my terror of the sea, I resolved to answer her call. And so I took my leave of Lazarus, Martha, Maximin and all of our other brothers and sisters in the Way and turned my face eastward again.

This time my journey was blessedly uneventful and I stayed some months in the house of Miriam at Ephesus. There, she is faithfully tended by John, whom she calls her ‘son’ – though of course we all know she misses her real Son, the One who told us He had gone to prepare a place for all of us in His Father’s house.

“We are all scattered to the four winds,” I told Miriam one day. “I could have never foreseen this that day when the men returned from the Mount of Olives.”

She turned her dignified face towards me and gave me a radiant smile.

“He did tell them. We must be scattered in order to tell His story to all men. And we must do as He wishes,” she said quietly, touching my arm with deep sympathy. “Renounce your will and give it over to Him. He will provide.”

Finally, strengthened by her love and that of the disciples who are gathered around her, I took my leave for the last time.

So that is why I am bound for the remote cave that I have come to call my earthly home. And this is how I have come to be on this ship again, watching my red hair stream in the breeze against the deep blue sea.

I must stop by Deborah’s shop in Marsallis for a new coiffure.

A Man’s

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St Mart ‘Toto Orbi Peculiari Patron’

By Harry Stevens, US Army (ret)

“Martin, the special patron of the whole world” Saint Gregory of Tours 84

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tin

MARTIN THE BISHOP arrived at this place at Candes on the Loire river in 397AD.

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n the late Roman Empire, Savaria was a small, remote outpost village (today Szombathely, Hungary) built during the reign of Claudius. The Roman Legions controlled the village on the major trade route between Italia and Pannonia, inhabited by the ‘Pannonii,’ Indo-European tribes.

One of Savaria’s legionnaires was a military tribune who rose from the ranks; he had a son in 316 or 317 AD. The boy was named Martin, or ‘little Mars,’ the ancient god of war--a divinity near and dear to a Roman soldier's heart. This pagan military family was probably of the cult of Mithras, as were many Roman soldiers. But the child Martin was born during Constantine’s reign of 306-337, when for the first time Christians were tolerated.

Military families today move around often, and it was no different in Martin’s time. After his birth, Martin’s family was moved to Ticinum, (today Pavia, Italy) not far from Milan. Martin spent his early years in Ticinum; his parents were part of a privileged institution, the Army.

Martin’s father retired, and was given land in Ticinum. There is a story of young Martin disappearing for three days, which he spent in a forbidden Christian church asking questions. He even asked to be baptized, which did not happen -- though something in this young boy was surely pulling him towards the Eternal Truth.

Martin’s Military Years

In the year 331, the Emperor Constantine issued an edict requiring all sons of veterans to enlist in the Roman Army. Martin, at the age of 15, had his destiny decided for him.

He was conscripted into the Army, and assigned to the prestigious scholae imperatoris, an elite unit which guarded the Emperor. However, his heart was elsewhere; Martin wanted to be a hermit in the desert and lead a life of prayer.

In the extreme cold winter of 335 AD, Martin was 18, stationed in Amiens, Gaul, where reports tell us 86

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that “many were dying of intense cold.” When he came across a half-naked beggar, Martin took his sword “cut the cape in two and gave half to the beggar, putting on the rest himself again.”

This was regarded as madness by his fellow soldiers, but in retrospect had an electrifying effect across Christendom. Martin could not have known the importance of this kind act. This one episode is frozen in time across the Christian world -- in paintings and statues, especially throughout France, and Germany -- to this day.

That night in his sleep, Martin saw Christ wearing half his cape. It was a vision that would haunt him all his days. Though Martin was still a catechumen, it is said he was baptized shortly after this event.

Confronting an Apostate Emperor

More than 20 years later, we find Martin bravely confronting the new Emperor, Julian the Apostate.

Before a battle at Worms, Martin said to the Caesar: “I have been your soldier up to now, let me now be God’s. Let someone who is going to fight have your bonus. I am Christ’s soldier; I am not allowed to fight.”

Julian flew into an imperial rage, and accused Martin of cowardice. In response, Martin offered to advance alone and unarmed against the enemy in the name of Christ.

Julian’s response in turn was to have Martin thrown into prison. Incredibly, the next day, the Germanic invaders asked for peace. Shortly thereafter, Martin was released from prison, and discharged.

The Holy Years

Martin served Caesar for 25 years; now he sought his Master. He was drawn to Hilary of Poitiers, later Saint Hilary. Under Hilary’s guidance, Martin became an exorcist, then deacon, then priest. He settled near Ligugé and for about ten years lived an austere life, preaching the Gospel in Gaul.

THE GRAVE OF SAINT MARTIN IN TOURS: A place of Christian pilgrimage until it was viciously attacked in the French Revolution, it has been restored today.

He attracted followers. More than 80 men gathered with Martin to form an early monastic community – about a century before St Benedict and his famed monastic rule. This community of Liguge survived until 1607 as a monastery; it was rebuilt by the Benedictines of Solesmes in 1852.

Because of his holiness and renown as a preacher, Martin became Bishop of Tours in 371 by popular acclaim. It was not an office he sought; however, it seemed God always had other plans then Martin had for himself.

Traveling for Christ

Bishop Martin continued to live an austere life near Marmoutier, which later also became a famous monastery. Here he trained priests, many who would later become bishops themselves.

He also traveled widely, covering incredible distances throughout what is now France and Germany, deliberately seeking out pagan strongholds to bring them the Gospel.

He traveled far from his diocese, and the stories that accompanied his visits emanate from today’s cities of Trier, Dijon, Beaune, and Vienne. Martin would go into villages, destroy pagan sites, and build a church.

As such, Martin was one of the originators of the Catholic parish. (Paroikia is Greek for house, parochia is latin, and paroisse is French).

Martin’s Miracles

Martin is known to have raised three people from the dead, the last one a pagan child near Chartres.

This last miracle helped convert many pagans.

There is a Martin story regarding a pine tree that is almost as famous as the cloak story. Many of the pagans were of cults that worshiped sacred trees.

Undaunted, Martin proceeded to cut down the symbol of their cult. The peasants there offered to cut it down themselves, on condition that he who trusted so strongly in his God would stand under it wherever they would place him. Martin agreed and allowed himself to be tied under the side towards which the tree was leaning. We hear of the intense fear of the brother monks who accompanied. Just as it seemed about to fall on him, he made the sign of the cross, at which the tree fell in the other direction.

The pagans gasped at the miracle, the monks wept for joy, and many of the pagans asked to become Christians because of what they had witnessed.

Many stories are also told of Martin pitted in demonic combat. Martin won these spiritual battles using prayer and the Sign of the Cross as his weapons. Often, Martin was called to drive demons out of people, and animals. Martin succeeded by the grace of God, always knowing Who the Exorcist actually was.

A Holy Death

Martin was still traveling and doing the Lord’s work at 80 years of age, though he sensed that he would soon to join the Communion of Saints.

He was traveling in Touraine, at Candes on the Loire River, there to settle a dispute among a group of prelates. Feeling weak, he asked to be taken into the local Church.

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MARTIN THE BISHOP looks down on the site of his death in 397 AD, in the church at Candes on the Loire River.

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A FAMOUS ACT OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY: Martin the Roman soldier cuts his cape in half for a freezing beggar, an act of mercy that would echo across Europe for centuries to come.

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St Martin

Photo Right: The local church at Candes, where Martin died in 397 AD.

The faithful wanted to lay Martin on a bed of straw; Martin asked for a bed of ashes.

The monks pleaded with him to allow them at least to put a sheet under him and make his last hours comfortable. "It becomes not a Christian," said Martin, "to die otherwise than upon ashes. I shall have sinned if I leave you any other example." He lay with eyes and hands raised to Heaven, until the brothers begged him to turn on one side to rest his body a little. "Allow me, my brethren," he answered, "to look towards Heaven rather than to earth, that my soul may be ready to take its flight to the Lord."

Martin died on Sunday 8 November 397. His funeral was solemnly celebrated in Tours on November 11, which ever afterwards has been celebrated as St Martin’s Day in Germany and France. (Editor’s Note: It was the day chosen for the Armistice between these two powers at the end of World War I and since celebrated as Remembrance Day in the UK and Veteran’s Day in the US.) We are told that two thousand monks and nuns gathered for his funeral, 1617 years ago.

Europe’s Extraordinary Devotion to St Martin There are St Martin of Tours parishes throughout France and Germany - as far east as the Rhine River, following the ancient borders of the Roman world. The story of St Martin and the cloak is known throughout these regions, and is depicted in statues and frescoes. On 11 November each year, the feast 90

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of St. Martin is solemnly celebrated in the Basilica of Tours. Today, there are St Martin lantern parades for children on the evening of November 11 throughout France and Germany.

Editor’s Note: Though most Germans and French today have only a very hazy idea of who Martin actually was, the traditions surrounding his day – of bringing light to the darkness – remain strong.) Today, there are 1573 Churches in France named after St Martin, 652 in Germany, 912 in Italy, 212 in the UK, and 157 in the USA. Saint Martin of Tours, Ora Pro Nobis!

Martin’s Biographer Much of the above history comes from Sulpicius Severus, Martin’s friend and biographer. Severus was a lawyer who gave up a life of luxury to follow his friend in faith. He wrote the story of Martin’s life in 397, when it became a ‘best seller’ of the ancient world.

References: Regine Pernoud, Martin of Tours, Ignatius Press.

Sulpicius Serverus, The Western Fathers: Being the Lives of SS. Martin of Tours, Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo, Honoratus of Arles, and Germanus of Auxerre, Sheed and Ward.

Church statistics from: http://www.viasanctimartini.eu/datenbank/sankt-martin-kirchen-in-der-welt

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A French Spiritu The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest

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by Losana Boyd October 2014 France | Regina Magazine

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he Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest had its origins in France in 1990, and was officially founded in Africa. The Institute continues to grow steadily throughout its native France, as well as in apostolates in Africa, Europe and the United States. The fundamental spirit guiding the Institute’s work is to faithfully serve the universal Church, especially through its charism of exclusive use of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

“We go where we are called,” explains Canon Jason Apple, an American priest of the Institute. After Pope Benedict’s 2007 Motu Proprio, many parishes throughout Europe and America have turned to the Institute for their great reverence and spirituality in the Mass, out of a deep desire to reclaim the heritage of Catholicism. Through the universality of the Roman Church, the Institute has brought the spiritual tradition and heritage of France to eleven countries around the world. The Institute further expresses the longtime friendship and cultural ties between France and the USA. In the namesake city of the great French Saint Louis IX, in Missouri, within the Archdiocese of St. Louis, the Institute houses the St. Francis de Sales Oratory.

The Institute’s French Character With all this international focus, how much of its native French character does the Institute retain? Quite a bit, it seems. Currently, the Institute has eighty seminarians and seventy three priests, and more than 40 percent are from France.

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“We are first of all Roman,” clarifies Canon Brieuc de La Brosse, a native Briton and a priest of the Institute at their seminary in Gricigliano, Italy. “Then we are French in keeping the classical way of life in our community.”

“There is a quality of French refinement present in our life here,” the American Canon Apple continues.

Though gastronomy and wine-making are wellknown areas of French expertise, there are other important national characteristics, as well.

Love of defending the truth, Canon Apple says, is one such trait. The rooster is the symbol for France and represents the willingness to fight for the truth.

Historically, French Catholics have had to fight hard for their faith, and perhaps it is true that we value most what we have to strive for. The French are always glad for a challenge, the Canons acknowledge with a smile.

The belief that nothing is impossible also imbues the French spirit. The founding of the Institute itself, in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, is a classic example of this spirit. To illustrate, towards the beginning of the foundation, the superiors even had to sell a car to buy food for the seminarians, dwelling in the beautiful but crumbling Italian villa donated to the Church by the Martelli family.

French Catholic Spirituality Catholic spirituality has particularly deep roots in France. Often referred to as the eldest daughter of the Church, France claims as its own sons and

A French Spirituality

The Institute’s seminary at Gricigliano, Italy

daughters a vast number of great saints, from Joan of Arc to St. Martin, St. Therese of Liseux, to the Institute’s own patron, St. Francis de Sales.

Salesian spirituality -- encouraging prayer as the foundation for a life of truth and charity -- guides the daily life of the Institute. St. Francis de Sales wrote the classic “Introduction to the Devout Life” in 1608 to great and continued success.

The French also have an exceptionally strong devotion to Our Lady. ‘Notre Dame,’ after all, is an international expression for the Mother of God. Of the nine major approved Marian apparitions, four have occurred in France: in Rue de Bac, La Salette, Lourdes, and Pontmain. An annual pilgrimage to Lourdes with Cardinal Burke is a revered Institute tradition.

In keeping with this French reverence for Mary, the Institute is consecrated to the patronage of the Immaculate Conception, and all the Marian feast days are celebrated with great honor and devotion. The Month of Mary, while originating in Italy, flowered in the heart of France and is well celebrated at the Institute.

is very important to me,” said Canon La Brosse.The language of the house is French, and all seminarians must learn French as well as Latin, in their formation.“It was humbling,” recalls an American seminarian, who now speaks French with ease. “All these lofty ideas were in my head and I couldn’t express them. I was reduced to very simple communication of my needs, and had to rely on the charity of my brothers to help me.”

“A common language fosters a spirit of unity,” explains Canon Apple. The sharing and support for each other is essential for building community life.

The Vietnamese mystic Marcel Van was instructed

by Our Lord and St. Thérèse to pray especially for France. This prayer for France, from his book of Conversations, could be said to guide the Institute’s work, as well: “Lord Jesus, have compassion for France, deign to embrace them with Your Love and show them all Your tenderness. Filled them with Love for You, help them to contribute in making You loved in all the nations on earth. O Love of Jesus, we hereby pledge to be faithful to You forever and to work with an ardent heart in order to spread Your Kingdom through the universe. Amen.”

French Family Life and Language As well, there is the cherished importance of the family, and the Institute fosters this spirit of healthy family engagement and interaction. “Through my exposure to the Institute’s apostolates, I saw the life of the priests together as a very charitable, brotherly life. This was very appealing and attractive. Living my priesthood in the spirit of community, of family, October 2014 France | Regina Magazine

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Little Sisters Discip of the Lamb ‘His Spouses, Small and Well-Loved’

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ples

By Donna Sue Berry

“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enameled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord’s living garden.”

- Thérèse de Lisieux

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ithin this garden there is the small community of Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb. The existence of this Order, according to their Prioress is “to allow those who have the ‘last place’ in the world, to hold in the Church the exceptional place of spouses of Jesus Christ, and to allow those whose life is held in contempt to the extent of being in danger from a culture of death, to witness by their consecration to the Gospel of Life.”

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Every day they receive the Eucharist, living in the spirit of silence and prayer, while meditating on the Gospel.

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he Little Sisters are made up of women with and without Down’s Syndrome.

The Sisters follow the ‘Little Way’ of Saint Therese; their simple life is composed of prayer, work and sacrifice. Together the sisters work to teach their little disabled sisters the manual labor necessary for their development, which includes adoration and praying the rosary adapted to their rhythm and capacities.

At the priory, the Little Sisters receive young women touched by the spirit of poverty and dedication, who are ready to offer up their whole existence to the service of Christ in the person of their sisters with Down’s syndrome.

The convent stands in a large park in close proximity to the Benedictine Abbey of Fontgombault; a monk of the Abbey is chaplain to the small community. The Order was founded with the encouragement of the late Professor Jerome Lejeune, Servant of God. Professor Lejeune discovered the chromosomal abnormality in humans that causes Down’s syndrome.

Mother Prioress Line shared a more in-depth look at the Little Sisters:

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Q. Would tell us about your Sisters?

A. The Institute of the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb is a contemplative order and provides young girls with Down’s syndrome the opportunity to fulfill their religious vocation.

This achievement is only possible because it is supported by Sisters without Down’s syndrome who answered a call to love, dedicating themselves to God with their disabled little sisters to form a single community.

It is a unique vocation within the Church.

John Paul II testified that all life is precious in God’s eyes. (Encyclical Gospel of Life – John Paul II). The Church, in recognizing the Institute specifically recommended that the Community would not be linked to any existing Order or Congregation. She asked the Sisters to seek to make their way by adjusting and adapting to the disability of the Little Sisters.

That is why we are not two communities combined into one with Sisters without Down’s on one side and the Sisters with Down’s on the other. We are all one in the same community and the same family where all live at the same

Little Sisters

adapted rhythm. We share the offices and the same tasks of the Community where manual labor is adjusted to each according to her abilities.

Q. What we the beginnings of the Order?

A. It is almost 30 years since the Community was founded in 1985. We started in a very small way, housed in the village of Buxeuil in the diocese of Tours. To form our charism, we drew from two Saints: The Little Way of St. Therese of the Child Jesus: this is not to seek great things but to do everything out of love for Jesus. From St. Benedict we took the two key words “Ora et Labora” -- prayer and work.

This balance is very important to our Sisters with disabilities.

We were canonically recognized in 1990 as a Public Association, by the Archbishop of Tours. We are now based in Le Blanc, diocese of Bourges, and became a religious institute of contemplative life through the archbishop in 1999. Our vocation is to dedicate our lives to God as an offering of love for the weakest and most helpless.

Q. Who founded your Order?

A. The foundation of the Order began with the meeting of two young girls, Line (now Mother Prioress of the Community) and Veronique, a young girl with Down syndrome, now a religious herself. Mother Line had then seen in the young Veronique a true vocation.

She knew that she needed help because all the religious communities in which she presented herself were unwilling to take her. Year after year the Community –recognized by the Church and led by the Holy Spirit – has adapted itself to the Trisomy 21 and the disability religious life.

Q. How is the Abbey of Fontgombault connected to your Convent?

A. From the beginning of the Foundation, Abbot Antoine Forgeot was a real father and a great support for the Community. He then appointed Father de Feydeau to accompany the Little Sisters in their spiritual development.

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It is through this that they can be devoted to Jesus and become His spouses, small and well-loved.

to him, for he knew the Little Sisters and welcomed their child-like spirit. He then left for the founding of the Clear Creek Abbey in the United States, and we remained in touch with him until his death. When he told us by letter of his serious illness, he had these beautiful words to say, “I will be the little brother of the Little Sisters.” After Dom Antoine Forgeot, Dom Pateau succeeded him. Thus were born the links with Fontgombault Abbey that remain today.

Q. Would you tell us about Servant of God, Jerome Lejeune’s connection to the Community?

A. Yes, Professor Jerome Lejeune has been with the Little Sisters from their birth and followed them as they entered the Community. Even today, we can call the Jerome Lejeune Foundation when needed. Professor Lejeune said that if intelligence is limited, then those with Down syndrome can develop their concepts by heart and are not disabled. For him, an adapted religious life would be possible to 102

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those with Down’s syndrome.

Q. We understand that you have both Sisters with and without Down’s syndrome. What should a woman expect when she comes to visit as an aspirant?

A. To a girl who would come as an aspirant, we would say to her that she should not look for great things. From Carmel we only took the little way taught by St. Therese` which is appropriate for our love of poverty. We will never make great accomplishment or be great theologians.

With our Little Sisters we are one big family. “Prayer is a single look to Heaven” said St. Therese. We have nothing to envy of our dear Sisters of Carmel. For here we have only taken the way. Looking at our Little Sisters throughout the day, we contemplate Jesus hidden in the heart of all, small and humble, Jesus has placed us at the school of love to the end.

It is a great joy, a great grace to be able to offer us to God through our Little Sisters.

Q. How long is the Postulancy and Novitiate?

A. First of all they have a time of discernment. Then there comes the Postulancy of one year, followed by the Novitiate of three years.

After the Novitiate there follows another period of three years of Temporary Vows, before their final Profession.

Q. Mother Line, what would you like to add about your Order of Nuns and their special charism?

A. Several young women with Down’s syndrome are knocking at our door.

To answer their call, our family needs new vocations of women without Down’s syndrome who have a solid calling to Jesus and to serving our Little Sisters! This call can be heard in the heart of many girls. The world today needs evidence of young girls who will give their lives completely to God by dedicating themselves to the religious life for the Defense of Life with our Little Sisters with Down syndrome.

The Little Sister, Sr. Rose Claire “It was a year, May 4th, that our young Sister, without Down’s syndrome, the Little Sister Rose Claire, aged 26, passed away to Heaven. She had deeply understood the charisma of the Institute. The Lord picked her, as she had written in 2012 on the occasion of her final vows, ‘Only one thing makes my heart beat, it is the love that I receive and that I can give.’”

Q. How can young women contact you?

A. We have an urgent need for healthy, young women with solid vocations to help and serve the Little Sisters who have Down’s syndrome and in witness to the Gospel of Life. Even from another continent, we will welcome them with open arms!

Young women who are interested in contacting the Little Sisters of the Lamb may do so by writing to this address: Petites Soeurs Disciples de l’Agneau 14 rue de la Garenne 36300 Le Blanc FRANCE

The Benedictine Monks of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey in the diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma, have a connection to the Little Sisters as well. Their late Sub-prior, Father Francois de Feydeau, was a spiritual director of the Sisters and received from Little Sister Rose Claire this picture she draw herself. “The elevator must raise me to heaven; these are your arms, O Marie! To do this, I do not need to grow bigger; on the contrary, I must remain small as I become more and more.”

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How the Black Dea Best Wines Created ‘The House of God 104

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Hotel Dieu “I, Nicolas Rolin (...), recognizing the grace and the belongings which God, source of all good, has gratified me; from now on, for ever and irrevocably, I found, construct, and date in the town of Beaune, in the diocese of Autun, a hospital to receive, serve and house the sick poor, with a chapel in honor of God the Almighty and of his glorious mother the virgin Mary, in memory of and to venerate Saint Anthony, abbot, dedicated to him and his name, to give it the belongings which God bestowed upon me.”

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he Hundreds Year War had a devastating effect on France and its people, particularily its poor. Towards the end of the war, a hospital was founded by Nicolas Rolin and Guigone de Salins (his third wife) in 1443 in Beaune. Nicolas Rolin was chancellor of Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy (le Bon of fame that handed over St Joan of Arc to the English).

The Treaty of Arras of 1435 essentially brought the Hundred Years War to a close for the Burgundy region, but left marauding soldiers destroying and plundering the countryside. The poor and destitute were victims of crime and misery at the hands of these marauders. The Rolins built the hospital to serve and protect the poor and destitute. Additionally, the Black Death had been in the area off and on for years. L’Hotel-Dieu met the needs of the poor and destitute, sick and dying.

L’Hotel-Dieu, like all of Rolin’s charitable contributions, was a combination of public display and genuinely pious action. In the founding charter Rolin stated that L’Hôtel-Dieu was established to exchange earthy goods for celestial ones and to exchange the impermanent for the eternal. Some paint Rolin a noble figure; others paint him as a rich nobleman

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Papal Legitimacy Over time, several popes granted legitimacy to the hospital. Pope Eugene IV gave his blessing and the hospital was consecrated on December 31, 1452. Pope Nicolas V in 1453 granted full independence from the local archbishop and the hotel came under the jurisdiction of the Holy See. Pope Calixtus III made indulgences for visitors to L’Hotel-Dieu on the five feast days of the Virgin and during the Easter Octave. Pope Pius II reaffirmed these indulgences.

A religious order was initially started to serve the poor, the Hospitaller Sisters of Beaune. Later, workers were not required to be members of the religious order. The woman workers at the hospital were treated with respect, and rules were written to protect them. The women were to be between eighteen and thirty, and unmarried, with good reputations. While employed at the hospital they were to remain chaste. They were free to leave to join a monastery or marry if they wished.

The regulations stated that the sisters were to be gently and well-treated by the mistress, with discretion and prudence, without criticism, negative speech or jealousy. Rules established how often the sisters were to confess, take communion, and say prayers for Guigone and Nicolas.

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The interior rooms are composed of a Gothic chapel, a kitchen, and a pharmacy,

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The altar piece of the Last Judgement by Roger Van der Weyden

Life was good for these sisters, and care givers of the poor and sick. L’Hotel-Dieu continued serving the sick until the 1970s. The good works and reputation of good deeds spread wide and far, donations came in from all over region. Donations of wine and vineyards also became common. For hundreds of years people continued to donate vines , hoping to atone for their earthly sins. The first donation of vines to L’ Hotel-Dieu dates from 1457. Today, wine from L’Hotel-Dieu’s Les Cave is renowned in the wine world. L’Hotel-Dieu currently owns 60 hectares of vineyards, which helps pay for the upkeep.

Architecture The architecture evolved over years. Some say it is the perhaps the best example of Gothic architecture in France. L’Hotel-Dieu buuildings form a rectangle centered around a large courtyard. The courtyard view of the roof is magnificent. The roof is made of glazed tiles of bright colors: brown, yellow, red, and green . The building itself only took nine years to finish, employing many artisans from near and far.

The interior rooms are composed of a Gothic chapel, a kitchen, and a pharmacy, plus many others.

The Room of the Poor is where the sickbeds were, bedspreads in red, turned toward the chapel so the patients could follow Mass. Saint Hugues room was the infirmary. Saint Anne’s room was for the wealthy. Saint-Nicolas’ room was used to prepare the dying for their journey Home. aSaint-Louis’ room was built at the end of the 17th century in the location of a barn. Today, it accommodates a part of 110

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the collection of furniture, tapestry, and art objects . corded a grant in order to have another room installed, and from the

Art Today, L’Hotel-Dieu contains over 5,000 collectibles.

There are furniture objects beds, trunks, wardrobes, tapestry, sculptures, and paintings. The altar piece of the Last Judgement by Roger Van der Weyden and the mural paintings of the 17th century in the Salle St Hugues are several magnificent works of art.

A Safe Haven And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least breather, you did it to me. Matthew 25:40 L’Hotel-Dieu provided the poor and destitute a safe haven in the 1500’s. Diseases such as black death, smallpox, and typhoid were endemic and epidemic.

These diseases fell harder on the very young, the very old, and those whose resistance were weakened by poor diet, hard labor, or other diseases. L’Hotel-Dieu served this population well, it gave shelter to the wounded, employment to women and widows, and provided Catholic services to all for over six hundred years. Today, L’Hotel-Dieu is a tourist attraction and museum, attracting about 400,000 visitors yearly. A charity wine auction by Christies is held yearly in November, on the third Sunday.

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French Indo

“While the promises of the false prophets of this earth melt away in blood and tears, the great apocalyptic prophecy of the Redeemer shines forth in heavenly splendor: ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”

– Divini Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism)

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n 1620, after an arduous journey from Europe, two Jesuits set foot on the shores of Indochina—a peninsula four times the size of France, bordered by China in the North and India to the West. Although Portuguese missionaries had come to these same shores a century earlier, they had made little headway among the natives. But the courage and dedication of these French priests—Fr. Alexandre de Rhodes and Fr. Antoine Marquez— was blessed by God and would result in the conver-

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sion of more than 6,000 souls in seven years.

Thousands more would come to the Faith in the next forty years such that the newly established Society of Foreign Missions in Paris—founded with the aim to evangelize pagan lands—felt the need to send their men overseas. The first Vicars Apostolic were sent, charged with overseeing the spiritual administration of Tonkin and Cochinchina (present-day North and South Vietnam, respectively).

Under their care, parishes and seminaries were

ochina

By Christine L. Niles founded and native clergy trained to serve their own people.

The local monarch, however, was hostile, and forbade Catholic worship. This was the start of persecutions on and off for the next two centuries, resulting in the torture and slaughter of many thousands of Catholics.

Fr. Pierre Joseph Pigneaux, sent from France in 1765, can be credited with perhaps the most far-reaching impact on the Faith in Indochina. Within a mere six years, his zeal won for him not only many souls but also an appointment as Vicar Apostolic of Cochinchina and bishop of Adran. Bishop Pigneaux helped restore the deposed prince of Annam to his throne—and by that act obtained the freedom of

Catholic worship throughout the southern region.

The Faith flourished for more than half a century.

But such felicitous circumstances would not last long. Successors to the throne did all in their power to stamp out every vestige of Catholicism. In 1833, Catholics were ordered to renounce their faith, and as proof they had to trample on a crucifix. Death was decreed for all priests.

Like the hunted Jesuits in Reformation England, these missionaries went into hiding, going from place to place in secret to offer the consolation of the sacraments to the faithful, sheltered in the homes of native converts loyal to their pastors. And like their forebears, captured priests faced torture, dismemberment, and beheading. Prison cells overflowed with October 2014 France | Regina Magazine

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The author, left, with her mother and brother, 1974 Catholics, many who died there—but rare was the case of apostasy. Even among those who renounced the faith amidst tortures, they were quick to repent and be reconciled to the Church.

In 1841, the emperor—claiming Catholics were conspiring against him—ordered that all foreign priests be drowned in the rivers and all native clergy be cut in half. By 1855, Catholicism was outlawed throughout the land, and the massacre began in earnest.

The blood of many Catholic martyrs would soak the Indochinese soil for the next seven years.

Government officials showed no mercy. Hundreds of convents and Catholic towns were burned to the ground and their inhabitants slaughtered or imprisoned. One third of all native clergy were wiped out.

Among the 300,000 faithful who dispersed, 40,000 succumbed to death from sickness and starvation.

All told, 600,000 Catholic faithful died in the persecution.

France, outraged by the attack on its people, sent ships to seize Turan and then Saigon. The emperor, out of fear of his enemies’ strength, signed a treaty in 1862 handing over portions of Cochinchina to French control, and promising freedom of worship.

The persecution ended—for a time. It was then that the martyrdoms of before bore fruit: the Faith spread rapidly, and the Church opened her arms to tremendous numbers of converts. Baptisms tripled between 1865 and 1869, and the once-razed parishes and convents formed the foundation of new structures where the faith would once again find a home and thrive.

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in the North. Catholics suffered harassment by local mandarins, while government officials looked away. In response to this breach of the treaty, France intervened and seized town after town along the northern peninsula. Reprisals were savage and swift: Annamite soldiers raped, pillaged, and butchered the faithful. The number of Catholic martyrs would again reach into the many thousands.

The persecution finally came to an end with the Franco-Annamite Treaty of 1886, which placed all power in the hands of France. French Indochina was thus born—an amalgamation of four French protectorates: Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchina, and Cambodia.

This period of colonial rule saw the greatest flourishing of the Catholic faith in the entire history of Indochina. Catholicism held favored status, and around the turn of the century the average number of converts per year numbered a stunning 50,000.

Native clergy were more numerous than in any other missionary country in the world.

Evil never rests, however, and this time of good fortune would see a swift end in the mid-twentieth century, when Ho Chi Minh declared himself president of the Democratic National Republic in the North, taking over the South some years later. French rule would cease completely in 1954.

Under the communist regime, the Faith was placed under interdict, and the Catholic population quickly dwindled, until it is now only a fraction of the populace.

But France’s presence is everywhere felt, whether in the faith, language, architecture, dance, or food.

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It was Fr. Rhodes who latinized the Vietnamese tongue, transcribing the tonal language into the Western characters used by all Vietnamese today. And Saigon, the former capital of Indochina, evidences France’s influence in 116

its European architecture, treelined streets, and public gardens.

Ballroom dancing, a popular pastime among the Vietnamese, is a French import. And the French contributions to Vietnamese food are too numerous to recount,

Regina Magazine | France October 2014

whether in their coffee, cheese, pastries, or main dishes.

The Eldest Daughter of the Church once had a cherished daughter in Indochina, who has now cast her off—even so, France’s spirit remains.

STREET SCENE IN FRENCH INDOCHINA: Bittersweet memories of a time before Communist Vietnam.

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The Secret of Sainte Menehould

By Beverly De Soto

~ Today, it’s a boring town in the empty reaches of eastern France. Cheerless grey houses crowd the main road on the way in to town. The local specialty -- served with Gallic pride -- is pig’s trotters.

But despite its mundane appearance, Sainte-Menehould is not just an ordinary farm town. It is the place where a thousand years’ line of Catholic French kings came abruptly to an end.

~

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It was in 1791 and the king was Louis XVI. The man who had aided the Americans in their fight for independence from the British just ten years before had finally been convinced to flee France. As the Terror grew more vicious and the French revolutionaries bolder, he was forced to acknowledge that his family’s lives were at stake.

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So, in disguise, with his wife the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette and their small son, Louis fled under cover of darkness. Their destination was Flanders, an Austrian possession, where Marie’s older brother would protect them.

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The Secret of Sainte Menehould

On their way through St Menehould, the royal party passed this building, then 60 years old.

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They stopped, apparently, a few paces beyond it at a shop that stood where this plaque commemorates the event today.

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Some said it was a clerk in the shop who recognized Louis, allegedly based on the similarity between his face and the image of him on the coinage. Others point to the near-certainty of spies and bribes.

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The Secret of Sainte Menehould

Whatever the case, Louis and Marie did manage to leave Sainte-Menehould, but to no avail. They were pursued, and along the road to Varennes arrested by one Citizen Drouet, the local postmaster. Drouet was celebrated as a hero; the King & Queen were returned to Paris.

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Sainte-Menehould turned out to be their first step towards the guillotine -where Louis and Marie were publically executed in Paris less than two years later. Their young son died in captivity, after years of abuse by his revolutionary captors.

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The Secret of Sainte Menehould

A thousand years is a long time, and the shock waves that the regicide of Louis and Marie set off reverberated through Europe for decades after.

Though some may be amazed, there is a young generation growing up in France today which yearns for the return of a Catholic French king,

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The Liturgy is Not About Us, But About God

An Interview with Dom Alcuin Reid

By Dan Flaherty 128

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O

ne of the pre-eminent liturgists of our time, Dom Alcuin Reid is a monk of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France. His PhD thesis on twentieth century liturgical reform was published as ‘The Organic Development of the Liturgy,’ with a preface by Cardinal Ratzinger (Ignatius, 2005). He has lectured internationally and published extensively on the liturgy and was the principal organiser of Sacra Liturgia 2013, the international conference on the role liturgical formation and celebration in the life and mission of the Church in Rome in June 2013, the proceedings of which are published as Sacred Liturgy: The Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church (Ignatius, 2014).

Dom Alcuin, what specifically does your work involving the liturgy entail?

The first thing it entails is to live the liturgy as fully as possible each day – to become thoroughly liturgical, as it were – by immersing oneself in the many rites and prayers of the sacred liturgy. Circumstances may limit what is possible at times, but this principle is fundamental.

From that basis my particular work has academic, practical and organisational aspects. Academically, there is no shortage of conference presentations to prepare or books to work on. I’m currently completing the T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy and hope to be able to work further on the sequel to Organic Development in the coming year. On the practical level I am often involved in preparing liturgical celebrations, particularly pontifical ceremonies, here and elsewhere.

At an organisational level, on behalf of my bishop I coordinate the various initiatives following on from Sacra Liturgia 2013. This past summer we held a very successful summer school here and will hold another next July. Also in 2015 major Sacra Liturgia conferences are planned for the USA and the UK. What prompted you to begin this work?

My academic interest was piqued by reading Archbishop Bugnini’s book The Reform of the Liturgy 19481975 (Liturgical Press, 1990). This, together with the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger, clearly demonstrated that there are “issues” in respect of liturgical reform that need to be addressed if we are to be faithful to the Church’s liturgical tradition and indeed to the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

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Practical involvement in liturgical celebrations has been a part of my life since my youth – it was a privilege to have Father (now Bishop) Peter Elliott as a mentor and friend. And for the past five years it has been a singular grace to respond to the invitation of Bishop Dominique Rey and to live and work here in Fréjus-Toulon, France, and dedicate myself to different aspects the liturgical apostolate.

Regarding the “reform of the reform” – wanting to align the Novus Ordo Mass more with the actual intentionof Vatican II—where would you describe this process as being at?

Officially it would seem that consideration of this is stalled. But then, only a few years before Summorum pontificum in 2007 no-one could have foreseen its appearance, so who knows what could come from the Holy See in the future? At the grass roots level, however, many clergy are now putting into practice a manner of celebrating the reformed rites that is in more tangible continuity with liturgical tradition and with the intentions of the Council, which intended a moderate liturgical reform, not a ritual revolution!

What are the most positive things you see regarding the state of liturgical reform in the Church today?

The widespread realisation by practically all now that the liturgical life of the Western Church following the Council was not without serious defects is a very positive development. There are sharply differing responses to this “question of the liturgy” of course, but the fact that people are prepared to discuss and consider it is an important step forward.

So too is the growing appreciation of the essential role of beauty in the liturgy. We owe much of this to the example and teaching of Benedict XVI, certainly, pre-eminently in his 2007 Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis, where he writes so beautifully of the ars celebrandi, “the fruit of faithful adherence to the liturgical norms in all their richness.” More and more clergy and others responsible for preparing liturgical celebrations are taking his teaching to heart and implementing it, which can do nothing but good.

And indeed Pope Benedict’s authoritative establishment that the usus antiquior – the older form of the Roman rite – may freely be celebrated by those who wish it enables its treasures to live and breathe in the Church of the 21st century. The number of young people who are attracted to this, and the vocations the usus antiquior inspires, are truly signs of the times.

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What are the most concerning things you see?

It is of great concern to see that bad liturgical practices, or even abuses, have taken root in far too many parishes and communities. For example, how many places sing at the liturgy rather than sing the liturgy itself? Many do not even understand the difference! If I am choosing songs to sing at different times in the liturgy rather than working faithfully to sing the given liturgical texts I have missed the point entirely. The liturgy – old or new – is something we receive from the Church and which we strive to celebrate as fully and as beautifully as we can with profound respect for its own rules and integrity. It is not like a cake which we make and to which we add icing according to our own tastes.

The underlying problem is a widespread lack of liturgical formation. Vatican II said that “it would be futile to entertain any hopes of realizing” the liturgical participation it desired unless pastors became “thoroughly imbued with the spirit and power of the liturgy” and in turn formed others in the same spirit. Has that in fact happened in the 50 years since? It seems to me we have much, much more work to do on this today.

What reading would you recommend to lay Catholics who want to understand the liturgy?

There are two little books which I cannot recommend highly enough: Liturgy’s Inner Beauty by Abbot Idelfons Herwegen (published in 1955 and previously in 1931 as The Art-Principle of the Liturgy); and Sacred Signs by Romano Guardini (first published in 1930).

These are not textbooks, but meditations. They will do much to introduce people to “the spirit and power of the liturgy”.

Some may also like to look at the essays in Sacred Liturgy: The Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church (Ignatius, 2014). These cover a variety of topics and, whilst more demanding, they will certainly foster a sound and faithful understanding of the Church’s liturgy.

If there is one thing should we keep in mind when considering the liturgy, what is it?

Cardinal Ratzinger put this beautifully in his preface to The Organic Development of the Liturgy: “If the liturgy appears first of all as the workshop for our activity, then what is essential is being forgotten: God. For the liturgy is not about us, but about God. Forgetting about God is the most imminent danger of our age. As against this, the liturgy should be setting up a sign of God’s presence. Yet what happens if the habit of forgetting about God makes itself at home in the liturgy itself and if in the liturgy we are thinking only of ourselves? In any and every liturgical reform, and every liturgical celebration, the primacy of God should be kept in view first and foremost.”

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Louis Spea He is twenty years old, and he has a few things to say about history, his country, his French culture and his ancient Faith.

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I grew up in Ch창telaillon-plage, in Charente-Maritime on the Atlantic coast.

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It is a small beach town and my family is a Catholic one.

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My education was Catholic, which gives a major place to the religious family life. We put, before and always now, Jesus at the heart of our lives.

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After the ‘Concile Vatican II’ traditionalist movements were created in France which considered this council to be a revolution for the Church, a radical changing that pushed the devout away from the root of Faith.

Nowadays, because of the de-Christianization of France and the birth of new societies without God, some people -- very often young ones -- join those movements because they want to return to a more moral society, putting God at its heart.

A Regina Photo Essay

In my opinion and in the view of lots of these young people, it is important for Catholicism to have engaged persons who are the future of Church and who are ready to sacrifice themselves for a cause: to restore a more moral society and come back to traditional values that were abandoned after the French Revolution.

The Scouts were really an important experience in my life, allowing me to grow up with other Catholics in contact with nature that is not given in our society. Scouting permits me to admire my environment and to make a break in my quotidian life, to liberate me from the chains that link us to our modern life.

A Regina Photo Essay

Scouting was created by Lord Baden Powell -- a youth movement based on learning strong values ​​such as charity, mutual assistance and respect. Its purpose is to help the young person to form his character and to build his personality developing his physical skills, and his spiritual life.

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Scouting is a major support for French Catholicism because it permits us to learn a different way of life oriented to a more spiritual path. It gives strength to Catholicism; it is a means to reinforce the Church with a youth ready to evangelize.

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A Regina Photo Essay

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Today, many people, young or less young, feel the need to leave their routine and to walk in Chartres pilgrimage to live an experience with thousands other people, walking from the Paris cathedral “Notre Dame de Paris” to “Notre Dame de Chartres.”

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Throughout the Chartres pilgrimage we have the will to imitate Jesus' passion in the mortification of the senses.

A Regina Photo Essay

The march is very hard but there is there a special atmosphere: it is almost possible to feel the union of prayer that links all of us Catholics.

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When we see, far away, C filled with joy and we sin tres t'appelles� with one

Chartres cathedral, all the people are ng the famous “Chartres sonne, Chare voice.

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But Chartres is first of all a spiritual meeting with God, a coming back to the Truth.

We come with different reasons but the only purpose is our sanctification.

I am a royalist because although I am young I see my country in a decline which for my ideals is very sad. I am nostalgic for a great France, respected in the world for its values, its traditions, its roots, even for its chivalrous ideal.

Today my France suffers from the republican values imposed at the Revolution, which has made a clean sweep of the past.

A Catholic king would learn from birth to love and lead his country. He would learn the notion of “Common Good� and so rule not for the power or money but to achieve the duty he has towards God and his people.

A Regina Photo Essay

Nowadays, we have a succession of presidents that make and break laws; it would be better to have a king who can lead a policy without always thinking about the end of his term in five years.

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In France more and more young peo royalist movements because they fe future of their country.

ople join patriotic or eel responsible for the

PHOTO CREDITS: Joseph Shaw, Teresa Limjoco, Harry Stevens

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St Giles

A Hero from France’s Dark Ages

By Ed Masters France has produced some of the Catholic Church’s greatest heroes as well as her fiercest, most intransigent foes. A little-known French hero is a very early gentle Saint who had an enormous influence on Europe’s history, simply by following his vocation as a monk. Regina Magazine’s Ed Masters takes us on a journey through the Dark Ages to meet St. Giles.

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St Benedict, St Christopher and St Giles pictured in this medieval painting

A

Greek Prince in Ancient Gaul

St. Giles (in Latin, Aegidius) was actually not born in France, but in Athens, Greece around 640 A.D. He was a prince, the son of King Theodore and Queen Pelagia, known for their piety. Thus he was of royal lineage -- and in one of those not-so coincidences in the ways of Providence he would go on to interact with a King of the Visigoths and a King of the Franks in later years.

When he was 24, St. Giles lost both his parents.

He used his inheritance to assist the poor and left Greece to live in obscurity (or so he thought) in Gaul, settling first in the area near the mouth of the Rhone River, then near the river Gard, and finally in the woods in the diocese of Nimes.

France in the 600s was a dangerous place. The peaceful centuries of the pax romana were a distant memory; the Roman Legions had left a power vacuum. Gaul was ruled by local Visigothic warlords and under threat of Muslim invaders.

Beggars roamed the countryside and the Church stepped in to provide succor for the needy. When Giles encountered a beggar who was ill and barely clothed, he took pity on the poor man and recalling the actions of St. Martin of Tours, he gave the beggar his tunic. Immediately the man was restored to perfect health. This miracle showed St. Giles how pleased the Lord is with those who give alms to the needy.

Giles in the Wilderness This was the first of many miracles the Saint is said to have performed in his lifetime. Though he lived in solitude away from the noisy, populated cities and

towns, his sanctity and fame spread far and wide.

Like St. John the Baptist, St. Paul the Hermit and the prophet Elijah, Giles lived off the land; his food was roots and herbs and water from streams to drink.

As Our Lord said, “Consider the birds of the air, and how your Heavenly Father feeds them...worry not about what you are to have to eat or drink, as your Heavenly Father knows all these things and provides.”

In a tale reminiscent of how St. Paul and St. Anthony of the Desert came to know one another late in life, the Lord brought Giles and St. Veredemus (also a hermit of Greek lineage) together for about two years, during which time they shared a love of all things holy. After this time they went their separate ways.

Giles and the Hind He was also fed milk from a hind (a doe) that was often his only companion. Once, she was fleeing from a hunting party of Visigoths pursuing her through the woods. She lay down at the Saint’s feet, and Giles prayed that the animal be spared. The hunters shot an arrow which pierced Giles, wounding him.

When the Visigoth hunters found the wounded Saint with the doe at his feet, they begged his forgiveness.

Hearing about this incident, the Visigothic King Wamba visited Giles. Impressed by his holiness, Wamba offered him honors and riches but the Saint would not be swayed.

King Wamba did convince him, however to accept some followers; Giles then built a monastery which followed the rule of St. Benedict. The sick and the afflicted often visited him, and were miraculously healed of their ailments by St. Giles.

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St Giles with the hind (female deer) who fed him.

St Giles is often pictured with a deer in art, as is St. Catherine of Sweden, St. Eustace and St. Hubert among others. Deer symbolize piety, the faithful Christian longing for God, and Christ the Saviour Himself. From Psalm 41:1 we read, “As the hart panteth after thy water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.” Also, because deer seek freedom and refuge in forests and mountains they also symbolize solitude and purity of life.

Giles Steps Into History Giles is also reported to have met with Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne. Charles Martel was severely troubled by certain sins he had committed that gnawed at his conscience. St. Giles advised him to sincerely confess all of his sins. The king did so, and found a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

On his return to his monastery, the Saint raised the dead son of a nobleman. When St. Giles and his monks discovered that Muslim invaders had destroyed their home, Martel offered them refuge. (It is said that it was the influence of St. Giles on Martel which enabled him to defeat the Ummayad Caliphate invaders at the Battle of Tours (Poitiers) in A.D. 732, a few years after the Saint’s death.)

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St Giles

St Giles is pierced by the hunters arrow as the deer seeks his protection

Giles traveled to Rome to meet with Pope St. Gregory II. Gregory gave the monastery privileges and bestowed an apostolic blessing on the community, along with two magnificently carved cedar doors.

(Giles’s monastery was in the process of being rebuilt, having been destroyed by Islamic invaders.)

Miracles After His Death His monastery restored, St. Giles died, full of years on September 1, A.D. 720 (some sources say 725).

His last words were the same Nunc Dimittis of St. Simeon at the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”

Many miracles occurred at his tomb. After his death many churches were built and named after him as far away as Hungary, Poland, and Scotland. St. Giles

Cathedral in Edinburgh was named after him and he is the Patron of that city.

His relics were hidden in Toulouse in A.D. 1565 to save them from the French Huguenots who like many Protestants throughout Europe at the time (and the French Revolutionists two centuries later) sought to eradicate Catholic devotion to the Saints.

St Giles is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and he is the Patron Saint of beggars, the disabled, the sick, blacksmiths, sterility, bad dreams, forests, and difficult confessions.

His tomb was rediscovered in A.D. 1865 and afterwards pilgrimages to his Shrine began anew.

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In a Hidden French Valle The Unquiet Home of Gregorian Chant

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n ey “The voice of God calls out to us each day: 'Run as long as you have the light of life, for fear that darkness cover you over!'

And the Lord, seeking his worker in the crowd whom he speaks to, says, 'Who is the man who wants life and desires to see blessed days?'

If, having heard Him, you answer, 'Me!' God answers you, 'Do you want true life, eternal life? Then keep your tongue from evil and do good, seek peace and keep to it.'

See with what tenderness the Lord shows us the way of life!�

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Solesmes Abbey Through the Ages

5th Century

11th Century

14th Century

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN WORSHIP

PEACEFUL CENTURIES

SUFFERING AND DESTRUCTION

The Abbey of Solesmes stands above the valley of the Sarthe River, midway between Le Mans and Angers. St. Thuribus, in the fifth century, organized Christian worship here in the Gallo-Roman villa de Solesmis.

The Abbey was founded October 12, 1010, half a century before the Normans invaded England. But all was peaceful in the lovely valley of Solesmes for the next three hundred years.

In 1375 Solesmes experienced the first sufferings of the Hundred Years War – as the English occupied and then destroyed the abbey 50 years later.

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15th Century

16th Century

18th Century

RENAISSANCE REBIRTH

ABBOT BANISHED

OUTLAWED, ARRESTED & ABANDONED

The abbey underwent a rebirth around 1425, with a rebuilding of property structures, the Church roof vaulting, the bell tower, the north and south transept, cloister, library, and sacristy following the work initiatives of Jean Bouglar through about 1556. The monks enjoyed a cloistered life during this Renaissance time, as the surrounding population of Solesmes benefited from holy preaching.

In the Concordat of Boulogne 1516, the monastery was deprived of a superior general, and life for the monks deteriorated into chaos. The King of France disposed of the priory, leaving the monks essentially leaderless and under secular power. The Congregation of St Maurus in 1618 helped preside over the reform of the Benedictine monasteries, including Solesmes.

In 1790, the French Revolutionaries outlawed religious vows. The monks of Solesmes were ordered to leave. Only one left; three were then arrested, and the other three went into hiding.

Officially the monastery was sold, but actually, no new owners came forward.

The monastery was left abandoned, but the villagers rescued a prized relic, a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, which was hidden from the authorities for generations and returned to the monks in 1850.

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A New Beginning It was 1833, and Solesmes Abbey had long been abandoned and left in ruins. A young secular priest, Prosper Guéranger, a bishop’s secretary in Paris, learned that disaster was looming -- Solesmes was 164

slated to be destroyed for lack of a buyer.

With his bishop’s approval and God’s grace, Guéranger collected enough money to rent the property, and moved in with three friends on July

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11, 1833. He received a canonical dispensation to become a Benedictine monk, and soon had many French and English benefactors for this fledging community.

In 1837, Dom Gueranger went to Rome to ask for

official recognition of the priory. Rome granted him instead recognition as an abbey, making Solesmes the head of the new Benedictine Congregation de France. On July 26, Dom GuĂŠranger made his solemn profession in the

presence of the Abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.

Over the years, daughterhouses have been founded from Solesmes, in many cases old monasteries being restored: LigugĂŠ (1853), Silos in Spain

(1880), Glanfeuil (1892), and Fontanelle (1893); also new foundations at Marseilles(1865), Farnborough in England and Wisque (1895), Paris (1893), and Kergonan (1897). In the 20th century, sixteen more houses were founded.

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Gregorian Chant Catholics the world over today consider Dom Gueranger to be the grandfather of the modern Liturgical Movement. Gregorian chant (‘plainchant’ in England) became a primary focus of Solesmes, as Dom Gueranger and his monks sought to restore the beauty and integrity of this ancient music. At first they used old choir books, but found the music lacking, so Gueranger began to study chant. Soon, others from outside Solesmes were seeking his advice, and he eventually assigned further study to the young monks Jausions and Pothier. These two men became the 19th century’s experts in chant, traveling widely to carefully copy ancient chant collected in the libraries of Europe. These were brought to Solesmes for study and analysis.

Solesmes Abbey became a central collection point for these old manuscripts, and eventually the Vatican recognized the great work of the monks. In 1904, Pope Pius X entrusted to the monks of Solesmes the work of preparing an official Vatican edition of the Church's chant, and appointed a Commission with Dom Pothier as its president.

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Abbaye de Saint Cecile de Solesmes The Abbey of St Cecile was founded by Dom Gueranger in 1866 as a woman’s Benedictine counterpart, located not far from St Peter’s Abbey of Solesmes.

The foundress and abbess was Jenny Bruyere, a young woman whom Dom Gueranger had helped prepare for first Communion. The Abbey of St Cecile has also worked toward the study of Gregorian chant, and has seven daughter houses under it, including the Benedictines of St Cecilia’s Abbey on the Isle of Wight.

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Solesmes in the Center of the Storm Incredibly, since its restoration in 1833, this peaceful monastery has been dissolved by the French Government no less than four times. In 1880, 1882, and 1883 the monks were ejected by force; each time, the Catholic laity protected and supported them.

In 1903 the Solesmes monks were forced to leave the country, as were all religious of France. The monks and nuns established themselves

on the Island of Wight, and built a new monastery there.

A friend of the community purchased Solesmes in hopes that the monks would return; in the event they did return to Solesmes in 1922.

Two decades later, three monks of Solesmes died in battle during the Nazi occupation, and many more monks were imprisoned. Only a few older or incapacitated monks were left in the monastery;

the rest found ways to fight the occupiers.

At the end of the war, many monks returned from Nazi prison camps to return to the life they knew, worshiping Our Lord. Vocations increased after the war, and life returned to peaceful solitude. Since 1945, Solesmes has enjoyed its longest stretch of peace in modern times.

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Abbey of St Peter’s of Solesmes Today

m Guéranger, who resuscitated edictine life at Solesmes, liked efer to the Church as a ‘society vine praise.’ In his view, each astery is a reduced image of Church of God and it privileges aspect of adoration and praise.

Rule of Saint Benedict draws ntion to this point when it says nothing ought to be preferred e work of God, that is, to liturl prayer. Little by little, under guidance of Dom Guéranger

and his successors, the tradition of Solesmes has organized things in such a way so that this priority of the liturgy might shine forth. It is the dominant characteristic of our life, to such an extent that everywhere in the Christian world Solesmes and the liturgy are identified as one thing.

Solesmes is known for its work in Gregorian Chant, sensitive restoration of melodies, scholarly research, publication of liturgical books for

the Church, and recordings of much of the repertoire of the liturgy.

Their publishing house continues in multiple languages, and their work can be purchased through their website.

The monks continue following the Rule of St Benedict.

“God seeks man and in turn man must seek God. We do nothing else in the monastic life.”

--Dom Delatte, third Abbott of Solesmes (1890-1921)

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Pilgrimage

By Donna Sue Berry

I

t was a sunny spring morning in 2004 when Donna Sue Berry stepped out of the safety of Notre Dame Cathedral. She joined 10,000 hardy Catholics to walk many miles up and down roads, across ravines, and through forests to pray where Saints had prayed.

Little did she know that before the day was through she would run screaming through a French forest wondering just what in the hell she was doing there.

Reliquary of St. Therese` in Lisieux

“Come with me to Chartres, Mom!” my daughter Crystal begged. Her aim was that I should accompany her on this historically Catholic 72-mile pilgrimage from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to Chartres.

This incredible 12th century Romanesque and Gothic cathedral had seen saints, kings, queens and such over the centuries. It had been built and completed by 1220 -- and I figured I had about a 1220-to-1 chance of not being able to go.

I was an Oklahoma girl, after all, age 49, who had never crossed an ocean and had barely been out of state. I was suffering from all the baggage that comes along with being divorced less than a year, after 28 years of marriage to my high school boyfriend. I was extremely hurt, lonely, angry, and tired of things going wrong. I was also a regular non-parishioner at about five different Catholic churches in the area.

I was not allowing myself to get too close to any one person or place.

But the promise of time with my daughter and first grandson was too enticing, and I agreed to go. And in the hours we spent walking around Paris, I began my own private journey.

At the Convent of the Sisters of Charity I prayed in front of the Blessed Sacrament, next to the incor176

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rupt body of St. Catherine Laboure. I asked her help in moving forward from my painful past. I wanted to live in the fullness of Christ’s mercy. I couldn’t believe I was in the very spot where that saintly nun had placed her hands upon the lap of the Blessed Mother and received from her the Miraculous Medal.

The next day we wandered through Lisieux and knelt in awe at the the reliquary of the saint of my childhood, Saint Therese. I asked her for prayers and intercession. All through France, I was living in a dream filled with many graces from God. What consolation and joy!

The next day we mingled with the pilgrimage crowds filing into Notre Dame Paris. The excitement and warmth washed over us as we knelt in that awesome Cathedral. I was overwhelmed, full of glorious expectations and riding on a high of enthusiastic prayer and love for our Lord.

Everywhere I saw the smiling faces of men and women, ready to set out. We were with Americans, behind a huge banner of our Lady of Guadalupe.

Someone started to lead the first of many, many rosaries as we walked up streets and down Parisian lanes, praying and talking. The pilgrims looked right out of a picture book, in hiking clothes with rosaries dangling from their hands.

Pilgrimage

It wasn’t long however before I had fallen back a little, engrossed in a fascinating conversation with two ladies in their early 70’s from Washington State.

With their skirts, hiking boots and walking sticks, they weren’t the least bit out of breath, yet I was starting to tire.

How could that even be? I was so much younger, but I was breathing heavily. The beautiful, sunny day was making me hot and sweaty. Had we even made it ten miles yet? Eventually the ladies were slowing their pace so as not to leave me behind. I waved them ahead, and kept falling further back.

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It wasn’t long however before I had fallen back a little, engrossed in a fascinating conversation with two ladies in their early 70’s from Washington State. With their skirts, hiking boots and walking sticks, they weren’t the least bit out of breath, yet I was starting to tire.

How could that even be? I was so much younger, but I was breathing heavily. The beautiful, sunny day was making me hot and sweaty. Had we even made it ten miles yet? Eventually the ladies were slowing their pace so as not to leave me behind. I waved them ahead, and kept falling further back.

There were hundreds of people from around the world -- so many nationalities and languages, and before long I was surrounded by non-English speakers. As I dropped back even further I began to panic, but just then we were led into a huge park. There were water bottles everywhere and I slumped down onto the grass in relief.

As I began to push myself to stand, I realized that I couldn’t; defeated, I fell back onto the ground. Clearly, I was in trouble. All the sight-seeing, walking up and down cathedral stairs and in and out of tourist sites had already stretched me physically. But the first fifteen miles of the Pilgrimage had done me in.

Now I really panicked! The a few people left looked more wrecked than I did. I noticed blood on one pilgrim’s ankle, and not a few bandages, too. Some looked absolutely worn out and just sat or lay back on the ground. The walking wounded were silently praying. We were alone in the park and could no longer hear the singing or the prayers.

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We didn’t have long to wait, however, before someone looking very much in charge, with both French and broken English showed up. We were told we would be picked up by cars and taken to the Mass.

As we all began to limp, I came to a clear conclusion. I scoured the sidewalks for a phone booth. I had a credit card. Had there been a taxi, I would have driven to Chartres. I needed a hotel. I needed a bath. I needed out of this pilgrimage.

But what I really needed was to continue the pilgrimage. So I obediently climbed into a car and moments later, we were delivered to a beautiful wooded clearing where the pilgrimage came to a halt.

Preparations were being made for an outdoor Mass.

I found a rock to sit down on, realized that the quiet ride had helped to relieve my sore muscles some, and I began to look around for my daughter. It wasn’t long before we actually caught sight of one another across the sea of pilgrims and I waved an “ok” that I was fine.

But I wasn’t. It was getting hotter; I was stifling in that airless green forest. The body heat from all of us pilgrims could have heated an arena in mid winter.

What was wrong with me? I was not normally such a wimp nor a complainer. I had been so excited about this trip and had felt physically up to the challenge.

But as I sat there in my tee shirt, jeans and white Reeboks, looking totally American and out of place, I felt completely and utterly lost.

I thought I had picked up the pieces of my life. I believed I had put myself back together after the divorce the summer before. But gazing down at the

Pilgrimage

“Dear God, I prayed fervently.

Get me out of here!!” ground in front of me and feeling the crowd press in as the Mass was about to begin, I was still buried in so much pain.

I fought back the tears that had been threatening to fall the last few miles by looking around for the Americans. Then, I suddenly realized: I was doing what I normally did when pain or problems arose -- I started looking for something to do or to fill my thoughts with.

I glanced over at my daughter, who looked ever so cool, calm and relaxed as she smiled and joked with the pilgrims. I loved that girl. But why in the world did I ever say I’d go on this pilgrimage?

Suddenly, the pilgrims quieted, and the chanting started. The Mass began and we hit our knees -some of us more slowly than others.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spriritus Sancti.”

Dear God, I prayed fervently. Get me out of here!!

The Mass in the forest was incredible. Afterwards, despairing of the miracle I had prayed for but which didn’t happen, I slowly, painfully headed into the woods in search of the medical bus.

Then my daughter appeared, merrily skipping along with the rest of our fellow pilgrims. And it wasn’t just her. All of these crazy-with-sweat, aching backs and legs pilgrims with their rosaries flying through their fingers seemed to be the most amazingly joyful people I had seen in years. They just kept praying and singing while they walked.

Why couldn’t I find that kind of joy? I had been to Confession and Mass, too.

But there I was, hurting and panting as I trudged alone into the hot, steamy, airless forest. I just knew I was going to die from the heat, exhaustion, and the emotions welling up inside. The bag over my shoulder felt heavier and heavier. Perspiration trickled down my back. My clothes were sticking to me.

“What am I doing here?” With each step the words screamed in my head, louder than they had all day.

I was going to explode! This was insane. This was supposed to have the trip of a lifetime; a chance to see France and the places where my favorite Catholic Saints had lived.

“And died,” I scoffed, and tripped over a fallen tree limb.

Mascara ran down my cheeks as I began to cry. I was a mess, inside and out. I could barely catch my breath but I began to sputter “Why, God? Why am I here?! This was supposed to be a fun, educational, illuminating trip!”

But this wasn’t fun. I needed comforting. I needed love and I needed to quit hurting. With each step the tears poured out more. I brushed the sticky hair away from my face. Finally I stopped. Alone in that forest, I screamed aloud.

“God, why? I didn’t ask for this! What in the hell am I doing here?”

I slid down onto my knees as the dam broke. I had never cried like that in my entire life. It seemed to come from deep down in my gut, and I’m not sure even to this day that any sound was coming out of my mouth.

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Pilgrimage

I don’t really know how long I was like that, but as I started to calm down I seemed to hear an inaudible voice say, “Because I love you.”

I looked down at the rosary that I had been crushing in my palm.

Gazing at the crucifix, I spoke the words out loud, “Because You love me.”

At that moment, I realized how quiet and peaceful it was. I knelt, feeling the cool, light breeze caressing my face. All the fight went out of me -- all the anger, pain, and humilation of the last few years – simply disappeared.

God had used the Pilgrimage to Chartres to grind the bitterness out of me, to free me from what was holding me back from moving forward in grace.

Hadn’t that been my prayer at the altar of St Catherine Laboure` and to St. Therese’ just the day before?

For a few moments I knelt in that peaceful quiet, when suddenly I heard a horn honking. The medical bus was just through the trees!

To board the bus, drink clear water and lean my weary head against the window was another gift from God! As the bus filled up with pilgrims, I saw that only a couple of us were not bleeding from the journey. One person was pretty sure her ankle was more broken than sprained. It wasn’t long before there were three buses full of the walking wounded.

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A woman with a bull horn appeared and began to tell us to remember that we were here for a reason. That this was the same pilgrimage that saints had walked. We were to offer our aches, pains and prayers up for the conversion of sinners and our own souls. She began the rosary and we prayed the rest of the afternoon as we journeyed on toward the spot where we would sleep for the night. I was still hurting, and felt like I’d never be able to walk again, but my soul was singing. I believe that was one of the most devout rosaries I have ever said.

Evening brought us to a huge field where we would unpack our luggage and eat our evening meal. There was broth and bread. Later, in our sleeping bags, we could pop a couple of Tylenol PM to help us get through the night with our aches and blistered feet.

Morning came and Crystal and I could both hardly move. Tents had to be repacked and Mass said before we headed out again. Again Crys and I said goodbye. I joined the walking wounded again; our group had grown and there were now many of us limping and dragging ourselves down the dirt lane.

Then, it began to rain.

We were a thoroughly bedraggled group of pilgrims who climbed wearily aboard the medical bus when it finaly arrived. I took the last seat next to a young woman who looked like she had been through a war.

She was overweight, dressed in punk regalia, with massive head of wild black hair. She had a gash over one eyebrow, covered by a bloody bandage, and her ankle was wrapped. She looked up at me, smiled cautiously and in a very French accent said, “Hullo.”

I asked if she would like one of my bottles of water.

Was she okay?

She shook her head and began to cry.

She’d sprained her ankle and fell, gashing her forehead, the day before, she said. The medics had bandaged her up and sent her to the bus for the rest of the trip.

With French courtesy, nonetheless, she inquired after me. Why was I on the pilgrimage? Why was I was on the bus?

Satisfied, she finally opened up. She said her name was Marie. She’d made a promise to come on this particular pilgrimage, she said. This was not her choice. But her sister had been fatally ill the year before, and she had had to promise her that she would make the Chartres pilgrimage.

She was a radio DJ , alientated from the Faith for years. And at the moment, injured and suffering from the heat, pain, and inconveniences, she confessed that she would gladly go home -- if she could.

However, with tears in her eyes, she maintained that she had resolved to stick it out. There had been the promise to her sister.

We rode in silence until the lady with the bull horn told us to grab our rosaries, and so we began to pray.

Or rather, I did. Marie sat in gloomy silence, broken by an occasional muffled sob.

I watched the the French country side slide by, drenched in falling rain. The Hail Mary was intoned in soft rhythm all around us. I prayed for Marie hunched next to me. I prayed for everyone I could think of. I offered up the miserable day and all my aches and pains for Marie’s conversion. I asked the Blessed Mother to wrap her up in her protective mantle and give her peace.

Soon the rain slowed to a trickle, and the buses slowed as well. We turned onto a small lane that led to an ancient church with a graveyard. The stone

markers were so old that most appeared to have toppled onto their sides.

Everyone began milling around into the church or through the graveyard. A few found various jackets or rain gear to spread out onto the ground so they could sit without getting wet. Marie found a big piece of plastic and claimed a spot herself, but I wandered into the church.

It was fabulous. The altar, the statues, and the stations of the cross were so old and beautifully made.

The church pews had small swinging doors on them and the names of parishioners dead these many years. I pulled one open and stepped into the pew.

I knelt there, feeling completely overcome with the holiness of the place. I must have prayed for half an hour, immersed in the peace of my surroundings before another pilgrim made their way into the church.

Back out to the open field, I saw pilgrims scattered on the ground, and a Priest with a bullhorn, leading the rosary. Then I noticed several priests on chairs, with a pilgrim kneeling beside each one. They were hearing confessions! As one pilgrim would receive absolution and leave a priest, another pilgrim would take their place.

I was moved to see the emotion on pilgrim faces as they confessed and then rose absolved from their sins. Next to me, I was astonished to see Marie actually praying her rosary aloud in French. It was beautiful to see.

I began to move my fingers over my beads. She grinned at me shyly and held her rosary up as if to say “I thought I’d try it.”

Just as we finished the rosary, a priest touched my shoulder and asked if I was ‘the American.’ Would I lead the next rosary in English? He handed me the bull horn with a smile.

So, I began the rosary and Marie said it along with me. It was quite a beautiful experience to hear the pilgrims as they followed in their various accents. At the last decade of the rosary the sun came out from behind the clouds promising a beautiful afternoon.

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the day before. It was time to confess the things that had been weighing heavy on my heart.

Afterwards my soul seemed to sing and I felt intensely happy. I knelt and said my penance and then looked at Marie.

“Why?!” she asked, flabbergasted.

“Why what?” I responded, confused.

“But you are so holy! Why do you go to confession again!?”

“Oh Marie, I’m not holy. I’m just a sinner and I had to!” I explained a little about the Sacrament. Marie was very quiet when the next rosary began. And a few moments later, she touched my shoulder and said she would be right back. I watched in surprise and thanksgiving as she knelt beside a priest and bowed her head. She had not been to confession in years! What a grace. What incredible graces I had received and witnessed on this pilgrimage to Chartres.

I bowed my own head and thanked God. That chilly night passed, but I could hardly contain my joy. The day had been filled with so many blessings. The next morning I walked the last few miles into Chartres. I will never forget the first sight of the spires of the cathedral rising just above the trees, nor the walk through the city as thousands of pilgrims converged through the open doors with their ban182

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ners and rosaries. We were there. We were inside the huge cathedral I had learned about at university.

This is where saints and sinners had travelled for centuries and knelt to receive their King in Holy Communion. We pilgrims knelt -- wet, hungry, and sore -- but there was only one thing that mattered as we bowed our heads at the Consecration of the Body and Bood of Jesus. We were about to receive Christ in Holy Communion. All else just faded away after I received the Host. But as I looked up at that north rose window of the Chartres Cathedral in all its grandeur I realized that I was now a part of it. I had knelt where saints and sinner had knelt. My hands had touched its cool stones and my voice rang out in song just like theirs had done. I had been given the grace to finish the pilgrmage and I would leave that cathedral changed. As we said goodbye to old and new friends, I overheard a man shout to a fellow pilgrim, “See you here next year!”

Next year? Would I ever want to go back to walk this Pilgrimage again?

Probably not. But I would never have traded this for anything. I will always be grateful to God that my daughter helped me take the first steps on the Pilgrimage that helped me reclaim my life.

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We the Ordinary People of the Streets

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People-Watching in Paris with Madeleine Delbrel We take our places in a sidewalk cafe in Paris, tempted by the fine weather, wine, food, and intelligent conversation.

Even the most seemingly insignificant things around us take on the weight of sacramentality.

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Our spirits are lifted by the ineffable ambience that is Paris

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One understands the bread and the wine, the taking and eating on a fundamental level in such a setting as this.

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People-watching, for instance. Why do we search the faces of strangers?

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It’s a universal pastime in Paris – the whole reason for its world-renowned ‘café culture.’

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A Regina Photo Essay

Surely we entertain ourselves by noticing the details and the differences. (These elegant Parisiennes are in their 70’s!)

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French sisters stylin’ and shoppin’

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A Regina Photo Essay

French teens and their ubiquitous Coca-Cola

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Young and old alike on bicycles.

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A Regina Photo Essay

Beneath this layer of idle amusement, however, there is something else at work.

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Perhaps we search these oth of ourselves

her faces for a glimpse

And as we search, we confront the universality of humanity itself.

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The more saintly among us perceive the gaze of Christ in that humanity.

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We the Ordinary People

M

adeleine Delbrel certainly did.

Swept into the heady artistic world and philosophic thought of early 20th France, she was an uncompromising atheist in her youth.

Inspired by a circle of intellectual Catholics, she experienced a profound conversionin her early 20’s, launching her into depths of faith as unflinching as her previous disbelief had been. Although she was a gifted writer and thinker, pondering how the interior and exterior worlds meet, her works are surprisingly accessible. She sets the battle lines in the struggle for holiness in the most ordinary of circumstances, in our most intimate and mundane encounters.

Her ‘We, The Ordinary People of the Streets’ draws a contrast between those in religious and active life, but it might just as well be called an ode to peoplewatching, as Delbrel reveals the joy and hidden holiness to be discovered within the ordinary all around us.

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We, the ordinary people of the streets do not see solitude as the absence of the world but as the presence of God. For us, the whole world is like a face-to-face meeting with the One whom we cannot escape.

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We, the ordinary people of the streets, know that all our work consists in not shifting about under grace; in not choosing what we would do; and that it is God who acts through us.

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The Unknown Catholic Geno

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n ocide

By Meghan Ferrara Jim Morlino, Catholic film-maker and president of innovative Connecticut-based Navis Pictures, talks with Regina Magazine about his movie The War of the VendĂŠe.

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A

friend suggested ‘Why don’t you do the War of the Vendée?’Jim Morlino recounts. And I said, ‘The what?’ I’d never heard the word; I had no idea what he was talking about. That was a period of history and an event that had escaped me.”

The War of the Vendee (1793 to 1796) was an armed rebellion against the French Republican troops

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which resulted in a massacre of over 100,000 Catholics – men, women and children – in the west of France.

As an early modern example of revisionist history, this shocking genocide was completely whitewashed from French history, and in fact until recently denied by the French government.

MASS BEFORE BATTLE: Young actors re-enact the common practice in the Catholic army to confess, hear Mass and to consecrate themselves to the Sacred Heart through Mary before entering battle.

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Due to the film’s positive reception, Jim was invited to work on The Hidden Rebellion, a documentary about the War of the Vendée. This afforded Jim and his wife the opportunity to visit France for the first time. Among the Morlinos’ favorite

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experiences were observing historical reenactors portraying important battles of the Vendée War and meeting historian Reynald Secher as well as descendants of Jacques Cathelineau and Henri de la Rochejaqueleinm.

MORLINO’S FILM FEATURES AN EXCELLENT SCORE composed by Kevin Kaska, who offered his talents after seeing Navis Picture’s St. Bernadette of Lourdes. The film has garnered many awards including Best Film for Young Audiences at the 2012 Mirabile Dictu International Catholic Film festival.

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The Unknown Catholic Genocide Young Actors

“There is something intrinsically beautiful and valuable in capturing and celebrating the creativity of young people as well as watching them give their talents to God and to Our Lady,” Morlino explained, adding, “Well, I love kids, number one. I love my own and, by extension, we are blessed with a great group of other Catholic kids who come from families with a similar philosophy as us.”

Jim described his youthful actors as respectful, attentive and well read.

“I find that this type of young person makes for a natural actor. When I studied acting formally, we were often encouraged to recapture certain elements of our youth to use on stage such as our innocence and emotional availability. I’ve found that many times these kids already have those basic building blocks. They don’t have the artifice that adults do.”

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NAVIS PICTURES’ FILMS ARE CAST ENTIRELY WITH YOUNG CATHOLICS, not professional actors.

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WHAT HAPPENED IN THE VENDEE? After exploring the making of The War of the Vendée, our conversation naturally segued into the historical events that inspired the film. “These were happy poor, many of whom, like most of Western Europe, were subsistence farmers. The Church provided spiritual sustenance for these farmers and the people of

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France by running hospitals and schools i Contrary to prevailing opinion, “the Revo popular uprising against abuses of monar the resistance wasn’t confined to the Vend similar revolts all through France,” accord

in addition to aiding the poor.� olution was not a widespread rchy and corrupt church. And dÊe or to Brittany. There were ding to Morlino.

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The Unknown Catholic Genocide

THE EMBLEM OF THE CATHOLIC OPPOSITION WAS THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS a devotion which began seventy years prior to the Revolution through the preaching of St. Louis de Montfort.

The people had a childlike faith and a great reverence for their priests and nuns who brought them Christ. They also had a great devotion to Our Lady and the rosary. Many of the soldiers incor-

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porated rosary beads as part of their uniform and their motto was “For God and King.” It reminded them that they were fighting for God’s rights as well as their own.

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The Unknown Catholic Genocide

BATTLE SCENE: How were the Catholic soldiers able to simultaneously fight for and remain faithful to their Catholic values?

Jim clarified how, despite the horrific efforts of the Infernal Columns to wipe out resistance to the Revolution and to eliminate the Catholic population, the Vendean soldiers conducted themselves with dignity and honor.

Though they fought with cunning and used their knowledge of the land to their advantage, the Vendeans also treated captured Republican soldiers humanely, even when this was difficult.

“The architects of the French Revolution knew exactly what their generals were doing, as proved by documentation which still exists in the National Archives.”

On one occasion, when his soldiers wanted to exact revenge against Republican prisoners, Louis d’Elbée urged them to recite the Our Father. At the words, “forgive us our

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trespasses,� the Vendeans’ anger dissipated and they abandoned their plans for retribution.

Later, on his deathbed, Vendee commander Charles de Bonchamps pardoned five thousand captured Republicans. This act was commemorated by a statue designed by the French sculptor Pierre Jean David, whose father was among the pardoned.

From the perspective of more than two centuries later, it is clear that the sacrifice of these Vendeans ensured the survival of the Faith in France.

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I Will Build It They Will Com Sorbonne graduate, EWTN alumnus and film-maker Daniel Rabourdin is determined to expose the hidden horror of 140,000 French Catholic martyrs killed in 1796. If this means sleeping in a tent outside his own home – rented to raise money for the film – that’s what he will do.

Regina Magazine’s Teresa Limjoco caught up with Daniel in America.

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t. me.

By Teresa Limjoco

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DANIEL DIRECTS A CRITICAL SCENE: “After most of the fighting ceased and the Vendeans had lost, the French Revolutionaries insisted on eradicating the civilian population. About 140,000 people disappeared -- 80% of them women, children and old people.”

Tell us about your early life in France.

When I was a teenager in France my teachers would ridicule Catholicism to try to make the students lose their faith. Fortunately I had a sort of mentor (a Latin Mass-goer) and an intellectually alert father who had “vaccinated” me against these critics. I was to stand up, to dare to speak up.

Some of my peers preferred that I keep quiet because they did not like ‘drama’. Yet I talked about the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, for example. That dogma was not invented by a later Church but articulated by the Church as the belief was present in the Catholic people from the beginning. In the end, the teachers seemed to respect my speaking up.

You live in America now, right?

Yes. Fast-forward 35 years later, I came to America and experienced much more respect for religion here.

There is so much that I like here.

And then after a few trips back to France where this intellectual persecution continues and I woke up to this fact: there is an underreported abuse of children in public schools. Specifically, I call this “Soul’s Abuse”.

In other places it has been called brainwashing. This abuse by adults in school who are doing something that nobody asked them to do is in my opinion a crime and should be put into legislation.

What led you to an interest in the War of the Vendee?

I was searching for another docudrama to film, with action and faith. I found an old historical comic book in my basement in France, on the War of the Vendée.

The War of the Vendée was an early yet massive persecution of people of faith by atheistic forces. At the height of their battle, the Vendeans had gathered 70,000 men-in-arms.

These farmers without military expertise rose up. They had many victories, and then succumbed to an enormous influx of Revolutionary soldiers brought back from the Eastern Front. To my eyes, they are the proto-martyrs of Christians dying at the hands of an atheistic power.

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I Will Build It. They Will Come.

Since their history is still ‘swept under the carpet’ by the public school system in France, I thought it would be a good movie to make it known to the whole world. With more awareness in the world, perhaps something would change in France later.

Don’t many French people know of this genocide in French history?

It is mostly the Christians (and in France when one says Christian, one means most of the time Catholic) who still know about it, because it was about their ancestors in the faith. The people in France who love the Latin Mass are the most aware of the story. They all have some book at home about it. They have been kept aware about where our civilization is headed. They are very educated historically. Most of the other forces in France prefer to silence any information about it.

But books exist - history books, experts, historians. And, the modern political leaders of the region of the Vendée are still militant about it. They are pushing for official recognition by the French Republic of the genocide that happened in the Vendée.

How did the film production come together: scriptwriters, director, cast, music composer, cinematographer, etc.?

I did it with practically nothing. Now that it is filmed and 70% edited, I still wonder how we did not fail.

The three professional actors that I convinced worked for half their usual fees. They stayed extra days in the field for the filming.

Farmers lent their farms and their fields.

The re-enactors Le Brigand du Bocage, in the Vendée and their founder, Ghislaine, were incredible. They acted for free, found the locations, told me where to rent the costumes. Ghislaine spent a whole night without sleep ironing the costumes. The historian Reynald Secher brought his guillotine from his museum, and had a mass grave dug out on his property for one scene.

This is amazing.

Yes, I was just bold and naïve enough, I suppose. I quit my job at EWTN, cashed in my retirement fund, rented out my own room in my house and slept under a tent. Still no salary and I count on good health to save on medical insurance. I do not know myself how the budget is going to be closed but I know that we are not stopping the production process. I still need about $40,000 to finish the editing.

I also tried and still am trying crowd fund raising on the internet. I actually spend half of my time begging, asking for money...in exchange for a beautiful tee-shirt of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that I designed. In exchange for other surprises. We try to be thankful…

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JIM MORLINO (L) AND DANIEL RABOURDIN ON LOCATION: “A dozen volunteers in America and in France are helping me.

My director of photography, Jim Morlino, worked on a very generous basis as he loved the subject and saw I could not do it alone.”

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I Will Build It. They Will Come.

What has been the reaction/response to the project - from ordinary lay people in France, historians, the Church?

A French bishop lent me an old van and wrote a blessing for the production. I slept in the van several times.

In America, a farmer and his brother give me money and also moral support. These friendships are very important and they come along with a lot of prayer. When people know the truth and suffer in similar ways to the Vendeans, they go into action. In some ways, they are heroes. The descendants of the Armenians (who suffered genocide at the hands of the Muslim Turks), of Ukrainians (genocide at the hands of the Communist Russians), Cubans, Vietnamese and Poles are very aware of the dangers of powerful atheist governments.

I tell them how engaged I am in this fight for religious liberty. Their part is to sacrifice a sky trip or a restaurant meal in order to get this docudrama done.

You are an artist supported by the ordinary people, then.

You know, creators and artists are most often poor. And if their paintings in the past or their films in the present are seen, it is because sponsors of the art exist. People are inspired when they see that an artistic work lasts a long time in its educational effect. Now, I try to call all those good people regularly. I love their concern, which is very touching. They must know they are doing a work of charity to let the truth be known.

I think that the martyrs of the Vendée are smiling on them in Heaven. The little children who died with their rosaries in their hands, the Carmelites of Compiègne … this teen girl who encouraged her little sister while walking up to the guillotine: “Do not cry little sister, tonight we have a dinner with the Sweet Lord.”

I have not yet tried to ask the help of any foundation, or authorities, or politicians. But I hear it could work.

I would love it. I would love even more if people with good will would contact some foundation for a grant.

I just do not have the time to do so myself. I prefer to push the production as far as I can for now. To “Build it and they will come.” In a month I will stop if I haven’t any more help. But I videotaped each step of this production to encourage the support of donors. I recorded people in France and America, on farm, in Paris, in the Vendee…

The donations from the good people along the path continue supporting us “just enough”. As Mother Angelica experienced when she was funding her television program, the Lord keeps sending just what is needed for the bread we need today.

Where are you now with producing the film?

All filming is done, both in France and in America. The acting sequences with action (the drama part) and the interview sequences (documentary part).

When do you foresee the premiere?

It will be in Spring 2015 for the English version. Why not one in Paris and one in Los Angeles? We will attempt to distribute “in selected theaters”.

Everybody who wants can help with the cause. With active people, active Catholics, active citizens we will bring our film to their theater and they can invite their community, school, or parish to fill the theater. And along the way, average theatergoers will get to see the docudrama. After that we will try history channels.

Then foreign countries (for now, Poland is interested, as well as Canada).

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SYMBOL OF DEFIANCE: The windmills of the Vendee were used by the Catholic rebels as signalling devices.

IN THE FILM, WE HAVE A FASCINATING INTERVIEW with Stephane Courtois, the author of The Black Book of Communism. He was part of an armed Communist plot in Paris in the 1970s. They aborted everything at the last minute when they became conscious of their folly.

Today Stephane is a political convert. The leftist intelligentsia in France that holds all the “cultural locks” of society is all up in arms, but he is happily free. He says in our film; “I am not a believer in God but if you take away the Christian God from a society, do not be surprised to suffer a catastrophe at the end”.

Why do you think the story of the Vendee is so important?

People must spread the word and make America aware that atrocities can come from anybody -- and in the 20th century, they came mostly from atheistic states -- ultra-centralized, ultra-liberal powers such as the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, or Cuba. In the 20th century, atrocities did not come from ethnicities or religions. They came from atheism. Nazism (a contraction of National Socialism) was militantly atheistic as well. Historians evaluate the death toll of Nazism at 40 million. They estimate the death toll of radical leftist powers at 140 million. These outnumber the deaths due to the Black Plague and ancient invasions, I think. The number encompasses the wars initiated, the purges, the gulag, the reeducation camps, and the starvation by loss of productivity, and by punishment of those who used to be productive (the entrepreneurs, the farmers etc.).

Where can people go to find more information about the film?

They can go to our website hiddenrebellion.com (for English speakers), and larebellioncachee.com (for French speakers).

Besides viewing your film (which looks very exciting, indeed!), where can people read/view to learn more about this historical episode?

I am so glad that you asked. I recommend first the little book For Altar and Throne by Michael Davies. It is a pleasant read by an English author. To understand the century-old process that we are going through, I also recommend the intelligent yet easy to read book of Dr. Benjamin Wiker of Steubenville: Worshiping the State.

It shows the progression from the French and English philosophers who believed in a heaven on earth that would be imposed by force.

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I Will Build It. They Will Come.

It shows how this was applied during the French Revolution and how this is still the dangerous dream of radical liberals today. The hippies believed in that heaven too. Their descendants now are hard at work to impose that “heaven” on us.

And then of course, there is the courageous book A French Genocide by the French historian Reynald Secher who makes known the need to recognize a genocide in the Vendée. Mr. Secher went to the French Army archives and found all the orders to the French generals to eradicate the population in Vendée.

How can people help you with this project? Can they still donate to help finance the production?

Oh yes, they can and we just can’t continue without their help! We have our hiddenrebellion.com/support page on our website and the people who help us also receive gifts from us. For the smaller donors, for example, we send them our hat, and a tee-shirt made with the colors of the production.

For the very generous donors there is also a five-course dinner by myself, names in the credits as Associate Producers, a visit in Los Angeles etc. Many of our supporters become involved in the making of the show. It is quite interesting for them, too.

To tell you the truth, I still need around $40,000 to pay several more months of the editor’s salary, voice talents, translators, special effects, creation of graphics, maps, music, etc. Editing is a very long phase in the production process. Sometimes we spend 5 hours at it and I have only 15 new seconds to show for it. It is a phase of creativity but it is long and takes around 10 months. I think that we still have four months to go so we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I just don’t want the process to stop now.

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Margaret Mary & the Sacred Heart “Behold the Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love.�

By Meghan Ferrara

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St Margaret Mary

Margaret Alacoque was born on July 22, 1647, during the reign of King Louis XIV, to Claude Alacoque and Philiberte Lamyn in Lhautecour, France. Whilst growing up, Margaret preferred silence and prayer to usual youthful pastimes, and she demonstrated an intense love of the Blessed Sacrament. For this reason, she was allowed to receive her First Communion at the age of nine.

A Sad Childhood

The Apparitions

argaret’s childhood was marked by sadness and difficulty. Her father died when she was eight years old, and disputes with relatives regarding his property were a great trial for Margaret and her family for many years. In addition, shortly after Claude’s death, Margaret contracted rheumatic fever, from which she suffered for four years. It was only after making a vow to the Blessed Mother to consecrate herself to religious life that Margaret was healed.

Margaret Mary, as she was now known, entered the Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial in the summer of 1671. After enduring many trials to confirm her vocation, the young novice pronounced her final vows on in November 6, 1672. A year later, on December 27, Sister Margaret Mary experienced the first of a series of revelations that would continue for another year and a half.

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Throughout this hardship, Margaret found solace in the Blessed Sacrament. During this period, Margaret received visions of the Crucified Christ, reminding her of His presence and protection, which she assumed others experienced as well. Upon the coming of age of Margaret’s eldest brother, the family property was returned and Mme Alacoque wished for her daughter to marry. Margaret wanted to please her mother, but she still felt called to the consecrated life.

While she prayerfully considered which path to take, she enjoyed a normal life in society. While returning from a ball, she witnessed a vision of Christ during his scourging, Margaret felt that she had betrayed Christ by breaking her childhood promise to the Blessed Mother. As a result, she immediately rededicated herself to religious life.

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During the course of these apparitions, Christ confided to the young sister his desire for her to establish the devotion to His Sacred Heart. He instructed that this consecration should include Holy Communion on the First Friday of each month, Eucharistic Adoration (in particular, on Thursdays during the Holy Hour of from 11 p.m. until midnight in memory of his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane), and the celebration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart on the Friday after the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi.

Rejected in Disbelief

Her Holy Death

Sister Margaret Mary’s attempts to convince her community of the validity of her message were unsuccessful. Her superior, Mother de Saumaise, was particularly resistant to Margaret Mary’s claims.

When this rejection seriously affected the young nun’s health, Mother de Saumaise reconsidered her opposition.

Sister Margaret Mary died just four years later on October 17, 1690, at the Visitation Convent in Paray-le-Monial. She faced her final illness with courage, frequently praying from Psalm 73, “What have I in heaven, and what do I desire on earth, but Thee alone, O my God?” She received the Last Sacraments, stating, “I need nothing but God, and to lose myself in the heart of Jesus.”

A primary source of support for Sister Margaret Mary during this difficult period was her spiritual director and confessor to the entire community, St. Claude de la Colombière. He was immediately convinced of the veracity of her visions, and his writings about them were an integral part of their eventual acceptance.

This new détente continued with the election of Mother Melin as Superior in 1683. She named Margaret Mary as her assistant and was more sympathetic to the young nun’s mission. Later, Margaret Mary also became Novice Mistress. Under her direction, the convent began to privately observe the feast of the Sacred Heart in 1686, but the practice soon spread to other Visitation convents.

The writings and teachings of St. Margaret Mary were thoroughly examined, and finally the Sacred Congregation of Rites passed a favorable vote on the heroic virtues of this faithful sister. The first petition to the Holy See for the institution of the Feast of the Sacred Heart was from Queen Mary, consort of James II of England. The devotion was officially recognized and approved by Pope Clement XIII in 1765, seventy-five years after Margaret Mary’s death. In March 1824, Pope Leo XII pronounced her Venerable, and on September 18, 1864, Pope Pius IX declared her blessed. Pope Benedict XV canonized this Apostle of the Sacred Heart in 1920.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, we place our trust in you!

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The Astonishing True Story of

St Joan of Arc For France and the Faith, She Was Burned As A Witch

By Meghan Ferrara It’s strange, but true. Amid the turmoil and upheaval of the Hundred Years War and the general malaise permeating the French countryside, a singular young girl rose to lead France to a new Golden Age. es to meet St. Giles.

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THE HOUSE OF ST JOAN: She was born on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1412, in this house in Domremy, to Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Rommey. She was the youngest of their five children.

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St Joan of Arc

JOAN’S FIELD: Joan and her sisters tended the sheep in this field. Though they were illiterate, they received thorough instruction in all domestic tasks.

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FAMILY HEARTH: Joan frequently sat by this hearth, where she was particularly skilled in sewing and spinning.

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JOAN’S CELESTIAL VOICES: As a girl, Joan was known for her love of prayer and her faithful church attendance, her frequent use of the Sacraments, and her kindness to the sick and poor. She was around fourteen when she first heard her celestial voices, accompanied by a blaze of light, bringing her divine messages.

She continued to receive these visions over the next few years. Joan eventually identified her visitors as St. Michael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Margaret, and they gradually revealed that her mission was to crown Charles as King of France and to defeat the English.

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The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass According to the Roman Missal of 1962 “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too. Pope Benedict XVI “Summorum Pontificum” July 7, 2007

Rediscover the tradition of prayer and worship which has sustained the Church Faithful for centuries…

Hear the ancient Gregorian chant, traditional hymns and sacred music composed by the great masters…

Experience the timeless beauty and richness of your Roman Catholic Liturgical Heritage.

Sundays, 9:00am St. Anthony of Padua Church Monmouth St. between 6th and 7th Sts. Jersey City, NJ 07302 stanthonyjc.com 236

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St Joan of Arc

Her Brilliant Military Career Before his ministers were willing to trust her, they sent Joan to Poitiers to be questioned. After an extensive examination, the panel of theologians affirmed Joan’s integrity and that of her mission. Upon her return to court, Joan and her soldiers rode to the relief of Orléans under a new standard depicting a figure of God the Father, to whom two kneeling angels presented a fleur-de-lis, along with the words, "Jesus Maria." The French broke through the English line and entered the city on April 29. By May 8, the English fort outside Orléans had been captured, and the siege raised. After several more victories, Joan urged the immediate coronation of the Dauphin.

At Rheims, on July 17, 1429, Charles VII was duly crowned, Joan standing proudly behind him with her banner.

After a failed attempt on Paris by the French, both sides signed a truce that lasted the winter. This prevented Joan from taking advantage of the momentum she’d gained at Orléans and her subsequent victories. Throughout the winter, Joan was keen to return to battle and continue her mission.

When hostilities renewed in the spring, she hurried to the relief of Compiègne, besieged by the Burgundians. Her attack on May 23, 1430 failed, and Joan was captured by one of John of Luxembourg’s soldiers and remained in Burgundian custody until autumn.

Betrayed by the King During Joan’s entire captivity, Charles and his ministers made no effort to secure her release. But the English were keen to exact their revenge on the Maid. So on November 21 the Burgundians accepted a handsome reward and released her to her enemies.

The English charged Joan with being a witch and heretic. On February 21, 1431, she appeared for the first time before an Inquisitional court presided over by Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais. He was an ambitious man who hoped through English influence to become archbishop of Rouen. The other judges were lawyers and theologians carefully selected by the bishop. Joan was cross-examined as to her revelations, her decision to dress in military attire, her faith, and her willingness to submit to the Church. Though she was alone and without counsel, Joan acquitted herself bravely. Her responses to questions and her conduct throughout the proceedings underscored the veracity of her claims.

Joan was sentenced to burning if she did not confess to being a witch and to lying about hearing voices. She refused to recant, despite being physically exhausted and threatened with torture. She waivered only once, when she was led out into the churchyard of St. Ouen to hear the sentence pronounced. She then returned to prison, but not for long. Either by her own choice or as the result of a trick played by her enemies, Joan resumed dressing in her military clothing. This provided the Court the pretext they needed to condemn Joan as a relapsed heretic and deliver her to the English on Tuesday, May 29, 1431.

The next morning she was led out into the market place of Rouen to be burned at the stake. At the end, Joan requested to see a crucifix and she was heard to call on the name of Jesus.

Twenty-five years later, Pope Callixtus IX ordered a rehearing of the case. Because of new testimony, the trial was pronounced irregular, and Joan was formally rehabilitated as a true and faithful daughter of the Church. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1919.

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MASSIVE PAINTING BY BASTIEN LE PAGE captures the moment in May 1428, when Joan’s voices became insistent and urgent. Joan traveled to the Dauphin’s residence at Chinon and on March 8, 1429, she was granted an audience. To test her, Charles disguised himself as one of his courtiers, but Joan quickly recognized him and, by a sign known only to them, she convinced Charles of her purpose.

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The Carmelites of Compiègne

Singing Their Way to the Guillotine

By Meghan Ferrara

O

ne of the darkest periods of the French Revolution was the Reign of Terror, which lasted from September 1793 to July 28, 1794. During these months, over 1,300 victims met their fate at the guillotine.

Yet, out of this turmoil emerged the story of sixteen Carmelite sisters, whose courage and hope in the face of martyrdom still is an inspiration today.

Darkness Gathers in Revolutionary France Following the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, the Church faced increasing hostility from the National Assembly and the new Republican government. On October 28, 1789, the Assembly banned the professing of vows in French monasteries. A few months later, on February 13, 1790, religious orders with solemn vows were subdued.

During this time, practices such as gathering

for common prayer and wearing religious clothing were also outlawed. On July 12 of that same year, the Assembly passed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, requiring all religious to swear allegiance to the new Republic instead of Rome. By 1792, religious houses were closed and their members dispersed.

Cloistered Carmelites In A Quiet, Northern Town The sixteen Carmelites resided in the quiet, northern town of Compiègne. The sixteen women were composed of professed sisters, lay sisters, and two servants. The names of the professed Carmelites were Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, prioress; Mother St. Louis, sub-prioress; Mother Henriette of Jesus, ex-prioress; Sister Mary of Jesus October 2014 France | Regina Magazine

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he history of the Catholic Church has taught us that real renewal movements start small and they come from the ground up. The latest example comes to us from St. Louis, where Veils By Lily, an enterprise producing traditional Catholic veils is inspiring a deeper love for the Holy Eucharist and a strengthening of family life.

Veils by Lily

Mantilla-Style Chapel Veils

Lily Beck Wilson is a cradle Catholic who had a “reversion” experience five years ago. “I was lukewarm…” she admitted.

“I received the Eucharist as if it were something trivial.” During her reversion, Lily studied Catholic doctrine on Christ’s Real Presence. “My husband is Protestant, and I had to think about what I believed and why”, she recalled. “I was blown away by John Chapter 6—how literal and forceful Jesus was.”

The truth of the Real Presence was overwhelming to Lily—“the God of the universe wants to be personally united to us—to me.” Lily added that in a world where all of us long to be loved, it is in the Holy Eucharist that Jesus Christ Himself wants to give us all that love and more.

Lily wanted to acknowledge Our Lord’s love—“to shout it from the rooftops”, as she put it. The veil became her way of metaphorically doing just that. It wasn’t easy—there were few, if any, at her parish who wore the veil, and wearing one had the disadvantage of bringing unwanted attention. When Lily saw a beautiful veil and thought “I could wear that”, the inspiration for her business took hold.

What if the veil could be made truly beautiful—a garment whose physical beauty would be a small reflection of the Divine Beauty

that it seeks to honor and proclaim? Maybe more women would feel as Lily did and think “I could wear that.” She put up a website and started to sell her own homemade veils.

The business came in quickly, but there were challenges, including one pretty big hurdle before she ever went public-Lily didn’t know how to sew. But she taught herself to use a sewing machine and the orders came in fast enough that it replaced her part-time job.

Giving up the part-time job led to another fruit of her venture: more time near her husband and what was then three children.

When she worked part-time she was starting work as her husband was coming home. “Family life was non-existent” she said. Now they could eat dinner as a family and rest on Sunday.

Those good fruits extended to the families of others. Business increased to the point where Lily hired a seamstress and a shipping assistant, who each work part-time, along with several freelancers who cut veils. “It’s flexible work with flexible schedules, and we ask everyone not to work on Sunday,” Lily told Regina. “If I need something on Tuesday, it can wait until Wednesday if it means taking Sunday off. Family comes first.”

Lily’s family-first policy is a demonstration of a truly Catholic business, one that is Catholic at its soul, not just its exterior, and something that can be emulated whether one sells veils or widgets.

Lily’s husband is now in the RCIA program and preparing to enter the Church at Easter Vigil. The couple has had two additional children since the starting of the business, it was those births that showed her the need to hire help. When she needed office space to store the lace, she found it in the same building as Liguori Publications. The office has been blessed by a priest from The Institute of Christ The King. The building has a chapel, with the Blessed Sacrament. It seems quite appropriate for a venture encouraging Catholic women to take their faith in the Real Presence and shout it from the rooftops.

www.veilsbylily.com Lily with Seamstress Diane and Baby Rose

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The Carmelites of Compiègne

Crucified; Sister Charlotte of the Resurrection, ex-sub-prioress and sacristan; Sister Euphrasia of the Immaculate Conception; Sister Teresa of the Sacred Heart of Mary; Sister Julie Louise of Jesus, widow; Sister Teresa of St. Ignatius; Sister Mary-Henrietta of Providence; Sister Constance, novice. The lay sisters were Sister St. Martha; Sister Mary of the Holy Spirit; and Sister St. Francis Xavier. The two women who served the Carmelites were Catherine Soiron and Thérèse Soiron.

While many of these women came from poor or middle-class backgrounds, the community enjoyed the patronage of the royal family. If a girl’s family found it difficult to pay the dowry expected upon entering the convent, it was not unusual for a noble or royal benefactor to provide assistance. Someone who exemplified this generosity throughout her life was the Dauphine, Marie Antoinette, who graciously paid the dowry of the prioress, Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, when she took the veil.

Ordered To Leave Their Carmel and Arrested The Carmelites were ordered to leave their Carmel on September 14, 1792, the feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. Shortly before their eviction, Mother Teresa lead her sisters in a communal act of consecration, offering their lives for the end of violence and the sake of peace in their homeland. Following the expulsion from their convent, the women lived in four groups and wore simple clothing. However, they continued to meet for common prayer and their for devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The community’s staunch fidelity to their vocation along with their refusal to swear allegiance to the new Constitution lead to their arrest on June 22, 1794. The women were charged with conspiracy, treason, being royalists, and corresponding with anti-revolutionaries.

Charged with “attachment to your Religion and the King”

and the King.” She then turned to her sisters and declared proudly, “We must rejoice and give thanks to God for we die for our religion, for our faith, and for being members of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.” During their trial, the sisters were not allowed lawyers or witnesses, the entire process being a mere formality. The “evidence” submitted by the state included pictures of the late King Louis XVI, images of the Sacred Heart, and the Canticle to the Sacred Heart.

Their Wedding Day at the Guillotine On 17 July 1794, the Carmelite sisters, attired in their religious habits because they had been washing their plain clothes the morning of their arrest, renewed their vows of baptism and religious profession. They then mounted a tumbrel and were led through the streets of Paris to the Place du Trône Renversé (now the Place de la Nation).

Witnesses reported that the sisters radiated joy, as if anticipating their wedding day. Juxtaposed against the ethereal silence of the usually raucous crowds were the voices of the sisters, singing their way to heaven. En route, they chanted the Salve Regina, the Te Deum, and Veni, Sancte Spiritus, and then intoned the psalm Laudate Dominum, omnes gentes.

Before each sister mounted the scaffold, she knelt before the Mother Superior to receive a blessing, kissed a small statue of the Madonna and Child, and placed herself beneath the blade without allowing the executioner to touch her. The Mother Prioress was the last sacrificed. All throughout, the silence was complete. Not even a single drum-roll sounded.

Ten days after the martyrdom of the sixteen Carmelites, Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore de Robespierre was arrested and executed, and the Reign of Terror came to an end. The sacrifice of the sisters, sustained by their devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, paved the way for the peace they so desired.

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‘What Eton and Have Be

Academic Excellence and Ho

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havagnes International College was fo inary in the west of France, by a group Ferdi McDermott, a former Catholic pu of the College since 2007.

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d Oxford Might ecome’

oliness at Chavagnes College

ounded in 2002, in a large former junior semp of British teachers under the leadership of ublisher. Ferdi has himself been Headmaster

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What Eton & Oxford Might Have Become

Q. What inspired you to do this?

I had always been drawn to the vision of Cardinal Newman expressed in his Idea Of A University in which a place of education ought to be a community of minds and hearts. According to Newman, education is about friendship.

It is the positive relationship between pupils and between pupils and teachers, and then with Almighty God, that sets the scene for learning. Learning happens because the people involved wish to learn from each other as a natural part of the esteem they have for each other. Especially for the young, learning is the most natural thing for them.

Q. Was there any sort of tradition you found must inspiring?

We were also inspired by the traditions of places such as Oxford, Cambridge and Eton, which before the Reformation were places of education that featured a community of scholars who joined together each day for prayer and for meals as well as for lessons.

The pillars of a College at Oxford or Cambridge were its Fellows, who originally saw their role as a vocation to teaching, scholarship and prayer. These places were meant to become powerhouses of prayer and learning, inspired no doubt by medieval monasticism, but quite distinct from it.

Newman’s ideal place of learning, he wrote, “will give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci, as it is sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been born, and which imbues and forms, more or less, and one by one, every individual who is successively brought under its shadow.”

Q. You seem quite fascinated with John Henry Newman’s ideas.

Yes, in Newman’s musings he was really trying to imagine what Eton and Oxford might have become had it not been for the Reformation. Academic excellence needed holiness in order to come to a full flowering. That was his dream.

And something like this idealism inhabited us when we started our own school in 2002, in the Vendée, a part of France known for its devotion to the Faith and its connections with England, in a building that had been a minor seminary for nearly two centuries, and was itself built on the site of medieval Benedictine monastery.

We are very much part of a tradition here; we feel it all around us.

Q. What were the obstacles in your way and how did you overcome them?

We have had some difficulties dealing with the French state. It is the heaviest administrative culture in the socalled ‘free’ world. But one gets used to it. The knack is to persevere and sometimes just to hope that French officials will take pity on a bemused Englishman who has been defeated by French form-filling. The local people, and our local bishop, have been very welcoming.

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Q. The setting for the school is beautiful. How did you find your way there?

Because of the huge difference in the real estate markets in the UK and France, it was a time when a lot of English people were moving across the channel; trading in a small house in London for a castle in France was all the rage at the time. We did it in a small group, with an adventurous project in mind. But we were not the only English people making the move at the time.

Q. How did you know that there was a demand for Catholic education on the English public school model in France?

Well, we didn’t. It was just that I had a strong intuition of the kind of school I wanted to create, and this was shared by my colleagues. Initially our pupils were almost all English. But that has changed. It was a pleasant surprise that certain kind of French family is fascinated by England and especially drawn to a school like ours.

Q. What countries have your students come from?

We have 40 boys at the moment. 25 of them are French, but some come from bilingual families, and those who remain here for a few years become quickly bilingual. The French boys here tend to be from aristocratic families who still hang on to their Catholic faith and who are prepared to make great sacrifices for their children. We also have pupils from England, Malta, Spain, Poland, Russia, Nigeria and two from the USA. Q. What grades do you offer? What special classes do you offer?

It is a secondary school, with pupils from ages 11-18. We prepare our boys for entry to university and they sit the British A-level examinations, with the French baccalaureate as an option. We teach Latin, Greek, Spanish, 250

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German and French, although only a very few clever boys get to study them all at once. There are also Mathematics, the Sciences, History, Music and Religion. And Sport. Lots and lots of sport. Boys love that, and it keeps them cheerful.

Q. Tell us about some of your star teachers.

Our teachers are often from Oxford, Cambridge or some of the other leading UK universities; several have doctorates or are pursuing them. They tend to be all-rounders who like their sport and music. I wouldn’t want to draw attention to anyone in particular, except to say that two former teachers are now ordained: one is a priest in the Institute of Christ the King, and another a deacon in the Fraternity of St Peter.

It’s a shame when great Masters leave, but we are happy to lose them to the priesthood. The main thing to say about the teachers here is that we are friends as well as colleagues. And that makes a positive difference to the boys.

Q. Is it difficult for boys who have not been away from home before? How do they learn to cope?

Boys are rarely homesick for long. There is so much for them to do. Mothers get “sonsick”. But we are learning how to deal with them!

Q. Why do parents tell you that they select your school? Do the boys have much choice in the matter?

The boys have a lot of choice in the matter. Parents are attracted for a number of reasons; mainly religious and cultural ones. But the boys buy in to the ideal. And they make it work.

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What Eton & Oxford Might Have Become

Q. You spend a great deal of effort helping boys apply for university. What universities have your alumni attended?

We have succeeded in getting boys in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and other leading UK universities, as well the Sorbonne (France’s oldest university), the Pontifical University of Navarre, to name but a few. Some have gone to the US; to the University of Kansas, to Thomas Aquinas College also.

Q. Speaking of alumni, where are they working today? Are they involved with the school?

Several former pupils have come back to teach for a term or a year. It is always great to catch up with them and to get to know them as men. We have one former pupil who was here from 2002-2005 who is now a deacon, and will be ordained priest in December. Others are lawyers in the UK, France and Spain. No doctors as yet, but that may come. No one in jail yet, as far as I know. On the whole, they tend to keep their sense of loyalty to the Church and also their friendship for each other. They are good at staying in touch.

Q. What’s been the best part of your experience as principal of the school? The worst? the most surprising?

I think I can tie the answers to those questions together into one story. In January 2011 I fell off the roof (I had been getting the school ready for a safety inspection, rather ironically). I was lucky to escape with a broken hip and wrist but I was on my back for about 2 months and unable to walk for about 3 months.

The time in hospital was an enforced silent retreat, punctuated by French television and visits from intrigued young nurses. I had a lot to think about after nine years of Chavagnes. There were a few doubts.

But the boys were kind. Some of them sent me sweets, cards, even a jigsaw puzzle. They were genuinely concerned. My return to school, in a wheelchair, was marked with touching expressions of affection from boys and teachers who were happy to have me back again. And also, I just felt that I was relieved to be home; that this was where I really belonged, doing the difficult but extremely rewarding work I love to do.

It enabled me to recommit wholeheartedly to the next ten years! So that whole experience was the worst and best thing that has happened to me here.

Apart from that, I would say that teaching is full of beautiful moments. Sharing in the instant of a child’s wonder at learning or understanding something new and interesting is just great. It always makes me smile.

Watching them grow into fine and idealistic men of faith is a great privilege. I went to a good school and an excellent university, but I often find myself wishing I could have had the education these boys are getting; to have been the solid young man at 18 that some of these young gentlemen are.

I think that some of them will make truly great teachers.

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Chavagnes A year in Europe The perfect experience for a young Catholic gentleman after High School and before University.

A new initiative of Chavagnes International College: a special Study Abroad Program aimed at providing boys from outside Europe with the chance to spend one or two years at the College and combine this with an exciting cultural schedule of visits throughout Europe, planned in cooperation with our extensive network of Catholic contacts in different countries.

The Chavagnes Study Abroad Program for boys aged 16-18 aims to provide: • A personalised study plan, including internationally recognised British qualifications (GCSE, AS and A-level, validated by the University of Cambridge International Examinations Syndicate, or by AQA.) • Participation in a rich daily life of prayer, music, drama, public speaking, sport and academic study • A climate of Catholic friendship with boys from the UK, France, Spain and other countries • A once-in-lifetime opportuntity to discover European languages, culture, architecture and people • A real chance to grow in maturity and faith in a sound Catholic environment Our program is for either 1 or 2 years, depending on your academic profile and future plans. The academic year runs from September to June inclusive, with a rolling 2-year program of visits to different destinations around Europe accompanied by staff from the College during some of the College's holidays. We advise students to travel home for the Christmas holiday only and to enjoy our special cultural excursions during the other vacation breaks.

Here is the information for the 2015-2016 School Year (starts Sunday 6th September 2015.)

The school year runs from September 2015 to June 2016 inclusive and includes holidays at Christmas and Here is a breakdown of details and costs for a one-year stay: • Tuition and full board accommodation at Chavagnes for 1 school year, September to June inclusive: 17,500 Euros.

• 10-day visit to Avignon, Lourdes and northern Spain in October mid-term break: 850 Euros.

Discover the renaissance Palace of the Popes, stay at the Abbey of Le Barroux, pilgrimage to Lourdes, practise your Spanish in Spain • 10-day visit to Sweden, Finland and Estonia in February mid-term break: 850 Euros.

Experience the unique culture of Europe’s frozen north and learn to ski.

•1-week visit to Sicily in Easter holiday: 750 Euros.

In the steps of the Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs, discover the treasures of Sicily.

Includes the Royal Chapel at Palermo, Mount Etna and the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento.

• Additional 1-week visit to Rome in Easter holidays: 750 Euros.

Visit the great basilicas, the Colloseum, the ancient Roman forum and the catacombs.

Enjoy Italian cuisine, and practice your Italian.

• 3-day walking pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres, plus a night in Paris and a night in Chartres (13-17th May 2016). 200 euros.

Follow in the footsteps of the medieval pilgrims, aliong with thousands of young French Catholics. Enjoy the sights of Paris and the medieval Cathedral of Chartres.

• 1-week walking pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in Spain, in honour of the Great St James. May mid-term break: 600 Euros.

Visit: www.chavagnes.org For more details, email Ferdi McDermott at principal@chavagnes.org

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What Eton & Oxford Might Have Become

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The Story of the Curé of Ars

‘They Were Not Human Voices’

By Donna Sue Berry

No. He had decided that they were not human voices, nor were they of angelic origin. He knew who it was, and he knew why it had stirred up the air with the horror of hell itself.

It was the Devil. And he was on the attack.

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Church of the Curé of Ars France

With the fight at hand, the Cure` of Ars had but one battle plan to repel the attacks, “I turn to God; I make the Sign of the Cross; I address a few contemptuous words to the devil.” Then, in prayer and patience, St. John Marie Vianney would pass uncomfortable nights shaken by the “grappin”-- happily because he knew it was a good sign that the next day some big sinner would come to the Sacrament of Confession. Sometimes there would be a “good haul of fish,” as he called the many sinners who would show up to confess after the Cure had passed such a night.

The town of Ars was not known for its holiness or piety. In fact, when the newly-ordained priest was assigned there, Ars was inundated with sin. Particularly, the vices of blasphemy, cursing, profanation of Sundays, and the gatherings and dances at taverns with their immodest songs and conversation.

These would be the subjects of his sermons, from which he never held back. “The tavern is the devil’s own shop, the school where hell retails its dogmas; the market where souls are bartered. It is the place where families are broken up, where health is undermined; where quarrels are started and murders committed.” There was no mincing of words for the Curé of Ars. Just how he would turn this entire village back to into a deeply faithful community was for him a labor of love, deep prayer, mortification and harsh penances. And a life lived in hidden 258

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obscurity. He would rise in the middle of the night to begin hearing confessions at one o’clock in the morning, and spend an incredible 14 to 18 hours a day in the confessional.

If a penitent withheld certain sins, the Cure would admonish them and proceed, to their astonishment, tell them their sins. He was known to weep while hearing confessions, with the remark, “I weep, my friend, because you do not weep.”

He maintained a strict fast of only one meal per day, consisting mostly of one or two boiled potatoes, black bread and water. He often wore a penitential garment next to his skin that caused friction and was stained from the blood it drew. When he did sleep he would do so on a bare mattress or a bundle of wood down in the cellar, and if he read, it was his breviary, the lives of the saints or something of theological value.

The villagers, dumbfounded, witnessed their priest practicing what he preached. He set the example for them. Over a period of ten years the entire town was converted. This conversion did not go unnoticed; thousands began to travel to Ars to see the saintly priest and to confess to him.

Today over 500,000 people a year visit Ars to see the incorrupt body of Saint John Marie Vianney, the saintly and humble priest responsible for the conversion of thousands of sinners.

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Notre Dame Loves La France

By Penny Silvers

I

t certainly seems so. Of the fifteen apparitions of the Virgin Mary officially confirmed by the Holy See through the entire world, fully one third have occurred in France. From 1208 until 1871, Mary appeared to a Spanish friar in the south of France, a teenage shepherdess in the French Alps, two cloistered nuns in Paris, two teenaged cowherds in the Alps, a simple girl in the foothills of the Pyrenees and a group of villagers in the path of an advancing Prussian army.

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The Apparition of the Rosary Our Lady first appeared to religious founder Dominic Guzman in 1208 in the Church of Prouille, in Languedoc, France, considered the “cradle of the Dominicans.” Legend has it that Saint Dominic received the Rosary there, which became the tool of the Dominicans in battling the Albigensian heresy, rife in that area.

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Notre Dame Loves La France

1664: The Visions of a Teenage Shepherdess

1830: The Miraculous Medal and Paris in Flames

Mary did not appear again until more than 450 years later, this time in the small Alpine village of Laus.

It was in May of 1664, while tending her sheep and praying the Rosary, that the 17 year old shepherdess Benôite Rencurel first beheld a lady in dazzling white, carrying a child. When she naively invited the Lady to share her hard bread, the Lady ‘smiled silently and disappeared into a cave.’

For the next few months, the Lady appeared to Benôite each day. The Lady’s message was to ‘pray continuously for sinners.’ She revealed her name as ‘Mary -- Reconciler and Refuge of Sinners.’ She instructed Benôite to go to the ancient Chapel of Notre Dame de Bon Recontre (‘Our Lady of Good Encounter’) where a sweet perfume would be emanating from the oil in the sanctuary lamp. This oil, the Lady said, would work miracles for those who received the anointing with faith.

In 1665, Benôite’s diocese recognized her apparitions. Construction of a small chapel was begun for Eucharistic Adoration and to receive penitents. Four years later, Benôite began seeing apparitions of the Suffering Christ; for ten years the visions told her that she would become a victim soul participating in his Passion. For two decades following, she suffered various illnesses. She died at 71, continually visited

by Our Lady.

In May of 2008, the Holy See announced its official recognition of the apparitions. The shrine at Laus is under the care of the Community of St. John, who are dedicated to the Sacrament of Confession. For anyone who wishes, healing oil is available from the sanctuary lamp for a small offering via the Sanctuary website at http://www.sanctuaire-notredamedulaus. com/ A cause for sainthood has been opened for Benôite .

Almost 120 years later, Our Lady appeared to the young novice Catherine Labouré in the Daughters of Charity chapel on Rue de Bac in Paris. The year 1830 was a dangerous one for France. Paris was in turmoil, as the July Revolution had unseated one monarch and set adrift unemployed, angry workers manning more than 4000 barricades throughout the city.

Tw ap fam

Catherine‘s three apparitions led to the popular devotion of the Miraculous Medal. In the second of these, Mary appeared atop a globe with rays of light radiating from her hands. Framing Mary in the shape of an oval were the words, “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” In Catherine‘s vision, the reverse side showed the letter ‘M’ surmounted by a cross, below two Hearts. The Sacred Heart was crowned with thorns; the Immaculate Heart was encircled with roses and pierced by a sword.

It w ve

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Catherine reported that Our Lady had instructed her to have a medal created from the vision, promising abounding graces to all who would wear it confidently. Two years later, a massive cholera epidemic struck, which claimed the lives of 20,000 Parisians.

The Sisters distributed the ‘miraculous’ medal; soon healings were reported as well as protection from the disease.

Mary’s medal also set in motion some amazing events. Eight years after the epidemic, the Rue de Bac Chapel once again became the site of apparitions. The Blessed Mother appeared again, this time to Sister Justine Busqueyburu, entrusting her with the Green Scapular of her Immaculate Heart for the conversion of sinners, in particular those who have no faith.

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“H fro alt su At of be div the his flo

Al fou Sis mo he co Piu

wo years after this, an atheistic French banker from prominent Jewish family, Alphonse Ratisbonne, mously converted to Catholicism. Ratisbonne

sited Rome on holiday where by his own account e was wearing the Miraculous Medal as a kind of ke when he visited the famous baroque church of ant’Andrea delle Fratte on January 20, 1842.

was there that Mary appeared to Ratisbonne, conerting him on the spot.

He was quite unable to explain how he had passed om the right side of the church to opposite lateral tar... All he knew was, that he had found himself uddenly on his knees, and prostrate close to this altar. t first he had been enabled to see clearly the Queen Heaven, in all the splendor of her immaculate eauty; but he could not sustain the radiance of that vine light. Thrice he had tried to gaze once more on e Mother of Mercy; thrice he been unable to raise s eyes beyond her blessed hands, from which there owed, in luminous rays, a torrent of graces.”

lphonse Ratisbonne became a Jesuit priest and later unded the religious congregation of Fathers and sters of Zion in Jerusalem. Catherine Labouré died ore than thirty years later, still a cloistered nun in er Paris convent. Her remains were found to be inorrupt in 1933; she was canonized in 1947 by Pope us XII.

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Notre Dame Loves La France

1846: Our Lady of La Salette Several days’ hard travel south of Paris in the RhôneAlps, Our Lady appeared to two poor cow herds -- Melanie Mathieu, 15, and Maximin Giraud, 11. Neither could read or write, nor had they had any religious instruction.

In the 1840s, France was plunged in political turmoil. The practice of religion had waned; conflict, disease and famine sparked emigration. In the fields near the hamlet of La Salette, the two visionaries reported seeing a dazzling globe of light, which opened to reveal a beautiful, weeping Lady seated on a rock.

She wore a golden crown, a dress of light, slippers edged with roses, and a golden crucifix hanging from a chain around her neck with a pair of pincers on one side and a hammer on the other.

She spoke to them in French and then in their Occitan dialect. With great sorrow, she told of her long work of staying the arm of her Son’s punishment for the irreligion of people. Specifically, she mentioned the offense of working on Sundays and blasphemous language. She warned of the coming of crop blight and famine punishments if her message was not heeded.

To each of the children, she imparted a secret which the other did not hear, asked them to say their prayers, and bid them to make her message known to people. The Lady of Light faded gradually, the globe of light drawing smaller and smaller, rising up in the air until it could no longer be seen.

During the days following the apparition the children were obliged to tell their story multiple times under rigorous questioning, and were brought to the scene repeatedly. On one trip, interrogators broke off a piece of the rock on which Our Lady sat.

A spring burst forth; subsequent miraculous healings were attributed to the water.

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Pilgrimages to the site began in spite of severe opposition from the authorities. Through all questioning and amid threats that they should recant, the two visionaries maintained consistency with their stories.

In 1846, there was crop failure followed in 1847 by a severe famine in Europe claiming the lives of approximately one million people, 100,000 in France alone.

After four years and two sets of enquiry, the Bishop of Grenoble approved the devotion to Our Lady of La Salette. In 1851, Pope Pius IX confirmed this.

Controversy followed the visionaries for the rest of their lives. Their secrets were also published. Maximin’s spoke of the loss of faith in France, the Church moving into darkness, and the rise of the Anti-Christ. Melanie’s secret included the loss of faith in Rome and a coming persecution of the Pope, priests, and religious.

Our Lady’s universal message was to conversion, penance, and prayer. Her title at La Salette is “Reconciler of Sinners”.

Catherine‘s vision showed the letter ‘M’ surmounted by a cross, below two Hearts.

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Notre Dame Loves La France

1858: Lourdes At the foot of the Pyrenees, ‘a small young lady’ appeared to 14-year old Bernadette Soubirous in a series of visions over five months from February to July. Calling herself ‘the Immaculate Conception,’ the ‘lady’ called for penitence and conversion of sinners and requested that a shrine be built in the garbage dump where the apparitions took place.

Bernadette, the asthmatic child of the town’s poorest family, immediately became a local object of skeptical regard. Persevering in spite of derision and suspicion, Bernadette learned obedience in what Pope Pius XII called in La Pelerinage de Lourdes, the “School of Mary”. Through her submission to the Lady’s bidding, a healing spring came forth, from which multiple miracles have been confirmed.

Bernadette relayed to her Curè the Lady’s request to build a chapel over the grotto. While he initially rebuffed her, after a while it was precisely Bernadette’s poorly-educated state which served to point to the supernatural.

Through the Lourdes apparitions, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception became a matter of ordinary discussion and helped to spread an understanding of Divine Logic in preserving Mary from the stain of sin.

Bernadette died in a convent, hidden from the world, 21 years after the last apparition. Her body has remained internally incorrupt, but it is not without blemish; during her third exhumation in 1925, light wax coverings were placed on her face and hands before she was moved to a crystal reliquary that year. For Catholics, the incorrupt Saints bring us to contemplate how Divine illumination can elevate a human being to such a high state of sanctity that the very cells which should have returned to dust remain in a state of preservation.

“I am the Immaculate Conception” the lady had said, according to Bernadette. How could a girl in her station of life know that four years earlier the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception had been promulgated

by Pope Pius IX? She was not even aware of what the word “conception” meant.

In any event, the local authorities wanted to stop the crowds from visiting the unauthorized site. They sought a condemnation from the Bishop, who ordered an investigative commission. Four years later, the apparitions were declared authentic, and in 1876, the Basilica over the grotto was consecrated.

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1871: Pontmain in the Path of the Prussian Army By 1871, France had been devastated by the Franco-Prussian War. Fully three quarters of France lay under the heel of Prussian occupation.

On the starry night of January 17th, in the tiny village of Pontmain, Brittany, Cesar Barbadette and his two sons Joseph and Eugène, aged ten and twelve were finishing up their tasks in the barn. Eugene looked out the window and saw an area free of stars over their neighbor’s house. Suddenly, he saw Our Lady smiling at him. Joseph also saw Our Lady; later as a priest he would recount what he had seen: She was young and tall of stature, clad in a garment of deep blue, ... Her dress was covered with brilliant gold stars. The sleeves were ample and long. She wore slippers of the same blue as the dress, ornamented with gold bows. On the head was a black veil half covering the forehead, concealing the hair and ears, and falling over the shoulders. Above this was a crown resembling a diadem, higher in front than elsewhere, and widening out at the sides. A red line encircled the crown at the middle. Her hands were small and extended toward us as in the ‘miraculous medal.’ Her face had the most exquisite delicacy and a smile of ineffable sweetness. The eyes, of unutterable tenderness, were fixed on us. Like a true mother, she seemed happier in looking at us than we in contemplating Although their parents saw only three stars in a triangle, the religious sisters of the parochial school and the parish priest were called over. Two girls, Françoise Richer and Jeanne-Marie Lebosse, aged nine and eleven, also saw the Lady.

The villagers – by now about 60 adults and children – began to pray the Rosary. As they prayed, the visionaries reported that they saw the vision undergo a change. First, the stars on Our Lady’s garment multiplied until her blue garment was almost completely gold. Then with each subsequent prayer, letters appeared to spell out the messages on a banner unfurled at her feet: “But please pray, my children,” “God will soon hear your prayers,” and “My Son is waiting for you”.

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As they sang “Mother of Hope”, a favorite regional hymn, Our Lady laughed and joined in. During the singing of “My Sweet Jesus,” a red cross with a Corpus appeared on Mary’s breast and her smile faded to grief. As the villagers sang “Ave Maris Stella” however, the crucifix disappeared, her smile returned, and a white veil covered her, ending the apparition at 9 o’clock. The apparition had lasted for three hours.

That evening, the Prussian troops in sight of Laval stopped at half-past five o’clock, about the time when the Apparition first appeared above Pont-Main, a few miles away. General Von Schmidt, about to move on the city of Laval towards Pont-Main, had received orders from his Commander not to take the city.

Schmidt is reported to have said on the morning of the 18th: “We cannot go farther. Yonder, in the direction of Brittany, there is an invisible ‘Madonna’ barring the way.”

The little village of Pontmain is proof that the earnest prayers of even the smallest parish can effect a turn in history. A year later, on the Feast of the Purification on February 2nd, Pontmain was approved as authentic and confirmed by Pope Pius XI with a Mass and Office in 1872. In 1932, Pope Pius XII granted that the Mother of Hope, the title given to the apparition, be solemnly honored with a golden crown. Today, pilgrims visit the Basilica of Pontmain as a sign of hope in the midst of war.

Throughout her 20 centuries of Christianity France has honored the Mother of God in glorious cathedrals and sublime chant. It is also true that in the 800 years since the Dominicans first did battle with the Albigensians, France has been a battleground for the Faith.

In appearing to the young, the lowly and the poor in the past eight centuries, Our Lady has graced France in a special way. Her apparitions, admonitions and gifts have given to the world devotions by which ordinary men and women can attain sanctity: to Jesus through Mary.

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Study at the

John Paul II Institute in Australia

The Melbourne session offers the following degrees:

· Graduate Certification, Graduate Diploma and Masters in Theological Studies (Marriage and Family) · Graduate Certification, Graduate Diploma in Theology of Psychology and Counselling · Graduate Certification, Graduate Diploma and Masters in Bioethics · Graduate Certification, Graduate Diploma in Religious Education · Masters in Sacred Theology (the civil equivalent of the Licentiate in Sacred Theology) · The PhD Degree

The Graduate Certificate in Religious Education is available on-line for students anywhere in the world. Included in the curriculum of all the degrees are subjects on: the New Evangelisation and Modern and Post-Modern Culture, Theological Aesthetics, Moral Theology (including Theology of the Body), The Theology and Practice of Natural Family Planning, Sacramental Theology and Theological Anthropology.

For details please consult the website: www.jp2institute.org or the Registrar, Lieutenant--Colonel Toby Hunter at thunter@jp2institute.org

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