Pellevoisin, France:
We are making our way to Pellevoisin, where Our Lady appeared 15
times to a woman called Estelle Faguette in 1876 .
Estelle got a deadly illness. It was not that she was going to die that
bothered her, it was the fact that her parents depended on her for their
survival as they were unable to work, and Estelle was the one that
provided for them by working.
She wrote a letter to Our Lady and put it in the little grotto to Our Lady
which was a good bit away from where she lived.
During the 15 apparitions by Our Lady that followed, Estelle was
completely healed.
The Mass in Pellevoisin this day was extremely nourishing for the soul
and the spirit, and throughout it there was a cohesion and perfection that
was tangible. The homily was strong.
After Mass we spoke with some of the Sisters of the religious community
who lives there; the contemplative sisters of Saint Jean, then we went to
visit the sanctuary and afterwards the grotto.
What a rich and beautiful day!
«Conversion»
Change is about practical and everyday choices and situations. It is not
complicated, but it is demanding, as it is necessary to go beyond the
conditioning and feelings, our comfort zone,
and our prejudices. To believe in Jesus, and not in people!
«For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those
who find it are few.»
(Matthew 7:14)
«Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: Return to me,’
declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty.»
(Zechariah 1:3)
It can sometimes even seem like we are going against
ourselves, even against what we think is «common sense».
«Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming,
and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be
observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the
kingdom of God is among you.”
Then he said to the disciples:
“The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man,
and you will not see it. They will say to you, ‘Look there!’ or ‘Look here!’ Do not
go, do not set off in pursuit. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from
one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must endure
much suffering and be rejected by this generation.»
(Luke 17:20-25)
Human beings
One day walking home from Mass I start chatting to one of the oldest member of
the congregation, an old lady. She was in her professional life a teacher in the
private local catholic school, she is someone who adores children.
She tells me stories that tells me how close she was to her pupils, they were
«her children», herself she never married and had children. Then she tells me
stories from her childhood, where she grew up in another village. She talks
about the War and the Occupation by the Germans.
She talks about being hungry, and the pain of her father who was crying with
desperation because he returned to the house at night empty handed, without
food to feed his children, who were hungry. Then she tells me about her
school friends; one day the girl sitting next to her in class did not come to
school. During the night german soldiers had forced their way into the house
of the little girl's family, had raped her and her sister and then taken their little
baby sister and cut her up with a knife, like one would carve a cooked chicken,
in front of them all.
I look at the old lady, this happened over 70 years ago, but she is crying as she
is talking.
It is true that in every single village in France, you find a monument of a
young french soldier as memorial to all the young men who were killed in
battle and all the civilians who were brutally murdered in the first world war.
It wiped out villages, there was hardly anybody left.
It destroyed not just industry and commerce, it broke the spirit of the people.
Unimagenary cruelty and evil took place.
Another day I visit the village of Oradour- Sur- Glane were the remnants of
the buildings are there as a reminder of what happened.
On the 10 June 1944, German soldiers came and forced everybody; adults
working, old people, parents and little children, into the village church,
barricaded the door and set the church alight. With the only exception of the
school teacher, who, by climbing up to a high window, managed to escape
through it, they were all burned alive.
A little boy, who they had overlooked, was seen in the village afterwards,
they took him and threw him into the well, where he drowned.
It is human beings that do these things.
It is hard to imagine, but the people that carried out theses acts were fathers,
brothers, friends, neighbours, husbands.
The second world war broke out only 20 years after the first one had ended,
which was not enough time for any real recovery of the country to take place.
It might explain the hardness of heart of many people.
They are polite and cultivated, but often appear cold and distant.
Narrowmindedness
There is a certain attitude that prevails amongst artistic people in the village:
painters, sculpors, etc, it is in fact a contempt for God. They feel superiour to
«all that».
They think if you believe in the Gospels and go to church, that you are a bit
simple, or maybe you have been brainwashed by somebody, and you are
walking around with funny and old fashioned ideas.
That is strange, because I have never found anything more intelligent or
relevant than the teachings of the Catholic Church.
«For wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me. There is in her a spirit
that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted,
distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane,
steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating
through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle.
For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she
pervades and penetrates all things.
For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of
the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a
reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image
of his goodness.
Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself,
she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes
them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the person
who lives with wisdom.
She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be superior,
for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail.»
(Wisdom 7: 22-30)
However, I think it is the people that stick to the formatting of their upbringing
in the Western World, where God has not had a major role to play for a long time,
who are a «bit simple» when they reject something on the basis of what they hear
in the media.
Now, in the media, there you find brainwashing, and on a massive scale.
Our education system is also a collaborateur in the de-christianization of our
societies. Especially the universities.
And how many schools really teaches the value of the Gospels?
On the one hand the education system is fantastic.
All that knowledge,scientific facts, methods to apply in all areas, expertise
in all fields.
It is a lot to be grateful for. But the problem is that there is a large proportion of
people who believe, because of all the knowledge they have, that God has died,
that He was only for those people of previous generations, like maybe their
grandparents, who did not have the education that they have.
That «those people» needed God, because they «did not know any better».
While in reality, it is rather a case of «not being able to see the wood for all
the trees».
«'A Day Without Yesterday': Georges Lemaitre & the Big Bang
In January 1933, the Belgian mathematician and Catholic priest Georges
Lemaitre traveled with Albert Einstein to California for a series of seminars.
After the Belgian detailed his Big Bang theory, Einstein stood up applauded,
and said, "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation
to which I have ever listened."
In the winter of 1998, two separate teams of astronomers in Berkeley,
California, made a similar, startling discovery. They were both observing
supernovae — exploding stars visible over great distances — to see how
fast the universe is expanding. In accordance with prevailing scientific wisdom,
the astronomers expected to find the rate of expansion to be decreasing, Instead
they found it to be increasing — a discovery which has since "shaken astronomy
to its core" (Astronomy, October 1999).
This discovery would have come as no surprise to Georges Lemaïtre (1894-1966),
a Belgian mathematician and Catholic priest who developed the theory of the
Big Bang. Lemaitre described the beginning of the universe as a burst of fireworks,
comparing galaxies to the burning embers spreading out in a growing sphere from
the center of the burst. He believed this burst of fireworks was the beginning of
time, taking place on "a day without yesterday."
But the phrase "theoretical prejudices" makes one think of the attitudes that
hampered scientists seventy years ago. It took a mathematician who also
happened to be a Catholic priest to look at the evidence with an open mind and
create a model that worked. Is there a paradox in this situation? Lemaitre did
not think so. Duncan Aikman of the New York Times spotlighted Lemaitre's view
in 1933: "'There is no conflict between religion and science,' Lemaïtre has been
telling audiences over and over again in this country .... His view is interesting
and important not because he is a Catholic priest, not because he is one of the
leading mathematical physicists of our time, but because he is both."»
(Mark Midbon Midbon, Mark. "'A Day Without Yesterday': Georges Lemaitre &
the Big Bang." Commonweal Magazine Vol. 127 No. 6 (March 24, 2000) 18-19.
Catholique Education Resource Centre
Mark Midbon is a senior programmer/analyst at the University of Wisconsin.
Taken from article on 08/12/2017
By the way, the village's Catholic school, where the old lady that I spoke to had
worked as a teacher, was closed down and immediately knocked to the ground
by the council. I never saw it, but they all told me it was a beautiful building.
There seemed to have been a real urgency to get rid of it, but nothing else has
been constructed on the site it was on.
Mass
The reading for today:
«Yes, naturally stupid are all who are unaware of God, and who, from good
things seen, have not been able to discover Him-who-is, or, by studying the
works, have not recognised the Artificer.
Fire, however, or wind, or the swift air, the sphere of the stars, impetuous
water, heaven's lamps, are what they have held to be the gods who govern
the world. If, charmed by their beauty, they have taken these for gods, let
them know how much the Master of these excels them, since he was the
very source of beauty that created them.
And if they have been impressed by their power and energy, let them deduce
from these how much mightier is he that has formed them,
since through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy,
contemplate their Author.
Small blame, however, attaches to them, for perhaps they go astray only in
their search for God and their eagerness to find him;
familiar with his works, they investigate them and fall victim to appearances,
seeing so much beauty.
But even so, they have no excuse:
if they are capable of acquiring enough knowledge to be able to investigate
the world, how have they been so slow to find its Master?»
(Wisdom 13:1-9)
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