Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 3 November 2024

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

Seems like a couple of weeks since I wrote to all of you in the bulletin. We have traveled from one city to another, each time getting acquainted with the saints who lived there, who are recognized by the Church for their heroic virtue, completing the mission and outcome God had planned for them. In most cases they were not strong people, but rather limited, uneducated, unwise of the ways of the world and, actually, often uneducated in their faith.

It gives all of us hope that God chooses us, the weak, and accomplishes so much of his plan visibly through us. We don’t have to rely on ourselves; we just have keep showing up!

There was an unusually intense period in history in the late 1700s and the first half of the 1800s when Jesus or the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to people here in France to give hope, especially in times of great persecution following the French Revolution. The Church was nearly destroyed. It is in this context that God chose the most unlikely people to speak.

He established some of the most active religious orders we know today to meet the needs of the poor and people at risk. He was able to proclaim the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception Church through St. Bernadette, provide a simple spirituality that sustained common people through St. Therese, establish devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through Saint Margaret Mary, and the beautiful spirituality which began the modern tradition of personal devotion and faith in the teachings of St. Francis de Sales in response to the Reformation.

It has been a remarkable opportunity to consider the lives, the places and the spirituality of all of them on this pilgrimage. And every day we bring you and your intentions with us to these places.

This evening I am writing to you on the bus as we make our way to the hotel after a bonus pilgrimage site; the Cathedral in Vezelay on the way to Ars, and the shrine of St. John Vianney. Tradition says that after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, Lazarus and his daughters Martha and Mary, Mary Magdalene and the two other Marys, and little Zacchaeus’ lives were in danger — Lazarus was living proof of Jesus’ miracles, after all — and they fled to France. Mary Magdalene’s, it is said, are the relics we visited in the crypt church, verified by Pope Philip IX in the early 1100s. The cathedral had already become one of the first great pilgrimage sites in France in the 300s.

These cathedrals in the Middle Ages were the homes of relics of saints which would attract people on pilgrimage to come and pray for the saints’ intercession, and would be the economic security for towns, relying on the markets for the tourist trade. On this trip so far we have also visited the incorrupt bodies of saints Therese of Lisieux, Catherine Laboure, Vincent de Paul, John Vianney, and the veil worn by Mary at Jesus’ birth which is the principal relic of Chartres cathedral.

Of course, we will be back already as you read this, but it is good to give a report from the pilgrimage bus on the highway. We continue to pray for you and our parish family as we continue on our way.

The Lord be with you.