As in previous years, we travelled to Paris to take part in the pilgrimage of Notre-Dame de Chretienté in which more than 6,000 young and not so young people walk the 100km to the cathedral at Chartres! We are with them to hear confessions, pray, sing, do penance and to taste the joys of a purified soul. The beginning was marked by a moment of great emotion: for the first time since the pilgrimage was founded 30 years ago, Holy Mass was celebrated with great ceremony in the cathedral in Paris, before a crowd whose one voice voice resonated in the arches as it sang a fully Catholic liturgy.
We took the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the scared places of our monastic family: the abbey of Pierre-qui-Vire, where Father Muard, its founder, lived and died in the odour of sanctity; the abbey of Saint Benoit sur Loire, where we were able to say Mass on the altar of the relics of our holy Father, and finally the abbey of En Calcat, founded by Dom Romain Banquet.
The altar of the the relics of St Benedict at Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire
La-Pierre-qui-Vire : the community in front of the Virgin and Child carved by the great sculptor Henri Charlier
The abbey church of En Calcat
We visited Lourdes as part of our itinerary: what a feeling it was for our 3 postulants to discover for the first time the sacred grotto where the Immaculate Conception appeared to St Bernadette and to which pilgrims come from all over the world to find the salvation for the sould and sometimes even also health in body. Since we have the honour of being called the Benedictines of the Immaculate, we came alsoe to kneel at length in prayer at the feet of Mary and to renew our total consecration to her. Having purified our souls by immersing them in the prayers of the holy Rosary, we also purified our bodies by plunging them in the pools filled with the miraculous water. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
In front of the Grotto of Massabielle
