 |
| Photo created by Google AI Image creator. |
"Behold, I make all things new." - Revelation 21:5
Despite
Everything, We Are Still Yours
France
has been called the Elder Daughter of the Church. The nation that built
Chartres and Reims, that produced Saint Bernard and Saint Louis, that gave the
world the Miraculous Medal and Lourdes, France has had a relationship with Our
Lady that runs deep and long and complicated.
Because France has also had its revolutions. Its anti-clericalism. Its
passionate attempts to dismantle the Church from within its own borders. The
nineteenth century saw all of it: the Revolution's aftermath, Napoleonic
upheaval, powerful movements that wanted religion stripped from public life.
And yet in that same turbulent century, France received some of the most
remarkable Marian gifts in history. Our Lady appeared to Catherine Labouré in
1830, giving the world the Miraculous Medal. She appeared at La Salette in 1846,
and she also appeared at Lourdes in 1858. Against the backdrop of every attempt
to push her out, she kept showing up.
The 1860 celebration of Our Lady of France was a nation responding to all of
this, saying, despite everything, we are still yours. The Church in France had
been attacked, diminished, and mocked. And it looked to its Mother and said: we
have not forgotten. We are here.
She received that declaration with a mother's gratitude.
Today's
Gospel - John 16:20-23
Jesus
told His disciples: "Your grief will become joy." He was speaking
about His death and Resurrection, but the pattern holds across every darkness.
What looks like the end becomes the beginning. What looks like abandonment
becomes return.
France, attacked on every side in the nineteenth century, received apparition
after apparition. Our Lady did not wait for France to get itself together
before she showed up. She came into the grief and offered the joy.
"Your grief will become joy." That is the promise Our Lady of France
has carried over her nation across every painful century. And it is the promise
she carries over every soul willing to receive it.
A Prayer
Our
Lady of France, you who have loved that ancient nation through its glories and
its betrayals, through its faith and its forgetfulness, love us with the same
persistence.
We too have been faithless at times. We too have pushed you to the margins, let
the noise of the world drown out your voice, gone long stretches without
turning to you. And still you came back. Still, you kept appearing.
Come back to us. Appear to us in the ordinary moments of this ordinary day.
Receive our returning hearts with the welcome you gave France, not with
judgment, but with open arms.
Our Lady of France, pray for us. Amen.
Reflection
France
strayed far, and Our Lady appeared there more frequently in the nineteenth
century than perhaps anywhere else in history.
Is there a period in your own life when you walked away from your faith, and
looking back, you can see where she was still showing up? What does that tell
you about where she is right now, even in the hard seasons?
Rosary Man Jim 🌹
Freely given. Freely shared.
