|
Life |
|
|
A BAKER’S DOZEN OF CHAMPAGNAT STORIES, PLUS A FEW OTHERS
1 The Marist Dream 2 The Pledge At Fourvičre 3 The Montagne Experience 4 Relations With His Parish Priest 5 Of Books And Dances 6 The Hermitage Years 7 Rain, Hail Or Shine 8 Without Honour In His Own Country 9 A Bathtub of Sweat – Champagnat’s Health 10 Bread and Matresses 11 A few Of His Favourite Shrines 12 Champagnat The Man 13 That Fool Champagnat
The Marist Dream
In October 1812, Champagnat transferred to the Seminary of St Irenaeus in Lyon to continue his studies for the priesthood. It was there that he encountered two young men who were to be influential in the establishment of the Marist society. The sower of the seed was Jean-Claude Courveille. Courveille was an enigmatic man and his story is not a happy one; nonetheless he has to take much of the credit for the Marist dream. At the age of twenty-two he was apparently cured of blindness at the shrine of Our Lady at Le Puy, a major place of Marian pilgrimage south-west of Lyon. In August 1812 he became convinced, during another visit to the shrine, that the Blessed Virgin was calling him to found a society in her name.
There were several like minded young men in the seminary at the time and they were fired with Courveille’s vision: a society dedicated to Mary, consisting of priests and auxiliary Brothers, Sisters and a Third Order of lay people. One of these young men was Jean-Claude Colin, just a year younger than Champagnat. He was often sick and not inclined to put himself forward, but he was inspired by Courveille’s vision and in fact was the driving force behind the eventual Marist foundations. It was Colin who, along with Champagnat, co-founded the Marist Fathers and the Marist Sisters.
Courveille was an inspiring man: “possessed of much zeal, he had a natural eloquence.” And under his leadership, twelve young newly ordained priests made their way from the seminary of St Irenaeus, the day after their ordination, 22 July 1816, to the shrine of Our Lady of Fourvičre on the hill overlooking Lyon, to consecrate themselves to the foundation of her Society.
It was Champagnat who kept insisting that there must be Brothers for the education of the poor children of country areas. His companions did not rush to his assistance, so he chose to go it alone. His dream was put into effect within six months of his ordination. Courveille had assisted him with money for the purchase of the little house at Lavalla, and in fact was closely associated with Champagnat for the next ten years, helping him with the purchase of the Hermitage property as well as in the training of the Brothers. He was, however, a serious thorn in the side of the Marists, priests and Brothers, and eventually left the Society in 1826 to become a Benedictine monk.
The Marist Sisters also got off to an immediate start, being established by the end of 1817. The Society of Marist Fathers was much longer in coming to fruition, but by the end of April 1836 they had Papal approval and were being sent to the missions of Oceania (where their confrčre, Peter Chanel, was martyred in 1841. His companion, Marist Brother, Brother Marie-Nizier, was lucky to escape the same fate.) The priests, including Champagnat, were able to make their vows as Marists in September 1836. It was not until January 1863 that the Marist Brothers were granted Papal approval. Champagnat did not live to see that.
Marist Pledge at Fourvičre
On 23 July 1816, the day after their ordination to the priesthood, twelve young graduates of the Major Seminary of St Irenaeus in Lyon made their way to the shrine of Our Lady of Fourvičre which stands on the hill behind, overlooking and protecting, the city. Mary had, since its Christian beginnings, been venerated here: Polycarp, a disciple of John, the Beloved Disciple to whom Jesus committed the care of his Mother, sent Pothin as the first bishop to Lyon. Pothin was succeeded by Irenaeus, the first theologian of the Western Church to write about Mary.
Shrines of the saints and the Blessed Virgin have played a significant role in the lives of Christian men and women down the years, and they were of great formative and spiritual value to the young Marists. Their original leader, Father Courveille, had conceived the Marist idea at the shrine of Mary at Le Puy. Marcellin Champagnat had prayed at the shrine of St John Francis Regis at La Louvesc to confirm him in his vocation. And Fourvičre, where Pope Pius VII had spent several days in April 1805 visiting and encouraging public worship at the newly restored sanctuary, was the gathering place for those who began the Marist society.
On that day the twelve made their way across the Saône and up the hill, and after the celebration of the Mass they pledged themselves to the foundation of “the pious congregation of Marists”. The details were not spelt out: no hint of a group of teaching Brothers, though that was definitely what Champagnat had in mind, as he kept reminding the group.
Fourvičre had a special place in the spiritual life of Marcellin Champagnat. Every time business took him to Lyon he visited the shrine and renewed his offering and consecration. On one such occasion, after Archbishop de Pins had not only given his authorisation for the Brothers’ habit and the taking of vows but also told Champagnat to build a new and bigger house for the young congregation, Champagnat went straight to the shrine to give thanks and renew his commitment.
But Champagnat was not so blinded by pious devotion that he could lose his sense of purpose and direction. When he was pressed by the Vicar General of Lyon to provide Brothers for the care of the shrine, Champagnat declined. His Brothers were founded for the work of teaching, and even though the Vicar General delivered his worst curse - “if you refuse Brothers, the Blessed Virgin will not bless you” - Champagnat held his ground. After all their pledge did proclaim “We do not take on this commitment irresponsibly or lightly for human motives or swayed by temporal gain. ... We commit ourselves to difficulties, work and suffering.”
Marist values are summed up in the last few lines of the pledge: “We solemnly promise to give ourselves and all that we possess for the salvation of souls in every possible way, working in the name of the Virgin Mary and under her auspices.” And so it is with the Marists of today.
Montagne Experience
In the Major Seminary of St Irenaeus at Lyons, Champagnat and his like-minded companions were determined to begin an Order of priests dedicated to the service of the Blessed Virgin. Champagnat himself urged the establishment of an Order of Teaching Brothers: his companions were happy to let him have his head in this project, but the priests were their first consideration. Champagnat was ordained in July 1816, and within six months, on Thursday, 2 January 1817, he had begun the Marist Brothers in an official way, with the gathering of two young men, Jean-Marie Granjon and Jean-Baptiste Audras, in a little building near the Church at La Valla, where Champagnat had been appointed as curate.
Why this extraordinary haste? The episode that gave him the final push into the decision he had been thinking about for some years was his attendance at the bedside of a boy dying in poverty stricken circumstances in the hamlet of Le Bessat, part of the parish of La Valla. The boy, actually seventeen years of age, was so undernourished and underdeveloped that Champagnat thought he was only eleven or twelve. The newly ordained priest was shocked to the depths of his being that a boy in Catholic France - the “Eldest Daughter of the Catholic Church” - was not only unaware of the basic truths of his Catholic Faith (the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Jesus), but did not even know of the existence of God.
He spent some time instructing the boy and preparing him to meet his God. He had to go away, but he returned later to find that the boy had died. From then on Champagnat did not rest until he had found several young men to help him bring his hopes into reality.
This seminal experience in the life of Marcellin Champagnat is summed up in the words of the plaque which is found at Le Bessat today: “Here at Les Palais near Le Bessat 28 October 1816 Blessed Marcellin Champagnat came to visit a dying boy of 17 years of age. He realised that the young man, John-Baptiste Montagne, was totally ignorant of the God he was about to meet. He prepared him for entry into eternal life; but shocked by the spiritual weakness which he had just encountered, he decided to wait no longer to start to gather a few disciples who would become, under the protection of Mary, the Congregation of the Marist Brothers, today spread throughout 70 countries of the world.”
Relations with His Parish Priest – Not a Preacher, but Definitely a Singer!
On arriving at La Valla, Father Champagnat found himself sharing accommodation with the Parish Priest, Father Rebod. Father Rebod was not a bad man but he was not an easy man to get on with. He had born the burden of the day and the heat thereof, he was tired and worn out and felt himself unequal to the task, content, it seems, ‘To rust unburnished, not to shine in use”.
While the Life is very circumspect about Father Rebod, reading between the lines gives us a clearer picture. Father Champagnat pays due respect to his superior, consults him on many issues, defers to him, offers him compassionate support; but this attractive young country boy become priest, full of common sense, willingness to get it right, full of the convictions of youth come to maturity through reflection and some suffering, this newly ordained enthusiast had more to say to the locals than the weary stammerer who had taken to drink as a means of coping.
A man like Champagnat who set himself a series of achievable goals in his resolutions (to be faithful to daily meditation, to spend time during the day with Jesus and Mary, to discipline himself – physically - when he spoke ill of his neighbour, to cultivate the presence of God, to treat everyone with great kindness), must have worked similarly hard to cope with his Parish Priest. It was this same Parish Priest who one occasion publicly corrected Father Champagnat on a minor technicality of Church practice concerning Confirmation; and who, on another occasion, while Father Champagnat was giving a brief instruction after evening Compline, burst into the church intoning the hymn that normally concluded Compline. By all accounts Champagnat conducted himself with admirable restraint and due humility – a lesson we could learn in our own litigious days when no public slight or crossing of wills goes unchallenged and unaddressed. Humility today is a rare virtue and, like virginity, a bit of a hoot for the trendies!
According to Marist sources the Parish Priest himself speaks very highly of Champagnat. Father Rebod is reported as describing the conduct of Champagnat during the eight years as his curate as “so regular and edifying that I never had occasion to point out anything that might be truly called a fault. … at his own request I watched him very closely, but I frequently had to moderate his ardour for work and his spirit of mortification. … he always received any remonstrances with respect and submission.” While it is not at all clear when Father Rebod made this glowing tribute, apparently he did say something similar when he gave his report to the Inspector of Schools in 1822.
We all know the difficulties of dealing with those who are our superiors in the job but who do things differently or are not always competent. Father Champagnat shows us the possibility of getting the job done the way we believe it should be done while at the same time observing the proprieties. His strong sense of the rightness of his cause was tempered with an admirable humility – we don’t always have to have the last say or always be seen to be right. Something about ways to skin a cat and a spoonful of sugar … probably rural French cuisine!
Of Books and Dances
Father Champagnat must have been in the parish of La Valla only a matter of days before he realised what a mess things were in. Where do you start, when everything seems so hopeless and overwhelming? He started probably where most of us would start – the tangible, the observable, the manageable – he cleaned the church! That would have been something the parishioners noticed when they entered the parish church for the morning Mass for the feast of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, a few days later on 15 August (1816). The next thing they would have noticed was that the new curate actually gave them a sermon, and moreover, it was prepared. This was a good start – there was no knowing what he would do next!
His first priority in this job was to begin some kind of parish renewal, for the parish priest, Father Rebod, had not been equal to the task (and who can blame him, given all that the Revolution had put the clergy through in the previous twenty years – we would do well not to judge the man too harshly!) Champagnat was relatively young, having turned twenty-seven only three months earlier, and he was not only enthusiastic by nature, but he was committed heart and mind to the salvation of souls. A solid country boy, he was well fitted to the long journeys in all sorts of weather that called him to a sick bed or a parishioner in distress or want, of which there were not a few in the rugged hills and valleys of that part of France. One can hardly say he relished these calls, but he did answer then with alacrity.
He also gave instruction to the adults and to the children. We are surprised that some of these lessons went on for two hours: they must have been good, even if we take into consideration that the alternative was not so much Home and Away or JAG or The Footy Show, but weaving or reading or Tante Marie’s stories around the hearth. He endeared himself to the locals not simply with his pastoral care of them but also because he could talk to them in their own language – not their own patois, for he came from a sufficiently different language area, but he was adept enough to pick up their quirky idioms without too much trouble.
He made hard calls on them, too. The new dance, the waltz, had been bought back to these country regions by the soldiers who had fought in the recent wars, and the waltz involved far closer physical contact than the old country dances where little more than the hands made contact. The waltz was banned by the clergy and frowned on even by the secular press. Champagnat, a priest of his time, took what measures were deemed appropriate to halt the offending dances. He took a similarly hard line against the influx of new books regarded as unsuitable for public consumption, either because of their pornographic or their philosophical content.
Champagnat was too canny to take away without replacing something it with something else. One of his ploys – perhaps not so appealing to our way of thinking – was to turn on a catechism lesson during the proposed dance: an effective way of telling who was where! In terms of the books, he actually provided a library of more appropriate reading matter at his own expense, and gave gifts and recommendations to help the parishioners choose more wisely.
The message for us today is not so much to follow his example in any literal way as to have enough insight to fill the gap once we have created one, to provide something more substantial than we have taken away by our advice or our criticism. It is the compassion and understanding of Champagnat that is far more impressive than the stand he took against the waltz.
The Hermitage Years
Champagnat was to live at The Hermitage from 1825 till his death in 1840. During that time he was involved in the training of the Brothers, in establishing new schools, in visiting the Brothers’ houses, in giving retreats, in trying to gain official recognition for his new Institute. As the same time he interested himself in the affairs of the Marist Fathers, of which he was co-founder, and of the Marist Sisters. He did have a number of priests helping him with his work with the Brothers, many of whom were of inestimable service, but some of them proved to be thorns in his side.
Government approval for the Institute was not just important - it was essential; otherwise his young Brothers were subject to compulsory military service. Champagnat got around the problem for the time being by having his men trained with a Father Mazellier whose own Institute had official approval; but this was just another burden for Champagnat. He was disappointed in a number of other issues including the loss of his first recruit, Jean-Marie Granjon; the difficulties which the ecclesiastical authorities put in the way of his struggling Institute; the problems caused by Father Courveille, the original inspiration behind the Marist venture, but now proving unmanageable. He had set himself up as Superior General of the Marist Brothers, much to the dissatisfaction of the Brothers, not only because his demands on them were unreasonable, but because they looked on Champagnat as their father in God.
It is no wonder that Champagnat’s health failed him at this time. But he struggled towards recovery and managed to keep the Institute not only on an even keel but moving rapidly ahead. The Institute expanded rapidly in the years between 1825 and 1840.
There were lighter moments, such as the unexpected visit of the gendarmes in July 1829. France was still in the aftermath of the Revolution and there were still eruptions of anti-clericalism. On this occasion one of the local functionaries led a troop of gendarmes to The Hermitage in search of a supposed marquis in hiding. Champagnat showed the witty side of himself by conducting the embarrassed party through the whole building from cellar to attic, and even broke down the door of a locked room to prove the point. The thoroughly discomforted group were made even more ill at ease because Champagnat treated them to a glass or two of wine before they left. This seems to have been a trick he learned from his father who, as the Revolutionary leader in Marlhes, had the job of overseeing the destruction of the church steeple in the town. Jean-Baptiste broke out the best barrel of wine for the marauding vandals who, quite happily drunk, went away without a second thought for the job they had come about.
There were travels to Paris, too, for government approval. It did not take Champagnat long to realise that he was being given the run around, and he soon hastened back to his beloved Brothers and The Hermitage.
But the years took their cruel toll; his health was broken by 1838. The final side of The Hermitage quadrangle had been completed as the chapel by October 1836, just after Champagnat and his fellow Marist priests had made their vows in September. Soon afterwards the Marist Brothers made their first public vows. Champagnat was in Paris in 1838. Schools were being opened in rapid succession. In October 1839 Champagnat allowed the election of a new Superior General of the Brothers: the young Brother François, who became a Brother at the age of eleven, was elected. It was time for Champagnat to face his personal future.
Rain, Hail or Shine
Whatever the weather, Champagnat was always available to call on those in need. Stories abound concerning his charity and willingness. The stories of his visit to the Montagne boy, the mother of Jean Berne, and to Bourg Argental, a visit which nearly cost him his life, are well ingrained in Marist consciousness by now; but there are some other stories which are worth the telling.
During 1820 he heard of the illness of a woman in the hamlet of Tarentaise, a good 20 k from La Valla, past the little settlement of Le Bessat. The journey took Father Champagnat and his Brother companion up the slopes and down towards St Etienne through the rugged countryside. The wind and the snow made it even more difficult to see the already bad enough roads. None of this mattered to Champagnat so much as having arrived in time to hear the woman’s confession and give her the Food for the Journey just before she died. On another occasion, having been called out in similar bad weather, he roused up the parish assistant, Jean-Marie Badard, to accompany him. The snow covered track refused to yield before them and the unfortunate M. Badard landed in a pond. Champagnat helped him out, got him home and, at Jean-Marie’s insistence, promised to tell no one of the incident. Jean-Marie’s confinement to bed with a fever soon gave the story away, however, and Father Champagnat joked that it was to be his trial by water and later by fire.
After such excursions, bathed in sweat and exhausted as he was, Champagnat nonetheless turned straight to the next job. He was indeed a robust, physically fit man; but if his mother had been around she would have told him to change into something dry and have a warm drink to replace the lost sweat, and perhaps succeeded in keeping his health a little stronger a little longer.
Not all his visits were to the sick; from time to time he made surprise visits to clandestine dances. On one such occasion he took one of the young Brothers with him, and he too managed to fall into a ditch. By the time Champagnat had extricated him to the accompaniment of the local dogs’ barking, the alarm had been raised and the dancers had fled.
He often left the presbytery early in the morning to visit those elderly parishioners who were not so easily able to get to confession, and he would spend the rest of the day in the hamlets talking to the men in the fields. This man among men had a way of convincing the farmers to drop in at the presbytery when it suited them for their annual confession and a bit of a chat. They seem to have been only too happy to do so. And he was not beyond helping to settle long standing disputes between neighbours over land problems or between parishioners and their church.
No wonder the parishioners were disappointed when Champagnat decided to give full time attention to the Brothers. They were to benefit, however, because his influence was spread much further through he work his Brothers were able to do in the local villages and hamlets.
Without Honour In His Own Country
When Father Champagnat was curate at La Valla he went to visit Father Allirot, his old Parish Priest at Marlhes. You can imagine that this would be an occasion for rejoicing, that Champagnat would have been made most welcome and encouraged in his vocation and in his planned venture. Father Allirot was less than encouraging however. All he had to say was: “I believe you want to found a congregation of teaching Brothers. You’d be better off spending your time preparing your sermons.” Now Champagnat may not have been top of his class, but he was no fool, and the good Parish Priest had had nearly thirty years to appreciate Marcellin the boy and the man. The advice was unkind – and, fortunately, unheeded.
Father Jean Antoine Allirot had known the Champagnat family for many years, since 1781, well before Champagnat was born. True, he had found himself in opposition to Jean-Baptiste Champagnat; but by the same token it was Jean-Baptiste who saved the priest from arrest, gaol and possible execution. And he must have thought enough of the family to send the priest recruiters to the Champagnat household in search of vocations for the newly opened seminaries – on which occasion young Marcellin steeped forward. He also must have had plenty of opportunity to observe the young seminarian at his apostolate of catechising the youngsters when he was at home on holidays. Surely he could see beyond the average marks achieved in the seminary examinations: after all he did recommend that the boy be given a second chance after the lad failed so badly the first year in the seminary.
Whatever lay behind this unkind remark, he was one of the first to apply to Champagnat for Brothers to open a school in the town of Marlhes. Marlhes was the third school that the Brothers opened (November 1819). Father Allirot does not seem to have had any confidence in the young Institute: he sent prospective trainees for religious life to the de la Salle Brothers in Lyon, actively steering them away from the Marists; and he was indiscreet enough to tell the Brothers in the school that their Institute was doomed to failure. He was also rash enough to neglect the house the Brothers lived in, to such an extent that Champagnat removed the Brothers from Marlhes in 1820. Allirot was horrified; Champagnat was adamant.
When it came to a matter of principle, Father Champagnat was as solid as the rock on which the Hermitage was built. On one occasion he was asked by Vicar General Father Barou to provide one of the Brothers as sacristan at his beloved shrine at Fourvičre; Champagnat refused on the grounds that the Brothers were founded for teaching not for manual work (a battle he was to fight with Father Colin as well). The Vicar General told him: “If you do not fulfil my wish, the Blessed Virgin will not bless your work and it will die.” A weaker man would have fallen at this low blow – appealing to the very source and fount of Champagnat’s strength – but Champagnat remained firm.
As for Marlhes, the Brothers returned there in 1832 under the aegis of Father Claude Duplay, brother of Father Jean-Louis, great friend and supporter of Champagnat; and wonderful to say, there is still a vital Marist school at Marlhes to this day.
Champagnat’s Health - A Bathtub of Sweat.
We are quite familiar with the ascetic, mortified elements of Father Champagnat’s life and spirituality; they are, of course, part of what made him so holy, such an appropriate candidate for canonisation. Great saints practise great virtue, and deep virtue is not acquired without some serious mortification of the senses.
“He was, by nature”, writes Brother John Baptist (Life p.383), “ascetical and conceded to his body by way of food and rest and any kind of comfort, only what he could not reasonably refuse it.” He took nothing – not even water – between meals even when engaged in hard work or travelling. Today we would understand the dangerous and destructive effects of such a practice on our bodies – nobody goes anywhere today without a bottle of water (fads and fashions can take this trend to another extreme but without the virtue of Champagnat’s practice!)
On one occasion he was stranded by floods in a house for a week and ate only potatoes and white cheese (however attractive this rural French cuisine might appear to us today, the implication is that this was poor food even by the standards of the day). He proclaimed himself delighted and he sounded the praise of the white cheese. On another occasion he arrived unexpectedly and the only food available was some tainted meat. Brother John Baptist is at pains to point out that the Brothers of the house were not hard to please but even they could not eat it. Not only did Champagnat make a meal of it but asked that the rest of it be served to him for supper.
The story of his near-to-death experience at the end of 1825 is well enough known: the extraordinary amount that he packed into that year was enough to destroy even the most robust man – which he was. He was opening new schools and in November he visited all the ten schools – on foot. He had built the Hermitage, taking a huge amount of the work upon himself. He had to contend with the contrary Father Courveille and the creditors who came flocking. This period was a turning point for Champagnat personally and also for the new Institute. No wonder his health let him down. And he was never really the same again.
But it all started much earlier than that. We read in the Life (pp25, 26) that he “had a robust constitution and had never been sick as a child. However, his austere mortified life and his intense application to study took toll of his health and he was forced to interrupt his third year of theology [1815-1816]. In order to recuperate, he went home for a few months and since he was barred from study and hated idleness he worked in the fields. Before long this restored his health and made him fit enough to go and finish his theology course.”
The course of his life was set from here on. His love of hard work was inspirational and it is one of the distinctive charisms of the Marist Brothers’ Institute. There is, however, a sense in which Champagnat never learnt to balance the elements of his life. Had he done so, he would probably have lived longer. On the other hand, Champagnat was the stuff that saints are made of, and saints are moved by powers and urges unknown to the rest of us.
Bread and Mattresses and a Listening Ear
Father Champagnat and the early Brothers provided more than just schooling for the children of the area. At Saint-Sauveur, for instance, they organised various collections during the year, butter, cheese, potatoes, clothing, bed linen. These items were distributed to the poor children of the parish, children who were sometimes given a home by the Brothers until they had made their First Communion.
The Brothers, of course, took their cue from Father Champagnat: it was he who showed the way in the care of those in need. On one occasion he was summoned to a sick man’s bedside only to find him lying on a little straw with no more than a few rags to cover him and his body disfigured with sores and ulcers. He gave the man some comfort, but more to the point he got himself back to The Hermitage as soon as he could and told one of the Brothers to take a mattress to the poor man. He was met with the response that there was not a spare mattress to be had in the house because the last one had been given away. Father Champagnat’s unhesitating response was: “Take the mattress from my bed and give it to him.” Nor was that the end of it. He made sure one of the Brothers was available to spend time with the man, to bring him food, to tend his sores, to wash him and to comb his hair.
There was not always a happy outcome to Father Champagnat’s efforts. At the start of January 1825 a young named Clement Berthier, living in the hamlet of Bachat, above the Hermitage, fell sick. He lay on his bed without a sheet and with barely any covering. His mother was not close to him and he refused to see her, saying that she wished to poison him. Champagnat was away on his travels and when he returned, someone told him of the sick man, whom he had never seen. He went to him and, moved by his destitution, he sent him a pillow, some linen and some blankets. He did not hear his confession; the Parish Priest of Isieux having already done that for him. The young man died, and left something in his will for the Hermitage. His mother falsely accused Father Champagnat of having abused the young man’s confidence in the confessional. Champagnat was forced to defend himself against this charge and the matter stopped there.
On another occasion he found his kindness met with a barrage of blasphemies. The presence of a priest was enough to set the ill man off with a torrent of abuse. Champagnat was wise enough to realise that the spoonful of honey would do much more good, so he advised one of the Brothers to continue to visit the man with all the supports he needed by way of food and coverings and little jobs around the place but never to mention God. This approach paid off in the long run and the sick man eventually admitted that only religion could promote such consistent kindness: “You not only put up with me but even serve me and lavish on me more care than relatives or servants would do.” He then asked for Father Champagnat and made his confession to him, apologising for his former churlishness. He died soon afterwards strengthened by the sacraments and brought to some peace by charity.
This is the legacy which Father Champagnat left to his Brothers and to those who follow the Marist way. It is the way of the Gospels, for how often do we hear the cry of the poor brought to our attention by the Old Testament prophets, by Jesus himself in word and deed, and in Mary’s manifesto in the Magnificat: “He has filled the starving with good things and sent the rich away empty.”
A Few of His Favourite Shrines
Did Marcellin Champagnat ever go to Le Puy? We will never know for sure, but it is possible. In 1796 the Feast of the Annunciation coincided with Good Friday, and for centuries such an occasion at Le Puy was marked with a special jubilee. As President of the Sodality of the White Penitents, Jean-Baptiste Champagnat may well have led his group in pilgrimage to the ancient shrine, and he may even have been accompanied by his wife, his sister and some of his children including the young Marcellin.
Whether this visit ever took place or not, Champagnat certainly was a strong devotee of the several shrines. On so many occasions when the going got tough, this tough, hard-headed son of peasant soil got going to the shrines. We are very familiar with the two visits he made to La Louvesc with his mother during those difficult early days when he was sorting out what he wanted in life – the demanding call to study for the priesthood or the more familiar and financially satisfying life of the sheep farmer. They were not, however, the only visits to La Louvesc. Apparently he and his companions from the seminary made a pilgrimage to the shrine every summer; and in the Life we read that when new troubles struck he prescribed prayers and a nine day fast on bread and water in the community and he himself made a pilgrimage to La Louvesc. The particular occasion referred to in the Life was another of those regular confrontations with Father Bochard, the demanding Vicar General who wanted to set up his own congregation and would brook opposition from no one, least of all a foolish upstart like Marcellin Champagnat; but we know from the Witness’s Depositions that he went “rather often” to this shrine, “on foot, through the mountains”, and when he returned he would kneel at the la Valla church door praying until it was time to say Mass. Saints are a tough breed – heroic in prayer as well as in action. How it grieved him not to be able to accede to the 1837 request of the Jesuits to have a Marist school established at La Louvesc.
Another of his favourite places of pilgrimage was much closer to home (at least while he still called La Valla home). It was the shrine of Our Lady of Leytra, or Our Lady of Pity, which was a fifteen minute walk from the church to the edge of the hill overlooking the valley of the Gier. Today it is a plain square unadorned and empty building, with very little to interest the visitor – a single whitewashed Station of the Cross, little else. It once contained a rather plain, not to say ugly, pieta painted a garish red and blue. Having been stolen from the chapel in recent years it was recovered in an antique shop in a nearby city and resituated at the foot of the altar in the parish church. It was to this shrine that Champagnat would take himself in time of special need, or simply for a bit of peace and quiet. On his return from such a visit in February in 1823 that he was to encounter Claude Fayol, the redoubtable Brother Stanislaus. (It is touching to realise that of all the early Brothers only Brother Stanislaus and the two Audras brothers – Brothers Louis and Laurent – are accorded the distinction of plaques in the Brothers’ cemetery at The Hermitage.)
Champagnat probably discovered Fourvičre while he was studying at the Major Seminary of St Irenaeus in Lyons; after all it was just up the hill behind the cathedral. It was to Fourvičre that their seminary professor Father Cholleton led a group of them to entrust the budding Marist plans to Mary. It was to this familiar place that the first Marists walked the morning after their ordination, 22 July 1816, to dedicate themselves to Mary and mark the beginnings of the Society of Marists. It was to this shrine that Champagnat hurried to give thanks for Archbishop de Pins’ approval and encouragement of the Marist Brothers in March 1824. Every time his business took him to Lyon he climbed the hill to Fourvičre to give thanks and ask strength and renew the consecration he made on 23July 1816 with his fellow Marists. We know that he refused to allow his Brothers to become sacristans at Fourvičre. However devoted he was to the fabric of the shrine, he was even more devoted to what was being asked of him by the true spirit of the shrine, Mary, the Good Mother. While he would have said Yes to his Brothers teaching at La Louvesc if he could have, he would not say Yes to their being sacristans at Fourvičre. Simple he may have been, but not stupid – his piety was born not out of weakness but out of strength.
Champagnat the Man
Champagnat’s handwriting was submitted to an expert graphologist for an assessment of the personality of the writer. Her conclusion was that the author had a practical mind, was pragmatic, a man of action, determined and persevering, a leader with a strong will.
I’m sure that more than a few people would have found Champagnat too strong a meat for their liking. In fact, it was said of him that he did not succeed in Paris in gaining government authorisation for the Order because of his “plainness” - his bluntness, his straightforwardness. “He is indeed a courageous man, but everything about him says ‘country bumpkin’ and he lacks the elegant formalities that are customary in Paris”, said one priest who knew him.
The affection in which his Brothers held him is all the more tribute to his deep compassion and love for them. He was indeed blunt and acted firmly when the occasion warranted it. There is a story told that when some of the Brothers arrived at the Hermitage (the Mother House) one rainy day during the holidays, the Brother in charge of the stores was away so that the visitors could not change out of their wet clothes. Champagnat apparently seized a handy tool and broke open the wardrobe to supply his Brothers with something dry.
During the revolutionary days of the latter half of 1830, the Hermitage was under threat from marauding mobs. Champagnat’s response was to instruct the Brothers to sing the Salve Regina (the Hail Holy Queen) every day - a prayer which the Brothers still pray daily. And one Sunday afternoon when the threat was even closer, he simply led the Brothers to the chapel where they sang Vespers, the evening prayer of the Church.
A few days later the local Crown Prosecutor arrived with a company of troops at the Hermitage to search the establishment - there had been rumours that the Brothers were holding counter-revolutionary drill sessions each evening and, what was worse, that they were hiding a ‘marquis’. Champagnat had great delight in showing them right through the building, and though it was quite apparent that the rumours were false, he insisted on breaking down a locked door - much to the embarrassment of the not very welcome visitors.
We must remember that the Brothers were, for the most part, teenagers and not well educated, or even very responsible. Hence his concern for the young Brother who was leaving the Hermitage for his first school: “Do you have everything you need?” said Champagnat, having guessed that the young man had only one pair of socks - the ones he was wearing. Or the time that one of the young Brothers jumped on Champagnat’s back for a piggy-back, mistaking the Founder for a confrčre: Champagnat gave him a holy picture instead of a lecture. And the time he sent a cushion from the house for one of the youngsters who, being tired at his work, sat down to watch his confrčres still hard at it.
This was the man who still inspires us today with his mixture of love and compassion, of toughness and gentleness - and a sense of humour.
That Fool Champagnat -complaints against him
Fellow Priest: “I was passing through La Valla once and there he was, up on the scaffolding, his soutane white with dust and up to his elbows in mortar. I said to him: ‘That is hardly an occupation suited to a priest. What will the neighbours say!’ He was so rude to me. He said ‘Many priests spend more time in less useful occupations.’ I turned my back on this ignorant fool.”
Another Priest: “Silly fellow, that Champagnat. Can barely speak the language himself, with his och, och, och, and his oi, oi, oi. He takes these simpletons from the fields and hopes to turn them into students and teachers. They grow pale over their books and will return to their pigsties worse than they left them.”
Another Priest: “So vain.. He hopes to start an Order of teachers. No brains; no money. Here he is building that huge building in that cold, wet valley. They’ll be dead before the first winter is over and the building will return to the rubble from which it is made.”
Father Courveille: “This house is a mess, Champagnat. You do not direct the Brothers with sufficient discipline. You let the novices get away with anything. The Brothers do not respect you - why, one of them even made you give him a piggy-back up the stairs. You allow stupid little men like Brother Sylvester to wheel barrows through a religious house. You do not pay your bills. You waste money on fine vestments and brass candlesticks and you can’t afford a decent wine. And the creditors are bashing down the doors. I’ve a good mind to leave you to it.”
Father Cattet: “I have just inspected this place you call a Hermitage. Your men do not know how to read or write. For all the time you spend on building and repairs, the place is like a stable for goats. You put these ignorant young men to work when they should be learning their catechism. And the food you serve isn’t fit for pigs. I will be recommending to the Archbishop that this place be closed immediately.”
One Brother: “Cloth stockings. Have you ever worn cloth stockings! They’re so uncomfortable; they’re hot in summer and cold in winter. You can never get them to dry. They make your feet sweat and, besides, we’re the laughing stock of the town because they’re not exactly top of the range fashion. It’s either decent stockings or I’m out of here.”
Another Brother: “Have you heard the latest. Another reading method. What’s wrong with the old one. We’ve had this pronunciation for years and now he wants to go along with the latest flash in the pan which is lighting up the country: new spelling, new pronunciation, new method of reading. The expense, the waste of time. Don’t get me wrong. I think he’s a great man. But this is ridiculous.”
Another Brother: “Oh, not salt pork again. Cheese, potatoes, and more black bread. Our pigs ate better at home. You know what he did. Madame Perichon brought us sugar loaf and he told her to swap it for a sack of potatoes. I nearly ran after her to tell her to slip it in the back door. I’d die for a bit of sugar.”
Another Brother: “Did you hear about the new mattresses. No? I’m not surprised. He stored them in the attic and kept the straw ones. Madame de Pleyne was not happy, I assure you. But he wouldn’t be moved. Straw it was; straw it is; and straw it ever will be.”
Another Brother: “Poor Brother Aristide lost his silk breeches. He was so proud of them. He couldn’t help boasting, so it was only a matter of time before our good Father found out about them. He was over at Tarentaise in a flash. And Brother Aristide had the pleasure of watching his precious silk breeches consigned to the kitchen stove.”
Another Brother: “He eats worse than we do, and that’s bad enough. Over at Bourg Argental he ate up the tainted meat for lunch and lined up for more at dinner time. And those Brothers aren’t fussy, but they wouldn’t eat it.”
Another Brother: “You know, he arrived here at five o’clock last Tuesday morning and we weren’t up. Most of us had come down with the flu, but that didn’t make any difference. He did not mince words with our Director. We might have got away with that one, if it weren’t for the white bread. ‘The Little Brothers don’t eat white bread’, he exclaimed. ‘But Father,’ the Director started to explain. ‘No buts, Brother Director. Out it goes, and stick with the black bread the rest of the Brothers eat.’ ”
Br Tony Butler 1998
LOST IN THE SNOW
Champagnat, from early 1817 when he invited two young men to live in a small house at La Valla, worked hard to establish an Order of teaching Brothers who would dedicate their energies to bringing the Gospel message to the poor youth in the villages and hamlets and small towns around this area of Southern France. These men were to live in community, make the traditional religious vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, and - under the banner of the Blessed Virgin Mary - live a life of service in the centuries old way of the Church.
The person of Mary is the key to understanding what makes the Marist Brothers different to other orders of male religious. The Brother sets himself to follow Christ as Mary did, to regard her as his Good Mother and his Ordinary Resource (that is, the one he automatically turns to in difficulties), and to live in a community which has the Holy Family of Nazareth as its model. There is, in all of this, a strong feminine way of looking at things, which presents a balance to the strong male elements at work in the world; and those elements have to do with care, sensitivity and listening. They are the qualities that Marist Brothers hope to bring to their personal lives and the way they run their schools.
Nowhere is the concept of Mary as Ordinary Resource more dramatically illustrated than in what the Brothers refer to as the Memorare in the Snow. In February 1823, Champagnat heard of the illness of a sixteen year old Brother in a town twenty kilometres away from the Hermitage, where the new Order had settled after a few years struggling at La Valla. The terrain is rugged and treacherous even today, but Champagnat made the journey, then, on foot, with Brother Stanislaus.
On the way back they ran into a snow storm and lost their way in the heavily timbered country. Young and strong as they were - Champagnat was 34 and Brother Stanislaus 22 - they quickly found themselves in danger of death. Champagnat said simply: “If Our Good Mother does not come to our assistance, we will die.” So they immediately prayed the Memorare, a very old prayer to Mary which begins “Remember, O most loving Virgin Mary, that anyone who calls on your assistance will not be rejected.”
Soon after they had finished their prayer, they saw lamplight in the distance. A farmer had come out of his house to check the animals in his barn. The two made for the light and were given assistance by M. Donnet and his family. M. Donnet maintained, some years later, that he almost never went outside to check the animals in winter because there was a connecting door from the house to the barn. And besides, the stormy nature of the night was reason enough for not venturing out.
For the Marist Brothers, this story is part of the Marist legend: the protection of Mary, very real for us in many and generally far less dramatic ways, is ever present and always readily available
BUILDING THE HERMITAGE
The Brothers regard the little stone building next to the present school at Lavalla as the “cradle of the Institute”. It was there that Champagnat installed Jean-Marie Granjon and Jean-Baptiste Audras as the first Brothers, 2 January 1817; it was there that they learnt to read and write and how to teach and how to pray, how to make nails to help support the house, how to live as a family.
But by 1824 the house was far too small, so Champagnat decided to buy and build. He purchased a property several kilometres below Lavalla, 206 acres of woods, scrub, rocks and field, next to the little River Gier. This was to become the site of the Mother House of the Marist Brothers Institute, the aptly and beautifully named “Hermitage”, the spiritual home of thousands of Marist Brothers, our own place of pilgrimage.
The Brothers, under the guidance of their father and founder, Marcellin Champagnat, built this five storey edifice. (It stand today, completed on its fourth side, as sound as it ever was, a house of welcome and pilgrimage for Brothers and all who love things Marist.) Professional builders were employed for the basic essentials of the construction, but the Brothers, called in during their summer holidays and at other times, quarried and carried the stone - they literally quarried the stone out of the rock of the area - they dug sand, made mortar, carried materials and assisted wherever possible. And Champagnat oversaw the lot. The Brothers had moved down from Lavalla into makeshift quarters beside the Gier - primitive, we would say, especially in the harsh winters of the region - and they rose at four each morning, washed in the river, dressed, and attended Mass under the trees. Then they got to work.
It sounds unbelievable to us, but these were tough young men, adolescents really, used to the hard work of the farm; and with a common purpose and under the charismatic leadership of Champagnat, these men would have gone to Hell and back for him. These are the young men and women who today enthuse over education, over their football and soccer and netball, their drama and their debating, who love their kids and would do anything for them. These are the heirs to the young men who joined Champagnat in the exciting venture of becoming Brothers in the Marist Family, of bringing the Gospel to the children of the land, of making a better life for those whose lives had been blighted by the worst excesses of the Revolution. The foundation stone of The Hermitage was laid and blessed 13 May 1824 and during May 1825 the Lavalla community took up residence. The building was intended not just for the Brothers: it contained the noviciate, of course, where the Brothers were trained, but it also held a school for the poor and a place of temporary refuge for orphans.
At the same time as the building of The Hermitage, Champagnat continued the work of founding new schools and the demanding task of gaining official government approval for the new Institute. All of this work was to cost Champagnat dearly in health and in hopes. He was not to see government approval for his Brothers - that did not come till June 1851, long after his death; and his health was so badly affected that he was next to death’s door for some time, having collapsed from overwork, 26 December, 1825. This was a bad period for the infant Institute.
THE DEATH OF CHAMPAGNAT
Champagnat did not look after himself: for him, the work of God and “our Good Mother” took precedence over mere bodily concerns. So, by the end of 1839, when he was fifty years of age, it was apparent that he was an ill man, worn out by the struggles to establish the congregation of the Marist Brothers. Father Colin, as Superior General of the Marist Fathers and Champagnat’s immediate superior, recognised the signs and arranged for the election of a Director General to succeed Father Champagnat. Brother François, an early disciple of Champagnat, was elected.
By March 1840, Champagnat was dying: the violent pain in his side, his back and his legs scarcely ever left him, he was subject to vomiting attacks, the body could take no more. It is not necessary to say that he never complained: he acknowledged his condition and allowed his Brothers to look after him and his priest friends paid him affectionate visits, but he bore his sufferings with bravery and good humour. He said his last Mass on 3 May, received the Last Anointing on 11 May and his final Communion on 4 June.
He was aware and astute enough to set his affairs in order, but it was his Spiritual Testament which was his lasting legacy to his Brothers. It is a powerful and very moving document which goes to the heart of Champagnat’s values, and at the heart of that is Christ’s commandment for us to love one another. “Let it be said of the Little Brothers of Mary as it was of the first Christians ‘See how they love one another.’ That is the desire of my heart and my burning wish at this last moment of my life. My dearest Brothers hear these last words of your Father, which are those of our Blessed Saviour: ‘Love one another’.”
At five o’clock on 18 May all the Brothers in The Hermitage community, some eighteen of them, gathered in his bedroom and the corridor outside. Father Champagnat supported by Brother François sat quietly while Brother Louis-Marie read the document. The Founder spoke a few words to the Brothers, but his voice failed. He concluded by saying: “I ask your pardon for all the bad example I have given you.” Needless to say there were few dry eyes in the room. The love these men must have had for Champagnat was exceeded only by the love he had for them.
He encouraged them to be obedient to their superiors, to be faithful to the practice of the presence of God, to remember the little virtues of humility and simplicity, and commended them at the last to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
He lingered for a few weeks, and we have no trouble imagining the care and attention the Brothers would have lavished on him and how he would vie with them in their concern for him. The end came at 4am on 6 June, a Saturday. The Brothers gathered in the Chapel and sang their traditional prayer to the Blessed Virgin, the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen). The funeral took place in the Hermitage community cemetery a few days later. “How consoling it is,” Champagnat said, “to die in the Society of Mary” and he might have added “surrounded by the Brothers you love.”
|