By 1803 the French priesthood in France was in complete disarray. The total number of priests ordained for the country between 1790 and 1815 was equal to that for one year before the Revolution. By 1803 it was apparent that something had to be done and in August 1803 two priests arrived in Marlhes on a recruiting campaign. "Go to the Champagnat farm," they were told, "there are plenty of sons there." And so they went. Marcellin was fourteen years of age and virtually illiterate, but to everyone’s surprise he declared himself interested in the priesthood. [It is very likely that his Aunt Louise, J.B. Champagnat’s sister, a Sister of St Joseph, Sister Therese, had a strong influence in the encouragement and the development of his vocation. She died at Marlhes in 1824.] He first had to learn to read and write formal French before he could begin the studies required for Latin, and during the next year he set himself to the task. He went to the neighbouring town of St. Sauveur to work at his studies with his brother-in-law, Benoit Arnaud, from whom he learnt very little. Arnaud in fact advised him to go back to sheep farming because he was wasting his time and money and endangering his health.

But while he was at St. Sauveur, Champagnat found an excellent role model in the local curate, Father Soutrenon. Soutrenon had been ordained in 1790 in the midst of the Revolution; he was quickly captured and imprisoned in the hulks. By 1804, back in active ministry in St. Sauveur, he endeared himself to the locals by speaking their dialect, working in the fields with them, being good with the children, enjoying a laugh and playing the flute. His charity was proverbial.

His seminary years at Verrières were difficult and frustrating for him. He was not an academic and he was far more used to the outdoor life. In terms of academic results, his first year was a complete failure and he was told not to return. Another pilgrimage to La Louvesc and the support and encouragement of his mother plus a recommendation from his Parish Priest Father Allirot saw him begin his second year of studies which were somewhat more happily completed. [His father had died in June 1804, and his mother January 1810.] He remained at Verrières till September 1813, having achieved little more than a mediocre result for most of his studies; and in October 1813 he entered the Major Seminary of St Irenaeus in the city of Lyons. He is 24 yrs old when he enters the Major Seminary 1 November 1813 along with 84 others, including Colin, Déclas, Terraillon, Sèyve, Janvier and Vianney.

It is here that we take up the story of the influences at work on the student priest Champagnat.

First of all there was a close family life and a simple deep piety to be found not only in Champagnat but also in a number of his fellow seminarians, the ones to whom he seems most attracted, men like Jean-Louis Duplay, Jean-Claude Colin and Jean-Marie Vianney, with whom he developed deep friendships. They reinforced in each other their shared ideals of service to God as priests in difficult times. Common sense, sound discernment, practical down-to-earthness: these values cut to the heart of matters. A tradition of hard work, steadfast application to the task in hand, peasant obstinacy in the face of difficulty and hardship; patient courage and tenacity, calm endurance in the face of illness and setback, sustained by confidence in God and seeking to do his will whatever the cost.

Devotion to Mary pervaded the area and the peasantry. Her virtues, her authenticity, her humility, her role as the mother who would lead them to God; love for her was the sure way of coming to love and service to God. Faithful to Sulpician insights, these men responded to the intensity of the love of their Saviour shown in the incarnation and in the eucharistic sacrifice. A devotion to pilgrimage to the local shrines of La Louvesc, Le Puy and Fourvière was part and parcel of the way these men, particularly Champagnat, expressed their devotion to Mary.

There was a marked devotion to the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament - the Sulpician emphasis on obedience was readily understood and embraced by Champagnat.

The two seminaries attended by Champagnat were essentially Sulpician and the basic Sulpician values inculcated at Verrières were strengthened at St Irenaeus. The Sulpicians had been expelled by Napoleon because of their devotion to the Holy See: they were driven out in 1811 and not allowed to return till 1816. But at Lyons, under the protection of Cardinal Fesch – an uncle of Napoleon’s – the spirit of St Sulpice was kept alive by Frs Gardette, Cholleton, Cattet and Mioland.

We turn now to the story of Sulpician Spirituality which has had a profound impact on the Church right down to our own time

Our story starts in the France of the early 17^th c. with the extraordinary revival which took place in the Catholic Church, "the most brilliant passage of the whole Counter-Reformation epic" (Philip Hughes). The French Church, ravaged by Calvinism in particular, was still subject of much of the corruption which had occasioned the Protestant Reformation in the first place – a loss of fervour, the poverty of clerical life, a failure of religious spirit which characterises almost every century, including our own.

Amongst the brightest stars of this period was St Francis de Sales (1567-1622), a real hero for Marcellin Champagnat. In him, says, Hughes, "the French renaissance is baptised and humanism becomes devout." His "Introduction to the Devout Life" has been a classic of spiritual literature ever since it was published.

[The reformers of French clerical life, men and women, had the most significant impact on French spirituality for the next two hundred years. One of the most prominent of these reformers was Cardinal de Bérulle, who founded the French Oratory and developed a new devotion to the priesthood of Christ which bore fruit in a new ideal of priestly practice and in the formation of innumerable priests in the many seminaries which the Oratorians founded and directed.]

Two other new orders also devoted themselves to this fundamentally important work of forming a new type of priest: the Eudists founded by St John Eudes and - the best known of all - the Company of St Sulpice, founded by Jean-Jacques Olier.

Hughes reflects: "Even through the worst days of the next two hundred years the Church of France reaped, from the work of these foundations, the benefit of a never-failing supply of well-instructed, well-informed parochial clergy, a body whom no episcopal negligence, worldliness or bad example could ever really corrupt.’’ That is high praise indeed.

Some of the names that continue to appear during this rich period include:

Charles de Condren (1588-1641) – Bérulle’s successor as Superior General of the Oratory;

Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657) – founder of the Suplicians;

St Jean Eudes (1602-1680) – founder of the Eudists;

St Vincent de Paul (1580-1660) – founder of the Vincentians (Lazaristes);

St Louise de Marillac – founder of the Daughters of Charity, the first order of religious women devoted to active benevolence outside the cloister;

Significant people formed in this school include:

Mother Madeleine of St Joseph (1578-1637) – disciple of Bérulle, prioress of the Great Carmel in Paris;

St JB de la Salle (1651-1719) - founder of the Christian Brothers;

Louis-Marie Grignon de Monfort (1673-1716) – spiritual writer

Mgr de Mazenod (1782-1861) - founder of OMI

I want to look at two of these men and talk about the values they contributed to French Spirituality up to the time of Champagnat and continues to percolate through the Church for another 150 years, even to our time.

Pierre Cardinal de Bérulle (1575-1629) – "the fountainhead from which this current of spirituality flowed." [Lowell Glendon S.S.]

His one passion in life was to open up to souls the riches of the mystery of the Word Incarnate and encourage them to live by that inspiration. For him understanding the mystery of the Word Incarnate led to interior baring of the self and complete abnegation. His teachings were completely Christocentric: at that time in the history of the Church the mystery of the Word Incarnate was hardly understood or preached, the mystery of the God-Man hardly known.

In 1613 he established the Oratory in Paris to remedy the evils of the Paris clergy:

To do any effective work for souls, the priest had to be both learned and spiritual, living in the Heart of Jesus.

Some of his foundational thoughts were: to honour God we must recognise with reverence that we share in his being and in his perfections; God is the first source and final end of our being; we need to recognise our radical dependence on and essential servitude of God. In the mystery of the Incarnation where the human will of Jesus is totally submitted to the divine is to be found our model of submission: the renunciation of our own will is the only way to know only God.

This sense of reverence and intimacy was to be found in a most special way in Mary; so for Bérulle it was obvious that we should live in constant and intimate dependence on the Mother of God, to whom he had a great devotion.

For Bérulle the Blessed Virgin is the model whose example leads us into supernatural intimacy with her son.

The fulness of Bérulle’s doctrine can be found in a prayer which Father de Condren gave Father Olier: it presents the core of the French School of Spirituality:

"Come, Lord Jesus, and live in your servant in the fulness of your power and the perfection of your ways and in the holiness of your spirit. Have dominion over every adverse power by the power of your spirit to the glory of your Father.

Olier added: "Make us share in the zeal that Mary has for your Church; invest us solely with yourself so that there may be nothing in us, so that we might live solely in your spirit like Mary to the glory of your Father."

[Olier’s Prayer as said by the Brothers: O Jesus, who dost live in Mary, come and live in thy servants, in the spirit of thine own holiness, in the reality of thy virtues, in the fulness of thy power, in the communion of thy mysteries, in the perfection of thy ways. Have thou dominion over every adverse power in thine own spirit to the glory of God the Father. Amen.]

Bérulle was overwhelmed by the verse from Philippians 2:6-11. "Let that mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking the form of a servant and being born in the likeness of man. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name which is above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

We turn now to the great Father Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657) – Founder of the Seminary of St Sulpice, Paris

Seeing the state of the French clergy Olier decided to establish a seminary in the parish of St Sulpice in Paris. It was a hard place to live in because of the physical conditions but also because of the expectations placed on the seminarians by Father Olier. However, the Sulpician training of seminarians became the norm for seminary training of secular priests throughout much of the world and has had an extraordinary impact on lay spirituality and on the spirituality of many religious orders, especially those founded by secular priests.

For Olier self-abnegation was one of the strong planks of its training platform:

To be avoided:

Silence is to be scrupulously observed in the house – it is the practice of all well-regulated communities.

The purpose of this regulation: to help the subject cultivate an interior attitude that allows a better disposition for prayer and meditation –

the keys to that holiness which the Sulpician method wishes to cultivate.

Of all the Christian virtues humility was the one to be most cultivated because it is the most effective to make the old man die in us:

serving the poor,

washing up,

serving at table,

doing the most menial tasks

h all of these were part and parcel of the training programme.

Care of and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament were of great importance; care of the sacristy was entrusted to the most worthy seminarians - its care, order, and neatness were in the hands of those most capable of showing reverence and respect to the Blessed Sacrament.

Rooms and furniture were to be poor and free from ornament – even mirrors were not permitted as they were an encouragement to vanity; interior and exterior renouncement and annihilation were attitudes to be cultivated; the lowest and meanest occupations in the house were to be preferred.

Service of the poor was seen as servitude to Jesus in the person of the poor; humility at the feet of all was to be prized, as was great purity of intention with an ardent desire for the glory of God.

There were four major themes for the writers and thinkers and practitioners of the 17^th c. French School of Spirituality: theocentrism, Christocentrism, Mary, and the priesthood.

THEOCENTRISM:

These writers had a strong contemplative spirit, but also a deeply apostolic and missionary spirit. And underpinning all their thought and action was their profound belief in and profession of a Trinitarian theology; they believed that men and women are called to commune intimately with the divine life of the Father, Son and Holy spirit.

This fundamental theocentric spiritual attitude was grounded in awe and adoration of God expressed through the virtue of religion. [The virtue of religion may be best defined as a cultivated habit – as all virtues are – of thinking and behaviour which gives due reverence to God; it involves obedience, respect and worship, as well as belief and adherence to a creed. It is expressed in strict fidelity, conscientiousness, and pious behaviour. It involves a degree of modesty and deference which is contrary to the more offhand attitude of familiarity and equality which we are inclined to bring to our relationships today.] They believed that though there were many holy and virtuous people at that time, they had an attitude more of familiarity than reverence towards God: there were many who loved God but few who respected him.

[The key to this sense of awe before the triune [ie, the one in three and three in one that is fundamental to Christian dogma] God was the awareness of the nothingness of all creation in itself. Condren – an influence on both Bérulle and Olier – had a transforming vision of all creation annihilated before the majesty and wonder of God. This particular type of via negativa and the accompanying negative language is a characteristic of the French school and is one of the reasons for its decreased influence in our culture since Vatican II. The via negativa is a particular approach to the spiritual life which derives from an understanding of the passage from Philippians which points to Christ’s emptying of himself. Christ surrendered his glories and prerogatives as God, his equality with God, and took on the form of a servant, adopting an attitude of self-humiliation and obedience. He was rich but became poor for our sake (II Cor 8:9); he learnt to obey through suffering (Hebrews 5:8). In imitation of Christ, many Christians have followed the path of "de-selfing" by means of gradual detachment from egotism and self-regard. This loss of self is generally accompanied by great suffering. The key word to explain this attitude is kenosis – the word translated as "emptying" in Philippians. It involves a gradual stripping of the personality, a gradual process of detachment from inessentials: possessions, clothing, material things, affections, family, power, maybe even reason. It involves losses, humiliations, risks, and may demand total dependence on another, an attitude wherein one has no desires but is totally satisfied with what is.]

This is a most demanding and potentially destroying approach to life and not many are called to it. But it is a way that accords well with the Sulpician method.

All Christianity is centred in some way on Christ, but the French school has its distinctive way of expressing and living this truth. Christ is seen as the Incarnate Word, the one who offers perfect religion – ie, praise, adoration, obedience and love to God. Thus we are called to conform ourselves to Jesus Christ and his interior dispositions.

John Eudes wrote: "It follows necessarily from this that, just as the bodily members are animated by the spirit of their head and live its life, in the same way we must be animated by the spirit of Jesus and live his life and walk in his ways. We should be clothed with his sentiments and inclinations, perform all our actions with the same dispositions and intentions he brought to his. In a word we should continue to bring to fulfilment the life, religion and devotion with which he lived on earth."

Now, that is very rich material; but we have to find our own appropriate way of living the Gospel as we move into the Third Christian Millennium, a way that takes account of the world we have been called to live in.

Mary, Mother of God, occupies a very important theological and affective place in the French school.

The poetic and effusive way these authors speak of her may seem foreign and exaggerated to us; but it is a natural development of the virtue of religion, which is foundational to their spirituality. If we contemplate God with reverence and awe, we should have a similar attitude to her who brought forth the eternal Word into this world.

Bérulle speaks of Jesus dwelling in Mary as in a temple: "It is the first and holiest temple of Jesus. The heart of the Virgin is the first altar on which Jesus offered his heart, body and spirit as a host of perpetual praise; and where Jesus offers his first sacrifice, making the first and perpetual oblation of himself, through which we are all made holy."

The medieval popular devotion to the Five Wounds of Jesus was, by the 16^th c., transformed into devotion to the Sacred Heart. The devotion was bequeathed to the Society of Jesus by St Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) and to the Sisters of the Visitation by their founder, St Francis de Sales (1567-1622). It grew in prominence at the time we are speaking of: John Eudes composed a Mass in honour of the Sacred Heart, and St Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-90) promoted the devotion and shaped its practice. [The feast day was extended to the universal Church in 1856 and in 1956 Pope Pius XII wrote an encyclical about it (Haurietis Aquas.)] Devotion to the Sacred Heart – or Immaculate Heart – of Mary was promoted by St John Eudes, and developed by way of analogy with devotion to the Heart of Jesus.]

[Note: Champagnat sometimes refers to the Divine Mary and certainly uses the phrase "the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary". We would distinguish much more carefully today in our use of these terms. Worship – Gk latria – is due to God alone, and we reserve such words as ‘divine’ for God. We render the saints respect – the technical word is dulia, Gk for service – and to Mary we render hyperdulia – a higher respect due to her because of her unique position as Mother of God. Catholics are often charged by Protestants as worshipping Mary. This we are careful not to do, and our language should reflect that.]

Because Vincent de Paul and Jean Jacques Olier were involved in parish missions in the French provinces, they realised from first hand knowledge and experience that the renewal of the faithful would only come about if their pastors were deeply spiritual and learned men. The 17^th c. priesthood was in a lamentable condition.

Bérulle and Condren (with the Oratory), Olier (with the Sulpicians), St Vincent de Paul (with the Vincentians or the Lazaristes as they were originally called – named after the College of St Lazare in Paris where they were founded), and John Eudes (with the Eudists) created institutions imbued with the spirit of the French school to train men worth of the vocation to the priesthood.

The Staff at St Irenaeus consisted of:

His brother, Father Claude, was to replace Fr Allilrot as parish priest of Marlhes and was instrumental in the return of the Brothers to teach there after they had left because of Fr Allirot’s poor treatment of them. They are still at Marlhes today.

(See Farrell Achievement from the Depths p4 and notes for further reflection on Gallicanism, Jansenism and Rigorism in the Seminary of St Irenaeus.)

The recent national events made it necessary to adhere to a strict timetable and programme; the Sulpician training of several of the lecturers made them suited to running the seminary on quite strict and Sulpician lines.

In the evenings they engaged in

Students were gradually introduced to the recitation of the Divine Office.

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin occupied a central place: "Unlimited confidence in her goodness, recourse to her in all one’s needs, attention to honour her in all one’s actions, doing everything in union with her, faithful to holy practices, saying the rosary each day …"

Courses in dogma, moral, Scripture, liturgy took up a good deal of the day and any time not already claimed by the timetable was to be given to study. "To read much, to reflect much, the weigh carefully the objections and answers and to consult the professor."

One of the strong features of Sulpician spirituality was devotion to the Eucharist.

Let’s revise some of his key ideas:

[He gave his first Brothers the Sulpician method of prayer and their method of catechism. Brother Sylvester wrote in his memoirs: "He had in his superior, Fr Gardette, a model of regularity that had become proverbial, and I often heard Fr Champagnat call him the rule incarnate. Likewise Fr Champagnat was the admiration of the seminary for the way he observed the rule. He found this rule so wise that he took it later as a model for the rule he gave the congregation. Several subjects who before joining us had been in the seminary and they said they found in our rule the same practices of devotion and the same exercises of piety and in Fr Champagnat the same regularity they had seen in Fr Gardette."

If Fr Champagnat came from the seminary with a rigorist background, he knew how to temper it in the practice of his pastoral ministry, especially in the confessional. Witnesses often attest this in the depositions.

While Champagnat maintained his spirit of humility and charity and devotedness to the poor and living an intense Marial life, he knew how to avoid the dangers of rigorism.

Champagnat’s ardent personality absorbed the principles of Sulpician spirituality and the dynamic urgency of his teachers; his good sense and discernment saved him from some of the weaker points of their conviction and manner.

The Sulpician ideal they inculcated of a complete gift of self to God was one he lived and one he tried to instil into his Brothers.]

Here are a few thoughts to tie together the many strands that have come out of the material concerning the Sulpician influences at work on the French Church.

His strong sense of the presence of God.

The Trinitarian aspect:

God as Father

God the infinitely and ardently loving Father: love, trust, the authority of God

[but Champagnat seems to have been less conscious of God as Holy Spirit.]

Champagnat and Christ:

The Incarnate Christ (the Crib)

Christ Immolated – (the Cross and Calvary)

The Eucharistic Christ – the Blessed Sacrament (the Altar)

"Marcellin’s devotion to Mary began at infancy: his love of Mary was from experience not from research." (Br Steven Urban) It was founded in the devotion of his family and the devotion of the area.

Champagnat never developed a theology of Mary but he did have his own synthesis of ideas about Mary based on his youthful experience of her as well as his seminary training in the ideas of Olier, Bérulle, Eudes, and others.

His was a predominantly Christocentric Marian devotion with an emphasis on her role as Spiritual Mother and on her mediation.

The qualities he most admired in her were

It is these qualities that he continually sought to inculcate in his followers.

Mary began a new life in becoming the Mother of Jesus –

the mediatrix of grace.

Mediatrix of grace: [-trix is the feminine of the Latin masculine ending –tor: mediator, mediatrix; redemptor, redemptrix] this is a title popularly applied to Mary in recognition of her role in salvation. It meant that Mary was seen as a channel of grace to the human race. It was first used in the 8^th c. and by the 17^th c. it had become a quite common way of referring to Mary. She has been called "co-redemptrix" and "dispensatrix" – titles which run the risk of being exaggerated and giving Mary an equal role with Christ in the economy of salvation. In the years after Vatican II there was a pulling back from these titles, but in the last couple of years there have been moves to get the Pope to declare as a dogma that Mary is the Mediatrix of all Graces – in the same way that the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption were in 1854 and 1950 respectively. This would be seen by many in the Church as a severe blow for ecumenism as well as being questionable theology and unnecessary.]

To return to Champagnat’s understanding of Mary.

Jesus lives in Mary in a permanent manner by the fulness of his Spirit: this spiritual life of Jesus in Mary receives great emphasis in the Sulpician devotion to Mary. It is at this profound level of the interior life that the union between the Saviour and his Mother is most real and intimate. This closeness of spirit and life in Jesus and Mary is clearly expressed in the image of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The point behind the devotion to the Sacred Hearts is that we might have but one heart with Jesus and Mary so that the divine will might be accomplished.

The implication of all of this was that we must honour Mary not just with acts of devotion but with our whole hearts. ["With our dispositions of respect, love and submission to the Blessed Virgin, we do these three things: adore the most holy Trinity as the ones who became the focal point of her life; honour the Blessed Virgin in all the aspects of her life, but especially in her titles as Spouse of God the Father, Mother of God the Son and Fulness of God the Holy Spirit; and pray for her intentions – give yourself to her to work in the Church and to remain faithful to God in her."]

For Champagnat there is a marked understanding of the closeness of the union established between Mary and Jesus in the Incarnation: he sees Mary always in closest intimacy with Christ.

The life of mystical union between Jesus and Mary by the Incarnation is characterised in Mary

no need for words – and silent adoration in the face of that presence. Champagnat says: "… adopt Mary’s spirit and imitate her humility, her modesty, her purity and her love for Jesus …"

This accords with the French school’s sense of Mary’s spirit being a capacity to receive God, her openness to him in love and service in the hidden life. If Champagnat dwells on her virtues it must be remembered that what matters to him is Mary herself, her spirit, her person, not a list of abstract qualities.

For Champagnat Mary is not only spiritual Mother and channel of grace but also Superior, Patroness, Queen of the Society. His belief that "this work is yours …" reflects Olier’s attitude expressed in his journey from Paris to Chartres to lay the keys of the new seminary of St Sulpice at the feet of the Madonna.

The theme of Mary as Queen, because of the dignity of her position as Mother of God, is traditional in this school of Mariology. In the troubled times of Champagnat and the first Marists it was linked with the idea of warfare – an idea borrowed from the Jesuits, the Company of Jesus.

Champagnat’s devotion to Mary and his service of her Son through her finds a new direction in the years at St Irenaeus: he wishes to become a priest in a society dedicated to her and he wishes to found a group of Teaching Brothers who will gather in her name.

The Marists’ response to Mary is to consecrate themselves entirely to her – their goods, their works, their person, their whole lives. They adopt three closely linked ideas: the imitation of Mary, the possession of her spirit, and the living of her life. From Mary’s choice of them and from the consecration they willingly make of themselves to her, they feel they can rely on her in complete confidence both in their personal lives and in their work.

The fervour that characterised Champagnat and Colin and the first Marists seems due to their conviction of the close relationship established between themselves and Mary; their apostolic enthusiasm was due to their being conscious of having received a special mission from her – to go into a dechristianised world to be new apostles to win back the world for Christ – in the manner of the Jesuits in the 16^th Century and the apostles of the 1^st Century.

If the Sulpician influence was the most powerful shaping force during Champagnat’s seminary years, it was not the only one. All that had gone before in his years with his family had laid the foundations for the structure that was to follow: mother, father, aunt, the revolutionary atmosphere in which he grew up, the impact of his one day at school and of the insensitive curate’s catechism lessons – these are some of the influences we can be sure of. But who knows what went on in the silence of the young lad’s heart while he was out in the fields tending his sheep?

Likewise, who knows what other elements impacted on him during those seminary years: the individual personalities of tutors and fellow seminarians, both those he related well to and those who rather looked down on this rough country lad; his reading, his prayer, his discussions. He was also influenced by other major and minor spiritualities: the Monastic Tradition, the Jesuit spirituality, the impact of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle and Francis de Sales, among them.

Champagnat’s use of several Jesuit texts indicates the influence of Ignatian spirituality on him and the Institute:

He also knew the Ignatian Rule and copied from it, including Ignatius’s letter on Obedience in the First Rule of 1837. The style of meditation practised amongst the Brothers for many years was the Ignatian method – composition of place, reflection, resolution (as distinct from the Benedictine Lectio Divina – reflective reading of a passage of Scripture.)

The whole Marist group was drawn by the example of St John Francis Regis SJ, because of his work in run-down parishes in the Auvergne and Languedoc. Champagnat frequently visited his tomb at La Louvesc.

For Champagnat the saint’s emphasis on the presence of God was his greatest impact. Champagnat, says Br Jean-Baptiste, carefully read and practised de Sales’ doctrine: "Perfection does not come form taking on all sorts of practices but in being devoted to those which belong to our state in life and in practising faithfully that virtue to which we are attracted by grace and by our spiritual guide."

Champagnat had in his library de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life and Mgr Camus’ The Spirit of St Francis de Sales.

These represent the most significant influences on Marcellin Champagnat’s spirituality, though there were undoubtedly many more of which we know little or can only guess.

[The Mystical Body is an image of the Church which describes the relationship between head and members in both hierarchical terms and charismatic terms: it reflects the relationship between laity and hierarchy; but it also emphasises the interior reality of grace in the human soul and the role of the Holy Spirit as the Soul of the mystical Body of Christ. The Mystical Body of Christ is identical with the Catholic Church. This view was promulgated by Pope Pius XII in his 1943 encyclical, but modified in the teachings of Vatican II.]

We need to cooperate with grace, but the point is that it is primarily grace. There are many similarities between this strategy of the French School and the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous in which recovery begins when people admit their radical powerlessness and turn their lives over to a higher power. Both these approaches draw on a perennial wisdom .

The teachings of the 17^th c. School of Spirituality were profoundly effective. As I was preparing this talk, I recognised so much of the teaching from my own ten years in formation from 1953 to 1962, in Juniorate, Noviciate and Scholasticate – all of which was pre-Vatican II. It sank in and became foundational, but it has been modified by post-Vatican II approach to the spiritual life and the vows and more recent understandings of our personal psycho-sexual development as well as by a new humanism which one has to embrace or become irrelevant. I see this struggle to maintain a balance between the world and the soul, the horizontal and the vertical, as a struggle which has gone on from the earliest years of Christianity – it is there in St Paul’s Epistles, the earliest of them encouraging the new Christian converts to put the world aside because the parousia was just a year or two off. In Paul’s later Epistles he dealt more with a way of living in the world which recognised that it was not going to go away quite as quickly as he originally thought. The quest for balance is just as real and powerful for us today as it has been for Christians in every age since the beginning.

Br Tony Butler 26.7.99