#servantofgod — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #servantofgod, aggregated by home.social.
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Quote of the day, 18 January: Père Jacques de Jésus
Mr. Zamansky, who was a prisoner with Père Jacques at the Royallieu camp, gave the following account of the moment when Père Jacques knew that he was leaving in one of the convoys heading east:
“We saw them off. Père Jacques was among them, his face imbued with the same peace we knew him for, but he was serious in his look and his walk. Surrendering oneself to God can only be done without any ulterior motive, and above all, without any hope of choice. And I think that’s what Père Jacques was saying the last minute I saw him: ‘Fiat voluntas tua.’ ”
In an interview given at the Carmelite convent in Avon, Mr. Michel de Bouard recounts how he was with Père Jacques in the quarantine block at the Mauthausen camp, when he told Père Jacques that he’d made a vow if he got out of that hellhole alive. Père Jacques thought about it for a moment, then said:
“No, you mustn’t tempt God; he’s the one who decides. Say ‘Fiat voluntas tua’ [Thy will be done (cf. Mt 26:42)].”
Fr. Didier-Marie Golay, ocd
Lent 2024 Carmelite Online Retreat, Week 5
Servant of God Père Jacques de Jésus—Discalced Carmelite priest and headmaster of the Carmelite boys school in Avon, France—endeavored to live the truth of his message, living a life of silence, obedience, and charity.
During the Nazi occupation of France, he enrolled three Jewish boys under false names and employed a fourth boy as a worker at the school and monastery of the friars. With the aid of a local villager, he was able to shelter the father of one of the students. Furthermore, he hired a noted Jewish botanist as a faculty member at the boarding school.
On 15 January 1944 between 10:00 and 10:30 in the morning, the German officers came for Père Jacques and the three students he had been sheltering at the boarding school; in a separate Gestapo raid in Fontainebleau, the botanist, his mother, and his sister were arrested at their home.
Although Père Jacques was sent to different concentration camps, the students, their botany teacher, and his family were incarcerated in the Melun detention center in Paris on 15 January. On 18 January they were transferred to the Drancy transit camp in the northeastern suburb of Paris.
On 3 February 1944 the students, their teacher, and his family were deported to Auschwitz in a transport of roughly 1200 persons. Upon their arrival in Auschwitz on 6 February, 985 persons were sent directly to the gas chambers. The Carmelite students from Avon, their botany teacher, his mother, and his sister all perished that day.
Only the fourth boy survived because he was working in the monastery on 15 January when the Gestapo arrived.
Translation from the French text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.
Featured image: Père Jacques and some of the boys he cared for through the years. Image credit: Discalced Carmelites (by permission).
#Jews #obedience #PèreJacquesDeJésus #ServantOfGod #willOfGod
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Quote of the day, 15 January: Père Jacques
In contemplating the life of Christ Jesus, Père Jacques sees him fulfilling the Father’s will. Often, he would quote the Gethsemane story: “Fiat voluntas tuas” (“Thy will be done,” Lk 22:42).
On 29 September 1936, he wrote to a friend:
“Don’t forget to pray with the weight of your worries. Suffering is such a powerful prayer! Let your trial detach you from the earth, and, freed, rest in God without trouble or worry. Say over and over to God: Fiat voluntas tua!”
He knew the cost of saying Fiat. In 1929, when he wished to enter Carmel, his bishop wrote to Rome and he was prevented from doing so. He confided in the prioress of the Carmel of Le Havre:
“For two days I struggled against a thousand feelings of sadness, despondency, discouragement and, above all, revolt. No matter how much my will repeated a sincere Fiat to the Good Lord, all sensitivity and pride shook and put wicked thoughts into my mind.”
With the breath of the Holy Spirit, Père Jacques would have the fortitude to repeat this Fiat in the deportation camps and to help his fellow prisoners say it. Several testimonies bear witness to this.
Mr. Zamansky, who was a prisoner with Père Jacques at the Royallieu camp, gave the following account of the moment when Père Jacques knew that he was leaving in one of the convoys heading east:
“We saw them off. Père Jacques was among them, his face imbued with the same peace we knew him for, but he was serious in his look and his walk. Surrendering oneself to God can only be done without any ulterior motive, and above all, without any hope of choice. And I think that’s what Père Jacques was saying the last minute I saw him: ‘Fiat voluntas tua.’ ”
In an interview given at the Carmelite convent in Avon, Mr. Michel de Bouard recounts how he was with Père Jacques in the quarantine block at the Mauthausen camp, when he told Père Jacques that he’d made a vow if he got out of that hellhole alive. Père Jacques thought about it for a moment, then said:
“No, you mustn’t tempt God; he’s the one who decides. Say ‘Fiat voluntas tua’ [Thy will be done (cf. Mt 26:42)].”
Mr. de Bouard continued:
“I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve realized that the true thought of faith, the deepest, the highest thought, is to say ‘Thy will be done’. Saying Fiat voluntas tua as we often did in the morning, on the roll-call square, in the smoke of the crematorium, was hard to say without reluctance. By giving me this instruction, Père Jacques, once again, showed me where the ridgeline was, where I had to try to place myself.”
Père Jacques didn’t just preach this abandonment to Divine Providence, he lived it to the end in his own flesh.
During the retreat that he preached at the Carmel of Pontoise, in a conference entitled: “Hope and abandonment,” he quoted from the Book of Job and concluded as follows:
“’Though he kill me, yet I will hope in him!’ [Job 13:15]. Here is a soul who knows what it is to hope—who knows what it is to trust in God—to say to God: ‘Our Father, Thy will be done!’”
Didier-Marie Golay, o.c.d.
Through the Cross Toward the Light
2024 Advent Online Retreat, Week 5Prayer for the Beatification
of Père Jacques de JésusTranslation from the French text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.
Featured image: Père Jacques with students from the Discalced Carmelite boarding school in Avon, France, Le Petit Collège Sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus. Père Jacques served as headmaster from 1934 until his arrest. Image credit: Discalced Carmelites
#concentrationCamp #faith #fiat #Mauthausen #PèreJacquesDeJésus #politicalPrisoner #prayer #ServantOfGod #suffering #trust #willOfGod
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Quote of the day, 5 December: Père Jacques
We have also seen God’s remarkable preparation of the Virgin Mary for her role as Mother of the Word made flesh. God exempted her from original sin and its consequences.
She is pure creature; God is pure deity, totally independent. For the Virgin Mary, her virginity lies in being a pure creature of God, namely, a creature living in that total dependence on the will of God.
Indeed, when we examine the Virgin Mary’s life, when we gather the conclusions of the Fathers of the Church who dwelt on this Marian mystery, and when we study the works of theologians, we find that she was absolutely obedient to the will of God, even to the least indications of that will.
Servant of God Jacques de Jésus
Conference 6, Virginity in God and in Mary
Wednesday Evening, 8 September 1943Jacques, P 2005, Listen to the silence: A retreat with Père Jacques, translated from the French and edited by Murphy F, ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Featured Image: This detail from The Annunciation by the Italian artist Orazio Lomi Gentileschi (1563–1639) is an oil on canvas painting executed in 1623 for Charles Emmanuel I, the Duke of Savoy. It is one of the masterpieces found in the collections of the Musei Reali di Torino. Image credit: Adobe Stock (stock photo)
#ImmaculateConception #MotherOfChrist #obedience #PèreJacquesDeJésus #ServantOfGod #VirginMary #virginity #willOfGod
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Today’s quote comes from Père Jacques de Jésus, O.C.D., the Discalced Carmelite friar who served as the headmaster of a boarding school in Avon, France. During the Nazi occupation, he courageously sheltered Jewish students, risking his own life to protect others. His selfless acts of heroism exemplify the virtues of compassion, courage, and infinite charity.Silence was a hallmark of Père Jacques’ life, so deeply devoted to Our Lady. One of his fellow prisoners in the concentration camp testified to his contemplative spirit:
I can still see Père Jacques kneeling on the floor of that poor barrack, without a kneeler, without any support—his whole soul concentrated and united with God. This vision of Père Jacques alone was a great comfort to me. I see his eyes fixed on the altar, his eyes where a gentle flame shone, like the flame in a shrine.
Now, let’s hear Père Jacques’ inspiring words.
God is eternal silence; God dwells in silence. He is eternal silence because he is the One who has totally realized his own being because he says all and possesses all. He is infinite happiness and infinite life. All God’s works are marked by this characteristic. Contemplate the Incarnation; it was accomplished in the silence of the Virgin Mary’s chamber at a time when she was in prolonged silence, her door closed. Our Lord’s birth came during the night, while all things were enveloped in silence. That is how the Word of God appeared on earth, and only Mary and Joseph were silently with him. They did not overwhelm him with their questions, for they were accustomed to guarding their innermost thoughts.
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Jacques, P 2005, Listen to the silence: A retreat with Père Jacques, translated from the French and edited by Murphy F, ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Featured image: Mary at the Loom is an oil on canvas painting executed in 1895 by British artist William Henry Margetson (1861–1940). It comes from the collections of Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, England. Image credit: Victoria Art Gallery / ArtUK (Public domain)
https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/05/01/mdj2024-ep001/
#God #incarnation #JesusChrist #nativity #night #PèreJacquesDeJésus #ServantOfGod #silence #StJoseph #VirginMary