He will return with his immense heart, with his heart of fire, his poor man's soul
and his smile. He will return! And the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph!

JUBILEE PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES

Letter to the Phalange N° 82

Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Saint George, martyr

Jesus! Mary! Joseph!

Our very dear pilgrim Friends,

Let us go to Lourdes to ask for a great miracle, like the one in the true and marvellous story that I want to relate to you. The Abbé Peyramale had an intimate friend, Fr. Martignon, a former archpriest from Algiers who came to Lourdes to implore the healing of his incurable chest complaint.

Henri Lasserre, who was his confident, related:

« At the Rocks of Massabielle, he had knelt down, prayed, plunged into the pools, and drunk water from the miraculous spring, but the implored cure did not descend from Heaven. “Come on!” he thought, “let us not lose heart. A petition so briefly made is far from being enough: we have to knock several times at the door for it to open to the one who wants to enter. Let us make a novena.^” At the end of the novena, there was no improvement in his health. The faith of the Canon did not weaken, nor did his hope. “I will continue with a novena of weeks.” » There he was in Lourdes for sixty-three days. On the sixty-fourth day, as he found himself absolutely in the same state, he became a fixture there. « If the Virgin Mary does not answer my prayer, he said with a smile, I am resolved to make a novena of years, and then even of centuries; but afterwards I will stop. » Mrs. Martin, the mother of St. Thérèse, would turn to him during her pilgrimage in 1877: « This good priest is really a saint », she said.

« Glad to remain in that corner of the world where the Queen of Heaven had set foot, content to breathe this sacred atmosphere and to go every day to the holy Grotto, he repeated: “I remain here at the disposal of Our Lady of Lourdes. She will answer when She wants. I am like someone sitting in an antechamber and awaiting an audience. My turn will come. I shall have my hour or my minute and shall not let it escape.” » (Henri Lasserre, Mgr Peyramale, 1897, pp. 291-293)

On 8 September 1877, on the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, Mgr Peyramale gave up his soul to God: « Amongst the tearful group that filled the death chamber, the intimate friend of his last years, the good Canon from the African metropolis, Fr. Martignon, overcome by sorrow, remained kneeling and leaning on the side of the bed. » Then he stood up and said to several of those who were there, to the curates of the orphan parish, to Henri Lasserre, to some others : « “I have just made the first prayer of my novena to Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows and my request for healing, beside these holy mortal remains. I beseech Our Lady of Lourdes to allow that, on Her own behalf and on the ninth day, our friend himself may transmit the answer to me.” Then he added: “Since the Virgin wanted to choose the day of Her own Nativity on earth to be that of his nativity in Heaven, I think I am sufficiently authorised to associate both their Names to my humble request.” » (pp. 318-319)

On Saturday, 15 September, the day before the ninth day and the Feast of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, he received a telegram announcing to him the departure of “Mr. and Mrs. Guerrier” for Lourdes, and asking him to be so kind as to receive them at the station with a car when the Express arrived from Bordeaux.

« He did not know Mr. and Mrs. Guerrier at all. A letter from the parish priest of Saint-Gobain, which had come in the mail twenty-four hours before the telegram, had merely informed him that Mrs. Guerrier had been suffering from a very serious illness for several years, and that she was leaving for Lourdes to beg for her healing. This lady and her husband, who were coming for the first time to the city of the Blessed Virgin, were insistently commended to Fr. Martignon. The Canon took care not to refuse this duty of charity and made his way to the station to meet the 3 o’clock train. »

At the appointed time, he saw a woman, who had been half-paralysed for two years, carried off the train. It was the day before the ninth day of the novena undertaken to ask for his own healing from his late and holy friend. « Faced with the misfortune of this distressed husband, the spectacle of this mother of three children, condemned to infirmity and inaction for such a long time, this family to whom maternal care was still so necessary, » the former parish priest from Algiers was stricken with compassion. He substituted this intention for his own and recommended to the incurable paralytic that she add the name of Mgr Peyramale to her invocations.

The next day, she was carried to the Basilica with infinite precautions, in order to attend the Mass celebrated by Canon Martignon; it was the closing Mass of the novena that had started on the day of the death of Mgr Peyramale.

On that morning, Canon Martignon truly answered the call he had heard on the day of his ordination to the priesthood, when the Bishop had exhorted him to unite himself to the Divine Victim when offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in such a manner that he might be but one “Host” with Jesus Crucified.

« Seated on a chair, the invalid woman attended Mass. Her completely lifeless legs, crippled for such a long time, were resting on a prie-Dieu placed in front of her. At the moment of the Elevation, the faithful bowed low. The disabled woman alone did not move. When the time of the sacred Banquet came, her husband went to kneel at the Communion rail. In her powerlessness, she waited for her God to come to her and in fact He came, carried by mortal hands. Hardly had she received the Sacrament of the Lord when she felt an invincible force urging her to get up from her chair and kneel down. At the same time, she heard in her soul, as it were, a sovereign voice commanding her to do so.

« At her side, bowed low with his head in his hands, her husband was praying after Communion, believing without believing and hoping without hoping. He suddenly heard the rustling of a dress and a movement. He raised his head and turned round: his wife had just knelt down beside him. Respect for the holy place kept him from crying out in gratitude, joy and astonishment. Instinctively he turned his gaze towards the altar and met the priest’s, which, like his own, sparkled with joy and emotion. Turned towards the faithful, the celebrant was just addressing to them the great priestly words: “Dominus vobiscum, the Lord be with you!” And in fact, the Lord was there. »

At the end of the Mass when the last Gospel had been said, Mrs. Guerrier stood up effortlessly, remained standing, and knelt down again... « As for her husband, he almost fainted and his legs were quivering. Pale, moved, trembling, his eyes wide open but blurred with tears, he looked at her without daring to speak to her and unable to believe his senses. The healed invalid, immersed in recollection, was praying and giving thanks. All the turmoil was for him, all the calm for her. The priest removed his vestments and withdrew to the corner of the altar to make his thanksgiving », after having given to someone else, with heroic charity, at the very height of his expectation, the treasure upon which he was counting.

« The response that he had implored from the goodness and power of Our Lady of Lourdes had been made to him with absolute clarity. The sign he had asked for was given to him. Whatever the joy of the healed paralytic, the joy of the priest was still greater. His friend, the Abbé Peyramale, gone to Heaven, was already beginning to manifest his presence. » (p.410-412)

We can guess the rest of the story. The Abbé Martignon, who was suffering more and more, awaited the end with a perfect spirit of sacrifice, and wrote to Henri Lasserre : « I am here like the bird on the branch, waiting for it to break! »

« It broke indeed, and the soul took flight.

« Eight and a half months after the healing of Mrs. Guerrier, on 27 Mai 1878, about 3 or 4 p.m., some unusual shivers ran through Fr. Martignon. He did not mistake the paramount meaning of this warning. “Magister adest et vocat te... Mary,” Martha told her sister, “the Lord is here and He is calling you.” When the last rays of sun were disappearing beneath the horizon, the priest of the Lord bent his head forward. His eyes closed to the earth in order to open again in the land where the Light never fades. »

Dear friends, this lady named “Guerrier (Warrior)” is the figure of the Church, our sick Mother, who is now mortally ill. During our pilgrimage, we are going to ask God that He may restore His Church through the power that He has given to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, through the intercession of holy Fr. Peyramale and through the merits of our Father, who has sacrificed himself to this cause for a long time. Then, but only then, will he be allowed to pronounce his Nunc Dimittis, to which we agree in advance by offering our sacrifice with the help of the Immaculate Heart of Mary :

« Jesus, it is for the love of You, for the conversion of sinners, in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary »

From his sickbed, this good servant of the Immaculate blesses you; we will see you very soon!

Your friend and Brother Bruno of Jesus