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!

BENEATH THE BANNER OF THE IMMACULATE

On Thursday, 1 May, the feast of the Ascension, our two hundred and eighty-five pilgrims, who had arrived the day before or that very morning at Pau, gathered at the Castle of Franqueville, situated on the south side of the city, before going down the road to Lourdes. Brother Bruno opened the pilgrimage by indicating to them the important intentions that we were bringing to the blessed Grotto.

Either singing the rosary or conversing in a friendly manner, our group then advanced along the splendid cliff road, which is « steeper » but so much more beautiful than the valley road. From there, the snow-covered Pyrenean range that touches the firmament reminded them of the Immaculate Queen of Heaven! At the head, there were our four French blue-coloured flags bearing the Hearts of Jesus and Mary and fleurs-de-lis, which our Father blessed a few days before our departure.

Bétharram, which is located halfway to Lourdes at the foot of the chain of the Pyrenees, overlooks three regions: the Bigorre, where Lourdes is situated at the foot of the Jer, the Béarn, where the sanctuary of Piétat is situated, with the valley of the Gave of Pau that stretches out at its feet, and the Basque Country, to the west until the sea. They are called the three “B”s: Bigorre, Béarn, Basque Country

ALONG THE WAYS OF THE IMMACULATE

« Come here in procession » Why has Mary such a wish? It is easy to understand, Fr. Marie-Antoine answers. Mary is a Mother and a procession is the gathering of Her children who come in a great numbers to Her to openly protest their love for Her and Her Divine Son, and to form only one Heart to sing Her praises, to pray to Her and to love Her.

« “ Venite, filii, audite me... ”Come! Come My Children, I have great gifts, great riches to distribute to you. The treasures of Heaven and earth are in My Hands: all the graces, glories and virtues, and I keep all this in reserve for those of My children who come to Me, while singing My hymns, invoking My Name, showing their love for Me. Yes, they are the ones whom I particularly delight in enriching because I love those who love Me and I always show Myself to those who come from afar to find Me.

« Blessed are those who come together on the ways that lead to Me. “ Beati qui custodiunt vias meas!”

« Processions are, as you can see, the great desire of the Heart of Mary because they are the most resounding expression of our love for Her; they are, moreover, the symbol of life’s pilgrimage and of the combat that we wage together against the enemy of our souls. The cross that precedes the procession reminds us of the pilgrim’s staff; it is at the same time the weapon of the Christian soldier: “You will always overcome by this sign.” These fluttering banners are our flags: Mary Immaculate, whose picture they bear, is our strength, our hope and our salvation, and the Angels and Saints, our defenders. We carry these images in our midst as the People of Israel used to bear the holy Ark, which ensured their victory. Besides, processions, which are so dear to the Heart of Mary, have always been dear to the Heart of God and one of the most ancient practices of religious worship.

« Did not Jesus Christ want to make His own triumphal entry into Jerusalem among a vast multitude that followed Him as they sang hymns to His glory, scattered flowers beneath His feet, and proclaimed Him the King of Israel? Did He not then come Himself in a kind of procession with all the heavenly Court to meet Mary when She entered into Her glory? Is it not written, that Virgins will follow Him in procession wherever He goes? Let us be grateful, therefore, to our Mother Church for having given us a taste of some of Heaven’s delights by establishing processions. » (LE LIS IMMACULÉ, p. 284)

OUR LADY OF PIETAT

	In the XIXth century Joseph Castaing, an artist from Pau, painted a picture representing the apparition. In it we see the Blessed Virgin speaking to the goatherd near a hawthorn in blossom among his immobilised goats.

At 10:45 a.m., we made a stop at the small shrine of Our Lady of Pietat to attend Mass of the Ascension.

This pilgrimage goes back to the seventh century, when a chapel was erected in honour of Our Lady at the very place of the martyrdom of a courageous and virtuous lord from Artois. He had married the daughter of a Basque lord and was murdered in hatred of the Faith by his wife’s family.

Centuries went by... In the sixteenth century Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre and mother of Henri IV, had abjured Catholicism in order to go over to the so-called « new » religion and to impose it on the Béarn, whose people were firmly attached to the faith of their fathers. The Protestant Montgomery was called to the rescue; he spread ruin and death throughout this region. The village of Pardies, was laid waste among others, along with its church and Our Lady’s chapel.

The proclamation of the Edict of Nantes in 1598 did not settle the matter because fifty years later Protestants were still predominant and persecuted Catholics. So, the region was hit by a terrible famine. For ten consecutive years, hail, drought, and every form of scourge combined completely devastated the crops so that the inhabitants of Pardies were reduced to a dreadful state of poverty.

How would they manage to get out of a situation that everyone considered to be a punishment from Heaven? Such were the circumstances when, according to the tradition, the Blessed Mary appeared to a poor goatherd.

« The good and merciful Mary took pity on her children in distress. A simple and God-fearing man, the village goatherd, was looking after his flock on the heights; on three occasions separated by long intervals he saw a Lady, who has always been considered as the Blessed Virgin. During each Apparition, She urged the goatherd to press the inhabitants of Pardies to build at that very place a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pietat [a word from the Béarn that is very close to Latin’s pietas, meaning piety, devotion, religion] and in return She promised him to deliver them from the great woes that oppressed them. And to prove Her intention, She made a hawthorn bloom in the middle of winter.

« The Catholic inhabitants of Pardies, who had already restored their parish church despite opposition from the Huguenots, were informed of Heaven’s demands. On the other hand, since they were convinced that God wanted to have the chapel of Our Lady rebuilt in reparation for the outrage made to the Mother of the Lord Jesus in these times of disturbances and impiety, they made a vow to rebuild the chapel at the place that She Herself had indicated to the goatherd. »

On 29 May 1661, they addressed a petition to the Bishop of Bayonne to ask him permission to fulfil their vow, and the prelate gave his assent. Everyone set to work, carrying sand and shingles from the Gave, which was four kilometres from there. So well did they carry off their work that two and half months later, on 15 August 1661, Mass could be celebrated there for the first time.

The Blessed Virgin had scarcely taken possession of these summits when the face of things changed: the storms stopped, the countryside blossomed again, harvests were abundant and (Catholic) exiles came back to their native village. A notarised record has preserved all these details.

A hawthorn in bloom… in the middle of winter!... Fr. Peyramale was without doubt thinking about Pietat when he urged Bernadette to ask the Lady to make the wild rose at the Grotto of Massabielle bloom in mid-February. Anyway we left this shrine with a certitude: when the Blessed Virgin wants something, She finds the means, especially when it is a question of winning Her beautiful domain back from heresy and paganism.

« On the way, with this ever so warm, ever so close current of thousands of unknown, fraternal pilgrims, it had seemed to me that the processions of angels and saints were going familiarly in our midst. I recognised there the humble Bernadette, in the company of Joan, Thérèse, and Catherine Labouré… » (Georges de Nantes)

THE SANCTUARY OF BÉTHARRAM

After having picnicked in front of a beautiful viewpoint on the Pyrenean range, our walkers set off again. At about 7 o’clock in the evening they arrived at Bétharram. After dinner, they all gathered in the sanctuary for a prayer vigil during which Brother Thomas indicated to them the reason for this stopover at the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Bétharram, the order that St. Michael Garicoits founded in the nineteenth century.

St. Michael Garicoits was born in 1797 into a farmers’ family in Ibarre, a small village of the Basque Country. His parents, who were poor, ardent Catholics, and thus counter-revolutionary, crossed the Pyrenees to receive the Sacrament of Marriage from the hand of a non-Constitutional priest. At peril of their lives they also hid non-Constitutional priests on their farm.

Little Michael had character. In this low-mountain country the rigorous climate, farm work, and the strict education of his parents rapidly hardened him. « Without my good, pious mother, he would say later, I feel that I would have become a villain. » He also feared Hell and had an irresistible attraction for Heaven. One day, as he saw the blue of the sky touching the summit of the hill close to which the family home was built, he thought this is where he could enter Heaven. Always quick to carry out an idea that came to him, he climbed up the hill, leaving the sheep of his father in the dog’s care. What a disappointment! The sky had moved back to the next peak. He ran to it and from it to the next. His adventure ended in complete darkness: without having realised it, night had already begun to engulf the mountain. The disillusioned child descended again. Yet, his bitter disappointment engraved still deeper on his soul the desire for the true Heaven!

Hungering for the Eucharist, he wanted to become a priest but was only able to start his studies when he was fourteen years of age, and still he had to work as a servant somewhat like Don Bosco. Blessed with a keen intelligence, he worked so hard that he managed to catch up for the time he had lost and became an exceptionally brilliant seminarian. He was ordained a priest in December 1823. For two years he remained curate at Cambo, a large village in the Basque Country. Already at that time the unseen source of his ministry was devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; he founded a confraternity to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In autumn 1825, he was appointed philosophy professor at the theological seminary in Bétharram. He had the confidence of his Bishop who confided to his secretary: « Fr. Garicoits is a saint whom I venerate; I want to make him the director of all our nuns, and you will see how he will revive the ardour of the Christian and religious spirit in our diocese. »

In fact, in a very short time he succeeded in restoring discipline, piety and zeal in studies at Bétharram until the day in 1832 when the Bishop of Bayonne decided to bring his seminarians back to him, at Bayonne, and left the Father alone. In the meantime, two major events had taken place: one concerned him intimately and the other related to the affairs of France and the Church.

First, let us see what St. Michael called his “conversion”. He had been appointed chaplain of the Daughters of the Cross who had just settled in the convent at Igon, four kilometres from Bétharram. It was there in 1828 that he met Joan-Elizabeth Bichier des Âges, their founder. « I thought I was someone, he wrote. Although I had looked after the flocks of my mother and lived very poorly, I gave myself up to affectation and adorned myself with elegant shoes to replace my shepherd’s clogs. »

Through his contact with this holy nun and with her sisters, who practiced evangelical poverty with such joy and simplicity, he understood that the Heart of Jesus called him to the radicalism of the saints: « I am only a shepherd, a former servant and must not be anything else for the Lord. » On that day, he set out on his giant’s course towards holiness.

The second event was the Revolution of 1830, which deposed the legitimate King, Charles X, and put the usurper Louis-Philippe in his place. For the saints, and for Heaven itself, as we can see in the Apparitions to St. Catherine Labouré, it was not a mere political revolution: it was Our Lord in Person, the true King of France who was dethroned. The Church herself was affected, since a prophet whose name was Lamennais rose up within her. He preached reconciliation between the Church and the Revolution in name of the Gospel. His motto was: God and liberty.

The Abbé de Nantes has denounced this insane doctrine as the great heresy of modern times, a prelude to the apostasy through which we are living. From 1830, it provoked among the clergy, consequently among the faithful themselves, a frenzy of protest, independence, and revolt.

St. Michael Garicoits assessed the danger and mounted the battlements: the Church suffered from a great evil that called for a powerful cure. « Oh! he thought, if we were able to gather together a society of priests whose programme would be the very programme of the Heart of Jesus, the eternal Priest, the Servant of the Heavenly Father: absolute devotion and obedience, perfect simplicity, inalterable gentleness! These priests would be a truly mobile camp of elite soldiers, ready, when the chiefs give the first signal, to run wherever they would be called, even and principally to the most difficult missions that no one else would accept. »

« Despite his profound humility, Fr. Etchécopar, himself a saint and St. Michael’s son of predilection, said about him that he believed in a work of special creation that would have its own aim, organisation, spirit, and means. He believed that the God of the little and the poor had chosen him to this end [to serve the Church of God so weakened by the Revolution of the last century (1789) and by the ravages of the modern spirit] and that He had said to him: “Go and found in My Church a new institute. It has its raison d’être. Here are your flag and your rallying cry: you will walk at the head with the flag of the Sacred Heart while shouting the ecce venio of My Son, and you will be the joy and the support of My Church.” »

THE FATHERS OF THE SACRED HEART,
MISSIONARIES OF THE IMMACULATE

Fr. Garicoits was truly a support to the Church. A “mobile camp of missionaries” was set up at Bétharram in 1834. From Bigorre in the east to the Basque Country in the west, the Faith and morals of this land were preserved thanks to Fr. Garicoits and his missionaries: through their missions to the working-class, their colleges, and the extraordinary charism of the founder himself as director of souls. He used to say to them often: « Forward, ever onward, all the way to Heaven! » Also: « Jesus Christ does not want lazy soldiers, but fighters and winners. »

It may be said that they prepared the ground so that in the days of Her apparitions in Lourdes in 1858, the Immaculate might find a people well-disposed, ready to enter into her plans. The Fathers of the Sacred Heart were the heralds, the spokesmen, the missionaries of this great “orthodromic” plan of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

St. Bernadette went on pilgrimage to Bétharram and bought the inexpensive Rosary beads that she used during the apparitions. St. Michael Garicoits was perhaps the first from among the clergy of the region who adhered to the apparitions of 1858 and stood surety for little seer to Mgr Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes.

Here, as in Piétat, we see the Immaculate in confrontation with many revolutions and victorious over all heresies. Devotion to Her is attested from the fourteenth century on, but for a long while already the Boune May dou Boun Diu, “the Good Mother of the Good God” was prayed to and She showed Herself helpful to travellers who at great risk had to cross the Gave at this place.

From time immemorial tradition has conserved two pious legends. The first is that of the miraculous statue of the Virgin carrying Her Child in Her arms, which was found by shepherds in the middle of a bush that burned without being consumed, very close to the Gave. Because of this mysterious light that shone from the bush She was called Our Lady of Estelle, or of the Star. The second is that of the young girl who fell into the torrent; the Virgin, the Good Mother, saved her from death by holding out a branch in full bloom to her. In gratitude, she offered a golden branch, a beautiful branch, “beth-arram”. Gaston IV of the Béarn, a hero of the first Crusade, had brought back a small amount of soil from the Holy Sepulchre. Bétharram was then called the “Holy Land”.

The sanctuary entered modern history with the plundering and arson perpetrated by the Huguenots in 1569, but it was reborn fifty years later, after a striking miracle. In 1616, the Archbishop of Auch, Léonard de Trapes solemnly enthroned a new statue of the Virgin in the chapel that had become so permeated with devotion; he did this amidst a large throng of people who had hurried from neighbouring parishes with cross and banners. « Before the pilgrims left Bétharram, the chronicler added, the archbishop climbed the slope of the hill that overlooks the chapel and set about erecting a large cross. It was high above the plain and visible from afar. It affirmed that this country, which had fallen momentarily into heresy, was restored to Christ. » After this triumphal pilgrimage, two months went by. In September, on the opposite hill, five farmers were preparing the bedding for their animals for winter: dried grass, ferns and gorse. Here is their testimony:

« This day was very calm, without any hint of a storm. Suddenly they heard an impetuous gust of wind that blew with violence on the top of the mountain of Bétharram. This forced them to glance at that place where they saw with displeasure the violence of this wind blow the cross down to the ground. After a short interval, the whirlwind ceased, and they saw this cross rise up by itself, surrounded by a brilliant light that formed something like a crown on its top… »

	Christ at the column, Sanctuary of Bétharram. A statue that escaped the destruction of the Calvary in 1794.

After this exaltation of the Holy Cross, Our Lady of the Beautiful-Branch became, through the piety and the gratitude of a holy chaplain, Hubert Charpentier, Our Lady of Calvary.

Having assured himself of the truth of the miracle of 1616, he planted three large crosses on the summit of the hill; then he conceived the plan for fourteen stations that would be built at different levels from the banks of the Gave to the top of the hill. The Bishop of Lescar allowed him to associate six priests to himself to share his apostolic works. King Louis XIII himself, on visit to the Béarn, offered him the sum necessary for the construction of the fifth station, the crowning of thorns, in memory of St. Louis, who bought and venerated the signal relic.

In the impetus received from the Counter-Reformation, there followed one hundred and fifty years of grace, duly attested miracles, sensational conversions of Protestant families, as testifies the “Register of graces” in which the chaplains recorded all the favours received, which were often spectacular: paralytics stood again, the blind saw, etc. The present church dates from this time. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Way of the Cross was decorated in an even more sumptuous manner, if one judges from the only statue of Christ at the column that was preserved (infra, p. 19).

But the Revolution passed that way like a hurricane, driving out the chaplains and savagely destroying the Way of the Cross. Let us pass over the difficult restoration of the sanctuary and pilgrimage after the Revolution, and this is where we find our St. Michael Garicoits.

THE VIRGIN MARY, MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE.

In 1832, as we have said, the seminarians returned to Bayonne and their director, Fr. Garicoits found himself the superior of a large, empty house. For several years his project for a foundation had been maturing. He thus went to make a retreat in Toulouse with a holy Jesuit, Fr. Leblanc, who said to him: « You will follow your inspiration, which, I believe, comes from Heaven, and you will be the father of a family that will be our sister… »

As though overwhelmed by these words, Michael Garicoits went immediately to throw himself at the foot of the tabernacle and of the gilded-wood Virgin who holds Her Child on one arm and a sceptre in the other hand, and he stood up strengthened. « I felt then in the depth of my being an extraordinary movement, one that confirmed me in my plan and encouraged me to carry it out. »

From that day on, he called the Blessed Virgin the « Mistress of the House », and one thought never left him: just as the Sacred Heart was conceived in the womb of the Virgin in Her house in Nazareth, so would the little society of the Priests of the Sacred Heart be brought forth in Her house in Bétharram.

	A marble statue that St. Michael Garicoits ordered from a young talented artist, Alexandre Renoir. The Child Jesus on His Mother’s lap leans forward to point with His finger to the “beautiful branch” that will save the young girl who had fallen into the torrent.

He restored the chapel by using the services of a talented artist, Alexandre Renoir, who sculpted the Virgin of the Beautiful Branch that is now enthroned above the main altar (see the preceding page). He introduced the confraternities of the Holy Rosary, of the Immaculate Heart of Mary refuge of sinners, and of the Holy Scapular. For the coadjutor brothers who help in the material tasks of the sanctuary and the missions, he bought a farm in the surrounding area and baptised it Saint Mary’s Farm. The first school that he founded was Our Lady’s School. In view of the affluence of students, it was suggested to him that he build a college in a more spacious place, on the other side of the Gave, but he resolutely refused. Here we see manifested his love for the “Mistress of the House”: « The Blessed Virgin chose Bétharram; we must remain there… If necessary, Our Lady will take the place of everything. »

All the feasts of the Blessed Virgin and every first Saturday of the month were celebrated in Bétharram by singing Mass and Vespers attended by the entire community, the religious and the students. The Rosary was recited together daily, and in the evening the whole religious family gathered at the feet of Our Lady to sing the Ave maris Stella and the Sub Tuum præsidium…

Personally, the saint did not content himself with these ordinary exercises. He was affiliated with the Perpetual Rosary Association, and he discharged his obligations from 3 to 4 a.m. He began his day with Her. It is touching to see that he died on the day of the Ascension, 14 May 1863, at 3 a.m., that is, at the hour when he used to get up to recite his ave.

It is therefore not surprising that he immediately understood the importance of the events of Lourdes and that he gave them his approval, first secretly, then publically.

In July 1858, Mgr Laurence, who held the superior of Bétharram in great esteem, sent Bernadette to him. Nothing has ever filtered through concerning their conversation. The witnesses only remember the radiant faces of the saint and the little seer, who came back several times to Bétharram to receive advice from the saint. It is said that two monks approached Bernadette when she was getting back into the bishop’s carriage:

« How happy you are! The Blessed Virgin promised you Heaven. »

She replied :

« O, O si-u me gagni! Yes, yes, if I earn it! »

« How good God is! St. Michael Garicoits used to say, how he fills our Pyrenees with graces. » When a missionary of Bétharram received from the Bishop of Bayonne the order not to speak of apparitions in his sermons, for « even though there were miracles, they were to no end », Fr. Garicoits merely observed, with a mischievous remark: « Does the bishop know the goal of the Blessed Virgin? » He supported out of his own pocket – God knows that he was not rich! – the construction of the Immaculate Conception Basilica in Lourdes, and on several occasions he humbly mingled with the throng of pilgrims.

« His tenderness for the Blessed Virgin was inexpressible », his first biographer related. Like his devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it was fed on a solid and clear doctrine. He contemplated and meditated endlessly on the mystery of the Incarnation and the Blessed Virgin’s answer: Ecce ancilla Domini, behold the handmaiden of the Lord, delighted him for it perfectly corresponded to the Son of God’s Ecce venio, behold, I come.

« From the Heart of the Father in the womb of the Virgin, he said, what a road opens before us! Jesus descended by Mary. Let us raise our heads towards our doctor, and let us also ascend by Mary. »

« HERE I AM, WITHOUT DELAY, WITHOUT RESERVE,
IRREVOCABLY, OUT OF LOVE! »

On Friday, 2 May, our morning meditation focused on “St. Michael Garicoits’ devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus”.

« It pleased God to have Himself loved. » It is with these words, taken from Bossuet, that St. Michael Garicoits begins one of his most beautiful texts. A short page that resumes the vocation of his sons and disciples, the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Bétharram:

« It pleased God to have Himself loved, and while we were His enemies, He loved us so much that He sent us His only Son; He gave Him to us to be the appeal that wins us over to divine love, the model that shows us the rules of love and the means for attaining divine love: the Son of God became flesh. »

St. Michael received special insights on this ineffable mystery of the Incarnation. On the night of Christmas in 1830, for example, he was seen totally transfigured at the moment of the Incarnatus est in the Creed and, at other times he was seen rising above the floor after the consecration.

« At the moment that He entered into the world, animated by the Spirit of His Father, He abandoned Himself to all His designs on Him. He took the place of all victims: »

« “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a Body You prepared for Me; holocausts and sin offerings You took no delight in. Then I said: Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.” »

These words from Psalm 39, which are taken up in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is the cry of Jesus’ Heart. At the top of the pages of his writings, St. Michael used to write these three letters: FvD, Fiat voluntas Dei. One day, he even went so far as saying before dumbfounded seminarians that he was sure of going to Heaven. When he was asked to explain himself, he added:

« In all things I have but one intention: that of doing God’s will. When I see that He desires something, I do it immediately. »

« Oh! what a fine disposition it is to be entirely at the disposal of one’s God! Oh! If this disposition were queen, if this sentiment were king, we would be in the arms of our heavenly Father like true children, carrying out our duty to the extent and in the manner that He wills. »

Jesus, our unique Model, « entered into the course by this great act that He never discontinued. From this moment, He always remained in a state of victim, annihilated before God, doing nothing by Himself, always acting through the Spirit of God, constantly abandoned to the orders of God, to suffer and do all that He willed: exinanivit semetipsum, factus obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem Crucis.

« Thus it is that God loved us; thus it is that Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Creator, became an ineffable attraction for the heart, a perfect model and an almighty aid. Yet men remain unmoved by God! Even among priests, there are so few who say, like their divine Master: “Here we are!... Ita, Pater! Yes Father!” »

How did this great evil occur?

« If there are characters, homes, or countries no longer on earth, the blame must be laid on the revolution, which substituted the reign of man for that of Jesus Christ. The most honest people forget that God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end of things, and they bring everything back to humanity. This can be seen on a large scale in peoples, and on a smaller scale in individuals, families and religious communities. But, in the latter as in the former, in the latter above all, it is a calamity.

« The concern for self, the self becoming the end of things, of the best of things. Then, how everything is lowered, degraded into sensualism! Everything falls and depreciates philosophy, theology, characters, and the loftiest of ministries. One only sees himself; and hence, all these earthly preoccupations in which society people lose themselves. What a waste of time, what a monstrosity, and also what a scandal! Man is put in God’s stead. We materialise ourselves, we humanise ourselves instead of divinising ourselves, instead of being for one another images of Our Lord Jesus Christ bringing everything back to His Father, so that, seeing one another, we see God in order to glorify Him.

« The reign of humanity is the forgetting of God; revolt against Him is Lucifer’s crime, the crime that hurled a third of the angels into Hell. It is this very crime that led to the reign of Antichrist. Yes, when humanity will have driven God out in a certain measure, then the end of the world will come; Antichrist will be the fruit of this egoist, monstrous, horrible love for self. »

In order to restore the reign of God, « the priests of Bétharram felt inclined to devote themselves, so as to imitate Jesus annihilated and obedient, and to employ themselves entirely to bring the same happiness to others ».

« Here I am, without delay, without reserve, irrevocably, out of love! »

Until the end, St. Michael heroically practiced this maxim: the evening before his death he went to meet his bishop, who was on a pastoral visit to a neighbouring village, in order finally to obtain from him recognition of the vows of his brothers. The answer was no; the bishop was unyielding.

The Father then returned to Bétharram, he was exhausted. He went to the kitchen and asked for some bouillon. The brother in charge of the kitchen offered him to take something else, for he must have been so tired and exhausted.

« No, he replied, the bouillon is enough with a piece of crust. » The brother relates:

« I ventured to make this observation: “It is really unfortunate that we cannot find anything to make you sleep calmly through the night.” »

– What can you expect, he answered me, forward march always! We have to take what the Good God sends us!

– When forced to, I replied.

« He turned round and said to me with a kind smile:

– When forced, no, it is not by force that we must receive what the Good Lord sends to us, but with respect and love.” »

It was his testament. The next morning at dawn, when dawned the Ascension of Our Lord, he in turn ascended into Heaven.

THE CALVARY OF BÉTHARRAM

Immediately after breakfast, we climbed the touching Way of the Cross that stretches up along the hillside, sustained by the rich meditations of Fr. Marie-Antoine, who made Bétharram a required stage of the pilgrimage to Lourdes when the Way of the Cross had not yet been erected:

« Pious pilgrims of Our Lady of Lourdes, would you be able to come participate in the joys and glories of Her Immaculate Conception without coming to Bétharram to participate in the humiliations and sufferings of Her Calvary! Would your pilgrimage be complete?

« The Immaculate Conception and Calvary cannot be separated. They hold together by mysterious bonds and form an indivisible whole in the divine plan. »

This is what St. Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort called « the secret of eternal Wisdom », the mystery of Redemption that is so well-represented by the legend of Bétharram, the story of the young girl who fell into the Gave and whom Our Lady saved by holding out a branch to her.

Fr. Marie-Antoine continues: « The name that the Mother of God wanted to bear here is enough to prove » this mysterious link that makes the Immaculate Conception and Calvary « an indivisible whole »:

« Bétharram means: beautiful branch, blessed branch. By her sin, Eve, offered humanity the cursed branch. By Her Immaculate Conception, Mary offers it the blessed branch. The one that She held out here to the little shepherd girl who had fallen into the abyss is its symbol. From the former, Eve picked the fruit of death; from the second, Mary picked the fruit of life. It is at Bétharram that She offers it to our souls. The tree that produces this blessed branch is the tree of the Cross; it is erected on the Calvary of Bétharram.

« The Immaculate Conception of Lourdes and the Calvary of Bétharram thus logically complement one another, and the well-manifested desire of the Heart of Mary is that they never be separated. The choice that She made of the Grotto of Lourdes related to the Calvary of Bétharram, the tears that She shed in the Grotto, amidst the smiles, and the three grand words: Penance! Penance! Penance! proclaim it most clearly. »

Here the holy Franciscan already announces the theme of the “Reparatory devotion” that Our Lady of Fatima would ask for in Pontevedra the following century:

« My child, Our Lady of Lourdes seems to say to the pious pilgrim […], if you wish to bring to the »Heart of your Mother the fullness of joy and to your heart the fullness of grace, come to Bétharram […]. I am waiting for you at the foot of the Cross. There, you are sure to find salvation. However much the torrent of iniquities seeks to sweep you along, and even if the abyss of Hell opens under your footsteps, do not fear; in Bétharram you will find the saving branch. Did the little shepherd girl whom the Gave swept away perish?

« This is how Mary speaks to the pious pilgrim of Lourdes. It is up to him to reply: “Yes, my Mother, I will go on the mountain of sorrow and the hill of incense. There, I will perfume my soul with the sweet fragrance of love”. »

Bétharram’s Way of the Cross thus unites the meditation of the Passion of Our Saviour with the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary. It ends at the chapel of the Resurrection, where we let our fervour manifest itself in the singing of our hymn “Victoire, le Roi paraît!” In this chapel reposes Fr. Auguste Etchécopar, the third successor of St. Michael Garicoits. Fr. Auguste’s body is conserved intact, which is a guarantee of a future beatification.

The Fathers had put themselves at our disposal for confessions at the beginning of the morning. At 11:30 a.m., in the beautiful chapel of the sanctuary, we sang the Mass, at the end of which Brother Bruno received the acts of allegiance to the Phalange of the Immaculate of several of our young pilgrims.