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SATURDAY 21 SEPTEMBER FUNERAL OF BROTHER HUGUES OF CHRIST THE KING
Our Father began by saying: «I am going there!». He had already made a move to stand up. Then he fell back into his chair: «If I go there, that will be the end of me…» His recent journey had exhausted him. Poor Father, who had held his son, his dear son, in his arms, on 11 September, embracing him before he caught the plane. He would have liked to have taken him into his arms once again before burying him himself. «If I go there, that will be the end of me…» For this departure of Brother Hugues of Christ the King for Heaven, is a death blow for him. And for each one of us. But it is a death that speaks of Resurrection, just as the death so cruel, so brutal and so sorrowful of Jesus on the evening of Holy Friday spoke of Resurrection… to the Heart of the Blessed Virgin, and Hers alone. For She alone had kept the faith. But we, my very dear brothers, we are more fortunate than the Apostles and the Holy Women, who wept like those who have no hope despite all the forewarnings Our Lord had given them, for we set great store by all the forewarnings given to the Church by the Blessed Virgin during Her last Marian apparitions. That is why we should not be surprised to see the vision of the Third Secret of Fatima being fulfilled, the vision that was revealed by John Paul II on 26 June 2000: «and in the same way there died one after another the Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people, men and women of different ranks and positions.» «In the same way», what does that mean? We are told that this procession of bishops, priests, men and women religious, lay people of different positions were climbing a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a large Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with its bark. At the head of the procession walked «a Bishop dressed in White», who the seers had the impression was the Holy Father. «Having reached the summit of the mountain, falling on his knees at the foot of the large Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious.» Our Brother Hugues did not die in this manner, although he undoubtedly belongs to this holy procession. But it is not said that all must die in this violent and sorrowful manner. However, note well the literal fulfilment of the prophecy which today we are made to see with our very own eyes: this burial of our Brother without a Mass and without a priest. The last scene of the Secret leaves us with this frightful vision of the consumption of the hierarchical Church: no more Pope, no more bishops, no more priests. Well! that is what we are figuratively experiencing today, my very dear brothers. I say figuratively, for we still have a Pope and bishops, and a parish priest who derives all his legitimate powers from them and who had even agreed to celebrate the funeral of Brother Hugues in our chapel. But the Bishop was against this. So it is as if there were no longer a priest, and we are like sheep without a shepherd. I will not attempt to explain to you the decision of your bishop: there is no explanation. Our Brother Hugues had not been excommunicated, as far as I know! But long ago the holy Doctors of the Church indicated to us what is to be done in such a case, for there is nothing new under the sun. Our founding Father explained this in a letter to his own bishop, immediately after the Council, as soon as he had begun to incur sanctions due to his opposition to the reform of the Church undertaken by Paul VI: «Saint Augustine soothes our anguish, strengthens our courage, enkindles even our hearts with a great ardour for the effort demanded of us, when he recalls, for example, the case of certain excommunicated persons, “those who, with a pious ardour, strive to advance in the ways of the spirit… They are not outside the Church even though, as a result of human perversity or some other necessity, they seem to be rejected. They are even in a better position to give proof of their attachment to the Church from the outside rather than from within, provided that they do not rise against her and that, on the contrary, they are firmly rooted through charity in the solid rock of unity.”» (De baptismo contra Donatistos, Book I, Chapter 17) Our Father continued to his bishop: «In rebellion against rebellion out of love for Christ and the Church, determined to pursue our criticism of the criticism that is corroding all our faith and defiling all our tradition, this is how we wish to remain faithful Roman Catholics, despite all opposition. And if you are hard-hearted enough to harbour resentment against us and to throw us outside, we would still have, for our consolation, the admirable recommendation of the great doctor of grace»… May those of you who are unfamiliar with our Community, and you journalists who are present, listen carefully to these words of Saint Augustine, Doctor and Father of the Church. They will find therein the explanation of the silence that we persist in opposing to the remarks of Mr Montreuil, published this morning in le Nouvelliste. «... “Divine Providence often permits even good men to be chased out of the Christian communion through the unruly activities of carnal men. If they bear this undeserved affront with great patience for the peace of the Church, if they do not foment any new heresy or schism, they teach the world with what true attachment and with what sincere love God must be served. Their desire is to re-enter the Church when the trouble has passed. If they are forbidden to do so, if the storm lasts, or if their return were to arouse a similar or even more violent storm, they continue to wish well even to those through whose machinations and intrigues they have been chased out. Without ever forming separate conventicles, they defend to the death and they confirm with their testimony the faith they know to be preached by the Catholic Church. Then the Father crowns them in secret, He who sees them in secret. Such men are rare, yet examples are not wanting: and they are even more numerous than might be thought.» (Saint Augustine, Liber de vera religione, 11) Our Father continued by applying these words of Saint Augustine to ourselves: «You are surprised and rightly so, Excellency and Father, that I dare to appropriate such words and to apply them to the immense family of my friends. On their behalf, I can answer for their faith and their charity, which keeps them rooted in the unity of the Church. «That is why, ever desirous of serving the Church and conscious of my personal indignity, I prostrate myself at Your feet, you who are the representative of Jesus Christ and the successor of the Apostles, in order to express to you my most filial and most humble respect.» (Letter to my Friends no 220, p. 9) That again is what our Brother Pierre did the day before yesterday, in his response to the bishop of Trois-Rivières. Moreover, Our Lady, in the Third Secret, gives us the example. She speaks neither of the Council, nor of Paul VI, nor of John Paul II, and that is why the integrists say that the Third Secret has been abridged, that it is not the complete text. They have not understood the Secret of Mary: this Mother of Mercy has received from Her Father and Our Father the ministry of compassion and not that of justice and vengeance. That is why She has no wish to be acquainted with the crime of apostasy committed by these Popes and this Council. She only wanted to show us the image of the true Priest, of the holy Bishop, Albino Luciani, the incomparable Patriarch of Venice who became Pope John Paul I. And the vision ends in this manner: «Beneath the two arms of the Cross, there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.» Outwardly our Brother Hugues died «in the same way» as John Paul I to whom he had such great devotion, as does all our Community: suddenly, early in the morning, without a sound, in the month of September. And prematurely, in the prime of life, at the moment when he was giving his full measure in the service of the Church. And we see him now approaching God for his private judgement, sprinkled with the blood of this martyred Pope, and with that of Father de Foucauld, our venerated Father, the model of our Community. The death of our Brother Hugues has made us realise in just a few days how unimportant so many things are, by making us suddenly remember, in the midst of our absorbing occupations, the thought of death. One of the articles in our Rule provides for that fateful day: «At their death, the Brothers will be buried in their religious habit, directly in the earth. Their tomb will remain without any distinction: a cross and the inscription of their name and their dates. Must not the Lord awaken them before long and judge them Himself? «May vanity not find a way to exercise itself in death.» We do not as yet have the dispensations required to permit the literal application of this article of our Rule, but it dictates the sentiments that must be ours today: «Must not the Lord awaken them before long and judge them Himself?» Such is our faith. A marvellous hope! At these words alone, the heart goes out towards him whom we weep over today, so certain are we of seeing him again – soon – more beautiful, more radiant, more glorious and smiling, for ever and ever and ever… And many things are brought back to their true value, many things of everyday life, many useless words… That is why I would like to remain silent. But I have something else to say. In Heaven, Brother Hugues has been received by John Paul I, by Father de Foucauld… And by a third saint: his own father, Bruno de Nantes, who also died suddenly, on 6 October 1966. For thirty-six years he has been awaiting his son, after having pointed out the way to him, him and his ten other children. I remember our Father's tears when he read the telegram: «Bruno passed away this morning», and last Friday… it was just the same! I felt that I had been taken thirty-six years back into the past, when I heard Brother Pierre saying to me on the phone with tears in his voice: «Brother Hugues passed away this morning.» And it all began again, like thirty-six years ago: on receipt of the telegram, «for a moment, I lost sight of the rest of the world, wrote our Father in 1966, no longer seeing anything other than the face, the beloved beautiful face of my young brother who had just died on the morning of his saint’s day, far away from me!» For us others, the experience was the same last Friday: «I threw myself upon the paths of sorrow [no, this time, that was not possible for our poor Father!]. At his side, I found those whom I love most in the world, a mother, a spouse in tears, and ten little orphans praying in the presence of “PAPA WHO WAS SO KIND AND WHO IS NOW IN HEAVEN”.» Today it is the same, but it is one of the little orphans who in his turn has left to rejoin his father in Paradise, while the others have become in their turn, one of them a religious, and the others fathers and mothers of a whole group of nephews and nieces who today weep over Uncle Hugues «WHO WAS SO KIND AND WHO IS NOW IN HEAVEN». How did the death of Bruno de Nantes happen? «Ah, with Gospel simplicity, continued our Father in his Letter. He got up one morning, in good form. For some while the alarming heart condition of two years earlier appeared to have become largely forgotten. He led the family in prayer and played with the children who, that morning, were on holiday. Around 11 o’clock, a neighbour picked a quarrel with him over some plum-tree shoots that were growing at the edge of a field. He was saddened by this and had immediately wanted to go and see the situation with a friend, a farmer whom he affectionately called “Pépé”. His wife accompanied them to the car; while starting the car, he said to her, half jokingly, half seriously, “What does PÉPÉ mean?… It means PRAYER-PENANCE!” A moment later, he fell gently to that ground which he had so greatly laboured over and so greatly loved.» If I recall these former events, my very dear Brothers, it is not only because things fell out in the same way for Brother Hugues from a medical point of view – same arrest of the heart –, but it is because these events relate to the same tragedy in the Church, even after forty years! Our Father wrote to his friends about his brother Bruno in 1966: «This brother, this friend, was one of our own. In full accord with us, he desired with all his soul that I pursue this struggle for the faith, with wisdom but with force and without intermission. On account of his children. That was his haunting concern. There was only one thing he feared for them, the depravation of their souls by modernist educators. Already he was gently correcting the slightest deviations of thought, even more so than minor disorders in behaviour.» What follows is so topical! Not only because Brother Hugues acted in the same way with your children, as though they were his own, but also because it is the answer to our concerns today, at a time when President G. Bush may well set the Middle East ablaze tomorrow by striking Iraq. I quote this account which dates, I repeat, from 1966: «The other evening, bringing his daughters back from school, he began to recite a decade of the rosary in the car. One of them, eight years old, who related this to us quite by chance, said to him: – The Sister said that we must pray for peace. – Yes, he replied. Well, we are going to pray for the conversion of sinners, because it is our sins that are the cause of war. If sinners convert, God will grant peace, otherwise not.” «He wanted to do more, and I must tell you this because of the immense debt that results from this sublime and weighty secret.» Our Father then relates how Bruno de Nantes offered himself as a victim for him, his priest brother, and for his combat… and also for his children, for one day he told me: «Monsieur Bonnet-Eymard, to do good for one’s children, one must be in Heaven.» On 6 October 1966, he departed for Heaven, in order to work «for Georges» and «for his children». He worked so well that today, thirty-six years later, the two causes are one and the same. His children and grandchildren are so well blended into the Phalange of the Immaculate, under the cheerful headship of their mother and grandmother, that Brother Hugues succeeded his father in an astonishing continuity of the merciful designs of the Heart of Jesus and Mary on this family, our family. On 25 August 1966, Mgr Le Couëdic fulminated the suspension, the infamous sanction which “suspended” our Father’s powers of jurisdiction, that is to say, the power to forgive sins and to celebrate the sacrament of marriage, a sanction which the bishop of Trois-Rivières has today, 21 September 2002, transformed into an excommunication and an interdict, that is to say into an interdiction to receive the sacraments for all of us, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, and friends of the Abbé de Nantes… Of course, this is erroneous and culpable from a canonical point of view. But let us try to understand, not the logic of his Excellency, but the will of God, the designs of God not only for the soul of our good Brother Hugues, but also for our own souls which have the grace and the privilege of uniting around his holy body, holy because it was sanctified by the sacraments of the Church throughout his entire life. That is something the bishop cannot efface… In order to understand this then, let us go back one last time to past events… In August 1966, our Father related, «happily, my brother Bruno was with me when I had to tell my mother of the terrible sanctions that were going to strike us, and already the press was bandying our name about in public. As I was leaving, he said to me: – What can we do? «And I recall having replied: – Nothing, other than to pray, and to console mama. «When one can no longer act, all that remains to do is to pray and suffer, that is the entire secret of the Gospel. PRAYER, PENANCE, the two words dear to the Virgin Mary, were still on his lips when death came to take him in the serenity of a wonderful autumn morning, on a feast day», his own saint’s feast day. Let us continue our parallel by revealing, with Brother Pierre’s permission, all our secrets. Do you know what Brother Hugues’ last words were? He spoke them on the evening of 12 September, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. I must explain that in the evening, the Brothers, if they have committed some fault during the day, go up to accuse themselves of it before their Brother Prior. This is an immemorial tradition in monastic life. It is called the “coulpe” or peccavi. A good monk likes to perform his coulpe, just as a child cannot go to bed without asking forgiveness for the foolish acts of the day. In the evening of 12 September, then, Brother Hugues went up to accuse himself «of not having pronounced the Holy Name of Mary often enough in his ejaculatory prayers», that is to say, in his heart, in the secrecy and spontaneity of his heart! Then he went upstairs to bed, in the great monastic silence. These, then, were his last words. But you may imagine that before he fell asleep, he multiplied his ejaculatory prayers, invoking the name of Mary in reparation for his “omissions” of the day! Then he fell asleep. And at the hour he was to rise to go to the chapel to make a holy hour, as he did early in the morning each Friday, it was his soul that was ejaculated from his body, in order to go to rest upon the Heart of Mary. What is extraordinary, my very dear brothers, and what must “edify” us today, i.e. do us good and make us leave this ceremony better than we came, is to see how this son has truly been reunited with his father in the Heart of the Blessed Virgin. Our Father said about his brother Bruno that he was «one of those ordinary Catholics who have so fully put into practice the law of the Lord that they attain, as though effortlessly, a kind of sanctity.» In re-reading these words, who today would not recognise our Brother Hugues? Once can truly say in this case: like father, like son! All those who knew him would agree. You, above all, dear Canadian friends who had adopted him as one of your own twenty years ago! For us, the Brothers and Sisters who had seen him put our monastic Rule so fully into practice, not effortlessly but by means of a constant effort over himself, it is so obvious that it is poignant! In the precise meaning of the word: what pricks my heart, what pierces it, is the thought of my laxness, my violations of the Rule and acts of negligence. Ah! yes, it is enough to make one weep… But also, what an opportunity for emulation! They are indeed fruitful tears if they incite us to conversion, to become saints, with the kindly assistance of this new intercessor, yesterday still so close to us, today with God, more prayerful and more powerful than yesterday, entirely dedicated to our combat! Amen! |
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« THOUGH DEAD, HE STILL SPEAKS. » Sermon given on the solemnity of the Holy Rosary, Sunday 6 October 2002, Feast of Saint Bruno.
Our Brothers from Maison Sainte-Thérère have written to us: «Our weeping has ceased, but not our astonishment. For there is no detail in all that our dear departed brother has left us that is not edifying and that does not serve as a lesson for us. Now our work and ordinary life have resumed their course, but should we take our minds off him for a single moment, everything very quickly brings him back to our memory. There is not a tree in our park that was not planted with his own hands, nor a corner of the house nor of the property which does not have, here and there, one of his inventions, his “patents”, as we used to call them. And was it not he who always found something to occupy the little brothers at a loose end and without work, who never missed an opportunity to raise our thoughts towards Heaven… or towards Maison Saint-Joseph?» That dear house! Along with Brother Pierre, he had made the great sacrifice of leaving it twenty years ago. In the plane that took them away, Brother Pierre, to raise their spirits, had said to him: «In any case, our Father did say that it was only a three month trial.» With surprisingly firm assurance Brother Hugues replied to him: «No, Brother, it is for ever!» As a child, he had heard this call, and he understood that the hour had come to respond to it. One day at Chônas, seated next to his little sister in the immense corridor of the castle, he was reading the life of Blessed Just de Bretenières, martyred in Korea, and he told his sister that the martyr had heard the Chinese calling to him from the bottom of the hole he had dug… And the little girl felt a pang in her heart. She said to herself: «Having taken my Papa, is the Good God going to take my brother as well?» Ultimately, it was not to China, but to Canada. On another day, at the school of La Péraudière, where he was a border, when a visiting Canadian priest spoke to the children about Canada and asked which of them would like to go there as a missionary, he raised his hand… Once in Canada, «for ever», he would nevertheless return to his dear Maison Saint-Joseph in order to pronounce his perpetual vows on 6 October 1986, sixteen years ago, having let himself be symbolically draped with a pall, a sign of death with Christ, in order to be buried with Him, so that he might rise with Him. He would also renew his acquaintance with Maison Saint-Joseph every year in the person of its founding Father and Prior and… his dear uncle, visiting his Maisons Saint-Georges and Sainte-Thérèse. «My last memory of him was during the visit of our Father, at the evening social gathering, a Canadian Phalangist writes to us. Brother Hugues was seated to the left of our Father. I remarked his beautifully angelic smile, full of affection when he looked at our Father. That touched me greatly. It seems to me that he must have had that very smile when he saw Jesus and Mary.» Brother Hugues was a knight of Christ the King, a crusader. When we opened his coffin to expose him in the choir of Maison Sainte-Thérèse’s chapel, he was magnificent! Clothed in his monastic cowl marked with the Heart and the Cross, armed with his crucifix and his rosary, he seemed to be carved in marble, like one of the recumbent figures at Saint Denis; his face had lost its cheerful and tender mobility, in order to assume a celestial majesty; he seemed to say: «I have fought the good fight to the end, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith… No, my Father did not deceive me!» We sat up with the corpse while a storm suddenly blew up around his funeral bier! The parish priest had agreed to celebrate the funeral Mass in the chapel of Maison Sainte-Thérèse, after having notified the bishopric of Trois-Rivières, in accordance with the kind welcome made to our Brothers by both the clergy and the population of Shawinigan since their arrival in June 1982. This decision was taken in the absence of Mgr Martin Veillette, the Bishop of Trois-Rivières. Upon his return, he became violently angry and forbade any priest in the diocese to give a Christian burial to our Brother. Brother Pierre then wrote him the following letter:
Our friends submitted with docility to the instructions of our Father, transmitted by Brother Pierre, not to discuss the bishop’s decision with anyone, be they journalists or otherwise, nor to reply to any provocation. Suppressing their indignation, they obeyed, with the sentiments expressed in this beautiful letter, chosen from amongst a hundred others:
But others, parishioners who do not belong to our community or to the Phalange of our friends but who had daily witnessed the evident virtues of a holy religious, were deeply scandalised and assailed the bishop’s house with telephone calls. The radio networks got involved, then the television, instigating a public debate, nationwide! It so happens that Mgr Veillette had recently opened up his cathedral to the funeral of a Hell’s Angel, assassinated by other «hell’s angels», his associates, who go by this name because they travel in groups on motorcycles, killing, raping, living from drug trafficking… “Angels” they may be! but angels from hell, buried with the bishop’s blessing! On the morning of the funeral, Saturday 25 September, the local paper, Le Nouvelliste, published the explanations of Mr Pierre Montreuil, the director of the Bureau of Social Communications of the Diocesan Pastoral Office: «The Catholic Counter-Reformation, which is a movement originating in France, denies the teachings of Vatican II. In particular its founder accuses Pope John Paul II of having killed his predecessor John Paul I. The Abbé Georges de Nantes also affirms that he has direct communications with the Virgin Mary. French parliamentarians describe the Catholic Counter-Reformation as a sect.» The spokesman added that he saw nothing «paradoxical in the fact of refusing a funeral to this truly religious man although the Church has no qualms about celebrating the sacraments for certain people like Hell’s Angels»: For «Hell’s Angels do not make it their primary objective to denounce the Catholic Church». There is no need for comment. Moreover, these were the journalist's last words: «The Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart have refused to comment on this whole affair.» One understands why! Indifferent to all this agitation, they were before the Blessed Sacrament, contemplating the beloved face of Brother Hugues, who said so much to them! As immobile as when he made his visit to the Blessed Sacrament, his eyes fixed on the door of the Tabernacle with the intensity of a Seer… His closed eyes, his lips of marble still spoke: of death, of judgement and of eternity where he had been the first to enter, like an elder brother. Our Father has often told us that a community
is not truly founded until one of its members has reached Heaven.
After that, everyone aspired to be the first to depart. Well! It is he who
bore the palm, it is our good Brother Hugues whom the Blessed Virgin
chose. There can be no doubt: “canonical recognition” is near… Does
not his holy death speak out in favour of our vocation of which it
is the fulfilment, after twenty-six years of religious life, twenty of
which were in missionary life, in daily obedience to the Rule
written by our Father, and the application of his teaching. Is this
not the sign of God’s blessing on our Father’s entire work and,
in particular, on the Order of the Little Brothers and Little
Sisters of the Sacred Heart, founded by him forty-four years ago? |
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Procession of the Little Brothers and Little
Sisters of the Sacred Heart, leaving the chapel of the new Maison
Sainte-Thérèse, ten years after the arrival of the first two
brothers, Pierre and Hugues, on 13 June 1982. Brother Hugues can be recognised by his height, next to Brother Pierre. In every situation, he could be seen standing a head taller than everyone else. On returning from the cemetery, at the social gathering where our little group met together, his absence was palpable, visible… |
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“A subitanea et improvisa morte, libera nos Domine!” From sudden and unprovided death, deliver us O Lord! With all his heart, Brother Hugues sang this invocation of the litanies, knowing however that «there are Christians whose great perfection makes them worthy of dying without a moment’s notice, without preparation» (THE BEST DEATH, English CRC no 72, March 1976). In fact, he prepared himself for this each day. By ending his letters with «One day less now separates us from Heaven», he ended up reaching his goal. Our Father has also said that our preparation for death must firstly manifest itself in a perpetual order in our affairs. Now, when examining the files of his office of sub-prior, what a surprise it was for Brothers Philippe and Gabriel to discover that Brother Hugues had placed all that was even vaguely related to the material organisation of our Maisons Sainte-Thérèse and Saint-Georges in an index with references to corresponding files… And in these files, there were precise notes providing meticulous procedures for each task to be carried out, how and when it was to be performed… He was, in fact, responsible for all the manual labour. Whenever something was needed or had to be repaired, Brother Pierre used to say: «Go speak to Brother Hugues about that!» Every Sunday, he prepared the list of work to be done during the week, after having inspected the houses and the “land” for the maintenance and regular upkeep of everything. Thus everyday life could begin again as before, better than before! From our new foundation in Heaven, Brother Hugues continues to attend to us and to our affairs, giving us the example of the observance of the three religious vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, the profession of which he had recently renewed on 9 September, at our Father’s hands. Everything that the Brothers over there relate about him superabundantly illustrates what our Father said about him on the day that he learned of his death: «He was a pure, pious, loving and charming child.» I carried out my own small investigations, a little like the devil’s advocate… not without a touch of suspicious jealousy… But I was only able to gather fioretti worthy of Saint Francis of Assisi whom he so loved. And this love was not in vain, for he truly imitated the Poverello: the personal effects he left behind can be fitted in a box. In work, he managed with what he had. The famous “inventions” of Brother Hugues! He unceasingly restrained our tendency to make manual labour more comfortable, recounts Brother Pierre. The young brothers could not always understand this, and this sometimes made the sparks fly. But Brother Pierre was there to declare Brother Hugues to be in the right, in the name of the spirit of our Father, but also to restrain him if he took things too far… And his hands were all worn and torn. That just made him laugh and he would say: «Anyhow, I don't feel anything!» He never threw anything away, as everything might come in useful. He used to put the tools away clean. And this was out of virtue, in a spirit of obedience and poverty. Whence that perpetual joy which he radiated, arising from devotedness, from service rendered in pain and great labour, in a perfect self-forgetfulness, which was a grace he received when our Father went into exile in 1996. Brother Hugues had become very penitent, more and more so, and even to excess, although always in obedience: «When one thinks of Jesus, of what He suffered, there are no limits», he used to say. One day, Brother Pierre explained to him the lessons of Saint Bonaventure that we read at the Matins of the Stigmata of Saint Francis. It was a ray of light, like his own transverberation. If one follows the account very closely, explains Brother Pierre, one can detect a certain contradiction between Saint Francis’ intention to climb Mount Alverne in order to do penance and suffer dryness there, and the abundance of consolations that he actually received there. Christ appeared to him in the guise of a crucified Seraphim, arousing in him an extreme joy mingled with a sorrowful compassion, so that he might understand «that it was not by the martyrdom of his flesh, but by the inflaming of his heart that he was to be transformed into a complete resemblance with Jesus Christ crucified». Thus Saint Francis would receive the stigmata, but this came about through his flights of seraphic love. It is the heart that must resemble Jesus. Jesus then grants us movements of compassion which make us like Himself, capable of suffering like Him, of dying like Him. Brother Hugues understood in his turn that it was not only a question of seeking corporal penance, but of burning with love. And on 13 September, on the morning of the eighty-fifth anniversary of the fifth apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, he was afflicted in his heart, with an invisible wound that carried him off to his King and Queen. This was our meditation before the body of our beloved Brother. From his well-earned repose, he seemed to be telling us to remain faithful to Uncle Georges until death, with the authority of an elder brother who has already crossed over… as a confessor of the faith. We must all recognise the secret of his sanctity, of which we are all jealous... his secret, which Brother Pierre shared with us: «Brother Hugues took to the letter all that our Father said to him.» May he go on, persevering in this attentive obedience, bringing his work to a successful conclusion and restoring everything in Christ the King, through the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. At last the hour arrived for closing the coffin and celebrating the funeral “without a priest” and therefore without Mass… We sang the antiphons of the Requiem Mass, and I presented, by way of a sermon, the portrait of the example left by our Brother Hugues of Christ the King, our elder brother and our model, the accomplished son of the saint of whom he was born. After having sang the absolution and the In Paradisum, we left the chapel and conducted our Brother to the cemetery in procession; the journey lasted five decades of the Rosary, which is the “Mass of the Blessed Virgin” according to the teaching of Sister Lucy, the seer of Fatima, a teaching happily taken up by our Father. The parish priest almost refused not only the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but even a place in the cemetery, which over there is administered by the parish. But the funeral director played the part of Joseph of Arimathea and took everything in hand. After the funeral, he said to Brother Pierre: «This young man was a saint. I am not the best of Catholics, but I am not blind. One has only to see what is taking place around his body: one reads of such things in the Lives of the Saints. At any rate, I have not seen such a beautiful ceremony for a long time.» As for the gravedigger, he said: «It is shabby what has happened to you! I am on your side. Just the fact that you don't reply to the calumnies shows which of the two sides has a clear conscience. In the future, I will do as you.» Brother Pierre writes to us that the doctors do not know how to explain the sudden death of our Brother, for his heart was good and sound. That will reassure the brothers and sisters of his family. But I think that I have finally discovered the correct diagnosis. In a letter addressed to Brother Louis-Joseph last 4 February, on the feast of Saint Veronica, Brother Hugues wrote, quoting Saint Edme: «Lord Jesus, grant that I may die athirst with a desire to see Thy Face.» That is what ailed his heart! May we all be struck with this same malady on the day of our death! Amen! Brother Bruno of Jesus |