The Archbishop of Tours.

“Our Lord revealed to me that He charged me with the care of France; that He would send me as His ambassadress to make a treaty of peace.” (Words of the Sister.)

… With regard to the communications themselves, he was so much impressed, that he did not hesitate to let it appear in his pastoral for the ensuing Lent of 1844, from which we extract the following, relative to the profanation of the Lord’s Day.

“Have the work-shops been closed? Has manual labour been suspended on the Lord’s Day? Show me the street or the thoroughfare of the city in which the noise of commerce has for one instant been interrupted! Everywhere the same clamour resounds, the same agitation, the same commotion sways the multitude as on week days. The children of men pursue their avocations with the same ardour as on the days assigned to labour. Here we behold them erecting stupendous edifices which the hand of God refuses to bless; there, exposing the produce of their industry, pursuing their speculations, their negotiations, their insatiable craving for wealth, for power, for honour.

“Look at our villages, pass on to our hamlets, what do we behold? The forgetfulness of God which necessarily follows in the train of profanation, and the countless other disorders, nonetheless deplorable. Yet the most diabolical of all these outrages committed against the majesty of God, is the shameful desecration of the Sundays and holy days. One part of the day is consecrated to business; the other, to pleasure; forbidden labour being always followed by disorderly pleasure. Servile occupation is succeeded by intemperance and immorality.”

Still enumerating the consequences of this profanation, the prelate continues. “On the one hand, we behold open revolts and scandalous outrages committed against the divinity of God; on the other, lukewarmness, nay more, total indifference in the fulfilment of duty. These provoke the wrath of the Most High, whose justice, though patient and long-suffering, is, nevertheless, inevitable; whose vengeance, though tardy, is certain. For God has no need to punish day by day. His power is eternal and not to be confounded with the justice of man, intimidated by the number of the guilty, and which, beholding the multitude to be punished, lets the sword fall powerless from its hand. It is not thus when God wishes to punish, it is not the number of the guilty which arrests His hand; He then counts but the just, and when these have disappeared from the face of the earth, His arm falls mercilessly.”

The venerable Archbishop was not satisfied with this appeal, addressed officially to his flock. On the 15th of March, he authorised in his diocese the association already founded at Notre-Dame de la Riche for the reparation of blasphemy. The pastor, Father Alleron, in establishing this society in his parish, had availed himself of the power conceded by the Pontifical brief of August 8th, 1843 (of which mention has already been made).

Permission had been granted to the sister, at her own request, to write to the Archbishop.

… to be continued…

Excerpt taken from: The Holy Face and the Work of Reparation, by Sr Marie de St Pierre, & Abbè P. Janvier (ed.), (1884), reprinted in 2026 by A.D. Press.