Venerable Francis-Mary-Paul Libermann

"I cannot sufficiently admire the wonderful change that took place in me at the moment the water of baptism flowed over my forehead. I truly became a new man. All my uncertainties, my fears, suddenly fell away. The ecclesiastical habit, for which I still felt something of that extraordinary repugnance which is peculiar to the Jewish nation, no longer appeared to me in the same light; I loved it rather than feared it. But above all, I felt an invincible courage and strength to practice the Christian law. I felt a sweet affection for everything that had to do with my new belief. I spent a year in that college, practicing my religion with a good heart and with joy. I was not, however, as at ease there as I was to be later at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice.

"It was in November 1827 that M. Drach came to present me at Saint-Sulpice. The retreat was already over; M. Drach began by making known the fears he had regarding my health; he apprehended that the community's rising time might be too early for me. The good M. Garnier replied bluntly that, in that case, one should not come to the seminary. Furthermore, my introducer added that I knew Hebrew perfectly, but that I was much less strong in Latin. 'The theology courses are given in Latin and not in Hebrew,' the superior replied rather sharply. These two answers gave me some fear, yet they did not discourage me. I would have occasion to experience later that a great kindness of heart was hidden under this apparent rigidity.

"My entry into the seminary of Saint-Sulpice was for my soul a time of blessing and joy. They gave me as an angel (or monitor) the Abbé Georges, today Bishop of Périgueux. The great charity with which he fulfilled his function confounded me by making me love more and more a religion that inspires such sweet and wonderful sentiments. And then that silence which is so well kept in the seminary, that interior recollection which can be read on all faces, and which is like the special character of those who inhabited this holy house; all this did me the greatest good. I felt I was in a new element; I breathed with ease. Only one thing was missing for me in those beginnings, which is that I was completely ignorant of the way to make mental prayer. Whatever M. Garnier had said at first, he allowed me to get up after the others: and I thus found myself deprived of the repetitions and explanations of mental prayer that are done on Saturday mornings. Not being able to do better, I took my manual in my hands, and I made my mental prayer by producing successively all the acts that the method indicates. This exercise, so painful in appearance, was made pleasant to me by the unction of grace, and it was very salutary for me."

Grace alone could give him the courage to leave everything like this for Jesus Christ. His father, after having used all means of persuasion to stop this son, the object of so many hopes, had vomited a thousand curses against him and as many blasphemies against our holy religion. Pious ladies had to provide for the maintenance of this voluntary orphan. This total abandonment to God was necessary to prepare him to evangelize abandoned souls later on. His greatest pain was to see, in the new light that had flooded him since his baptism, the darkness in which his father was buried. He burned with the greatest zeal for the salvation and perfection of all those who were united to him by the bonds of blood, as can be seen by his correspondence, which is full of evangelical unction and breathes a perfume of faith and love. This apostolate, which he exercised with such zeal in his family, was not sterile; a nephew and four nieces consecrated themselves to the Lord. As for him, it seemed that his existence was assured: a very evident vocation was calling him to the ecclesiastical state. To reach this goal, he encountered a seminary and directors he would have chosen by preference.

During the first years of the seminary, God filled him with interior consolations. A sensible grace, which was granted to him to an eminent degree, the gift of tears, betrayed, in spite of himself, this dew of heaven that penetrated his soul. During the hours of more intimate communication with God, during mental prayer, before the Blessed Sacrament, at the moment of communion, he seemed to melt under the breath of the Holy Spirit. Standing or kneeling, his face motionless, and his face turned toward heaven, he could not detach his eyes, full of delicious tears, from an object so sweet to contemplate.

These first delights, which are like the milk of the spiritual life, soon gave way to other, more solid nourishment, we mean that of interior desolations. A director having one day met him overwhelmed under the weight of his sorrows, encouraged him by the memory of the Saints and by the example of Saint Vincent de Paul: "Alas!" he replied, "Saint Vincent de Paul could at least make mental prayer!" How long did he have to endure this trial? It is not usually of very long duration. For him, for the apostle of abandoned souls and the great master of spiritual renunciation, it lasted five years. That was not enough; God was preparing another way to crucify him, to accomplish in him the work of grace. At the moment when he was about to take the first step that was to separate him from the world and consecrate him irrevocably to the service of the God who was to gladden his youth, he saw the crown of the priesthood escape him. He was seized by attacks of epilepsy; this humiliating infirmity, which common language calls the "high disease," began precisely at the age when it most often becomes incurable. The violent seizures, called the "grand mal," were more or less spaced out; but all the nuances of what is called the "petit mal" recurred very frequently. The crises followed one another rapidly in the first years; they could only weaken later because the illness seemed to find no more resistance in an exhausted body. Such was his fatigue that the poor patient could barely stand during communion; he heard Holy Mass, sitting apart, in a small chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph, to whom he had a particularly affectionate devotion all his life. He did not always have the strength to assist the celebrant at the altar; but he prayed with his angelic peace, and even with tears, which must be attributed less to the excess of suffering than to the outpouring of a soul wounded by love.

He was seen as if struggling with attacks that seemed to yield to the energy of his prayer: he continued it all the more ardently as the agony was closer and lasted longer. This ardor radiated on his tormented face, especially at the moment of communion; often the priest, who gave him the bread of the strong, felt urged to unite himself to the dispositions of this failing victim. He visibly overcame the nascent crises, even outside of holy ceremonies, by a special gift and by the energy of his will. A pious lady addressed a few words to him at the moment when slight symptoms began to alter his face. He noticed that this lady was going to suffer as much as he; he raised his eyes to heaven, saying: "Lord, have pity on your servant!" He pronounced these words with such a vivid feeling of resignation and faith that God heard him, and replaced the storm with an increase of peace and joy, which allowed the conversation to continue with great consolation on both sides.

One day the doctor, after having assisted him in the most frightful convulsions, exclaimed, as soon as he had set foot outside the infirmary: "What is this M. Libermann?" The nurse only half understood this question: "I know," continues the doctor, "what ravages such crises produce in all the senses and in the deepest part of the soul: I found M. Libermann calm and almost happy; he i M. Libermann Founder of the Congregation of the Holy Heart of Mary. s therefore an angel or a saint." Indeed, grace and heroic courage alone could triumph over the dark desolation, the ordinary result of this illness: he sometimes felt such a deep disgust for life, the temptation to take his own life was so strong, he distrusted himself so much in the midst of such great danger, that he kept no sharp instrument on him or in his room: "I can barely cross a bridge," he confessed one day out of necessity, "without the thought of throwing myself into the water coming to me, to end my sufferings; but the sight of my Jesus sustains me and makes me patient." Finally, where one must admire the wonderful conduct of Providence is that, in the midst of this horrible infirmity which leads to mania, to dementia, Libermann became a proven director of souls, a master of the spiritual life; he drew from it that detachment from sensible things, that horror of degraded nature which made him look upon himself as a beggar, a miserable man, a madman, rotten flesh, an object of horror and disgust, etc.; for these are the terms he constantly used, following the example of the Saints, to speak of himself. His illness seemed to him an image of the wounds of sin: this desolation of body and soul, he called it the tomb of Lazarus, which he described so well in his Commentary on Saint John. It was there that he waited with patience, with confidence, for long years, for the good Jesus, his friend, to come and visit him. On July 8, 1830, writing to his brother, he tells him without restraint the state of his health, tells him that he is renouncing the consolation of Holy Orders: "There," he continues, "is something very distressing, desolate, unbearable! Surely that would be the language of a child of the century, who seeks his happiness only in the goods of this world, and who acts as if there were no God for him; but that is not how the children of God, the true Christians, act: they are content with everything their heavenly Father gives them, because they know that everything He gives them is good and useful, and that, if it happened otherwise, it would be a real misfortune for them; for all the evils that God seems to send us are real goods. And woe to the Christian to whom everything goes according to his will! He is not filled with the favors of his God. So, my dear friends, I can assure you that my dear illness is for me a great treasure, preferable to all the goods that the world offers to its lovers, since these so-called goods are only mud and misery in the eyes of a true child of God, and can only distance him from his Father who is in heaven. And I hope that, if Our Lord continues to me the grace He has given me until now, and which I do not deserve at all, I will lead a perfectly poor life and one solely employed in His service; and then I will be richer than if I possessed the whole world. And I defy the world to find me a man happier than that! For who is richer than he who wants to have nothing? Who is happier than he whose desires are fulfilled? And why afflict yourselves on my account? Do you think I will die of hunger? Oh! my God, the Lord provides for the birds of the field, and will He not find a way to feed me too? He loves me more than the birds of the field.

"But, you will say, if I were a priest, I could have a position and help my family. No, my dear friends, it will not be so: my body, my soul, and my whole existence are in God, and if I knew that there were still a little vein in me that was not His, I would tear it out and trample it underfoot, in the mud and the dust! Whether I am a priest or not, whether I am a millionaire or a beggar, everything I am and everything I possess is God's, and no one else's; and I beg you not to demand that I act otherwise, for it would be unjust on your part and useless; the bonds of charity that bind me and attach me to my Lord Jesus Christ are too strong for you to be able to break them, even supposing you wanted to (which I do not think at all), provided, however, that it pleases the Lord to continue His kindnesses to me, which I certainly do not deserve."

Under the newly constructed cloisters of the Paris seminary, there met an elite of prelates who are currently edifying the people, a nursery of vocations destined to adorn most religious congregations, a crowd of apostles ready to become in great numbers, on distant shores, confessors and martyrs of the faith: in the presence of these fellow students and masters worthy of such a generation of Levites, the young Libermann, by taste and by choice, would have chosen the most obscure role, had not circumstances made it a necessity for him. If he was already in the plans of God, and if he gradually became an apostle of the seminary, he was first and always, and in all the simplicity of the word, a good seminarian. "For five years," he wrote to a friend, "I repeat it to you, I judged nothing, I examined nothing." He therefore passed between his fathers and his brothers, eyes closed, despite the extraordinary lights that illuminated his soul. If something informed him, instructed him, inspired him, he made it his profit. If a trait edified him less, he profited from it still, to do better and humble himself more. If he had to give an opinion, he gave it and moved on. And yet, he did not hesitate or recoil before any good work, any thought of zeal and edification.

This measure and this reserve towards his neighbor, he knew how to keep, which is much more difficult, towards himself. He did not judge himself, he did not submit himself to his own examination, in the sense that while watching over all his interior with the most scrupulous attention, he did not submit the operations of God on his soul to his own mind. He referred them to his director, and was content to pray until tears came, so that God might enlighten him, and through him spread His light in his ways. He remained for more than ten years without wishing to scrutinize, despite the slightly divergent explanations of his directors, an extraordinary fact, which, instead of troubling his modest peace and exalting his imagination, only strengthened him in his humble distrust of himself. In the year 1831, at the feast that the seminary specifically dedicates to the priesthood of Our Lord, he was meditating in the chapel, during high mass, on the mystery of the day, while no doubt renewing the humble confession of his unworthiness. As if to answer his thoughts, the divine Master, by a sensible and distinct vision, deigned to show Himself to him as supreme Pontiff. He saw Him, His hands full of lights and graces, and, as if arranged around Him, all his brothers from the seminary. It seemed to him that He was walking through the ranks, giving each one a share of His largesse, and excepting only him alone, at the same time that He seemed to offer him his brothers, and as if to place at his disposal the treasure distributed to all. The vision finished, he spoke of it shortly after to his director, with his accustomed peace. Of the various explanations that could be presented, he accepted only one, the one that placed him in the last rank. He knew such complex situations in the spiritual life that not only did his directors hesitate, but even the most skillful masters of spirituality found themselves at a loss. And yet, in the eyes of his fellow students, who saw the frightful trials from the outside, as in the eyes of his directors who penetrated within the veil of his soul, by the unanimous admission of all, he was always in docility, calm, and peace, to the point of often drawing from his brothers, enraptured, this exclamation: "How happy he is!"

Despite the good odor that so many virtues spread in the Saint-Sulpice seminary, the revolution of 1830 having diminished the resources of this house, it was resolved to exclude a subject who was visibly and indefinitely irregular; in making this painful communication to this poor seminarian, he was asked with affectionate anxiety what he was going to become: "I cannot return to the world," he said, "God, I hope, will be willing to provide for my fate." This answer touched the children of M. Olier so much that they took a second and generous decision so that Libermann would move to the house of Issy, and remain there at the expense of the Company as long as it pleased God. There, being neither a student nor a director, he thought himself a burden, he looked upon himself as a laborer, he asked for the most humble offices, both inside and outside. He was for a time reduced, so much did his strength betray him, to having almost no other occupation than that of brushing the trees and cleaning the wood of the arbors. Who could have seen in him the chosen one of God, destined to revive the fervor of the three houses of Paris, Issy, and the Solitude? This is, however, what he undertook; he first addressed himself to the simplest souls, to some good servants, whom he found gathered during free hours in the porter's lodge: his apostolate soon extended to the infirmary.

After the sick, he lavished the most ingenious cares of his charity on the newcomers. If a seminarian arrived, he helped him carry his trunks, led him to his room, swept it, made his bed, often on the sly, so that, returning in the evening, the newcomer would have the surprise of finding everything in order. An angel, that was the usual word, had passed by there. He understood the importance of giving, early on, the best habits to the new ones. He noticed that one of them, of extreme vivacity, would leave abruptly at the first call and run at full speed, until he lost his breath; without addressing any advice or reproach to him, he would find himself at the right moment in his path and would advance facing him with a very marked gravity; then, he would go to share his work, doing very calmly before him what he had just done very precipitately; he was called, and even as if for something urgent: he would nonetheless finish peacefully what he had started, then leave without trouble, even after a second call, at the risk of scandalizing the petulant seminarian, who finally noticed the lesson and did not forget it.

At Issy, profane sciences had taken precedence over sacred sciences; let one judge if there should not have been in this athenaeum something of the stir of the Areopagus when the new Paul came to speak of his doctrine, perhaps unknown to many. "You wish," he said, "to know what to think of study? The priest must possess two things: science and holiness. It is certain that the first, the principal, the most important, is holiness; for the highest theological science cannot save a soul without grace. The Holy Spirit alone gives grace, and more abundantly to a holy priest, of ordinary and sufficient science, than to one who has only mediocre piety, with much theology. However, one must not despise science; it too is necessary, although secondarily: one must have it in a sufficient degree. Let us distinguish three kinds of science: the first is purely natural, and acquired with all the ardor and contention of the mind, counting only on one's own strength; this science is sterile and unworthy of a priest. The second is purely supernatural, and is acquired only in contemplation; given only to a small number, it has always been rare in the Church. The third could be called mixed; it is to this one that all seminarians must apply themselves. To obtain it, one must, being moved by a supernatural principle, as by the motive of pleasing God, and of doing His holy will, seriously apply one's natural faculties to the study of science, in a spirit of recollection and love of God full of confidence in Him alone. One must avoid at the same time that natural laziness and cowardice that lead us to rest, and the disgust that serious application can inspire; beware of too pronounced a taste, of the passion for study: renounce oneself, by humbling oneself before God, by setting aside at once the vain complacency that applauds success and the discouragement of impatience. It is above all very important to work in recollection; for otherwise "our mind gradually takes the habit of acting by itself, independently of God, and that is a true evil. But the most serious inconvenience is that our mind takes on an extraordinary natural activity, which makes it incapable of flexibility and docility to divine lights: which harms the things of God greatly, and can become a terrible obstacle to prayer, to the knowledge of oneself and of souls, and of the action of grace in them."

These are the beautiful maxims that he wanted to make reign: obeying no doubt a superior impulse, he addressed himself to the very one who had brought with him from the world into the seminary the whole procession of sciences, the famous Pinault, whose faith was well known to him. He dared to explain his plan to him: to revive the fervor of the two seminaries through that of Issy; to take as auxiliaries and instruments, not the Pinault Professor at Issy and director of the Œuvre des bandes. most skillful nor the most influential, but the most fervent: through them, to put in honor the spirit of pure faith, and to propagate the work of clerical perfection, not only by passing words, isolated examples, efforts behind closed doors, in a small circle of unknown and timid zealots; but highly, frankly, by a majority of Issyens of good will, who, under the influence of a director, would set the pace for the seminary of philosophers, which in its turn would react on that of Paris, and through this one on all of France. The professor understood and promised his support. The first superiors approved. The work of the bands began; thus was named this association of fervent ones and zealots, which, for four years, had for its director M. Pinault and for its soul the pious Libermann.

"He had a particular grace," said one of them, "for directing souls and making them advance in perfection. Those who tended strongly toward God found themselves attracted to him as if invincibly. He was a center where all those who sincerely sought to sanctify themselves ended up." Another adds: "One cannot say what good M. Libermann did us; his cheerful and easy way of treating the truths of religion attracted one to him; his goodness won hearts; his sincere zeal and his air so penetrated went to the bottom of souls... It was enough to cast a glance at M. Libermann to strike down a temptation, revive cowardice, calm the most agitated soul, make recollection succeed dissipation. I have often experienced it, by looking at him even from afar, and my confreres have told me many times of similar impressions. The most ardent among the seminarians, those who had had the most contact with the world, were those to whom he attached himself by preference, and whom, often after great resistance, he won over the best and carried the furthest in virtue. I saw one, who was considered to have been one of the liveliest and proudest, never raise his eyes a single instant in the refectory, during the two years that I observed him with care, being placed opposite him. God had given M. Libermann great and sure lights concerning souls, the interior ways and the operations of grace. In an instant, he had known a soul thoroughly; it even seemed he had known it in advance, and one doubted if it were not a sort of inspiration. I have had, thank God, very good directors in my life, men of great reputation; but I can assure you that no one has ever known me as well as M. Libermann. From the first interview, going straight to the bottom of my character and my needs, he immediately pointed out to me the regimen to follow and the remedies to employ, making me notice the connection and the scope of a crowd of things that I had barely glimpsed until then myself. I found in him the same lucidity and sureness of glance, when I had to study and determine my subsequent vocation. No one has more clearly unfolded the present and the future to me, and more completely fixed me on this point so delicate and so important. It is for this that our directors often sent us to him, as mine did on this occasion. They themselves said loudly that they had advanced much, through the conversations of M. Libermann, in the knowledge of spiritual things."

He gave everyone rules and advice worthy of the greatest masters of the spiritual life. By thus sanctifying himself, and by sanctifying others through his words and examples, God was preparing the Congregation of which he was to be the founder: it already existed around him without his knowledge. Frédér ic Le Vavasseur, born Frédéric Le Vavasseur Co-founder born on Bourbon Island. on Bourbon Island in 1811, entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice around 1836; admitted among the philosophers of Issy, he was received and introduced by Fr. Libermann, who served as his friend, angel, and mentor. He repaid him with a prompt return and was soon one of his most useful auxiliaries in pious meetings. His first and main trial was an extreme difficulty in adapting his mind, tired and until then solely exercised in the combinations of exact sciences, to theological studies. The difficulty increased for eighteen months, due to the decline of his health, to the point that he did not hesitate to say that, barring a miracle, he could not continue his studies.

This was much the same case as one of his fellow students, Mr. Tisserand, who, with him and Fr. Libermann, was to form something like the triumvirate of the founders of a new congregation. Having entered the seminary of Issy shortly before, Eugène-Nicolas T Eugène-Nicolas Tisserand Co-founder of Creole origin. isserand had gone through the first philosophy courses no less painfully, to the point that, deemed incapable and refused for the tonsure, he had been deprived, by decree of the archiepiscopal council, of the scholarship that had been allocated to him. In dismissing him, his director recommended that he, for the honor of the Church and in the interest of his soul, renounce the ecclesiastical state. He retired to a Trappist monastery; after a few months, his impaired health forced him to abandon this retreat. He reappeared at Issy and obtained, with great difficulty, ten days of hospitality. At the end of this time, contrary to his expectations, he was allowed to resume his former place. He had been occupying it for two months when Le Vavasseur entered the same seminary. Mr. Tisserand was born to a Creole mother and was a descendant of a former governor of Saint-Domingue, whose name had remained famous; without having consulted with his new friend, he was no less preoccupied than he with the salvation of the Negroes. Only, all his thoughts were fixed on the slaves of Saint-Domingue, his maternal homeland.

The two seminarians, of Creole blood, thus felt the same secret aspiration, and they had the same confidence in Father Libermann. Such is indeed the obscure origin of the work that would later be called the Congregation of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Heart of Mary. Two seminarians, one rejected from the clergy as incapable, the other despairing of being able to complete his studies, both having to rely, for their main chance of success, on an acolyte excluded for ten years from Holy Orders and struck by an ordinarily incurable disease: on this triple foundation God would build His edifice.

Everything that, in the life of Father Libermann, according to human foresight, seems to distance him from the goal, is the direct path in the views of Providence. Thus, Father Louis, wishing to revive the congregation of the Eudists, turned to Saint-Sulpice to have an auxiliary who would help him especially in the direction of the novitiate. Father Libermann, designated by Mr. Mollevaut, consented to break all the ties he had formed with his many friends, to devote himself to this distant and unknown work. God wanted to prepare him for the trials of a nascent Congregation through the most painful trials of a restored Congregation. Does it not seem that the servant of God was tracing three years in advance the history of the first tribulations of his future Congregation, when he wrote these lines from Rennes, where his apostolate, until then everywhere crowned with success, was stopped at the Eudist novitiate by obstacles he never wanted to fully disclose: "We are poor, small, ignored, and even despised, not only the body in general, but each member who is part of it. This," he continues, "always happens in the beginnings of Congregations: one is treated a bit like adventurers who want to try an enterprise, for lack of finding better. We are without a name, without protection, and obliged, in every encounter, to lower ourselves, to put ourselves below all those with whom we have to deal, to receive the pains, the insults, and the injustices, not only without resisting, but even in silence, and like a poor man trampled by a more powerful one, and who fears to resist him for fear of being crushed by him. Difficulties everywhere, both in general and in particular, and within and without, from men and from demons."

However, Mr. Le Vavasseur made the trip to Rennes in 1838 and discussed, for the first time, the apostolate of the blacks with Father Libermann. Upon returning to Paris, he, in concert with Mr. Tisserand, had this holy work recommended to the prayers of the archconfraternity of Our Lady of Victories, and, encouraged by Mr. Pinault, he wrote to his friend to consult him again. He informs him that God has inspired this same design of evangelizing the blacks to Messrs. de la Brunière, Senez, Tisserand, etc.: "Perhaps also two or three at Issy would certainly embrace it with all their soul. See before the good God what good there may be in all this. For a thousand times death, rather than desiring or thinking anything outside of this divine will. You see well all the difficulties of such a work, but difficulties are what God rewards. The whole question is to know if He wills it." In his response, Father Libermann advises him to humble himself before God, to abandon his soul to the impressions of grace, and to execute his project with constancy despite all obstacles.

For him, ready to devote himself entirely to this work, he awaited only a manifestation of the will of God. He saw one in the ardent, though wise, desire that came to him to make the journey to Rome. He Rome Birthplace of Maximian. immediately obeyed this heavenly order, and he left Rennes, his heart torn by the touching entreaties of Father Louis, superior of the Eudists, who wanted to hold him back; he went to Lyon by way of Paris, where Mr. Pinault, his director, strengthened him in his design, while another person of high virtue, and in whom he had confidence, contradicted him and treated him as imprudent. At Notre-Dame de Fourvières, his attire and his appearance as a suffering, poor traveler caused him to be refused the honor of being an altar server, an honor he had humbly requested in order to approach closer to the blessed image. The superior of a religious Congregation, whom he went to consult, began to laugh out loud as soon as he heard him speak of his project. He then resolved to abandon himself blindly to the guidance of God, and to speak of the views of Providence regarding him only at the time, in the place, and to the persons that this same Providence would designate to him.

Mr. de La Brunière, who had accompanied him to Rome, separated from him. After two months, he was therefore left alone, in the most complete abandonment, at the mercy of the attacks of his cruel illness, delivered to the sufferings of the most extreme poverty, without bread, without clothes, without friends. It was then that he was in all his power, like Saint Paul, because he was in all the weakness of which human nature is capable. God, who does not want one to attribute His works to the power of men, only begins to manifest His own when theirs is entirely absent.

"The difficulties are great," he wrote, "and will perhaps become even greater in the future. But I do not understand how a man who has a small grain of faith can object to this. If one were to undertake in the Church only easy things, what would it have become? Saint Peter and Saint John would have continued their fishing on the Lake of Tiberias, and Saint Paul would not have left Jerusalem. I conceive that a man who thinks he is something, and who counts on his own strength, can stop before an obstacle: but when one counts only on our adorable Master, what difficulty can one fear? One only stops when one is at the foot of the wall. One then waits with patience for an opening to appear; then one continues one's march, as if nothing had been."

French ecclesiastics, vaguely informed of his design, sought only to demonstrate its absurdity to him: one of them, a penitentiary of Saint Peter's in Rome, then very powerful, gave him the most mortifying reception. The Eudists tried to cure him of what they called his pretension of being a founder. "Are you thinking," he was told, "of wanting to found an association, being in such a miserable state?" He replied by asking what Saint Ignatius possessed when he laid the foundations of his Institute. "He had only a sack and his discipline, and see where his Company is now. Is Providence not the same today? Counting on it, I am rich enough."

He finally addressed one of the holiest priests in Italy, conjuring him not to refuse him his prayers and advice: the holy man received him coldly, listened to him with distraction, turned his head as soon as he had finished, and, for his only answer, stood up and left him abruptly. He wrote a letter to the ecstatics of the Tyrol, whom he had been advised to consult: it remained unanswered. Finally, he asked to be introduced to Msgr. Cadolini, secretary of the Propaganda, and handed him a memorandum to consult; he counted so little on a favorable result that he neglected to give his address to receive, if necessary, a reply. He traced at the end of this memorandum the present situation of the work with an ingenuousness well suited to compromise it: "They are eight or nine decided to devote themselves to it, but they are without asylum, none of them is a priest; the petitioner, thirty-five years old, has not been able to be promoted to Holy Orders, stopped by the irregularity of an illness which, for nine years, it is true, has always been diminishing, and which, for two years, has not had an attack." While awaiting the success of this step, the Servant of God undertook a combat that was to make him triumph over all his enemies at once: it was to conquer himself first, through humiliation in all its forms, through his poverty pushed to the destitution of a beggar, through the mortification imprinted on his whole body, which he chastised severely following the example of the great Apostle. He added to this an ardent and continuous prayer, a charity that applied itself to all the works that his indigence allowed him, the visit to hospitals and prisons, the catechism of poor children, the pilgrimage to the holy Roman basilicas and to the cemeteries of the martyrs.

He had for shelter, in an honest and pious house, on the fourth floor, a small attic, with no ceiling other than the beams, whose steep slope did not allow one to stand upright, except at the entrance. He was happy to rent this lodging which he had to share with pigeons; furthermore, as there were two compartments, he took the most miserable one, and, for furnishings, he placed there a chair, a table, a straw mattress spread on the floor, a single blanket; a stone served as a pillow. He lived in the greatest poverty, poorly fed, poorly clothed, often not having enough to pay for the postage of letters that numerous young French men addressed to him to consult him. It happened more than once that he went to receive, mingled with the indigent, the soup distributed in the evening at the door of certain convents. Never was he heard to complain of either the cold or the heat, although in winter he slept on the hard floor and as if in the open air, and in summer under a burning roof and in a steam room. Nevertheless, his cruel illness does not seem to have visited him once; but he experienced violent migraines, almost continuous fevers, and, sometimes, a general boiling of the blood and humors, which erupted in boils and other skin diseases, and this dovecote was nonetheless the sanctuary where he spent, alone with God and under the gaze of the holy angels, his happiest hours: it was there that his conversations with heaven were not troubled by the earth; it was there that he wrote his Commentaries on Saint John; it was there that he drafted the Constitutions of a Congregation that the most indulgent friend would have regarded as impossible; not only did he think of the Rules, but he accompanied them with glosses and commentaries.

At first, he found himself in great perplexity: the attraction to set to work was becoming more and more vivid, and yet a first thought stubbornly refused his pen as soon as he began. He took up and left this task several times, to the point of asking himself if he should not renounce everything, to occupy himself solely with the care of his soul, until he was inspired to have recourse to and to consecrate his work to the holy heart of Mary. He wrote these first lines, which serve as a frontispiece to the Rules of the new Congregation and which will remain his motto forever: All to the very great glory of our heavenly Father, in Jesus Christ our Lord, by the divine Spirit, and in union with the most holy heart of Mary.

Now, it happened that, from the moment this vivid and penetrating thought came to him, and he had yielded to the impulse of grace that pressed him, as a master inspiration of his soul, to vow his work to the most holy heart of Mary, all the difficulties disappeared for him. By contemplating first this heart, sanctuary of all virtues, he felt moved to invoke and honor it, as a model of the apostolic life, and as he united himself, while writing, to the interior dispositions and sentiments of this heart towards God, Mary favored him with lights more abundant and unknown to him until then. It was under this impression, or, to speak better, under this direction of the heart of Mary, that he composed the Rule as it is today. When it was finished, he then noticed, for the first time, that Mary had taken it upon herself, as if without his knowledge, to put into it an order and a sequence of which he had not thought at all.

While the humble stranger perhaps believed himself to be the only one with God who was seriously occupied with his work, the Holy See, which knows how to recognize the Spirit of God in due time, even when it hides under appearances most capable of being misleading, read the memorandum, had inquiries made in Paris, and finally had the Prefect of the sacred Congregation of the Propaganda write to the servant of God, to exhort him to persevere with his associates in his design of founding a society of missionaries, destined to evangelize the blacks and to neglect nothing, each in particular, to respond to their vocation. "Moreover, the sacred Congregation has confidence," said Cardinal Fransoni, "that the good and great God will give you health perfect enough so that you may receive Holy Orders, and devote yourself entirely, with your collaborators, to the holy ministry." Fr. Libermann received these encouragements as coming from the very mouth of God, and used them in turn to instill into the souls of his confreres the confidence with which his heart was filled. When he came to thank the Prefect of the Propaganda, the latter strongly urged him to find a bishop who would make himself the protector of the nascent work, and take the new missionaries under his authority, until the moment when the Holy See would deem it necessary to approve, by a public decree, the new Institute and its regulations.

At the moment when the venerable founder was sending all this good news to his friends, this protector bishop had just left Rome and preceded Fr. Libermann's letters to France by only a few days. It was Msgr. Collier, of the Order of Saint Benedict, like Gregory XVI, who honored him with a particular Grégoire XVI Pope who established the liturgical feast of the blessed. affection. Appointed and consecrated in Rome as Bishop of Milevum and Vicar Apostolic of Mauritius, he came to recommend his vast diocese, which had in all only five or six priests, to the Superior of Saint-Sulpice. The latter spoke to him of Fr. Libermann's work; the pious bishop took it under his protection and promised to let the missionaries act according to the attraction that God would give them. Emerging from all external struggles, it still remained for Fr. Libermann to triumph over a completely interior and terrible combat: it was to know whether he should receive holy orders. The divine will declared itself on this subject at Our Lady of Loreto.

Men of God, says his historian, have par excellence the local genius, or, to speak better, the grace of places. Fr. Libermann, who had found the cradle of the French faith, the city of Metz, to read the Gospel for the first time, a Christmas feast in Paris to receive holy Baptism there, the seminary of Saint-Sulpice to be born there to clerical life, a chapel of Loreto at Issy to begin his apostolate there, a novitiate of Saint-Gabriel in Brittany to deliver the most violent assaults to the fallen angel, Rome finally to give a name and Rules to the Congregation of the Holy Heart of Mary, could he choose a place m Congrégation du Saint-Cœur de Marie Congregation founded by Libermann. ore suitable than that where the Word was made flesh, to contemplate the priesthood closely; to ask, not for an extraordinary call to Orders, but for peace, strength, the fullness of priestly grace, in order to spread this grace in the work of the Holy Heart of Mary, and through this work upon thousands of abandoned souls?

Returning from this pilgrimage, one evening when he had strayed from his route to go to the tomb of a Saint venerated in the neighborhood, he entered, towards evening, a village where all the doors closed before him. He continued his way to a remote cottage, where poor people welcomed him with kindness, despite their affliction. A child, suffering from an acute illness, seemed at the point of death, and was letting out piercing cries. The pilgrim had compassion for their pain, and said to them: "You do not know what to do, good people; let us have recourse to God and His Saints. I come from the tomb of the Saint; I brought back a plant that grows right nearby. Take it, soak it in water, and give some to your child." As the child's father, obeying this advice with a lively faith, hastened to present to the sick child a whole glass of water prepared in this way: "Let me do it," he resumed, "a drop is enough." He dipped a finger in the water, moistened the child's lips with it: his pain calmed down immediately. He rested for the rest of the night, and appeared cured the next day, when the traveler withdrew.

Upon his arrival in Rome, he found a letter calling him to the seminary of Strasbourg, in the name of Msgr. Rœss, appointed coadjutor bishop: he came there to finish his theological studies with the simplicity of a young seminarian. There, although he did his best to live in isolation and pass unnoticed, there was around him, by his mere presence, by his good examples, by the gift that accompanied his slightest words and all his exercises, a general effect of edification which was like the reflection of the holy life he led without fanfare. God used this means to prepare for him elite associates, intrepid apostles, among others Ignace Schwindenhammer.

the new community did not yet have a tent pitched anywhere. One of its protectors, the Abbé de Brandt, obtained from the Bishop of Amiens a country house belonging to the bishopric, in the village of La Neuville, a short dis tance from La Neuville Location of the first novitiate near Amiens. Amiens. Fr. Libermann hastened to accept; this prelate added a new and signal favor, by consenting to raise him to the priesthood at the next ordination. Thus all of a sudden, so admirable are the ways of Providence, so gently and strongly does it reach its ends, the obstacles cease, the doubts, the anxieties disappear; the holy founder was ordained a priest on September 18, 1841; he said his second mass on the altar of Our Lady of Victories. Since then, he never ascended to the altar of immolation without his air, his demeanor, his voice testifying that he considered himself, too, as a victim. He gave this way of viewing the holy mysteries as the best method of attending or celebrating them. One of his own, on the point of being ordained a priest, asked him what he had best to do to celebrate worthily: "You sacrifice yourself," the man of God answered him; and he repeated the same word several times: "I do not know," he said, "a better method for hearing or saying holy mass." It is at bottom that of the Pontifical: *Imitamini quod tractatis*.

From Our Lady of Victories, the venerated Father, as his sons called him, returned to La Neuville with his first two companions, Messrs. Le Vavasseur and Collin, on September 27, 1841; the novitiate opened and the Congregation began with three members. It had to go through trials that would be too long to recount. After two years, they had not yet reached the number of twelve: they lived on a few alms, in the strictest poverty, barely provided with the necessities. If a newcomer arrived, one of the elders would give up his room and his bed, and sleep on the only table placed in the refectory. If even this place was missing, a staircase sufficed, except for stepping over the bed and the one resting there to pass through. This stratagem was invented at the arrival of the good Father Lannurien; and the one who thus made room for the first superior of the French seminary in Rome, this elder, who would become Msgr. Bessieux, for quite a long time had no other cell than the space under a staircase. Others shared a corridor, with no other equipment than a mattress spread on the floor. The venerable Father Superior, the most suitably lodged, had only a table, a bed, and a straw mattress, which he moved with his own hands every morning. At first there was only one inkwell, placed in a common room: everyone came to draw from it, even the superior, who did not want it moved for his own use.

Everyone was in turn the servant of all the others, even in the office of the kitchen. They even went successively to get provisions in the village, to fetch water at the fountain, to carry and bring back commissions from the city. One day, one of the improvised cooks imagined that, to save time, fire, and wood, he could prepare the vegetables for the whole week on Monday. He returned again on the third day to his provision which warned him by its mold of the miscalculation of his arithmetic. Another, who was beginning with great fervor in the contemplative life, prayed all morning before the crucifix in his kitchen. At eleven o'clock, the signal for a conference awakened him. There was not even a fire lit. He ran to warn the venerated Father and told him everything ingenuously. His punishment was a slight smile from the good superior, who, without emotion, took back the notes he had placed before him, lifted the conference, went to the kitchen, and set to work so actively that at the usual hour everything was ready. They lived at first on a family regulation which had its basis in the Constitutions written in Rome. But they lived above all on the life of the venerated Father; he was the regulation always present and like the living example constantly placed before the eyes of his family.

"I cannot express," says a postulant, "what effect the little interview I had with him for the first time had on my soul. I have never met anyone who represented to me better the ideal of a Saint. We especially loved, among ourselves, to compare him to Saint John and Saint Francis de Sales, by his sweet charity and his exterior so well composed. His mere sight spoke of love and peace. There was an unspeakable expression of holiness in all his features and especially in his eyes. I believe that many people felt towards him the sentiment of a superior of a major seminary, who said: When I am in the presence of Father Libermann, I am seized with respect, as in the presence of a Saint. His face was beautiful, full of an energy pleasantly tempered by sweetness, always serene and easily smiling. It was sometimes ravishing: when he gave his beautiful exhortations, one would have said he was inspired. It was especially during his annual retreat that his face took on a particular expression of holiness and union with God. It was then enough for the brothers and novices to cast a glance at him to feel animated with faith. Upon returning from each trip, his first visit, after the chapel, was for the infirmary. We saw it ourselves, a few months before his death and already seriously ill, lavishing the most tender care on a brother threatened with phthisis. He wanted to accompany him himself from Paris to the Gard, place him in the carriage, give him the best corner everywhere, make himself his servant all along the road. After having left him very piously resigned, he continued, even in Paris, to occupy himself with him and to encourage him by his letters."

He counted among his dearest patients the tempted and afflicted souls. In the very midst of the most intolerable indispositions and migraines, he went so far as to spend several consecutive hours with them. One day, his strength failing him, after having uselessly spent a lot of time consoling one of these souls, he came, all sad and dejected, to take one of his novices and say to him: "Go see if you could not be happier than I. O my God! why can I not relieve all miseries!"

His charity was no less evident towards the brothers, the humblest portion of his family; he loved to confer familiarly in their midst and helped them when needed. He made his own bed for quite a long time, under the pretext that he had his own way of arranging it. The infirmarian had over him, in the absence of the doctor, a sort of sovereign authority that he liked to recognize out of a spirit of obedience. As for the doctors, he pushed blind submission to them perhaps too far. One of them having insisted on removing a wen he had on his head, in order not to afflict the infirmarian who would have protested, he chose an hour of walking to submit to this execution: it was so violent that he could not help saying, after the walk: "This wen was removed from me like pulling a nail out of a wall!" Another doctor prescribed a soup against his repugnances: he took it and threw it up immediately. The doctor had the harshness to immediately impose the same prescription on the patient, who had the patience to undergo it a second time, without saying a word. It happened that they presented him with potions more or less disagreeable, forgetting to correct their bitterness: he always took them, without pointing out the oversight; he even anticipated the excuses, by saying that he did not distinguish by his palate what might be missing from them.

The humility of the venerated Father was no less than his obedience: he believed and declared himself willingly, in moments of intimate confidence, unworthy and incapable of being at the head of his brothers: "He hoped well," he said, "that they would end up doing him justice, by chasing him from the Congregation." — "How happy I would be," he said one day, "if I could flee and bury myself in a deep retreat! I hope that one fine day they will dismiss me as stupid and good for nothing, and that finally I will have all that I deserve and all that I desire." One fine day, he began to speak heart-to-heart with one of his secretaries about what he called his ignorance of the sciences, his incapacity for business, his powerlessness to attend to any study, although he had the desire, the absolute dependence in which God held him, to the point of being unable to say or do anything, unless He came to his aid. He concluded from this that it was urgent that the members of the council of the Congregation meet to consider the means of replacing him, as being at the very least useless. This conversation was abruptly interrupted. Shortly after, meeting the same secretary, he stopped him to resume with an accent of holy joy: "What I just told you is serious; tell these Gentlemen that they must meet in council to consider the means of getting rid of me." In a word, Fr. Libermann was like a hearth of this divine fire that Our Lord came to bring to the earth, and according to the desire of this good Savior, this sacred flame passing from the heart of the holy founder into that of these zealous missionaries, went with them to embrace the universe.

The celestial fire first broke out in Mauritius with Father Laval; in Bourbon Island, with Father Le Vavasseur; in Saint-Domingue and Guinea, with Father Tisserand and two other apostles: the battlefield of these valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ expanded every day, and, on the other hand, camps were multiplied in France to train and harden them. The new Congregation, through a combination of circumstances whose account would lead us too far, was merged with that of the Holy Spirit, and revived with a very young sap that age-old tree, in the shade of which the birds of the air had long been resting in the French colonies. Equipped with full powers from the Holy See, and charged with infusing the spirit of Our Lord into this new body of which he was the head, the venerable Father succeeded despite terrible trials. Finally, when Our Lord had accomplished on earth, through his servant, what he had resolved from all eternity, he wished, before calling him to himself, to make him more worthy of heaven through a painful illness that broke out at the end of January 1852. He showed himself a model in this circumstance as in all others, by his resignation, his calm, his abandonment: he asked neither to live nor to die. Although his sufferings were so sharp that they sometimes drew from him this involuntary cry: "Oh! my God! oh! how I suffer! What a martyrdom!" they always left a certain smile on his lips. His eyes, always clear, drew great strength and great consolation from the crucifix and from the images of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph, which were at the foot of his bed, to signify to him the new family that awaited him. "One evening, as he was coming out of a doze, I asked him," said one of his children, "in the presence of Father Lannurien and Brother Marie, how he was feeling: 'I am suffering a lot,' he replied. — 'Is it not true that you are offering your sufferings to the good God for your children?' — 'Yes... to the good God... for you... for all... for all of you...' — 'And also for Guinea?' I added. — 'Oh! yes... for Guinea... for Guinea... and especially Dakar... Mgr Kobès... poor Guinea... poor Guinea!...' he added four or five times in a row.

"The Reverend Father Lannurien then said to him: 'And for us too, Father Superior, so that we may be good religious?' — 'Yes... yes... good religious... good religious...' I continued to ask him: 'What do you recommend for us to be good religious?' At these words, he recollects himself for a moment; then makes efforts to speak, and stammers: 'Be fervent... fervent... always fervent... and above all charity... charity... charity above all... Charity in Jesus Christ... charity through Jesus Christ... charity in the name of Jesus Christ... Fervor... charity... charity in Jesus Christ'. After having pronounced these words with difficulty, he opens his eyes, and seems to ask if we are all there. 'Stay with me,' he adds. Father Lannurien replies: 'We will always stay with you'. At these words, he looks at Father Lannurien, saying to him: 'Yes, my dear'.

"At nine o'clock in the evening, after the seminarians had gone to bed, all the members of the Congregation gathered in his room. He was transported onto a mattress to make his bed, and from the mattress he was carried back to his bed. This double transport tired him greatly, given his state of extreme weakness. Father Le Vavasseur nevertheless told him that all his children were gathered around him and wished to receive his final instructions. He then recollected himself; then opened his eyes, looking from side to side, and said, making great efforts to make himself understood: 'I see you for the last time... for the last time... I am happy to see you...' Then, after a moment of silence, he continued in a barely intelligible voice: 'Sacrifice yourselves for Jesus... for Jesus alone... with Jesus... with Jesus alone... Sacrifice yourselves with Mary... with Mary... God is everything... man is nothing... The spirit of sacrifice... Zeal for the glory of God... the salvation of souls'. He repeated these same words again, mixing in that of charity. He stopped from exhaustion, saying: 'I can do no more'. I encouraged him, however, to pronounce the holy names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph once more, and immediately he began to say: 'Jesus! Mary! Joseph!' He made efforts to repeat them, and continued thus, for quite a long time, to say 'Jesus! Mary! Joseph!' until he could no longer pronounce them. After that, of his own accord, he tried to raise his arm, and blessed us all on several occasions. I then asked him, on behalf of the Rev. Fr. Chevalier, who could not leave his bed, for a special blessing for him and for the success of the indigenous clergy of Africa.

"On February 1st, it was judged that unless a miracle occurred, he would not see the beautiful feast of the following day. Several times his children had offered themselves to God as a holocaust in place of this venerable Father: they redoubled their pleas to Our Lord; the venerable parish priest of Notre-Dame des Victoires recommended the Saint, his friend, his model, to the prayers of the archconfraternity. On February 2nd, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the holy sick man, who until then seemed to see or hear nothing, suddenly woke up, opened his eyes, cast them around him and seemed to recognize what he saw. A crucifix was presented to him; he looked at it, contemplated it with an avidity mixed with pain and sweetness. A few words of piety were said to him, such as Jesus, Mary, Joseph... *In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum*... *Monstra te esse matrem*, and other similar aspirations to Jesus, Mary, Joseph and his guardian angel. He seemed to understand. At each word said to him, his eyes became more animated. Sometimes he turned them toward the crucifix, sometimes he raised them toward heaven, with that indescribable expression that one noticed in him when he prayed with fervor and insistence. But when I presented to him an image of Mary holding the child Jesus in her arms, oh! it was then that his eyes shone with a bright radiance; his face, decomposed by suffering and the approaching death, took on an ineffable expression of tenderness and love, and from his whole figure one would have said one saw luminous rays springing forth. He seemed to be listening to someone who was speaking to him, he appeared to hear a celestial harmony that transported him out of himself. He tried to lift his head from his pillow, and certain movements of his hands indicated that he wanted to grasp the image against his heart: the whole upper part of his body seemed to leap as if to unite with the good Mother. Oh! how beautiful it was!

"This kind of rapture lasted about an hour. Around three-fifteen, the expression began to diminish; his gaze was still fixed toward heaven, but it was a gaze deeply imbued with holiness and great interior suffering. One would have said that his eyes, fixedly stopped on some invisible object, were following all its movements in the air. We were all convinced that he was seeing something with the eyes of the soul.

"Oh! how beautiful it was! how touching! how celestial! Never in my life will this scene be erased from my memory and my heart. Truly I was no longer sad, I was crying, but they were tears of joy rather than pain; my soul experienced a consolation, a happiness that I could not express.

"However, his pulse was less frequent, his breathing was becoming more labored; it reached three-forty-five. The community was singing Vespers, which the dying man still seemed to hear. They were about to begin the canticle of Mary. One of his children, standing at his bedside, said to his confreres: 'He is going to die during the Magnificat'. A window overlooking the chapel was opened, and, as they were singing in the choir these words, very distinctly heard: *Et exaltavit humiles*, Mary received his beautiful soul. His children, who were surrounding him, kissed him one last time while saying the *Gloria Patri* of the holy canticle, with the choir. *Moriatur anima mea morte justorum*."

His room immediately became a sanctuary; the crowd that pressed into it seemed to be approaching an altar rather than a coffin. His heart and his tongue remained at the seminary of Paris; the rest of his body was, according to his wish, transported to Notre-Dame du Gard.

In Rome (1869), the canonical tribunal responsible for investigating the cause of the beatification of the venerable Libermann was organized.

His life was written by Cardinal Dom Pitra cardinal Dom Pitra Biographer of Libermann. . The second edition of this work appeared at Pousselogue frères, in 1872.