A Year-Long Journey Begins

 

Dear Friends,

On Saturday June 28, the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our eighteen year old son, Asher, departed from Bradley International Airport for France. This begins a gap year which will include missionary efforts to spread the Children's Rosary and experience more cultures and languages. The first stop will be a month volunteering at La Salette Shrine in the Alps of France. As he will not be home for a year, packing was an involved process. After the essentials were placed in the two checked bags and one carry on bag, then the rest of the space was backfilled with Children's Rosary T shirts in French and Portuguese along with Children's Rosary books and handmade rosaries. Although his itinerary is still very much in flux, his time will be spent in Europe and Africa. As we just celebrated the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul yesterday, the priest at Mass spoke extensively about the sacrifices and trials Paul endured to further his missionary activities. We are told in Scripture about Paul,

"Three times I was beaten with rods, once was I stoned; three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day in the deep. I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits... in danger in the country, in danger at sea" (2 Corinthians 25-26).

Thus we know that to follow Christ there will be trials but I humbly ask for prayers for Asher. We have often traveled together promoting the Children's Rosary but this time he will be on his own. He travels alone but always united in prayer. We will be chronicling his journey on the blog so stay tuned to updates. I will be providing updates and Asher will also be sending dispatches from the road sharing his personal experiences. Asher has a love of history so also expect a fair amount of history to be peppered through his reports when he visits a new place.

Please see his journey as a fruit of the Children's Rosary. For Asher was only four when the Children's Rosary began and has been very much a part of this during most of his life. 

He has participated through prayer and also helping to send materials around the world. Not only has he helped to send rosaries but also statues of Our Blessed Mother as is shown below. He is with his older brother in the picture below.

The photo directly below is from 2019 when he traveled with our family to visit Children's Rosary groups in East Africa. 

As he grew he has had a chance to visit groups in various places around the globe.
This most recent trip will take him to French and Portuguese speaking countries in Europe and Africa and will conclude with time in Italy. He has applied to the seminary through our Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut and plans to enter when he returns. Please also keep his vocation in your prayers.

The trip to La Salette Shrine in the Alps of France is a long one. It requires a flight to Paris with a connection through Dublin. Then a train ride to Grenoble, a bus ride to Corps France which is a mountain village and a van ride up into the mountains. As soon as he landed in Paris yesterday, he dropped off his bags at the hotel and made his way to Mass. He went to Saint Louis d'Antin Church. We have a friend who is a priest there named Fr. Haby. We visited him last summer and he has helped with arranging for a place for Asher to stay in Paris after his time in La Salette. It had been my hope to write to him to coordinate a meeting during Asher's brief time in Paris as he passed through to La Salette. However, due to our preparations for the trip the email never happened. Asher had made no plans to meet yet just as he entered the Church there was Fr. Haby processing down the aisle as Mass was ending. This Church is next to the train station and has many Mass and a very large number of priests in residence helping with all the Masses. The chances that Fr. Haby would be there just as he entered was by the grace of God. It is beautiful to see how Our Lord makes up for our failings and shortcomings. We always hope to arrange everything perfectly but so often this does not happen. Praise God for His grace and attention to the tiniest detail. Asher had arrived early for the next Mass and Fr. Haby had just finished celebrating the prior Mass. The two friends had time to exchange greetings. 

Asher has written his first dispatch from his one evening in Paris before the morning train to Grenoble, France. 

After dinner, I decided to walk down towards the Place de la Concorde. There is a basilica there dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene on the way. I didn't really know anything about it, but then I stumbled upon a tour guide giving a tour in Spanish, so he filled in some of the details, and I looked some up later.

The church was begun during the reign of Louis XV during the mid to late eighteenth century, but work on it ceased during the French revolution. After the revolution, Napoleon had it redesigned to take on the neoclassical style that is so evident in the façade shown in the first picture. It was supposed to be a monument in honor of his military achievements, but Napoleon ended up prioritizing the completion of the Arc de Triomphe instead, and his military endeavors collapsed before the finishing of this structure.

During the Bourbon Restoration, Louis XVIII intended for it to be a chapel in expiation and honor of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, but that idea was abandoned, and instead it was dedicated in honor of St. Mary Magdalene. The front scene you can see above the columns was sculpted by Philippe Lemaire and depicts the Last Judgment with Mary Magdalene kneeling in front of Christ. 

That was completed just before the end of the Bourbon Restoration; in July 1830, Charles X was deposed, and Louis Philippe was made "King of the French," (notably not "of France,") heralding the era of constitutional monarchy. In the end, his government finished work on the basilica despite some efforts along the way to build a train station instead.

In October 1849, Frederic Chopin's Requiem Mass was held at the basilica, and many other musicians would follow; Offenbach, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, and many others had their funerals held there.

There are some beautiful paintings and sculptures inside as well, including The History of Christianity and Christianity in France by Ziegler, The Ecstasy of Mary Magdalene by Marochetti, and The Baptism of Christ by François Rude, but these I did not see because the church was closed by the time I was walking by.

Afterwards, I continued towards Place de la Concorde; you can see the Egyptian obelisk in the picture which is in the middle of the square. It was a gift from the King of Egypt to Louis Philippe in 1836 and erected there. You can also see the meeting place of the National Assembly of France, whose façade mirrors that of the Basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene; it was originally called the Palais Bourbon before the Revolution. The square was renamed Place de la Revolution during the French Revolution, and it was the site of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; the Directory government renamed it Place de la Concorde in 1795. 

I then walked across the Seine river over the Pont de la Concorde; I took a picture looking leftward down the river (in which you can see the western façade of Notre Dame), and I took a picture looking straight across at the National Assembly house and the Eiffel Tower.