Dear Friends,
This post is a follow up to yesterdays post. Asher, age 18, has set out for a one year trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. The journey began on June 28 when he left West Hartford, Connecticut for Paris. The story picks up on June 30. Please note that Asher loves history so his dispatches are rich with historical detail. As one will see what began with a lovely visit of Paris in the morning turns a bit terrifying. Please see the end of the post for a full explanation.
On Monday morning, I decided to take a walk up to the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre (that is, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre) for an early morning Mass before catching the train. My cab driver from the airport had pointed it out on the drive to the hotel the day before, and he had said it was very beautiful and had a spectacular view of the city. Both points turned out to be quite true once I arrived at the basilica. 
Montmartre is itself a hill in the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris, and it is known for being home to a great deal of artistic history, not the least of which being the basilica. It was also the home to various artists of note, including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. Several of these artists ended up depicting Montmartre at some point in their work, such as van Gogh in his Moulin de la Galette, which shows a well-known windmill at the top of the hill, and Renoir in his A Garden in Montmartre. The meaning of the name "Montmarte" is a bit unclear, perhaps meaning "Mount of Mars" or "Mount of Martyrs."
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart, which is situated at the top of this hill, needs a bit of a historical introduction as well. The story starts with Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in the seventeenth century at Paray-le-Monial, a small community in central France.
St. Margaret Mary was a Visitation nun at the monastery at Paray-le-Monial, and during her time at the monastery she received three apparitions of Jesus, and it is hard to overstate the impact the messages He gave had on the Church. His instruction to pray before the Blessed Sacrament between 11 and 12 at night on Thursdays and to honor His Sacred Heart on the first Friday of the month sparked the First Friday and Holy Hour devotions, which have become quite popular among Catholics in the centuries since. Additionally, the apparitions led to a huge push to honor in particular the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
However, the relevant part of the story for our purposes is that St. Margaret Mary wrote in more than one letter to her superior that Jesus had specifically asked for a building to be built to honor the Sacred Heart where the king of France, Louis XIV, would consecrate himself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in order to gain Divine Favor for the nation of France. Louis XIV and his great-grandson, Louis XV, never did such a consecration.
About a century later, the French king, Louis XVI was guillotined by the revolutionary government in the Place de la Concorde that I visited on Sunday night. It was later found that he had stuffed a letter into the prison wall the night before he was executed stating if God would deliver him from his impending death, he would, among other things, perform the long-awaited consecration. Nevertheless, he died the following day, and so did the possibility of his doing the consecration.
About eighty years later, after the heady idealism of the various French revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848 had long since burned down, the French suffered a catastrophic defeat to the new, ascendant, united Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. This led to a significant feeling of melancholy and self-examination on the part of France in the wake of such a disastrous loss. At that point, and at the beginning of the Third Republic, there was a strong push by a French bishop named Felix Fournier and a philanthropist named Alexandre Legentil to have a church built in Paris in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as St. Margaret Mary had requested. Extraordinarily, the French Parliament aided in the construction of the Church, acknowledging its role as a kind of expiation for past mistakes.
It took decades to finish to whole Church, and the governmental support was a hotly debated issue the whole way. Georges Clemenceau more than once proposed measures in parliament to cancel the project, but they were rejected to the very high cancellation costs they would have incurred.
It was finished in 1914, and it was consecrated after the end of World War I in 1919. In 1885, when construction was still in process, perpetual adoration was begun at the basilica, and it continues to this day.
After the 7:00 am Mass, I spoke to the celebrant who was from Gabon, a Francophone African nation next to Cameroon, and I gave him information about and told him about the Children's Rosary.
After staying for Adoration for a while, I walked outside and indulged in much picture taking, given the beautiful church and the splendid view of Paris (see attached photos), after which I walked back to the hotel for breakfast. I was not able to take pictures inside the church because it was prohibited to do so.
Later, I (barely) caught the train to Grenoble and then took the bus to La Salette. I will say more about La Salette in another dispatch (and include pictures), but suffice it to say it is very beautiful, and it is a very contemplative, quiet place; I am very much enjoying my volunteer work here.
This is where Asher's dispatch ends but I would like to add more detail to the portion of the story about his barely catching the train to Grenoble. When Asher and I were able to speak this was the first thing he told me from that morning. As he was leaving the hotel, the traffic was very bad and resulted in him arriving at the train station with little time before his train was to leave. Since he is carrying a significant amount of Children's Rosary materials and books he has three roller bags. He rushed to the train and boarded, stored his bags and took a seat. With a sign of relief he settled in only to hear the conductor call the train destination which to his surprise was not Grenoble.
He asked where the Grenoble train was and it was just in front of the train he was on and would be leaving. He dashed off the train with his bags and was running on the platform. A conductor seeing his three bags told him he was allowed only two. But seeing the poor situation Asher was in he gestured toward the car that matched his ticket. Asher tried to board but there was a young family ahead of him with children and strollers. The mother was making her way on and her husband was behind Asher. The whistle was blown to signal the train was departing and the husband, who was behind Asher, gave him a shove that sent Asher and the whole family falling into a heap. Everyone was on the train and with no time to spare. But just before the train began to move two more individuals jumped on to find that there was a heap of people just inside the train. Asher indeed did make the train and also the bus from Grenoble to the mountain town of Corps. After a sunny few weeks the skies opened up with heavy rain as he was picked up by a van to take him the rest of the way to the Shrine. The single lane roads have drivers going both directions with dangerous cliffs off the side. With heavy rain, I don't even want to think about traveling on these roads but Asher seemed at this point unphased by this part of the journey.
In reflecting about this harrowing ordeal at the train station, I could not help but see how all our missionary trips for the Children's Rosary have involved a sacrifice and surrender. Sometimes we are literally fallen on the ground and sometimes we are spiritually brought low. But in all cases Our Lord needs our total surrender to act.
Please keep Asher in your prayers. And we will keep you updated.
Your Friend in Christ,
Blythe
