Used with permission of The Evening Standard

Dear Friends,

The fire of the cathedral Notre Dame de Paris this Monday of Holy Week can only make us think of the words of Our Lord "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it" (Saint John 2, 13-25). God has allowed incomparable sufferings with the Passion of Jesus; we must keep a supernatural view of our trials.

Yesterday morning, I listened to Bishop Aupetit ask us to question the deep spiritual reasons that led to the construction of Notre Dame de Paris. He also called us to reconstruct the Church which is not made only of buildings.

Many wondered about the changes that this drama could have on our pilgrimage of Christendom. The pilgrimage will, of course, go ahead!  How could it be otherwise! "It is necessary that France, it is necessary that Christianity continues" said Charles Peguy.

We will inform you as soon as possible of practical changes concerning the first day of pilgrimage, on June 8th. Our Support Teams are currently working on the different options. Be vigilant by regularly consulting our website (www.nd-chretiente.com) or by calling our secretariat (01.39.07.27.00).

In these trials, let's try to mobilize the pilgrims in an exceptional way this year. The fervor of the passers-by on the square of Notre Dame in flames must continue with the fervor of the pilgrims of Christendom!

John Paul II pronounced, on May 30, 1980, this beautiful prayer at the foot of the statue of Notre-Dame de Paris:

 "Virgin Mary, in the heart of the City
We pray for this capital city.
You, the Untainted, keep the purity of faith!

Virgin Mary, from this edge of the Seine,
We pray for the country of France.
You, Mother, teach them hope!

Virgin Mary, in this high place of Christendom,
We pray for all the peoples of the earth.
You, full of grace, make them one in Love. "


Our Lady of Paris, pray for us.
Our Lady of Chartres, pray for us.
Our Lady of Holy Hope, convert us.


Jean de Tauriers
President of Our Lady of Christendom

Our Coach is Full!

I am pleased to report that we have now filled all the places on our coach to France.  We look forward to meeting or re-meeting all those pilgrims who have already registered in London or France!  Chartres Sonnez!  And many have answered that call!

Ready, Set ....

Dear Prospective Pilgrim,         

Re:  Chartres Pilgrimage 2019

The 37th Chartres Pilgrimage has, as it’s theme, “The Peace of Christ through the Reign of Christ”.  We hope you are able to join us for this unforgettable pilgrimage in honour of Our Blessed Mother and the Holy Ghost. 

The 26th British Pilgrimage leaves London on Friday, 7 June 2019 at 7:30 AM.  (There will be a Mass of Departure in Westminster Cathedral Crypt at 7:00 AM).  Deposit by 25 March, with payment in full by Palm Sunday, 14 April 2019 please.  We arrive back in London about 8PM on the following Tuesday, 11 June 2019.  Following the Mass before departure; we take the Ferry to France; overnight stay Friday at the Hotel ibis, Aulnay sous Bois; 3 days of Pilgrimage; a hot meal and overnight stay in Chartres (L’Hotel); Mass in Chartres Cathedral Crypt; and return via Eurotunnel to London.  The full cost is £285.00 (£140.00 for Children under 12).   Further information is on the website.      

We will have one Youth chapter (ages 13-30) dedicated to St. Alban and one chapter (Our Lady of Walsingham) for everyone else!  We may also have a family chapter.    

Please contact us for any further information on email: Chartres@duc-in-altum.co.uk.  We look forward to seeing you on the road to Chartres, Deo volente!

God bless,

Francis and Julie Carey

Cardinal Sarah at Chartres!

Allow me first of all to warmly thank His Excellency Bishop Philippe Christory, Bishop of Chartres, for his fraternal welcome to this wonderful Cathedral.

Dear Chartres pilgrims,

“The light has come into the world,” Jesus tells us today in the Gospel (John 3, 16-21), “and men have preferred darkness.”

And you, dear pilgrims, have you welcomed the only light that does not deceive: that of God? You walked for three days, prayed, sang, suffered under the sun and in the rain: did you welcome the light in your hearts? Have you really given up darkness? Have you chosen to pursue the Way by following Jesus, who is the Light of the world? Dear friends, allow me to ask you this radical question, because if God is not our light, all the rest becomes useless. Without God all is darkness!

God came to us, he became man. He has revealed to us the only truth that saves, he died to redeem us from sin, and at Pentecost he gave us the Holy Spirit, he gave us the light of faith ... but we prefer darkness!

Let’s look around us! Western society has chosen to establish itself without God. Witness how it is now delivered to the flashy and deceptive lights of a consumer society: to profit at all costs, and frenzied individualism.

A world without God is a world of darkness, of lies and of selfishness!

Without the light of God, Western society has become like a drunken boat in the night! She does not have enough love to take in children, to protect them beginning from their mother’s womb, to protect them from the aggression of pornography.

Deprived of the light of God, Western society no longer knows how to respect its elderly, accompany unto death its sick, make room for the poorest and the weakest.

Society is abandoned to the darkness of fear, sadness and isolation. She has nothing to offer but emptiness and nothingness. It allows the proliferation of the maddest ideologies.

A Western society without God can become the cradle of an ethical and moral terrorism more virulent and more destructive than Islamist terrorism. Remember that Jesus told us, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10, 28).

Dear friends, forgive me this portrayal. But one must be clear and realistic.

If I speak to you in this way, it is because, in my priestly, pastoral heart, I feel compassion for so many wayward souls, lost, sad, worried and lonely! Who will lead them to the light? Who will show them the way to the truth, the only true path of freedom which is that of the Cross? Are we going to leave them to be delivered to error, to hopeless nihilism, or to aggressive Islamism?

We must proclaim to the world that our hope has a name: Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world and of humanity! We can no longer be silent!
Dear Pilgrims of France, look upon this cathedral! Your ancestors built it to proclaim their faith! Everything, in its architecture, its sculpture, its windows, proclaims the joy of being saved and loved by God. Your ancestors were not perfect, they were not without sins. But they wanted to let the light of faith illuminate their darkness!

Today, you too, People of France, wake up! Choose the light! Renounce the darkness!

How can this be done? The Gospel tells us: “He who acts according to the truth comes to the light.” Let the light of the Holy Spirit illuminate our lives concretely, simply, and even in the most intimate parts of our deepest being. To act according to the truth is first to put God at the center of our lives, as the Cross is the center of this cathedral.

My brothers, choose to turn to Him every day! At this moment, make the commitment to keep a few minutes of silence every day in order to turn to God, to tell him “Lord reign in me! I give you all my life!”

Dear pilgrims, without silence, there is no light. Darkness feeds on the incessant noise of this world, which prevents us from turning to God.

Take the example of the liturgy of the Mass today. It brings us to adoration, filial fear and love in the presence of God’s greatness. It culminates in the Consecration where together, facing the altar, our gaze directed to the host, to the cross, we commune in silence in recollection and in adoration.

Dear friends, let us love these liturgies that enable us to taste the silent and transcendent presence of God, and turn us towards the Lord.

Dear brother priests, I want to address you specifically. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the place where you will find the light for your ministry. The world we live in is constantly petitioning us. We are constantly in motion, without taking care to stop and take the time to go to a deserted place to rest a little, in solitude and silence, in the company of the Lord. There is the danger that we regard ourselves as “social workers”. Then, we would not bring the Light of God to the world, but our own light, which is not that which men expect from us. What the world expects of the priest is God and the Light of his Word proclaimed without ambiguity or falsification.

Let us know how to turn to God in a liturgical celebration, full of respect, silence and sacredness. Do not invent anything in the liturgy. Let us receive everything from God and from the Church. Do not look for show or success. The liturgy teaches us: To be a priest is not above all to do many things. It is to be with the Lord, on the Cross! The liturgy is the place where man meets God face to face. The liturgy is the most sublime moment when God teaches us to “ to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8, 29). Liturgy is not and should not be an occasion for grief, struggle or strife. In the ordinary form, just as in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, the essential thing is to turn to the Cross, to Christ, our East, our Everything and our only Horizon! Whether in the ordinary form or the extraordinary form, let us always celebrate, as on this day, according to what the Second Vatican Council teaches: with a noble simplicity, without useless additions, without factitious and theatrical aesthetic, but with the sense of the sacred, with the primary concern for the Glory of God, and with a true spirit of a son of the Church of today and of always!

Dear fellow priests, always keep this certainty: to be with Christ on the Cross is what priestly celibacy proclaims to the world! The plan, again advanced by some, to detach celibacy from the priesthood by conferring the sacrament of the Order on married men (“viri probati”) for, they say, “pastoral reasons or necessities”, would have serious consequences, in fact, to definitively break with the Apostolic Tradition. We would to manufacture a priesthood according to our human dimension, but without perpetuating, without extending the priesthood of Christ, obedient, poor and chaste. Indeed, the priest is not only an “alter Christus”, but he is truly “ipse Christus”, he is Christ himself! And that is why, following Christ and the Church, the priest will always be a sign of contradiction!

To you, dear Christians, lay people engaged in the life of the City, I want to say with force: “do not be afraid! Do not be afraid to bring the light of Christ to this world!

Your first witness must be your own example: act according to the Truth! In your family, in your profession, in your social, economic, political relations, may Christ be your Light! Do not be afraid to testify that your joy comes from Christ!

Please, do not hide the source of your hope! On the contrary, proclaim it! Testify to it! Evangelize! The Church needs you! Remind all that only “the crucified Christ reveals the true meaning of freedom! “ (Veritatis Splendor 85) with Christ, set free liberty that is today chained by false human rights, all oriented towards the self-destruction of man.

To you, dear parents, I want to send a special message. Being a father and mother in today’s world is an adventure full of suffering, obstacles and worries. The Church says to you: “Thank you”! Yes, thank you for the generous gift of yourselves! Have the courage to raise your children in the light of Christ. You will sometimes have to fight against the prevailing wind and endure the mockery and contempt of the world. But we are not here to please the world! “We proclaim a crucified Christ, scandal for the Jews and folly for the Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1, 23-24) Do not be afraid! Do not give up! The Church, through the voice of the Popes - especially since the encyclical Humanae Vitae - entrusts to you a prophetic mission: to testify before all of our joyful trust in God, who has made us intelligent guardians of the natural order. You announce what Jesus has revealed to us through his very life: “Freedom is accomplished in love, that is to say, the gift of oneself.” (Veritatis Splendor 87)

Dear Fathers and Mothers, the Church loves you! Love the Church! She is your Mother. Do not join those who laugh at her, because they only see the wrinkles of her face aged by centuries of suffering and hardship. Even today, she is beautiful and radiates holiness.

Finally, I want to address you, you the younger people who are numerous here!

However, I beg you first to listen to an “elder” who has more authority than me. This is the Evangelist St. John. Beyond the example of his life, St. John also left a written message to young people. In his First Letter, we read these moving words of an elder to the young people of the churches he had founded. Listen to his voice full of vigor, wisdom and warmth: “ I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. Do not love the world or the things in the world”(1 John 2, 14-15).

The world we must not love, as Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa commented in his homily on Good Friday 2018, to which we do not have to comply, is not, as we all know, the world created and loved by God, it is not the people of the world to whom, on the contrary, we must always go to, especially the poor and the poor of the poor, to love them and serve them humbly ... No! The world not to love is another world; it is the world as it became under the rule of Satan and sin. The world of ideologies that deny human nature and destroy the family ... structures from the UN, which impose a new global ethic, play a decisive role and have today become an overwhelming power, spreading through the airwaves through the unlimited possibilities of technology. In many Western countries, it is a crime today to refuse to submit to these horrible ideologies. This is what we call adaptation to the spirit of the times, conformism. A great British believer and poet of the last century, T.S. Eliot wrote a few verses that say more than whole books: “In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away”.

Dear young Christians, if it is permissible for an “elder,” as St. John, to speak directly to you, I also exhort you, and I say to you, you have overcome the Evil One! Fight any law against nature that would be imposed upon on you, oppose any law against life, against the family. Be of those who take the opposite direction! Dare to go against the grain! For us, Christians, the opposite direction is not a place, it is a Person, it is Jesus Christ, our Friend and our Redeemer. A task is especially entrusted to you: to save human love from the tragic drift into which it has fallen: love, which is no longer the gift of oneself, but only the possession of the other - a possession often violently tyrannical. On the Cross, God revealed himself as “agape”, that is to say as a love that is given to death. To really love is to die for the other. Like the young gendarme, Colonel Arnaud Beltrame!

Dear young people, you often, without doubt, suffer in your soul the struggle of darkness and light. You are sometimes seduced by the easy pleasures of the world. With all my heart of a priest, I say to you: do not hesitate! Jesus will give you everything! By following him to be Saints, you will not lose anything! You will win the only joy that never disappoints!

Dear young people, if today Christ calls you to follow him as a priest, as a religious, do not hesitate! Say to him: “fiat”, an enthusiastic and unconditional yes!

God wants you to have need of you, what grace! What a joy! The West has been evangelized by the Saints and the Martyrs. You, young people of today, will be the saints and the martyrs that the nations are waiting for in a New Evangelization! Your homelands are thirsty for Christ! Do not disappoint them! The Church trusts you!

I pray that many of you will answer today, during this Mass, the call of God to follow him, to leave everything for him, for his light. Dear young people, do not be afraid. God is the only friend who will never disappoint you! When God calls, he is radical. It means He goes all the way to the root. Dear friends, we are not called to be mediocre Christians! No, God calls us all to the total gift, to the martyrdom of the body or the heart!

Dear people of France, it is the monasteries that made the civilization of your country! It is men and women who have accepted to follow Jesus to the end, radically, who have built Christian Europe. Because they have sought God alone, they have built a beautiful and peaceful civilization, like this cathedral.

People of France, peoples of the West, you will find peace and joy only by seeking God alone! Return to the Source! Return to the monasteries! Yes, all of you, dare to spend a few days in a monastery! In this world of tumult, ugliness and sadness, monasteries are oases of beauty and joy. You will experience that it is possible to put concretely God in the center of his whole life. You will experience the only joy that will not pass.

Dear pilgrims, let us give up the darkness. Let’s choose the light! Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to know how to say “fiat”, that is, yes, fully, like her, to know how to welcome the light of the Holy Spirit like she did. On this day when, thanks to the solicitude of the Holy Father Pope Francis, we celebrate Mary, Mother of the Church, let us ask this Most Holy Mother to have a heart like hers, a heart that refuses nothing to God, a heart burning with love for the glory of God, a heart ardent to announce to men the Good News, a generous heart, a heart as profuse as the heart of Mary, as abundant as that of the Church, and as rich as that of the Heart of Jesus ! So be it!

Chartres 2018!

Bonjour, Pilgrims!

Yes, it is that time of year again when the siren bells of Chartres Cathedral begin their slow but relentless peal of welcome.  Will you answer that call?

We are now accepting registrations for the 25th British Pilgrimage which leaves London on Friday, 18 May 2018 at 7:30 am.  Cost, at £275.00 (£140.00 for children under 12), is the same as last year and the Itinerary (as far as we know at this early stage) is virtually identical to last year.

Registration deadline (when payment in full is due) is Palm Sunday, 25 March 2018.

We understand that it will not be possible this year to register on the spot in Paris as this has put too much of a strain on the French organisers.  So, you must register in advance!

2017 was a fantastic Pilgrimage and a reminder can be accessed here. (put together by our Danish friend, Frederick Winslow).

We look forward to welcoming you in May!    

The Pilgrimage is Over! Now the Work Begins!

 

British Pilgrims at the  Shrine of Our Lady of the Pillar

Dear pilgrims,

Two thousand seventeen (2017) is an exceptional year. First of all we have the great joy and honour of being gratified by the presence of his Eminence, Cardinal Burke. Secondly, this year we can thank Our Lord for numerous anniversaries. The first one being of course the first century of the apparitions of Fatima, the second being the tenth anniversary of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, and last but not least, 2017 is the thirty-fifth anniversary of our pilgrimage. 
The apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima have a particular link with our pilgrimage. At Fatima the Virgin asked all of human kind to pray and to do penance for the conversion of Russia. She condemned communism while warning us about the misfortunes to come of the twentieth century. In nineteen-eighty-three, during the launch of the first Chartres Pilgrimage under the pontificate of John-Paul II, our founders wanted for us to be an echo to the famous polish pilgrimage of Częstochowa and therefore amplify the catholic resistance to communism. 
Our choice for the Traditional Liturgy, as one of the founding acts of this pilgrimage, was not done for a certain liturgical beauty or a sense of nostalgia or for conservatism but for faith. The Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, published by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, 10 years ago, wanted to pacify the Church with herself. We are therefore, forever grateful to Pope Benedict XVI who acted courageously and published this document which is in itself an act of faith, charity and justice. Today, 10 years have gone by since the Motu Proprio, and the Chartres Pilgrimage has become a providential event for generations of pilgrims because of the holiness of this liturgy, this extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, “the first act of the new evangelisation” to quote his Eminence Cardinal Burke. 
One last anniversary, in 1997, 20 years ago, His Holiness John-Paul II was here in France, on the grave of his beloved friend, Professor Lejeune, “We are, said the Pope, in front of a great Christian of the twentieth century,…a man for whom the fight for life became an apostolate.” Jérôme Lejeune is a modern example of this fight for christianity and Catholic teaching. Our priority today is the fight for the importance of life against abortion and euthanasia, for family against the fake “same sex marriage”, and against the gender theory. For 35 years, pilgrims from Chartres have been in the heart of this fight for christianity, vocation of our pilgrimage. 
Lastly, a few words on Notre Dame de Chrétienté : The growing numbers and new regulations make the pilgrimage harder to organise every year. Next Year, God willing, we will have to change and improve our organisation, find solutions to keep and develop the Chartres Pilgrimage which we love because of its traditions and its spirituality. We will give you more details and ask for your help very soon. Be sure to follow us on our website. 
Have a safe journey back. Come back next year in 2018. The theme will be “Saint Joseph, pilgrim and servant.”

Notre Dame de la Sainte Espérance, convertissez nous ! 

Jean de Tauriers,
Président de Notre Dame de Chrétienté

Consecrate Yourself to Our Lady!

Every year, on the evening of Pentecost Sunday, the pilgrims of Chartres consecrate themselves (or renew their consecration) to the Blessed Virgin Mary in front of the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the middle of the campsite at Gas. 

This act of consecration is very important on a personal level. It is all the more fruitful for the one who makes it if his dispositions are better. 

In this year of the centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima, the association Notre-Dame de Chrétienté has decided to offer you a totally new "preparation of the 33 days". This preparation will allow us to know more about the apparitions (each day we will have a small history) and the extraordinary means that the Mother of God has come to give us: devotion to her Immaculate Heart. 

This devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is made concrete by the devotion of the "5 first Saturdays of the month" which will be explained throughout this preparation of the 33 days. Indeed, on Saturday, June 3rd, the first day of our pilgrimage will be a "first Saturday of the month." If you wish to make this devotion of the first 5 Saturdays in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Providence has provided that between the first Saturday in June and the first Saturday in October (the anniversary month of the end of Apparitions), there are precisely 5 Saturdays. What an opportunity not to be missed during these months, and to prolong our pilgrimage, united by prayer with all the other pilgrims!

This preparation for the Consecration is an excellent means to make our pilgrimage fertile and to give it the best spiritual climate for the good of all our souls. It is also a beautiful way to thank the Blessed Virgin for all the graces she never ceases to obtain for us with her Son. 

During the 33 days before the pilgrimage, from Monday 1st May to Friday 2nd June, you will have the possibility to receive by e-mail the texts of the preparation. They will allow you to support your daily meditation and prayer. Registration for Marian Consecration.  (NB. The information from Notre Dame de Chrétienté will be in French, but you can also use information from the website "fish eaters" to make your Consecration).   

PRAYER OF POPE PIUS XII This prayer, dedicated to Mary Immaculate, was composed by the Pope for the Marian Year (December 8, 1953-December 8, 1954), which was proclaimed to mark the centenary of the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. 

Enraptured by the splendor of your heavenly beauty, and impelled by the anxieties of the world, we cast ourselves into your arms, 0 Immaculate Mother of Jesus and our Mother, Mary, confident of finding in your most loving heart appeasement of our ardent desires, and a safe harbor from the tempests which beset us on every side. 

Though degraded by our faults and overwhelmed by infinite misery, we admire and praise the peerless richness of sublime gifts with which God has filled you, above every other mere creature, from the first moment of your conception until the day on which, after your assumption into heaven, He crowned you Queen of the Universe. 

O crystal fountain of faith, bathe our minds with the eternal truths! O fragrant Lily of all holiness, captivate our hearts with your heavenly perfume! 0 Conqueress of evil and death, inspire in us a deep horror of sin, which makes the soul detestable to God and a slave of hell! 

O well-beloved of God, hear the ardent cry which rises up from every heart. Bend tenderly over our aching wounds. Convert the wicked, dry the tears of the afflicted and oppressed, comfort the poor and humble, quench hatreds, sweeten harshness, safeguard the flower of purity in youth, protect the holy Church, make all men feel the attraction of Christian goodness. In your name, resounding harmoniously in heaven, may they recognize that they are brothers, and that the nations are members of one family, upon which may there shine forth the sun of a universal and sincere peace. 

Receive, O most sweet Mother, our humble supplications, and above all obtain for us that, one day, happy with you, we may repeat before your throne that hymn which today is sung on earth around your altars: You are all-beautiful, O Mary! You are the glory, you are the joy, you are the honor of our people! Amen.