Dear fellow members of the Confraternity,
“Chartres is ringing, Chartres is calling you” again this year!
In just over three weeks, once again, thousands of pilgrims will set off from Paris to Chartres Cathedral. If this pilgrimage to Chartres is a showcase for our spiritual family, it is also and above all a powerful means of sanctification; a wonderful conversion tool. There is a grace specific to this pilgrimage.
Many people for decades now have rediscovered a sacramental practice or even the faith on the roads of Chartres. Numerous vocations were born there and life resolutions were taken there. For many still, this pilgrimage was the place where for the first time they became acquainted with the beautiful traditional liturgy. How many people also consecrated themselves there to the Blessed Virgin? How many have also deposited there a sometimes heavy bag of past sins that they could not until then manage to accuse? How many have discovered there a little Christianity on the move?
For all these reasons, I allow myself to invite you to “prepare” this pilgrimage spiritually during the month of May (whether you participate in it physically afterwards or not).
Comment ?
By asking Our Lady in the month dedicated to her for graces for the pilgrims of the next Pentecost. Graces of conversion.
About sixty seminarians from Wigratzbad will take the bus early in the morning the day before the pilgrimage to go to Paris. Many priests of your little Fraternity will come to hear confessions and pray for their own conversion. Like other priests of course, diocesan or members of different communities.
Accompany them with your prayer so that God, through them, may be better known and better loved; and so that hearts open to the grace of Chartres. Beginning, moreover, with the hearts of your priests and seminarians. Not forgetting mine.
The world has been mobilizing for months (rightly or wrongly) to send “weapons” to Ukraine; and U.S ? Couldn’t we unite in a completely different field and raise prayers to heaven for the pilgrims of Chartres? These prayers which are our own weapons.
It is always possible during the day, moving from one room to another in your house, going up or down stairs at home or at work, going to or leaving your car, to say in your heart a tiny “Hail Mary”; for the pilgrims of Chartres. It would be a good habit to adopt which would not delay us in any way, but which on the other hand would allow us to make our day profitable and to regularly raise our soul to God. It would be a beautiful spiritual reflex.
So in this month of May dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, let us multiply these little prayers… for the intentions of this year’s pilgrims and for the smooth running of this pilgrimage.
A converging beam of hundreds and even thousands ofAve Maria will bear fruit in the souls that Our Lady chooses. One or a thousand. Or even more.
Let us be for these souls the Good Samaritan of the gospel. Because at Fatima, the Blessed Virgin asked us to pray for the conversion of poor sinners. Not to mention ours. Mine.
Mass for your intentions will be celebrated on May 26th. Early. Just before getting on the bus leading to the Chartres pilgrimage.
#Preparing #Chartres #pilgrimage #Ripostecatholique