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A Passionate Missionary about his Mission

Jean BerthierFr. Jean Berthier, M.S. (1840-1908), founder of the Congregation of the Holy FamilyA missionary passionate about his mission to the service of God and the people of God: it is this passion that explains the life of Fr. Berthier. He joined the first group of Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, – a very small number – in 1862. They had pronounced religious vows for the first time only four years before, in 1858, the year when Jean Berthier entered the major seminary of Grenoble. Health problems force him to interrupt his novitiate.

In June, 1863 he went on pilgrimage to the shrine on the Holy Mountain. Among these missionaries, some believe that instead of this young Fr. be twenty-three years old, ill, is not one of them. (1).But he persevered and on September 8, 1865, he pronounced his vows as a La Salette. From then on he was fully a part of the Congregation.

He was a very active missionary in the shrine serving pilgrims, preaching missions, and as a writer. About ten days after he had made his first vows, the celebration of the anniversary of the apparition of September 19, 1846 took place at the shrine. He wrote the account published in Les Annals, a La Salette Publication. (2) Among the religious of La Salette, he was the first to write a book on Mary’s Appearance at La Salette.

The Founder of the Apostolic School

1877 First LS Apostolics 1877Class of students in 1887 at St. Joseph’s School
We can say that Fr. Berthier is at the origin of the development of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Salette in France and especially beyond France. It was indeed from the foundation by Fr. Berthier in 1876 of our Apostolic School to Corps, in the Saint Joseph house that our Institute was developed, was able to send Missionaries to Norway, then in Madagascar, and to North and South America, and elsewhere.

CorpsSchool of St. Joseph in Corps;As the number of Apostolics increased, the school swarmed. As early as 1879 a section was opened in Grenoble, in one of our houses still existing today, Notre-Dame Réconciliatrice, rue Chanrion. Two years later a house was opened in Switzerland, which served as a scholasticate.

Beginning in 1887, so ten years after the debut, seminaries founded by Fr. Berthier had more than three hundred and fifty young students. (3) He then founded the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Family, but always the same missionary perspective. Fr. Jean Berthier thus allowed the flourishing of a multitude of priestly vocations in the service of God and his people.

Training method

A striking point is the organization of the school founded by Fr. Berthier and his method of training: namely, the students were led to assume responsibilities for the smooth running of the house. There were people in charge of the various services: dormitory, refectory, chapel, etc. No supervisor in the study room, but a "monitor". The organization established by Fr. Berthier remained in use thereafter. More than one of us knew it.

The Apostolics felt happy at Saint Joseph. Let me mention in this printing has had one of the very number that had attended high school elsewhere: from Saint Joseph, he had felt that young people liked the house. That had impressed him.

Salettine Devotion amid Turbulent Times

Fr. Berthier founded our apostolic school in 1876. Just before this time, France was marked by political upheavals following the defeat of France in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War (July 19, 1870 to May 10, 1871). This type of period provided a favorable ground for taking seriously all kinds of prophecies, the unrealistic fruits of the imagination.

At the time of the fall of Charles X of France in the July Revolution of 1830, a pseudo-prophet named Martin Galardon had been taken seriously, it seems, even by bishops. So it is not surprising that, at the time when Fr. Berthier founded our school, there were people who were interested in La Salette in the hope of discovering, in the secrets that the Virgin had entrusted to Maximin and Melanie on September 19, 1846, seeking useful keys to know the future.

Should we count among them the Abbé Louis Marie René Tardif de Moidrey, author of a commentary on the Book of Ruth, appreciated by Paul Claudel? (Editor: It represents a certain way of reading the Bible, a figurative and symbolic way... It was also a fervent defender of the Appearance of La Salette and he contributed to the practice and development of pilgrimages.) It is not safe at all.
School of the Holy FamiliyFirst Apostolic School of the Congregation of the Holy Family in Grave, NetherlandsAt the end of 1879 he had led Leon Bloy to La Salette. Descending on pilgrimage, being sick, Tardif stopped at the town of Corps. He was welcomed in the Apostolic School of Saint Joseph founded by Fr. Jean Berthier, and died on September 28th. In any case, one thing is known: our people have refrained from attaching themselves to this type of misguided aberration which is Melanie’s expanded secrets. And if they abstained, it was undoubtedly thanks to the training that Fr. Berthier gave them.

Salettine devotion based on the Relationship of Humanity to God

Mary with ChildrenOur Lady of La Salette speaks with the two witnesses during the Apparition on Sept. 19, 1846And here, in order to see clearly and identify the heart of the formation given by Fr. Berthier about the message of La Salette, the Apostolic School of Saint Joseph and the Scholasticate of Loèche in Switzerland in the 70s and 80s.

In the nineteenth century, it is paradoxical to take a leap forward. It is advisable to question the
Formation given by Fr. Berthier in the Seminary which he opened in Grave in Holland in 1895. Fr. Berthier received, from the earliest beginnings, candidates from several countries and speaking different languages.

It seems that the first seminarian who arrived at Grave was a German. Did he know French? I myself was a Scholastic in France, but previously I had studied French as a foreign language for several years at the Apostolic School in Italy.

After the horrors of the 1939-45 war there began a dynamic of reconciliation between nations. By founding a school where students from different countries had to live together, Fr. Berthier lived and brought to life this dynamic of unity and reconciliation as early as the nineteenth century.

Berthier Reconciling his Students with Each Other

His biographers teach us that in order to make charity prevail between young people from different peoples, some of whom had been at war with each other in the relatively recent past, Fr. Jean Berthier argued from his very first teaching about the people we find in the Bible. He emphasized that we must “love our brothers, not because they are agreeable to us, please us, have a good understanding of, do us good or have a beautiful appearance, and good qualities, etc. But we must love our brothers because they are created in the image and likeness of God ... (4).

Fr. Berthier obviously referred to the very first teaching in the Bible about humanity:

“...God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness... God created humankind in his image; in the image of God he created them...” (Genesis 1:26a,27a).

And now we come to the message given by Our Lady at La Salette September 19, 1846, to the Fr. Berthier, a Missionary of Our Lady of La Salette, and to the founder of the Missionaries of La Salette, Mgr. Philibert Bruillard, Bishop of Grenoble.

A Distortion of the La Salette Message – punishment instead of mercy

But first the message. It seems that this message would be impregnated, briefly stated, with Jansenism. Forty years ago, a theologian described Christ at La Salette as typical of a Christianity with a “dominant (attitude) of justice and punishment”. In a presentation to the pilgrimages of Dauphine published thirty years ago we read: “When we re-read this message, we experience a strange feeling of (a paradigm) shift.” (6)
theArmOfMySonThe window depicting Mary’s words about “the arm of my Son”, as seen in a widow in the Chapel of the La Salette House in Hartford, Connecticut
“The presentation of a God who threatens and is quick to punish is hardly acceptable to the faithful more and more sensitive to a loving and merciful God” (7), it was recalled in 1996 at a Paris conference devoted to La Salette on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Apparition. The content of the “surprisingly strong” message was described in a French Marian magazine. It has been presented as evidence that the Christ of La Salette was “a righteous, vengeful Christ," (8) Mary would then intervene to protect us against her Son.

Words of Mary versus Initial Impressions

In fact, at La Salette, Mary said exactly the opposite: indeed, in her message she presented herself as being in charge of praying that her Son should not abandon us – which, in good logic, implies that Jesus wishes us only good, and that he is truly our Savior.

Among the various approaches of this false reading of the La Salette we have just pointed out, the first and main approach is an unconsciousness one. Concerning this error, Fr. Berthier recalls that humanity was created in the image and likeness of God. Sin having made humanity feel the loss of their likeness to God, it thus became mutilated, crippled, and unbalanced.

In order to find our balance and health once again, we absolutely need the Son of the Beautiful Lady who appeared at La Salette. He is made us children of Mary to heal those who are open to him, and unite us once again to him. His fundamental work is to give us new life.

But if we are unaware of this need for healing, this need for new life in God thanks to the Son of the Weeping Mother... of La Salette..., an incorrect conclusion can arise: if Our Lady of La Salette says she is called to “with the arm” of her Son, she seems to be preventing him from punishing the guilty. What else could this mean?

Bishop de Bruillard shares his Pastoral Letter for Lent, 1846

De BruillardBp. Philibert de Bruillard (1765-1860) of Grenoble, France, founder of the La Salette MissionariesIn order to correct this false impression, we need to... seek out the bishop who was charged by Providence to examine the La Salette Apparition in the name of the Church, namely Mgr. Philibert de Bruillard, Bishop of Grenoble, who is also the founder of the Missionaries of the La Salette Missionaries.

When he prepared his Pastoral Letter for Lent (Spring) of 1846..., he obviously had not the slightest premonition that this heavenly appearance would take place in a mountainous parish in his own diocese in the following September. And yet in this pronouncement he offers a fundamental help for the correct interpretation of the message that will be received the two shepherds of La Salette, Maximin and Melanie.

He first reminds the members of his diocesan that, by baptism, God has marked them with his divine seal and admitted “to his people”, the people whose Virgin Mary will speak on the following September 19th. As for the various moral obligations imposed upon his faithful people, they result from the fundamental identity of these people – they were created “in the image of God”. By sinning, they have unfortunately damaged the image of God within them. They can only be healed by uniting themselves with the Son of God, “a substantial image of the Father,” who came to save them. But “what ingratitude” on the part of God’s people if they forget the glory of their adoption by God and their union with Jesus Christ!

In this presentation by the bishop of Grenoble made about Christ as our Savior, healing his family of a degradation which marked them and changed them, there is the light which makes it possible to read correctly the message given sever months later by Our Lady to the Salette herself on the 19th of September, 1846.

It would obviously be interesting to know whether Fr. Berthier knew of this pastoral letter. Mary had appeared on that Holy Mountain when he was almost six years old. In any case, Fr. Berthier was aware of the truths that Mgr. de Bruillard, our founder, taught there.
Robert SchumanRobert Schuman _1929_(1886-1963), Prime Minister of France from Nov., 1947 to July, 1948, one of the founders of the European Union and NATO.
When we have these truths in mind, we are able to understand correctly the words of the “Beautiful Lady” of La Salette. She says that she prays so that her Son does not abandon us, because without him we are unfortunately maimed and helpless against the powers of evil.

An Addendum – Robert Schuman, a Reconciler Living among Reconcilers

Recall that one of the main architects of reconciliation in Europe, Robert Schuman, lived during the war, in 1943, for some time hidden at the sanctuary of La Salette. (Robert Schuman was Prime Minister of France from November of 1947 to July of 1948,  one of the founders of the European Union the Council of Europe and NATO)

Schuman commented that he occupied his leisure by studying St. Thomas Aquinas. He shared that he was able to meet in the Summa Theologíca of St. Thomas the developments on the book of Genesis, the first chapter that God created humans in God’s own image and likeness (Summa Theologica, I, 93), thus echoing the thoughts of Fr. Jean Berthier about his international student body.




Endnotes:
1- Antoine Bossan, Some historical notes on the community of the Frs of ND Salette, June 16, 1863.
2-Statement of the handwritten notes of RP Perrin, former superior general ..., typing p. 40.
3-Jean Berthier, The Work of Vocations at La Salette, Pilgrimage of La Salette, New ed., 1887, especially p. 53 et seq., 96-98; Jean Jaouen, The Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, Paris 1953, p. 77 and following.
4-Louis-Michel Brolles, To all my people. The life and work of Fr. Jean Berthier , Thionville, impr. G. Klopp, 1988, p. 133.
5-Christian Duquoc, different God, Paris, Ed. Cerf, 1977, p. 66.
6-François Muller, Sanctuaries and pilgrimages since the fifth century. Province of Dauphine, Veyrins, Le Chassins, 1985, p. 23.
7-Claude Prudhomme, in La Salette. Apocalypse, pilgrimage and literature, Grenoble 2000, p. 178.
8-Elisabeth Claverie, The wars of the Virgin. An Anthropology of Apparitions, Paris, Gallimard, 2003, p. 241.