Back to Earth

By Christian
(continuing from previous post)
The Lord poured upon me so many graces after that, that I knew it had really happened, it had been real. I devoured the Scriptures, especially the Acts of the Apostles. I knew what it meant to chew the Word of God. I couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t stop praying. Everything was so clear. I knew that what I read in the Scriptures was the Truth. 

At that time I was traveling extensively in Muslim countries for my job, and to Libya in particular. There, it was forbidden to have a Bible. So I hid it in my underwear when going through customs. 

I read constantly when I was not meeting people. The guys I was competing against called me the Priest. Back home, I couldn’t see the Host or pray the Our Father without crying abundantly. I couldn’t stand to hear anyone gossiping. I remember, once, we were leaving the Church, and we met some friends. When they said something negative, just negative about another person, I left. I couldn’t stand it.
At the same time it happened that I saw only what was good, truly good in people and couldn’t see what was not good. I felt the presence of God all the time; I could talk and listen to Him, but not only to Him, also to Mary, to the Saints, especially to Saint Joseph.
I never had this vision of Mary and of this Light again, at least I don’t think so, but I know I encountered God in a very tangible, sensible way. The veil between the visible and the invisible had been lifted for a brief moment, and my life couldn’t be the same anymore.

We started to pray with our friends, faithfully every week, for many years. We also started to revive the parish. We organized a choir and sang at the Sunday Masses, we re-started Adoration that had been long forgotten. We taught Catechism, prepared youths to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, did marriage preparation. One time I was at an empty hospital Chapel, kneeling and praying in the first row facing the Altar that was just a few feet away. 

Hospital Chapel, Le Creusot, France

Behind the Altar there was a painting of Jesus on the Cross, we could see Jesus with his open wounds and I got sucked into the wound on his side, but didn’t have the guts to go, so I stopped right there. For surfers or body surfers, you know this feeling when you are at the top of the wave and you look down and you say to yourself, “I can’t do this one”.
Another time during Adoration, I was facing a statue of St Joseph, and I felt that he was really there with me. I didn’t have any doubt about St Joseph’s presence.
During all this time, I thought everybody had the same connections. I was sure the Pope had conversations with Christ and the Saints, that he was receiving their help and advice in a very palpable way, like Joan of Arc. Speaking of Joan of Arc, I have to tell you this story. I had a Catholic friend who was in prison in a Muslim country. His competitors found a way to trap him, under a National Security case so he would be sent to prison and couldn’t get a lawyer. He was kept in secrecy, with no public hearing, no trial, for many years. It was completely unjust! Then I had a dream where I saw his judge telling my friend: “Now you can go, you are free and don’t complain it was an injustice. Many people had to suffer injustice in many countries. Look at Joan of Arc!” 

Why did I have such a strange dream? What did Joan of Arc have to do with a Muslim country? Well, a few months later I had a call from my friend’s secretary. She was so happy to tell me that he had been freed that very same day. It was the feast of Joan of Arc.
Another time, I was visiting some friends in Nebraska, and was supposed to attend a business Christmas party three hours drive from my friends’ house. There was an ice storm warning the whole morning on TV and on the radio. It rained the whole morning and the rain froze instantly when reaching the asphalt.

So I decided to leave early. I almost had to crawl to reach the car, a huge station wagon from the sixties that weigh a ton. The road was covered with 1/2 inch of crystal clear ice. On the highway there was a lot of traffic, everybody hurrying, slowly, to get home; things were getting hectic. I was driving slowly, and without warning the car started to veer and make circles; I could see the lights from the cars coming from every direction through the windshield, in the rear mirror. I just had time to say:  “Oh Lord no, not now, please!" I knew I was going to crash and it was going to be pretty bad. Well that didn’t happen. I landed peacefully on the left side of the highway (there was no middle separation) and got stopped by a few inches high snow drift, just before the ditch. Only the front plate got bent.
A few years later we left our relatives, friends, house, job, and finally our country, to live a life of prayer in a Catholic Community where families could live with priests, brothers, nuns and other families. We sold our house and belongings, shared the produce with our daughters and the poor and woke up one day knowing that we depended on God only for everything.

Community of the Beatitudes
Monastery of the Visitation where we entered in 1990
Pont Saint Esprit, France

We went to the Holy Land and I was so longing to receive more graces, visions. But I was very disappointed; I felt I had received nothing special. That wasn’t true, of course. I had felt such a strong presence of the Lord when we were in the upper room, where Jesus instituted Eucharist. That was not good enough for me who had already received so much. Still I wanted more goodies, more sweet stuff. I wanted to feel the presence of the Lord all the time. It didn’t happen; the Lord had decided it was time for me to stop sucking milk and start chewing on meat.
I don’t have the chill anymore; I don’t cry when I receive the Eucharist or say the Our Father.
I can hear gossip and even gossip myself.
But I know that the veil was lifted at one time and that everything I saw and lived was true. Living in the presence of the living God is our daily experience, He is always with each one of us, always present, always interested, always attentive: “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Mt 28:20.

Heaven Opens

By Christian
We had already been married seven years and had three gorgeous daughters. We'd bought a beautiful farm house in the country side, close to my wife’s parents in the heart of Burgundy and its famous vineyards.

Our home in Burgundy, France

We had great friends with children the same age as ours. We were healthy, the children were great. Business was very good, money was not a problem.

Christine had started going back to Church after a deep conversion and I was going too, once in a while. More often, I stayed home with the children while she was at Mass. I felt a little jealous of her relationship with God and the Church. I sometimes resented having to baby-sit instead of  spending time with her, doing something fun. I felt as if God were stealing her away from me. It’s true, also, that I didn’t much like having spiritual conversations; it made me uncomfortable.

My Franciscan aunt

I had been raised Catholic; Sunday Mass, Catechism, some family prayer, the whole deal. I had gone to a Christian Brothers Elementary School, I had been to all the convents in my native Morocco to visit my aunt, who was a Franciscan nun, and my uncle was a Franciscan priest. We had spent a lot of time together, often going on long trips just the two of us. Then, at sixteen or seventeen, I became disinterested in my faith and drifted away. That was a sort of protection too; at that time the Church was in a turmoil. It was the sixties/seventies. I am glad my Mom never told me about our Boy Scouts Chaplain, who'd left to get married to a nun. It would only have justified my leaving the Church.

When I saw that Christine was going back to Church, praying, and enjoying it, I realized I was not fully happy, even though everything was going so well. I looking back at times when I had felt more fulfilled. I had enjoyed very much the beautiful Masses, full churches, the processions of the Blessed Sacrament, or the processions for Mary's Feast days, and the bells and smells. I also loved when, with my Mom, we prepared food boxes and visited poor people, mainly elderly, at a time when there was no social security and no retirement plans.
But now I was a grown man, a business man, and I was traveling all over the world meeting important people.

The Business Man (on the far left) in Italy!

I started to think: “I understand my Protestant brothers who talk directly to God. They don’t have to go through a priest for Confession. They don’t have to worry about the ritual of the Mass, when to kneel, sit or stand. They don’t have to worry about the Saints or the Virgin Mary. They talk to God like equals, so they can have adult conversations”. (When I was an Altar boy I was always afraid I would forget what I had to do, so I have been always a “flower pot”, just for decoration, doing nothing).
I knew very little of the Protestant way.
I thought Catholicism was too complicated and didn’t understand why we should learn about the Saints. What was their role? What about the Virgin Mary? That was too complicated.
I just wanted to talk to God directly, one on one, and everything would be just fine.

I was thirty-two when Christine and her sister trapped their husbands into a pilgrimage to Yugoslavia, via the Club Med. We were the only pilgrims at the Club Med.

The Church in Medjugorje, June 1984

Since that wasn’t enough, they dragged us, the same summer, to a one week retreat in Ars, France, with 5,000 people. Ars is the village of St Jean Vianney, the good Cure of Ars.
I was OK for the one week retreat, that was a good way to reconnect. I didn’t feel like going to a priest and talking. Talking about what? Why should I talk to anybody about my interior questions and my spiritual life when I could talk to God directly? I didn’t need to go through any third person.

Ars 1984

That one week retreat turned out to be a charismatic gathering, and all these smiling and joyful, exuberant people, were really getting on my nerves. But hey, I gave one week to the Lord. I was going to talk to Him and so I didn’t care much about the surroundings and all these people. Most of them were camping, but we stayed at a hotel.

The second evening was an evening of Reconciliation. I had my eyes closed and I was trying to pray when I started to shake. I felt as if I was holding 460 volts of naked wires in my bare hands. It was going all through my body in several waves. I thought: “Not me, not me, I didn’t ask for anything, I just came to look. I don’t want to do anything."
I felt like Zechaius; I wanted to see and not be seen. I wanted to be a spectator, not an actor. I knew something was happening!
Then somebody came to me in what I’d call a vision. It wasn’t God, no. It was the Virgin Mary.

Mary as depicted in Medjugorje

She was very young, very petite, and beautiful. She was maybe five feet above the ground, as though floating. She was in a very green pasture sloping down, surrounded by short stone walls. The Virgin didn’t say a word. I could see her blue eyes and dark hair; her lips. She was dressed in a long dress; the color of the dress was very dark, almost black but still very bright, full of light at the same time. It made me think of the color of black storm clouds when hit by the setting sun in summer.
Saint Pio used to call her, "Abyss of Grace, Incomparable Masterpiece, and Woman Clothed in Light. The Light of God flows into her and she - reflecting like a mirror - sends it back out onto humanity."
She had a very sad smile; she just looked at me.
Since I didn’t know what to do or say, I felt like I had to present to her all my family and friends. That’s what I did, as though I were presenting this long line of people to my Queen.
This is when she really smiled; she kind of even restrained herself to laugh joyfully. I don’t know why she laughed at that moment. Since she didn’t say a word, I felt like it could mean: “I know you and I know all your relatives and friends." Or , “I came for you and you only,” or even, “You're nice, it’s cute what you are doing,” or something like this. I felt comfortable, but shy and awkward. It lasted awhile and I felt it could have lasted longer. She welcomed everyone with this gentle smile; I could see her teeth, her hair moving. There was just one of my friends that she was not happy to meet; I had the feeling that she was repulsed by him.
Without noticing any changes in where we were, I sensed that she was leading me to a spot on my right side, up. And there I was, in front of a great light, nothing I have seen before, nothing I can describe.

Pope Benedict XVI once said that “when one has the grace to sense a strong experience of God, it is as though seeing something similar to what the disciples experienced during the Transfiguration: for a moment they experienced ahead of time something that will constitute the happiness of Paradise. In general, it is brief experiences that God grants on occasions, especially in anticipation of harsh trials.”

“While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” Matt. 17: 5.

Yes, it was beautiful! Only years later could I compare it to what I read about people having had an after-life experience; the tunnel of light, and then this huge, magnificent light, so powerful. I knew I was in The Presence of the source of Light and Love. I was in the presence of God. It felt so good. No words can describe it. This was where I belonged; this was where I wanted to spend the rest of my life; my eternity. I stayed there in awe and didn’t want to move, not knowing what was happening. Everything of this world around me had disappeared; I didn’t feel the presence of anyone, didn’t hear the music nor the prayer. I was crying of happiness, and then I had to go back!

I didn’t know what had happened. I couldn’t talk about it. It took me a full year before I could talk about this experience to my wife and then many more years before I could talk about it to close friends and then I could give my testimony whenever I felt it was good to talk about it no matter who or what. The only thing I had decided on the spot was that I wanted to come back to this gathering the following year.

Struggling to the Surface

Christian
It’s very hard to revisit these times, very painful.
Not only for the loss and the pain of losing this baby, but also for the pain I had inflicted on Christine. I should have been her protector and I did nothing. I was desensitized completely. Pregnancy was an abstract concept to me; it didn’t seem real! Pregnancy was dissociated from baby.
Now, when I see ultrasounds of babies at every stage of life, pictures, and movies of the baby’s development, I can’t understand how we could have done what we did. It’s beyond imagination, beyond comprehension! A baby in the womb is so real, so alive.

Père J.M. Desbois

Christine
God in his Providence put a very holy priest on my path, Father Jean-Marie Desbois, a friend of my Mom’s family. I cannot remember exactly when, after the abortion, I met with him and confessed, but I think it was pretty soon. I didn’t feel the effect of this Confession right away, and I kept on living in sin. I kept this terrible event locked inside and would push the lid of the box shut each time it would attempt to open.

Only after our wedding in 1977 did the healing really begin. What is this grace we receive on our wedding day? Christ gives us a tremendous gift at that moment: He offers us the capacity to love each other as He loved the Church. He makes us capable of sacrificial, self-giving, selfless love; He offers us Agapè.

July 2nd, 1977

I was broken by my sin, hurting deeply, unable to truly love and give myself. Christian was deeply wounded too. Christ had to heal us first in order to allow us to become able to love fully.

The healing happened in steps--and is still going on!

After the first step of Reconciliation, today I can see the second step in the powerful testimony of a friend.
It was the end of 1981, and we lived in Aix en Provence. My Mom had asked me to pray for my brother’s endangered marriage. We didn’t go to church much, but I had decided to stop at the cathedral on my way back from ballet classes. But then time was short and I was about to change my mind, when I saw one of the ladies in my ballet class enter the cathedral. I thought, ‘if she’s going, I’m going.’ I went in behind her and asked her if it was where she came to mass. She told me she wasn’t Catholic but liked to stop here to pray. She then told me the story of her conversion! I was deeply touched and envious! Her story triggered a strong desire in me: I also wanted to have an encounter with Christ.

Aix en Provence, Cathedral Holy Savior

I made up my mind to go to a prayer group in Marseille. My sister had been praying with them when she lived there. It was a huge decision for me because I had learned to drive in Nebraska, and driving conditions around Marseille were vastly different! I hired a baby sitter for our two daughters, as Christian was on a business trip, and I left. I was scared, but I made it! I wasn’t good at parallel parking and the only parking spots there were parallel. I was about to give up and go home when this huge, American style car left, giving me ample space to practice my parking skills! I had no idea what a charismatic prayer group was. I joined the group and started praying with everybody. At one point, the leader invited those who wanted to kneel in the center to be prayed upon. I hadn’t come all this way for nothing, so I volunteered. I knelt and everyone started praying over me. The leader said this sentence (I thought it came from the Bible): “Come, my child, come and throw yourself into my ocean of love.” To me it was God the Father addressing me! I felt a great peace and a great joy come upon me. I felt I had been forgiven, I felt loved as never before! It was February 2^nd, 1982, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. 

Marseille, Notre Dame de la Garde

The priest who was there also said that many knots were being untied within me and would continue to be untied in the coming months. This is how I started praying again. I started going back to mass every Sunday, and sometimes even during the week, or whenever possible. I started praying the Rosary daily, too, praying for Christian to experience this encounter also. I was back on track, the healing could continue!

Christian

It took much longer for me to return to God and the Church. But when I look back, it seems that I was away from the Church for a very short time; I hope that’s the way the Lord looks at this period too. Still it wasn’t easy for me to see Christine rediscovering this intimacy with the Lord. I felt kind of forgotten, neglected, jealous, maybe? The Lord was taking away the little time I had with my wife. I didn’t like it too much. But deep in my heart I knew!

I knew that that was the life we were called to. Of course, I resisted a bit, to show that I was still in control, and it’s true that I didn’t know what was going to happen, or where we were going but yes, we were called to the Real Life.

Us then, with Mathilde and Jehanne