PERE LAMY WITH THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AT MASS

It was the 9th of September, 1909. I had come to renew the promise to go all my life to Gray in thanksgiving for a favour, and the Parish Priest of Violot was with me. They gave me handsome vestments put out for a prelate who was to come and who didn’t arrive. I began my Mass. The Abbe Lemoine was in the interior of the chapel to the right, on a kneeler. The Blessed Virgin appeared to me suddenly, and at the same time the devil. It caused me violent emotion. I was in great doubt but I did not dare to believe because of my unworthiness, that I was facing the Most Blessed. It was much beyond me. The Blessed Virgin came down from the ceiling, throned in great glory, so gently, so gently. She was as if in a furnace of light. Her glory went through everything gradually. The candles, the chalice, the altar vestments and myself, like the sun going  through water. How far did the glory reach? You need to know what the glory of God is, when you think what He gives to the dearest of His creatures. It was just like a sun. I never saw the end of it. She came down from the ceiling like that, with Her hands joined . She wore a little smile before letting Her voice be heard. When she uncrossed Her hands, it seemed to make an eddy around Her.”

“She first exchanged a word or two with the demon. During her descent, She said to Lucifer, who appeared behind Her.
‘Is that you?’
(Lucifer): ‘I have leave of the Father.’
‘So be it.’
Then, as if She were questioning him. ‘You know how to obey the Father?’ He gave no answer but I felt crushed. She extinguished Her glory. The lesser glory never left Her during all of the Mass. I still stayed at the Dominus Vobiscuм. Had I dared, I would have fled into the sacristy, if I had not been at the altar. When I looked at the Parish Priest of Violot, he put his two hands over his face and his face in his book, and leaned his whole weight on the kneeler. I kept saying, ‘I shall be well defended.’ She talked. She asked me questions. I did not dare to answer. She stood upright. She was of middle height. With the movement that She made, there was a little storm of glittering spangles. Her crown only appeared when She stood up. Her feet were just about the height of those chairs. She stayed a little above the ground. With the right hand, She signed to me very maternally, ‘Go on,’ to give me back my courage. I said within myself, ‘If you are the Blessed Virgin, show me.’ She said; ‘I am the Mother of God.’ When She said, ‘I am the Mother of God,’ very gently, I seemed to melt away within. I did not doubt the word of  the Mother of God. I believed Her, but She came in poor company (the fiend).”

“When I commemorated the martyrdom of St. Gorgonius She smiled gently. It was the prayer of Her Nativity. At the ut quibus Virginis… I bowed to Her. She bowed to me, very graciously. I saw Her reflection in the glass before me in the altar-card. The interview went on, and so as not to cause too long a break, She signed me to read the Epistle. What humility, even in Heaven! And for me, a mountebank of the umpteenth class!

“The little server said: ‘Is it the Blessed Virgin, Father?’ as he took the book from the Epistle side to the Gospel side. I said to him, low, ‘Don’t talk, you will make Her go away,’ She looked on him with motherly tenderness. She stayed aside to let him pass and took Her place again at the middle of the altar. When I said the Munda cor meum, She left the middle of the altar and went to the Gospel side.”

“After the Gospel, the priest came back to say the Credo. She took Her place again at the side of the priest, almost in front of the book. She let him begin the Credo; at the Incarnatus est, She bowed as if to say, That is so. At the Sub Pontio Pilato, She put forward Her closed hands upon the altar, clenching Her fists in a gesture of mighty sorrow. Her arms were just beside me (and he showed a distance of five inches). I was so upset that I made a mistake. I muddled things. When She saw that I wasn’t getting over it, She went on with the Credo as if She were saying the Mass. My mistake had given me such a shock. She put me back where I had stopped, very gently. (And, smiling, he said): She knows Her prayers well.”

“At the Memento, She recommended the priest to ask more. There is great store, and still greater to be given.”
“The Blessed Virgin foretold the War. She spoke to me very maternally, about my childhood, founded the pilgrimage of Our Lady of the Woodland; told me She wanted a new congregation. With great energy She condemned Modernism, treated of several different matters, defending me against Lucifer.”

“When  the Blessed Virgin speaks as a mother, She wears a crown made from a spray of roses, of lilies, and of daisies, with a silver band, quite narrow, at a third of the height. These flowery sprays are arranged like the fingers; a white rose, almost open, a single lily, almost open, and a daisy. Naturally, these flowers often repeated, form a circle. As for the green branches at the base of the crown, they are very sober in colour. It is a bell-shaped crown. You could pass your hand between Her crown and the veil on Her head. But when She condemned Modernism, She wore a crown of matchless beauty. If the crown of flowers can be copied, the other one, the great one, cannot even be dreamed. It is made up of clusters of Jєωels and light. The Jєωels are very fine, small for most part and a few large. They are harmoniously arranged like the grains in a ear of corn with sparkling lights inset between the stones and throwing them into relief. There are blue stones, some red, some violet but less numerous than the blue. Among the most beautiful are the pale blue stones. I am almost sorry that I did not ask Her for one. Of those stones, some hang and others cluster. There is quite a play of lights, some outside and some inside the crown. It is like a diadem, rising in the middle. All that I have seen in the museum look like cobble work beside a finely finished shoe. There is no crown on earth like that. She wears it when She speaks as a sovereign Lady. She is majestic. She wore it without glory, or else She would be frightening and She does not come to frighten.

“After the Credo, She spoke of the War in very sorrowful tones. ‘It will be slow to kindle. It will set all Europe on fire. It will set the world on fire. There will be about five millions killed, but (turning towards Lucifer) ‘I shall save many in spite of you’. The fiend said, ‘They’ll pass through the gorge of the Vosges.’ The Blessed Virgin, ‘No, no, they will pass through Belgium.’ Satan said, ‘They are just as guilty on one side as the other.’ Satan understands guilt very well. The Blessed Virgin half turned towards me and the bottom half of the church filled with a white cloud which opened. The wall disappeared and then I saw there a town with a mighty river. I think it is Belgrade. I saw the pictures of the War. I had a curious sensation. I felt quite well that I was in the church, but I was also transported far away. I cannot exactly reckon the thing up. I have perfectly reckoned the favour the Blessed Virgin was doing me by showing me these countries. She brought me through an immense landscape. I am giving you very incomplete explanations but I cannot find words for these things. I saw ships of war with enormous funnels. I saw the landscapes, but later on I took the trouble to place them and that wasn’t possible at all. You see great rivers, mountains, sea. How place them on the maps? All is not over. There are scenes which I did not see unfold. The best for you just now is to keep quiet.”

“The Priest recommended his Parish to the Blessed Virgin. The Blessed Virgin protected it in a special way during the War, especially on the day of the explosion. She looked at me steadily; ‘While he is alive, the Germans will not pass this way – at Le Pailly.’ After a little silence She added, ‘Even after his death. That is his cradle, the village where he was born. I shall be Protectress of those lands!’ Just then the pictures of the War left off and the wood came on the scene. Lucifer said to Her, ‘You are already called Our Lady of Lourdes; you are going to call yourself Our Lady of the Woodlands.’ She turned Her head lightly. I followed the direction and She showed me a shanty. I saw the shanty, I saw the little statue; perhaps She shows it because of its gestures. The Virgin spreads Her cloak to protect us and the Child is blessing the earth on which there is no cross . Just at this moment, She stood aside a bit to let the boy with the book pass.

“I had not been to the Bois Guyotte for many years but I recognized it at once. I saw it twenty five miles away as if I were in it. The wood was being cut away altogether. At Gray I saw the forest all in disorder and I saw people in the wood, cross-cut saws squaring the tree trunks, perhaps more than a hundred persons. There were horses, harnesses, I could hear carters swearing under the eyes of the Blessed Virgin, and they did not check themselves. The wood was in a very lamentable condition, trees cut down, stripped, branches everywhere hanging down to the ground. It was in September and the wood was already turning russet. The house was shown to me just as it is, but in decrepit condition. Still there were a few good panes of glass left, but these had all gone when I bought it. There was no sanctuary naturally. I saw it close up. Just at that time, the chapel, which had formerly been a hunting lodge, had become a woodman’s shelter.

“I will not say anything much of what She told me about the monasteries. She spoke to me a long time about the community at Gray. She visits the communities. She told me so. She taught the Holy Women Herself. She had grouped the holy women, the widows, and She had them with Her. She was with Her Apostles. The scattering of the congregations were a punishment rather for the people than for individuals. She showed me all the monasteries in France in times past and times to come, with their inmates. I saw Clairvaux”.  And Pere Lamy sketched a complete picture of this ideal monastery in the heroic time of St. Bernard with its blessed Abbot and its monks, whom he described one by one. He spoke also of the future religious of Grossesauve re-populated. “As I knew the district well, my attention was focused on the priory. I remarked how the ancient building was made and I saw monks that lived in centuries gone by. They were shown to me in procession, two by two and four by four, with their heads down. They went into the three hundreds. The desert shall again be peopled and I saw buildings that are to be.”

From “Pere Lamy” by Comte Paul Biver. (Reproduced in the Our Lady of Victories magazine, Issue No.169, November/December 2015)