St. Louis de Montfort’s Legacy of Shrines and Pilgrimages
Fr. Roger M. Charest , SMM
W hen people hear that I am preparing to lead pilgrims to Lourdes and other European Shrines for the fiftieth time, in the fifty sixth years of my priesthood, some will ask “why do you love shrines so much?” I suppose I could answer like the little boy who answered his kindergartner teacher’s question: “Why do you believe in God?” His answer after a long silence was: “I think it’s because it runs in the family!”
There is probably more truth than fiction in that answer. Yes, I remember when my mother, back in my home town, Fall River, Ma., used to bring us children religiously every week in the summertime to St. Anne’s afternoon Novena services. I suppose that basement shrine with its richly adorned statue of St. Anne, flanked by several sets of crutches that had been left behind by handicapped people who had been cured there, had made a deep impression on me as a child. At any rate, I had already made up my mind that I wanted to become a priest and a missionary priest at that. Naturally, being an Altar boy in a parish staffed by Dominican Fathers and Brothers, I was “planning” to become a Dominican priest.
But God had other plans for me. He directed me to the Montfort Missionaries who had their own minor seminary in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York.
I learned during my early seminary days, that St. Louis de Montfort himself was a great lover of Shrines, particularly of Marian Shrines. If you read his biography, you will find that Montfort was a true pilgrim of God. He was selected, along with one other seminarian at the Major Seminary of St. Sulpice, in Paris, to represent the Seminary on the yearly pilgrimage on foot from Paris to Chartres – a distance of some seventy miles. A pilgrimage which has been carried on to this day by pilgrims from all over the world.
Montfort’s Shrines in America
Shrine of Our Lady of the Island and Lourdes-In-Litchfield
In our relatively small American Province, the Montfort Missionaries have built and staffed two Shrines to Our Lady.
We know that Father de Montfort made a pilgrimage on foot to Rome (by way of the Shrine of Our Lady of Loreto) to seek guidance for his priestly ministry. And he did receive from the Holy Father himself, Pope Clement XI, the mandate of “Apostolic Missionary” and to return to his native country to continue his preaching apostolate on the Renewal of the Baptismal Vows through the hands of Mary. The Pilgrim returned to his native land and not only made personal pilgrimages during his brief life-time, but he also restored several Marian Shrines that were in disrepair. He even built a monumental Calvary Shrine, in Pontchateau, which was ordered to be destroyed the very day of its proposed dedication. The Saint’s reaction was, since the Bishop has spoken: “God’s will be done.” Of course, it was to be rebuilt a century later and is today an important place of Pilgrimage in Brittany.
Montfort definitely left his followers in the ministry of the Word, a great attraction for Shrines as places of prayer and conversion. Isn’t that the full gospel message: Prayer and Penance? Isn’t that the message Our Lady gave to Bernadette at Lourdes and to the Children at Fatima: Prayer and Penance?
I would say that the Montfort Missionaries here and around the world have inherited something of our founder’s pilgrim-like lifestyle and preaching apostolate—“perhaps it runs in the family!”
In our relatively small American Province, we have built and staffed two Shrines to Our Lady. One in the foothills of the Berkshires, in the archdiocese of Hartford, CT, LOURDES-IN-LITCHFIELD (link), the other in the diocese of Rockville Center on Long Island, N.Y., OUR LADY OF THE ISLAND (link).
