Saint Louis Marie de Montfort
An Often Misunderstood Saint Part II
Fr. Patrick Gaffney, SMM
I n 1700, after Father Grignion’s ordination, Father Leschassier did search for a field of apostolate in keeping with the newly ordained ardent longing “to go about in a simple way catechizing the poor people of the countryside.” But Leschassier was convinced that the young priest had to be well supervised. He therefore sent Father Louis Marle to St. Clément’s Hall, Nantes, a residence for priests under the direction of a saintly, elderly man, Father Leveque. Slowly, and under the guidance of the director, he was to be initiated into the preaching apostolate. The young priest was overjoyed. But only for a month or two.
Even though at a great distance from Paris, Father Grignion retained Father Leschassier as his spiritual director. The noted Sulpician was for the newly ordained Louis Grignion, friend, oracle, father, guide, the voice of God, and surely, a strict overseer of tendencies to go far beyond the “moderate.”
Over and over again, Father Grignion requested Father Leschassier’s permissions as his letters to his spiritual director reveal. Letters 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 are addressed to Father Leschassier. They disclose a young priest totally open to his spiritual director and thoroughly dependent on his advice. The short Letter 10, three times asks his director, “Am I doing the right thing?” (“Fais-je bien?”). It is not so much a question of a young man unsure of himself but of a new priest following the spirit of the seminary which called for strict obedience to a director. Montfort had a clear idea of what he should be doing but wanted to submit everything to Father Leschassier’s judgement. Thus he could be assured that his will was in conformity with God’s. For so had he been trained.
The young priest could not remain at St. Clément’s in Nantes since he believed it to be incredibly lax and inactive. Urged by Madame de Montespan, the former mistress of Louis XIV, and with Father Leschassier’s guarded permission, in 1701 he moved on to Poitiers and became the chaplain at the large local work-house, euphemistically called the General Hospital.
And rumors of “strange behavior” got back to Paris, so John Baptist Blain still at Saint Sulpice – tells us. Montfort the priest more and more broke with Sulpician tradition. The poor became his retinue, his clothes so resembled their rags that they even took up a collection to buy him clothing. The rumor mill at St. Sulpice ground out more and more stories – almost all of them true – about the “singularities” of Father Grignion: “Is it true that he drank some pus he had squeezed out of a poor man’s cyst? (It is related that the young Montfort was so nauseated by the sight of one of the sick poor that on impulse he took this rather bizarre means to conquer his repulsion.) And isn’t it true that he is actually serving the sick and cleaning up alter them? And that he, a priest, has all his possessions stuffed into a backpack? He’s demanding that a rule he wrote be observed by everyone in the hospital . . . What’s this about a group of badly handicapped women at the poor-house being formed into a community called “Wisdom ”? And then he – an inexperienced priest – actually sent a Mademoiselle Trichet from a good family of Poitiers to live with the group as her novitiate . . . and this newly ordained hopes this to be the beginnings of a new community? Who does Father Grignion think he is.!”
It was definitely not considered proper for a cleric to identify with the abject poor by becoming one of them. Nor was it becoming for a graduate of Saint Sulpice to live like a vagabond. Nor was it fitting for a priest to wear a cassock that was poorer than the rags of a beggar and worse still, actually to beg! Montfort, the free spirit, wanted to soar high into the skies. But the genteel customs of well-educated priests were iron chains holding an eagle to the earth.
An eagle? At least, so some believed. But Father Leschassier along with his colleagues were now a little doubtful. In fact, he began to suspect that his dirigé was not led by “a good spirit” as he would put it to John Baptlst Blain.
Montfort’s Spiritual Director
Probably as early as May, 1701 (Montfort had not been ordained a year), Fr. Leschassier dropped the young priest a short note, saying, “I am not sufficiently enlightened concerning people whose conduct is out of the ordinary.” Yet he did not refuse to give advice to this out of the ordinary priest, to the extent that he was capable; “ I will tell you only what I think”.
Towards the end of 1701, he wrote again, telling Father Louis Marie to find a good spiritual director in the area where he lived. Father Leschassier’s words are important in any assessment of the situation: “I have great trouble answering you, first of all because you are not at all according to ordinary ways, I would have trouble vouching for all that you are doing.” The spiritual director recognized that counseling Louis Grignion – whose ways were definitely exceptional – was not within his expertise. And with admirable frankness, he wondered if the young priest had been gifted with special graces of the Holy Spirit: “and not wanting and not daring to place limits on the grace which perhaps is attracting you to these sorts of practices.” Moreover, the many miles separating Father Grignion and Father Leschassier could not permit lengthy dialogue “on so many things that you will believe useful for the work which you will have, as has happened in the little missions for which I would be in a certain sense responsible to the public, since you constantly say that you do nothing without my advice and that you live in an entire dependence on my direction. I advise and request, Father, that you choose a good director in the place where you are . . .”
Tile mural depicting a scene of St Louis de Montfort’s Life and a scan of the picture used in the original publication
This mural (image #1) appears immediately outside the chapel in Montfort’s Spiritual Center. This first scene depicts Louis Grignion’s leaving to begin his studies in Paris. Louis Grignion walked to his destinations and this journey was no different. It is over 250 miles between the towns. He would give up his clothes and money along the way.
The second, slightly grainy image, is a scan of the picture used in the original publication of this article in the Queen of Hearts Magazine.
” … I was present, and just about fainted, for I could not hold up under the humiliation [of Montfort] which I witnessed . . . but Louis Grignion bore all this with his customary meekness and modesty.”
On the same day, Father Leschassier dropped a note to the Bishop of Poitiers asking him to find a director for the young priest: “Father Grignion informs me that he has the good fortune of now serving in your diocese. I believe that he will be of some service, provided that he has someone to counsel him and will not undertake anything new without that person’s advice.” And as we know from Letter 11, Louis Marie obeyed, inasmuch as a Jesuit, Father de La Tour, became his confessor and advisor.
However, he still felt an indissoluble tie with Father Leschassier and several months later, July 4, 1702, he wrote him at length in order to present “a short but truthful account of my conduct and actions.” In the letter, he speaks almost naively about some of the extraordinary graces he has received: “Almighty God, my Father, whom I am serving in spite of my great unworthiness, has enlightened me to a degree I have never experienced before. He has given me the gift of making myself clear, a facility for speaking without preparation, a good health and a great capacity of sympathizing with everyone. This is why I am so highly praised by nearly everyone in the town, which, incidentally can be a very great danger for my own salvation.” The gift of wisdom was freely being poured into his heart.
He ended this famous Letter 11 with a rather emotional appeal, in keeping with the baroque spirit of the times: “Father, I beg you to honor me with a letter. I remain always submissive to you. If I am deprived of your advice, it is only by force of circumstances.” Father Leschassier responded a month later saying that he would have answered sooner, “if you had need of my response to direct you on something of importance.” After expressing his joy upon learning of Montfort’s zest, Leschassier returned to a theme he believed was ever so important in dealing with the young priest: “. . . persecutions will not harm you if you follow the rules of Christian prudence, if you do not undertake anything except by her (prudence’s) counsel . . Do not invent anything concerning exterior devotion which has not been well planned out with others and authorized by the legitimate superiors . . . it is even less fitting to seek out novelties in interior practices since the most pure virtue is that which the Apostles learned from Our Lord.”
In the meantime, Father Leschassier heard that Father de Montfort’s difficulties with the Board al the General Hospital of Poitiers had forced the young priest to leave his post as chaplain. (Had he not gone beyond his competence and jurisdiction?). And Worse still, this recent graduate from St. Sulpice had walked from Poitiers to the huge poorhouse at La Salpetriére in Paris where he lasted only five months before the directors fired him. His joyful boldness in proclaiming the radical demands of the Gospel everywhere – in churches, town squares, hospital wards, houses of prostitution, military barracks, to vagabonds, to the rich and poor – was deemed unacceptable conduct. Thrown out of La Salpetriere, he was now attached to nothing … no parish, no mission band, no superior, no chaplaincy, no benefice, no income, no bishop. The young priest was a vagabond, a failure! A blot on the precious image of St. Sulpice seminary.
Alone and Deserted By All
Father Louis Marie, only a few years ordained and still unsettled, found lodging in a tiny, wretched room – a broom closet – under a stairway in a dilapidated house in Paris. He paints a vivid description of his situation in a beautiful letter to the first Daughter of Wisdom, Sister Marie Louise Trichet, apparently the only one he could count on at that time of desolation: “Those friends I once had in Paris have deserted me . .. Both men and demons in this great city of Paris are waging against me, war that I find sweet and welcome. Let them slander me, scoff at me, destroy my good name, put me into prison; these are precious gifts . . .” The young, idealistic priest had, it would seem, suffered all of the above, if not more.
It was around this time of personal crisis, probably between the beginning of September and October 18, 1703, (the recess period at St. Sulpice) that Louis de Montfort knocked at the door of the Sulpician vacation residence just outside Paris, ln Issy. At this highly critical time in his early priestly ministry, he requested to visit with Father Leschassier. An eyewitness, John Baptist Blain, describes the incident: “How bewildered (Father de Montfort) was when, having arrived at Issy, this wise superior (Father Leschassier) who was with the community, received him with an icy stare, sending him away shamefully with a haughty, emotionless air, not willing even to speak to him or to listen to him. I was present, and just about fainted, for I could not hold up under the humiliation [of Montfort] which I witnessed . . . but Louis Grignion bore all this with his customary meekness and modesty.”
In dire need of counsel and support, the young priest had the doors of St. Sulpice slammed shut in his face and by his former director at that. Never again would they meet, never again would they exchange letters. Father Leschassier’s silent, icy stare let it be known that Father de Montfort could no longer seek help from St. Sulpice. Not even in a time of personal crisis.
Upon his return from his pilgrimage to Rome in 1706, Father de Montfort passed through Angers where his former superior, the Sulpician Father Brenier, was director of the local seminary. His attempt to talk things over with Father Brenier ended up in an ugly repeat of the scene at Issy three years previous: the cold stare, the haughty silence. “How unjust,” Father de Montfort murmured, “to be so humiliated in front of all the “seminarians!” It is apparent that Father Leschassier’s rejection of Montfort in 1703 was not a regrettable indiscretion. It was studied, calculated. It represented the concerted attitude of the Sulpicians toward a young priest who had so openly and seriously violated the established norms for a graduate of the greatest seminary in France, St. Sulpice. The leaders of the institution made it clear that seminarians were not to take Father Louis Grignion as their model.
(To be Continued)
