Q&A: I have read the great annual pilgrimage on foot from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris to the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Chartres has Saint Louis de Montfort as one of its chief patrons. Would you kindly tell me why?
Father J. Patrick Gaffney, SMM
The principal reason would be that Saint Louis de Montfort made that identical pilgrimage, on foot, during his final year at Saint Sulpice Seminary in Paris. Each year, the seminary chose two seminarians to make this pilgrimage, as representatives of the entire community and in imitation of a pilgrimage made by the founder of the Sulpicians, Jean-Jacques Olier.
In the summer of 1699, Louis-Marie Grignion, together with a fellow seminarian, M. Bardou. went on pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Crypt at the Cathedral of Chartres. The journey took three days which were spent in silent meditation or praying the Rosary. For meals, they begged for bread in the villages; they spent the nights in barns. On the road, Bardou related that Montfort spoke of God to the laborers in the field and to the poor whom he saw near and far, then rushed to catch up with his brother seminarian. His time in Chartres was spent in intense prayer. At the altar of Our Lady of the Crypt he received Communion and persevered in prayer for six hours, on his knees, as if in ecstasy. He spent the day in silent, contemplative prayer, which made his companion remark, “How is it that Grignion can converse with God for so long?”
This pilgrimage to Chartres was accomplished to praise God for His many gifts. However, some years later when a parish priest expressed astonishment at Father de Montfort’s power to transform hearts during a parish mission, the saint confided: “My dear friend, . . . I have traveled more than two thousand leagues on pilgrimage to ask God for the grace to touch hearts and He has answered my prayers.” On his many pilgrimages, he also considered himself as a representative of all his people, as he mentions in his letter to the people of Montbernage in Poitiers: “I ask you all in general and individually, to follow me with your prayers on the pilgrimage which I am going to make for you and for many others. I say ‘for you’ because I am undertaking this long and difficult journey [to visit the Pope] in dependence on the Providence of God to obtain from Him through the prayers of Mary, your perseverance. I say ‘for many others’ because I bear in my heart all the poor sinners of Poitou and elsewhere . .”
Like the pilgrims of the Middle Ages, Montfort considered a pilgrimage a path of penitence. The trials of the road, with the sweat and physical exhaustion; the sun, the rain and the cold; the difficulties of finding lodging and shelter; the various attitudes of the people he encountered: these basic elements of a pilgrimage held enormous penitential value for Saint Louis de Montfort.
Saint Louis-Marie is not only one of the chief patrons of the annual pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres. He is a model and intercessor for all those who, … will make a pilgrimage to Rome or to any holy site to celebrate the Eternal Word’s Incarnation.
Painting of St. Louis de Montfort, which resides at the Montfort Spiritual Center in NY.
