During the Retreat we were introduced to a veru holy woman; Marthe Robin, foundress of the Foyers de Charite. Born on 13th March 1902, the youngest child of a French peasant family she lived a normal childhood until 1918 when she was taken by an unknown illness that slowly took over her body until she was left completely paralysed, blind and unable to eat or drink - between 1926 and 1981 her only sustenance was the Eucharist, which she received once a week after confession to her Spiritual Director Pere Finet. She died on 6th February 1981 and her funeral was attended by 6 Bishops, over 200 priests and thousands of people.
We have decided to make her Patron of Orthfully Catholic despite the fact that she has no Sacred Title because she loved the priesthood, she said the Foyers could never work without priests; she is a model of the Theology of the end of life, if she had become ill today doctors would simply have given up on her and done all they could to end her life; she is a deeply holy person, she received regular visions of our Blessed Lord and Lady, she wrote incfredible prayers and in 1930 she received the stigmata sharing in the Passion of Our Lord every Friday for the rest of her life - she was in intense pain from Thursday evening until 3pm on Friday when she went into a coma until Sunday morning. She would receive visitors until she lost the ability to speak in 1980 and created many vocations to the priesthood simply by saying, 'God wants you to be a priest'.
We at Orthfully Catholic are praying hard for her Beatification and Canonisation and for a Foyer to be founded in the UK. Please join us in those prayers.
God Bless you all,
The Seminarians
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2 comments:
Marthe Robin was the subject of a seminar/group presentation at the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec. I missed it because of being involved in something else at the same time.
If you get the chance to visit the foyer at Chateuaneuf-de-Galaure, do take it. It is quite something to walk up the hill from the Foyer onto the "plain" above to visit Marthe Robin's house and room. Ars is within a days travel, too.
Joe,
Yes, Fr Herve was over there while we were in the Foyer. We would love to go to Marthe's house one day! God Bless!
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