Emmanuel d’Alzon 2010 Bicentennial Newsletter

No. 7 - September 2010

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving to your Church,
in the person of Emmanuel d'Alzon, a fiery apostle of
Your Kingdom. Please glorify Your Servant and reveal
the power of his intercession by granting us  the favors
we now seek from you loving mercy.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Father Emmanuel d'Alzon (1810-1880)

Like Augustine, overlooking the ruins of Hippo

Fr. d’Alzon was approaching the end of his life in the year 1880. It was a time in France when the future appeared particularly bleak for the Church and religious congregations (especially because of the Ferry Law which restricted teaching possibilities for the Church and for religious congregations and threatened the existence of “unauthorized” religious congregations). Fr. d’Alzon had a sense that his death was near. On August 10, he wrote to Mother Marie-Eugénie once again: “It’s 3 PM and I am about to begin a 15-day retreat to get me ready for my 70th birthday. After which....” He left this last phrase unfinished. The prior of the Carthusian monastery of Valbonne in the Gard, Dom Vaulchier, where he made a second retreat in September, said of him, “I believe that Fr. d’Alzon, like all souls advanced in the ways of God, had a single focus, namely, whatever could serve to glorify God and sanctify souls.

The testimonial of Fr. Bernard Fougères, the episcopal vicar of the diocese of Nîmes, in which he speaks of his own relationship with Fr. d'Alzon.  

The first time I heard of Fr. d'Alzon I was only 10 years old, in my parish, St. Francis de Sales, when our parish priest told us about him in one of our catechism classes. He described him as a local apostle for the modern world. His account captured my imagination because it has stayed with me ever since I heard it: the founder of a religious order and an educator of the young