Eucharist Adoration

 It’s 7:00 AM, and the Blessed Sacrament is exposed under a rich canopy; during the night, the women took turns in adoration.  The year is 1864 and the women are prisoners in Cadillac, France.

They were 397 women, relatively young, their crimes ranging from murder, robbery, and prostitution.  Illiteracy was very common.  A Dominican preacher was requested to begin a retreat in preparation to beginning perpetual Adoration.  In these days, people didn’t receive Communion frequently and Adoration was considered a spiritual communion.

The friar was fairly new.  His name was M. Jean-Joseph Lataste, O.P.* In order not to interfere with the labor of the prisoners, the retreat time had to be taken from the inmates’ sleep.  Imagine the trembling, young friar presenting himself at the prison door. Imagine him looking over the sleepy congregation, kerchiefed heads bowed down.  Would they not listen to him, fall asleep, be disrespectful, or even mock him out loud?  Here is how Father Lataste described his state of mind:

They were there, almost four hundred of them, dressed in shabby clothes, a handkerchief tightly wound their temples, giving them a very unusual appearance which somehow was offensive to me.  The point is I was prejudice. In fact, I had a horror of them.

At the beginning of the first sermon, the preacher went beyond his personal repulsion, and raised his eyes to his audience.  His first words, his greeting, landed like a bomb.

My dear sisters,…

He didn’t call them sinners, and rant about their crimes and scream at them to repent. Rather, he spoke of God’s love.  As he talked about the mercy of God, he heard them sobbing.  Gradually, their handkerchief heads rose, with eyes wet with tears.

He was the first one to be converted.

They brightened at the story of Jesus exorcising the demons from Mary Magdalene.  They asked about the love of Mary Magdalene for Jesus.  Could Jesus love them?

I spoke to them of God’s great mercy, of God’s great love, of God’s preferential love for sincerely repentant souls who want to love like Magdalene.  You would have seen them gently raise their heads, like flowers after a storm when the sun comes out to touch them.  Their faces lit up little by little; it seemed that they breathed more easily and that the walls of the prison, heavy as they were, had become light.

He told them when they knelt in front of the monstrance, to give Jesus their love like Mary Magdalene did--to speak to Him from their hearts.  God loved them and would forgive them for their transgressions.  The mercy of God respects the basic dignity of every human being, who is called to holiness whatever their past.

The women looked at the Blessed Sacrament in awe.  It was a mystery.  They wondered if it were true that Jesus could love them.  He loved Mary Magdalene.  He loved Dismas.  He was God; His mercy was endless; His forgiveness was given; His love was for them.  They could feel it.  Finally, they were free to love Jesus.  They would be like Mary Magdalene and love Him, forever.  Their hearts beat in unison with the pulsating joy and happiness emanating from the Monstrance.

*Blessed M. Jean-Joseph Lataste, O.P. founded the Dominican Sisters of Bethany, with some of these same inmates.  His cause for canonization is being considered. He is known as the Apostle to Prisoners.

Quotes from My Dear Sisters, Fr. Jean-Marie Guellette, O.P., New Hope Publications, 2018.