The request of Our Lady of Victories in Paris during anticlerical days (II)

(continued from A Moment with Mary of December 2)

On his knees after Mass, Fr. Desgenettes began to think it was only his imagination. “If I keep this up…I’ll end up a visionary,” he told himself severely — when, to his shock, the same voice repeated the command. Then a notion, seemingly fully formed, sprang into his mind: that of forming a pious association to pray for the conversion of sinners through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart.

Unable to get the idea out of his head, he yielded. At High Mass the next Sunday, with the bishop’s approval, Fr. Desgenettes announced a first meeting of the new pious association after Vespers that evening. There were barely a dozen people at Mass, and he wasn’t optimistic.

But when evening came, to his amazement, he found almost 500 people gathered in the pews — the congregation size they normally had only at Christmas and Easter. They were quiet during Vespers, but after he had explained the goals of the new pious association and begun Benediction, they began to sing, and they were soon responding to the Litany of Loreto with fervor. Within the first days of the canonical establishment of the association, 240 signed up. The pope soon raised the association to the Archconfraternity of Notre Dame des Victoires.

Between the consecration of the parish to the Immaculate Heart and the new archconfraternity, Notre Dame des Victoires found itself at the heart of a new surge of Marian devotion throughout France.

The annals of Notre Dame des Victoires became a veritable Who’s Who of 19^th-century Catholicism. Among the first to sign up for the new archconfraternity were Dom Prosper Guéranger and the Curé of Ars, who would later register the names of his entire parish. Don Bosco said Mass at the altar of Our Lady of Victories, where he was told in a vision, “This sanctuary is a house of blessings and graces.” The first gatherings of the Nocturnal Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament took place at the altar of the archconfraternity, organized by renowned concert pianist and Jewish convert Herman Cohen.

Another Jewish convert, Theodore Ratisbonne, became a priest and then vicar of the parish of Notre Dame des Victoires. He believed that the prayers of the archconfraternity were responsible for the miraculous conversion of his freethinking brother Alphonse.

Even John Henry Newman had history with Notre Dame des Victoires. He stopped by on his way to Rome in 1848 to thank Our Lady for his recent conversion. He, too, had been the subject of the archconfraternity’s prayers. They were overjoyed to meet him and reportedly charmed by his modesty and simplicity.

In troubled times, it’s consoling to reflect on the immense power Our Lady has both to avert disaster and to repair the seemingly irreparable. Notre Dame des Victoires bears witness to past and present victories of grace. Consecrated as it is to her Immaculate Heart, it is also a sign of her great victory in the future, predicted at Fatima: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”

Adapted from onepeterfive.com/history-lady-victory/