Everything connects through Mary!

Mary! My first encounter with her was in 1980, when I was about 15. I had never met my father, and had grown up amid hardships and violence, especially when my mother got involved with a gangster when I was 10. In November 1979, this man committed suicide in my yard right in front of me by firing a bullet into his heart.

I became a violent teenager after that with no sense of direction. On March 19, 1980, a Christian woman called Marie-Do, took me to Montpellier to listen to the testimony of Nicky Cruz, an American gang leader turned pastor. That evening, I opened my heart to Jesus and I began a new life. In June 1980, Marie-Do took me to Lourdes on my first pilgrimage. On the last evening there, I knelt before the Grotto and gave my life to Jesus through Mary.

When I returned from this pilgrimage, my relationship with Jesus was stronger, as was my relationship with Mary. I began to pray the Rosary more and more regularly, encouraged by the Marian fervor of Pope Saint John Paul II. In 1984, I founded with some friends the first Catholic rock band in France that we called Totus Tuus, JP2's motto borrowed from Saint Louis de Montfort: All to Jesus through Mary! Then, I left my bass guitar to enter the seminary...

On May 25, 1985, my unknown father found me. He was a German soldier who had had a passing affair with my mother. He explained to me that he had been looking for me for several years and that he had even gone to Lourdes to ask for the grace to find me. I asked him: "When did you go to Lourdes?" He answered: "In June 1980." It was in the exact same year, month, and place, that I had given my life to Jesus through Mary... Everything connects through Mary!

Father René-Luc, founder of CapMissio, the diocesan mission school of Montpellier and a preacher in France and abroad