Une Minute avec Marie
Faire connaître et aimer Marie
I was baptized when I was 3 and a half months old, but soon afterwards, my parents joined the Communist Party and their faith died out. So I had no religious education. At the age of 33, I learned that the father who had raised me was not my real father. Once I got over the shock, I wanted to meet the man who had conceived me. This was easily achieved. He was a married man, who already had nine children when I came into the world.
Ten years after our first meeting, he invited me to a Catholic spiritual session. I agreed to take part because I was curious and open. On the last day, at the end of the last mass, I fell to my knees in tears, overwhelmed by God's love. I said the words "Forgive me", and instantly knew that God was accepting my prayer. So I didn't hesitate for a second to open my heart to Him.
I carried on as best I could, with ups and downs. One day, my father, who was in Paris for a few days, gave me an icon he'd made depicting "Mary, Gateway to Heaven". Shortly afterwards, I found a rosary on the floor. I liked it a lot, because it was multicolored and pretty. It was the rosary I had prayed for! I didn't know how to pray it, but one day I heard inside me: "Sylvie, go pray", with insistence. I went to the chapel on rue du Bac (Paris). Just as I arrived, the people were starting the rosary. This is how I learned to pray the rosary and it has stayed with me to this day.
On December 8, 1987, some of my father's friends told me about a prayer group that met every week in a large church in Paris. I went there and have attended it ever since. There, I started spiritual direction with a consecrated woman who guided me for 27 years. She was a spiritual mother to me, because ever since my early childhood I'd been a wreck: everything in me had to be rebuilt: my mother had never been kind to me and was jealous of the happiness of those close to her.
To be loved by God and to love him was so wonderful for me! My friends noticed my change. Though they were not believers, they agreed that my conversion had transformed me and they found me radiant with joy. My relationship with the sick was transformed. As an intensive care nurse, I could now see Christ in every one of them! At the same time, I was regularly involved in emergency medical missions for twenty-seven years, and I often had the opportunity to give witness of my encounter with God!