2017 01 Bulletin-N20

BULLETIN OF THE FRIENDS OF FATHER CAFFAREL BULLETIN N° 20 JANUARY 2017 ASSOCIATION DES AMIS DU PÈRE CAFFAREL 49 RUE DE LA GLACIERE F-75013 PARIS www.henri-caffarel.org To order the DVD about Father Caffarel (in French) contact: L’Association des Amis du père Caffarel • 49, rue de la Glacière F-75013 PARIS • www.henri-caffarel.org Price: 5 € The last page of this Bulletin contains the registration form In order to renew your subscription for 2017 If you have not already done so You can also write out the names of friends you wish us to send Registration forms to on the back of your form. CONTENTS - Editorial: “To Find, you need to Seek” José & Maria-Berta Moura Soares p. 4 - The 2017 Colloquium on Father Caffarel p. 6 - A Word from the Postulator of the Cause Brother Angelo Paleri p. 7 - Praying to Father Caffarel Annina & Giampaolo Martinelli p. 9 - From Father Caffarel’s Archives The Brazil Conference on Prayer p. 13 - Father Caffarel’s Prayer p. 23 - Association of The Friends of Father Caffarel Honorary Members of the Association p. 24 - Subscription Renewal Form p. 27 3 EDITORIAL To & José Moura-Soares (Responsible Couple, International Leading Team) To Find, you need to Seek In one of Father Caffarel’s marvellous letters 1, we found a sentence that can explain why we are once again preparing an International Colloquium on Father Caffarel, “ Finding the path to holiness consists, in fact, in seeking .” This desire to show to the world and to the Church how important Father Caffarel was for the Sacrament of Marriage, a path to holiness, is not only a challenge, but it is also an honour. Indeed, this goal of helping people fulfil their vocation towards holiness was one he held for his entire life. The teachings communicated in his books as well as the works he founded are such treasures that everything ought to be shared with everyone. Grasping Father Caffarel’s personality, examining his spirituality, identifying the effect of his propositions on an international level are all ways of enabling us to know him in a dynamic form and are also ways of joyfully showing everything that his man of God left to the Church. The manner in which Father Caffarel’s thinking allowed a solid Christian spirituality, founded on baptism and marriage, to germinate in the heart and life of many people is a source of joy for the initiative that will occur in December 2017. Henri Caffarel influenced the building of couples’ relationships, but also that of widows, by giving a life meaning to their situation, by proposing a spirituality of widowhood as a continuation of marriage 1 Being Present for God: 100 Letters on Prayer 4 and by thus giving the signification of widowhood for the Church as Christ’s spouse. As a man of encounters, where private prayer was a source of life and love, intercessory prayer too was important to him. It was a means of contributing to the construction of man, his great preoccupation, as he explained it to us in his Being Present for God: 100 Letters on Prayer , “I would like, dear friend, that, when you start your meditation, you always have the strong conviction that you are expected: expected by the Father, by the Son and by the Holy Spirit, expected by the Trinitarian family, where your place is in fact ready. Remember that Christ said, ‘I am going to prepare a place for you.’ This gift that was offered to the Church, through his dynamism, leads us undoubtedly to the beautiful challenge of the Mission, and the necessity of presenting all his propositions to the world. This was also the meaning of the Pope Francis’ exhortation during the private audience with the Teams of Our Lady Movement in September 2015, where he encouraged us to give others what we have already received. At a moment when it is so necessary to affirm joyfully all the gifts God has given us, it would therefore be an error not to contribute to this cause so that Father Caffarel, tireless bearer of this fire of love, be better known and loved. A saint is firstly someone who is “alive,” someone towards whom everyone moves in order to live and overcome the difficulties of their daily life. Therefore, the more we know Father Caffarel, the more he is loved, thus contributing to accelerating the day when the Church will proclaim the holiness of his life. And we will finish with Pope Francis’ statement on this subject, made at the Movement’s audience, “The cause of beatification of your founder, Father Caffarel, has been introduced in Rome. I pray that the Holy Spirit enlightens the Church in the judgement that it will have to pronounce on this subject one day.” Paris, November 18, 2016 Tó & José Moura Soares 5 On the occasion of the 70 th anniversary of the Charter of the Teams of Our Lady, the International Leading Team and the Association of the Friends of Father Caffarel are organising a scientific colloquium on December 8 th and 9 th , 2017, placed under the patronage of Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris HENRI CAFFAREL, A PROPHET OF OUR TIME, AN APOSTLE OF MARRIAGE AND A MASTER OF PRAYER A colloquium for the Cause of Canonisation of Father Henri Caffarel. The aim of this event is to show the influence of Father Caffarel’s thinking and intuitions on the theology and spirituality of marriage and on prayer. A colloquium that forms part of the Collège des Bernardins’ programme . A former Cistercian college, the Bernardins today is one of the prestigious places where encounters, dialogue, research and culture take place as well as being a centre of theological and biblical training. Since 2009, the Catholic Academy of France has its headquarters there. An international colloquium . Simultaneous translation in five languages (English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish), with broadcasting in real time as a webinar (streaming) will allow a greater number of people, Team members or not, around the world to participate in the event. A scientific colloquium. The event’s steering committee has called upon researchers and specialists to explore aspects of Father Caffarel’s personality or thinking and the legitimacy of his works: his vocation as a man of God, his foundation in the Church, his teaching and his pedagogy of private prayer, together with his vision for couples and marriage. Numerous testimonials from numerous countries across the continents will illuminate the talks… They will show the universal character of his propositions that remain pertinent for today’s men and women. 6 A Word from the Postulator of the Cause Father Angelo Paleri, Father Paleri’s speech that was given at the Gathering of Responsible Couples in Teams of Our Lady from France, Luxembourg and Switzerland, November 20 th , 2016. Father Henri Caffarel was a prophet of our time, and this is how Cardinal Lustiger defined him at his funeral. Father Caffarel was also a child of his time. In his youth, he was in contact with the Marists recently established in Lyon, his native town, and also with the Jesuits. In particular, Alphonse Plazenet, a Marist and Jean Roullet, a Jesuit. Henri Caffarel lived in a historic period where ideas and visions of the spirituality of marriage would be developed within the framework of Vatican II (and also in the articles and works of the Jesuit Paul Doncoeur, the Dominican Ambroise- Marie Carré and Father Jean Viollet who in 1918 founded the AMC (Association of Christian Marriage) and the lay person Alain Christian). Father Caffarel met leading Catholic figures like Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Henri Bergson, Blessed Vladimir Ghika (a Moldavian prince who converted to Catholicism, was a priest and founder of religious institutions and promoter of charity initiatives, and was killed in the Communist prisons of Bucarest). All these men contributed to the development of Catholic thinking in the France of that era. Henri Caffarel was also a prolific writer and founder of magazines that spread the word of God similar to, in other European countries and beyond Europe, the conventual Franciscan St Maximilian Kolbe in Poland and in Japan, the Blessed Carmelite Titus Brandsmas in Holland and the Blessed Giacomo Alberione in Italy. Once he had founded in France the Teams of Our Lady and the Fraternity of Our Lady of the Resurrection for widows, he felt the need to set up contacts in other European countries in order to understand 7 more deeply their respective spirituality and to consider models of organisation. In Italy, for example, he got in touch with Father Paolo Liggeri (founder of ‘La Casa’ in Milan and the first Italian centre for listening), who had the Italian translation of Father Caffarel’s book “Thoughts about Love and Grace” printed in 1960, and with Father Enrico Mauri (founder of the Opera ‘Madonnina del Grappa’ for widows in Sestri Levante). Father Caffarel was named Consultant to the Commission for the Apostolate of the Laity, where he contributed by sharing his intuitions and knowledge while enriching his own experience. This young priest, who gave himself completely to the One who called him and to whom he dedicated his existence, was someone who was perfectly at one with his era, inasmuch as he searched for, along with other great contemporary spirits, for solutions to the urgent problems of society. New horizons would open thanks to the profound intuitions and reflection of individuals who worked together. (…) In the 1970s, the vocation that he had felt during his youth appeared again (at the time, he had thought of becoming a monk and of dedicating himself exclusively to prayer); incidentally he was one of the first priests in France to experience the charismatic revival movement within the Catholic Church (and this would lead him to travel to the United States).

Load more