Jacques Fesch, The Penitent

April 6, 1930-October 1, 1957

"It is only recently that I have come to understand the meaning of the cross. It is at once prodigious and atrocious: prodigious because it gives us life, and atrocious because if we do not accept to be crucified all life is denied us. This is a great mystery, and blessed are the persecuted." - Jacques Fesch

Thursday is his birthday.

He's a penitent.  He accidentally murdered a policeman.  He was near sighted and shot the policeman who was pursuing him - after a botched robbery.   I don't know if he had the intent to kill, but that's just my thought.

Jacques Fesch, a young French man, was a convicted murderer who was guillotined for his crime in 1957 at the age of twenty-seven. He killed a police officer while fleeing from the scene of an attempted armed robbery. He has left us a testimony in his letters, written while in prison, that can bring hope to even the most hardened of sinners. His letters show that he was successfully able to resist the terrible temptation of despair, and present a clear witness to the unconquerable strength of a God who is Love, and whose love no crime can overpower. The letters display a glowing testimony to the fact that Love is stronger than even the most horrible of deaths. On the last night of his life, Jacques Fesch, wrote, "I wait in the night and in peace... I wait for Love." - Read more at: Murderer, Convert, Contemplative, Mystic

Anyway, Father mentioned him in his homily yesterday.  I was happy he did so.   We have a really good priest for our pastor.  He loves being a priest.

Penitents.

Like Mary of Egypt - but not exactly - Jacques found a place to flee - although incarcerated and sentenced to death.  There, he experienced that profound sense of repentance and encounter with Christ's love.  If there was only a way for us to cut ourselves off from sin with such vehemence, and to truly encounter Christ in that exile.  To accept our lot as our penance, our participation in the saving passion of Christ.  The penitents demonstrate that Christ came to save sinners - even the most offensive and guilty.

"If we do not accept to be crucified all life is denied us."

This is one of the most edifying pieces I have read in a long time ...

"When Christ took pity upon me..."

"When Christ took pity upon me, I knew it was all over - it was just over and done with; I never would have imagined tagging myself gay, or extolling the minuscule and narrow virtues that an existence so lost and disgusting ever held. Imagine Mary Magdalene ruminating about the few brief moments of spurious happiness she had back in whoredom; or preserving her former good-time-girl moniker. Like Mary, my shift was extreme - for me, the whole gay thing was just evil - and, for so many years, it kept me away from Christ; it cost the lives of many dear friends, and almost took my own. Call me a former-homosexual, ex-gay, even a penitent, but never ever call me gay." - Joseph Sciambra

Saints who disappeared...

S. Roch

 

 

Hidden with Christ in God.

A meditative note in yesterday's Magnificat for the feast of St. Bartholomew described the Saint as "One of the anonymous Apostles, all the personal details of his life have disappeared behind the Gospel he proclaimed.  Like John the Baptist, he decreased to nothing so that Christ might increase."

I liked that a lot.  I thought of my saints who disappeared - often to the consternation of those who knew them in life, and even those who come to know them as saints.

Take St. Alexis for instance.  He disappeared - with the permission of his wife of course - and became a pilgrim, dying unrecognized as a beggar beneath the staircase of his family home - where he had lived once he returned  to Rome.  Unrecognized, he truly lived a hidden life.  As did St. Benedict Joseph Labre, and even Matt Talbot.  None of these guys wrote books or taught CCD, or preached in the streets, or acted as usher in church on Sundays.  They just disappeared - in plain sight.

The pilgrim St. Roch, whose feast we just celebrated August 16, also ended his life in anonymity, dying in the prison of his home town Montpellier, unknown and unrecognized.  His story here.

The other evening I was reading about one of my favorite female saints, Margaret of Cortona.  All of her adult life she was shunned because she had lived with her nobleman lover until his murder, and bore him a son out of wedlock.  After her conversion, rejected by family and friends, she remained the object of suspicion and gossip by those who knew her past.  The Franciscans held her back from entering the Third Order for three years to test the sincerity of her conversion, and yet, after her admittance and adopting the penitents garb, people continued to doubt her repentance.  Gradually she withdrew, becoming more and more of a recluse.  Her penance testified to the authenticity of her conversion - not words or writings; she voiced no objections to her detractors, no defense of her virtue...

Then there is St. Marina, whose father kept her with him disguised as a boy, when he became a monk.  After her father's death, Marina remained in the monastery, living undetected as a man.  At one point Marina was accused of fathering the child of an innkeeper's daughter.  She was dismissed from the monastery and spent five years in expiation of the crime, but was received back into the community after serving her sentence.  When Marina died, the monks discovered she was a woman and therefore innocent of the paternity libel.    She never spoke a word in defense of her virtue.