Hope From France

Extract

It needs a long view to assess the uses of adversity. At the time, while the intolerable thing is happening, hope itself seems hopeless. But at the heart of the disaster some new life starts springing: a new life, that is yet the recovery of something old and forgotten. For the Christian, that is only to say that no circumstance is without its providential value. Tout ce qui arrive est adorable.

In France in 1941 there seemed little room for hope. The ignominy of defeat reached deeper far than the level of a military surrender and it is easy enough to understand the mood of tortured immolation—“All that is left to France is to suffer”—which came over many Frenchmen at that time. But it is not given, to the members of Christ to despair, and the failure of human hopes, reveals all the more surely the new life we are called to share: “you will be distressed, but your distress shall be turned into joy” (John xvii: 20).

It was precisely at this time, 1941, that there came into being a movement, later to be known as the Centre de Pastorale Liturgique, which had for its aim nothing less than the recovery of the parish church as the Christian home, the place where the children of God meet and worship and whose influence extends to all they do. It might seem that there was no need to found a society to affirm what is an integral part of the Church’s function as the Mystical Body of Christ. But the Dominican founders of the C.P.L. had precise objectives in view. The German occupation brought grave difficulties for Catholic life in France.