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Jacques-Désiré Laval

Onorato
9 settembre
Grado
—
Stato
Beato
Nascita
18 settembre 1803
Morte
9 settembre 1864
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Jacques-Desire Laval · Jacques-Désiré Laval

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Jacques-Désiré Laval was born on 18 September 1803 at Croth, a village in the valley of the Eure in the diocese of Évreux, while France was still shaken by the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. His father, Jacques Laval, was a prosperous farmer and mayor of the village; after three daughters the parents had longed for a son, and so the child received the name Désiré, "the desired one." He grew up in a devout household, but his mother died when he was seven, and his uncle Nicolas, parish priest of Tourville-la-Campagne, took charge of his religious instruction. After early studies in his uncle's presbytery school and at the minor seminary of Évreux, his father sent him to the celebrated Collège Stanislas in Paris, where he took his degree in letters at twenty-two and in sciences the following year.

Drawn to medicine, he defended a thesis on rheumatic joint disease on 21 August 1830 and became a doctor. The revolution of that year and the barricades of Paris sent the young physician back to Normandy, where from September 1830 to April 1834 he practised at Saint-André-de-l'Eure and afterwards at Ivry-la-Bataille, often with great charity toward the poor. Yet these were also the years of his greatest danger. He loved comfort and elegance, paraded in uniform at the head of the local national guard, and delighted in fine furniture and receptions; the spiritual life was pushed aside. Remorse worked in him slowly and deeply. A disappointed love, and above all a fall from horseback that might well have killed him, brought him face to face with God's call, which he had long refused. "As a priest I shall be able to do more for the good of my neighbour," he explained to his brother, and to the astonishment of many he closed his practice and entered the seminary at Issy on 15 June 1835.

A late vocation among younger men, he was at once given charge of the service of the poor at Saint-Sulpice in Paris; there too he formed a friendship with François Libermann, with whom he would later labour in the missions. On 22 December 1838 he was ordained priest in the chapel of the Saint-Sulpice seminary by Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen, Archbishop of Paris. On 8 January 1839 he was appointed to the little parish of Pinterville, south of Louviers, with its 485 souls. The two years he spent there were like a novitiate for the missionary he was to become: austerity of life, a door always open to the needy, close attention to the living conditions of his parishioners, and unceasing prayer. He shared with the poor everything he had.

But the misery of the black peoples of Africa and the urgency of bringing them to Christ took hold of his heart. Bishop Collier, newly named Vicar Apostolic of Mauritius, accepted his services for the apostolate among slaves lately emancipated by the British. Laval entered the Society of the Holy Heart of Mary founded by Father Libermann — today the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, the Spiritans. He left Pinterville forever on 23 February 1841, reached London on 14 May, and embarked empty-handed on the Tanjore on 4 June. He would never see Europe again.

After a hundred days at sea he landed at Port Louis on 14 September 1841, in complete indifference; on 26 September he received charge of the Mission of the Blacks. He set himself to learn Creole, composed a simple catechism, and sought out among the freedmen the small group he could train as his helpers. He wore a patched cassock and travelled on donkey-back. He lived withdrawn in a little wooden shed in the presbytery yard so as to receive his "dear blacks" at any hour, and they were astonished to hear themselves addressed as "Monsieur" and "Madame"; for them he celebrated a special Mass every Sunday at midday. Day after day he visited them in their huts, in the hospital, and in the prison. He fasted when supplies were short and slept in a packing crate. His medical knowledge served him constantly, and he laboured to improve their health, their sanitation, their farming, and their whole social condition.

In his apostolate he always went to the essential. He had no taste for oratorical flourishes or showy ceremonies that might dazzle simple souls without giving them a future; instead he returned tirelessly to the fundamentals of Christian doctrine and practice, admitting no one to Baptism or First Communion who had not been prepared in small groups and well tested. He scattered little chapels and bush schools and prayer centres across the island, watching over them from his confessional, and — an initiative that anticipates the labours of many pastors today — he chose collaborators, men and women, as prayer leaders, catechists, visitors and counsellors of the sick, and heads of small Christian communities: the poor evangelizing the poor. When a terrible cyclone destroyed most of the chapels on 8 March 1848, the faithful rebuilt them at once with enthusiasm.

The secret of his zeal was his holiness. Every hour not given to direct apostolate he spent in prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament, joining to his prayer penances and mortifications that, for all his discretion and humility, deeply struck his confreres. He himself often lamented his own tepidity and the aridity he suffered. "Let us count only on the good God and on the protection of the Holy Virgin," he said. Yet the more fruit he bore, the fiercer the opposition: some of the white colonists nicknamed him "the great black beast," and for a time he had to give his evening instructions under the protection of two policemen. In the end aversion gave way little by little to confidence, and in some to profound admiration. He is said to have brought some sixty-seven thousand souls to the faith.

When Father Libermann died on 2 February 1852, his successor, Father Schwindenhammer, named Laval provincial superior of the missions of Bourbon (Réunion) and Mauritius — a burden he bore uneasily, for he had made no novitiate, knew little of the rules of religious life, and shrank from writing reports. He simply kept on with his people. After a series of apoplectic strokes he died at Port Louis on 9 September 1864, having given twenty-three years, all his strength, and his whole heart to the evangelization of the islanders. At his funeral the preacher took up the words of Isaiah applied to Christ: Evangelizare pauperibus misit me — "He sent me to announce the Gospel to the poor." Thirty thousand people followed his coffin, and he was laid to rest opposite the church at Sainte-Croix.

The pilgrimage to his tomb began with that very funeral procession and has never ceased; each year offerings and ex-votos are placed there from the night of 8 September until the close of his feast. His cause was opened in Évreux and in Port Louis, formally introduced under Pope Benedict XV on 26 June 1918, and Pope Paul VI declared him Venerable on 22 June 1972. Pope John Paul II beatified him in Rome on 29 April 1979 — the first Spiritan to be beatified — and prayed at his tomb in Mauritius on 14 October 1989. The spiritual inheritance of Blessed Laval still shapes the life of the Church and of society in the Mauritian islands.

May Blessed Jacques-Désiré Laval obtain for us the grace to spend ourselves, as he did, on those the world counts as nothing; imitate today his patient, hidden charity by treating one forgotten person with the dignity of a brother or sister in Christ.

Fonte: Causes of Saints Anche elencato Wikidata Cause dei Santi GCatholic

Calendario Romano Generale · Liturgical Calendar API

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