French (Dis-)Connection
by Bishop William Joensen | September 17, 2025
Our ongoing Jubilee Year 2025 celebration has overlapped with another Jubilee that concluded this past June: the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque at the Visitation monastery in Paray-le-Monial, France. The latter Jubilee was inspiration for a group of 38 pilgrims from the Diocese of Des Moines, including Father Trevor Chicoine of Cass County and me, to recently venture to France to visit numerous sites made holy by female and male saints who compose some of the legacy of this country once called the “eldest daughter of the Church.”
I won’t bore you with a travelogue, but certainly the opportunity to pray and celebrate Mass in the locales where Ss. Thérèse of Lisieux, Catherine Labouré, Louise de Marillac, Vincent de Paul, Margaret Mary and her spiritual director, Claude la Colombière, Hugh of Cluny, John Vianney, Thomas Aquinas, Sernin, Bernadette Soubirous, and above all, Blessed Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes, are venerated was a source of profound personal grace for group members. And we believe these graces flowed to others for whom we implored the saints’ intercession in our families, in the Diocese of Des Moines and beyond.
Spiritual connections with the universal Body of Christ were deepened—most vividly at the moving candlelight vigil procession under a clear, moonlit sky at the Lourdes Shrine, where people of many language groups were united in invoking Mary, who is both the Immaculate Conception and the temple of her Son’s Body. As an anonymous monk once observed, Jesus endowed Mary “with every privilege, making her in body and soul the purest, loveliest temple that ever was: pure because immaculately conceived, lovely because full of grace.” The pure spring Lourdes water that weighed down many of our pilgrims’ suitcases on the way home is intended to be a sacramental that conveys healing and hope to gifted recipients.
After a preliminary excursion by the first wave of our group to Normandy, our whole group converged in Paris. I reminded everyone of a distinction I’ve previously drawn between a tourist and a pilgrim: A tourist, I propose, enlists the senses to take in the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that are a source of fascination and pleasure. He or she samples this or that food, is bemused and appreciative of differences in cultures, all in the name of having an experience directed toward oneself. A tourist remains to some degree detached from one’s surroundings until one gets back on the bus, the plane, to return home.
Pilgrims, in contrast, have a goal, a destination, that is only partly perceived or known. There is a degree of mystery that draws us forward, and if we submit ourselves with humility, docility, and reverence to something, someone greater than ourselves, allowing the One who evokes our curiosity and longing to lay claim to us, then our souls are set for something far more meaningful than self-satisfaction—we are drawn through the doors of mystery into a genuine personal encounter.
From there, we are moved to conversion of heart, to deepened friendship with Jesus. We are then spurred to affirm and expand the communion of life, Spirit, and love God bestows. This communion is no transient affair, such as we experienced on our final night together in France when our hotel manager finally found the televised Iowa-Iowa State football game for several of us to watch gathered around a flat screen TV; rather, this communion endures long after our pilgrim days are done.
Father Chicoine, in his several rousing homilies, invoked the tourist/pilgrim distinction more than once and convicted us of our need for the mercy coursing from Jesus’ Sacred Heart in the sacraments of confession and Eucharist—mercy that strips away the material and psychic layers we accumulate that pose a barrier to the simplicity, poverty of spirit, and charity embodied by the saints.
In his last encyclical, Dilexit nos/“He Loved Us” [DN], our late Holy Father, Pope Francis, comments on the disposition to make reparation for personal sins to offer consolation to Jesus’ wounded heart: “It might appear to some that this aspect of devotion to the Sacred Heart lacks a firm theological basis, yet the heart has its reasons. Here the sensus fidelium [instinct of the faithful] perceives something mysterious, beyond our human logic, and realizes that the passion of Christ is not merely an event of the past, but one in which we can share through faith. Meditation on Christ’s self-offering on the cross involves, for Christian piety, something much more than remembrance.”
Here we note St. Thomas Aquinas’ claim, “The believer’s act of faith has as its object not simply the doctrine proposed, but also union with Christ himself in the reality of his divine life.” Pope Francis continues, “We can also add the recognition of our own sins, which Jesus took upon his bruised shoulders, and our inadequacy in the face of that timeless love, which is always infinitely greater” (DN par. 154, including note 157).
As much as novel and renewed connections were formed during our France pilgrimage, I was also moved to reflection about some of the social and political dynamics among the French people that underlie some felt disconnections between the French and Americans, and even more, between Catholic Christians. Philosopher Chantal Delsol exposes one foundational rift in her work, Prosperity and Torment in France: The Paradox of the Democratic Age. She refers to Philippe d’Iribarne’s celebrated book, La logique de l’honneur [the logic of honor], where he exposes how the relations of authority within businesses vary greatly among countries:
“In the Anglo-Saxon world [which informs our American mindset], the logic of the contract predominates.” This sort of logic presumes a type of equality among parties inspiring confidence and an expectation of receiving a fair return for what one gives. In France, another sort of logic prevails when it comes to authority: “What is essential is not to lose face, to receive the consideration that is due you. It is necessary to remain dignified and to shine, even if the situation demands obedience” (Delsol pp. 57-58).
Freedom and the honor that attends it for the Frenchman means not having to submit to another. On the surface French society extols “egalité” among all persons, but this supposed egality is undermined by a stealth preference for money and material privileges that must remain concealed: “One does not speak of them, one deceitfully denies them, and one finds ways to hide them” (p. 63). Hence, the net result is fundamental mistrust among citizens.
Certainly, our American culture is beset by a tendency toward excess and materialism, and surveys show a rise in social mistrust. There is a form of transparency that can negatively manifest itself as ostentation, a “show-off” attitude that says, “look at me.” Such a mindset lacks discretion and modesty.
In contrast, and more positively, in the U.S. there is also a disposition to honor those who excel in any venue of life, whether in academics, athletics, business or other charitable pursuits that extend beyond mere personal gain. In America, we need not be shy about striving to be excellent or generous, or in receiving the earthly honors and compensation that recognize our efforts.
Yet, given their treasury of saints, our French friends have all the spiritual resources at hand to foster a culture shift, and to inspire Americans and all Catholics to go deeper in faith and self-donation (i.e., “self-submission”) than we already have to this point in our lives. For as Delsol observes, in contrast to limited material goods, “immaterial goods unfold by being shared. . . . One would not revolt over spiritual goods; they cannot be accounted for or equalized; they are not distributed from outside, but are internal in terms of access and evaluation” (pp. 60-61).
Herein lies a French paradox: in a contemporary society with a preference for privilege and benefits that are discreetly hidden from public view, the lives of the many French saints who animated this eldest daughter of the church disclose a preferential option for hiddenness, for self-effacing sacrifice that is not interested in personal gain at the exclusion of one’s fellow citizens.
Rather, the French saints, whatever their degree of recognition by their peers, “suffered” the indignity of allowing their pointed insights and tireless practice of charity among the poor to be made public despite their personal preferences. These saints reveal the hallmark features of those who belong as baptismal card-carrying citizens to the Kingdom of God.
St. Catherine Labouré, for example, was a 19th century 24-year-old novice in St. Vincent de Paul’s Daughters of Charity who received private apparitions from the Blessed Virgin Mary. She revealed to Catherine the design for the Miraculous Medal. Yet Catherine did not rest on her “most favored” status, but spent the next 40 years of her life serving the aged and infirm to an extent that she is regarded as a patron of seniors and the sick.
The glory of the saints is the hope and impetus for us to follow the path they have trod, to worship at the one altar of Word and Sacrament, drawn into sacred company with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The French saints, as do all saints, help us to view our whole life, our very identity, as pilgrims who have embarked on a journey of hope in which our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, has paid for us to take part.