A few words from Pierre
on prayer
The Fire
All it takes is one place where someone is there to love Jesus, and immediately people come running. Man is made to burn. Then you will see the fire spread. But really have that love. Adore, adore
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 08/78
We become burning bushes that burn and are not consumed. It is like a burning fire that the Lord desires to kindle from our poor lives, that together we dedicate to his service, to the growth of his Kingdom of Love
Preparatory notes for a teaching 24/06/80
Caught in this fire of love, we are completely burned,
melted, destroyed and rebuilt with our true self.
"Emmanuel" weekend 26/10/75
We have to drink this fire, we have to worship, we have to warm ourselves by this fire that is worship; and really if we put ourselves there, then everything comes to us, everything comes.
French-speaking Africa meeting, Paray-le-Monial 12-16/07/79
What we need to do for all of you who are here is to worship. When you have time, you will pray and you will adore. […] But the purpose of this adoration is naturally to honor the Body and Heart of Christ, but above all it is to ask Him to set us ablaze with love, to set us ablaze with love for our brothers and sisters in turn. [The love of the Heart of Jesus is asked for in adoration and in trusting prayer. Even if you are a log, you remain at the feet of Jesus and you put yourself to bask in the sun of his Love. […] So I beg you, ask Jesus, like a child, for this great grace of having your heart set on fire with love in order to set the world on fire!
Session of Paray 09-21/07/77 Introduction to the teaching of Mgr Gaidon
So, above all, what you must ask of the Lord is not to say to him all the time: “Ah, Lord, take this sin away from me”, but that the Lord burns you, that he transforms you, that he gives you a soul to share with Mary.
Interview on 23/05/73
So let’s look at God instead. […] The simplest thing is to ask for Fire, the fire of Heaven, to come into us. […] As long as we don’t have this fire, we will never get very far.
"Emmanuel" weekend 25-26/10/75 Saturday 25/10/75
This is not reserved for the privileged few, it is true for everyone because man is made to burn.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat. August 78 09/08/78 Afternoon.
God wants to replace our heart of stone with his Heart burning with love, to communicate to us his ardent desire to save souls… For this He wants to touch our heart with His Love, to pierce it, to break it. Discovering our misery, we enter into his Mercy. [In adoration, Jesus wants to give us the compassion of his Heart, the sweetness of his Heart. He breaks our pride, our self-will, puts us in his school: “Jesus, gentle and humble of heart, make our hearts like yours.”
Preparatory notes for a teaching 24/06/80
These graces of poverty will be given to us in adoration. And our hearts will be inflamed, inflamed with love for the Lord and for our brothers. We will be like living torches, we will be able to set the world on fire, starting with France.
Meeting of the Fraternity of Jesus 25/06/77
If we adore, we really feel poorer and poorer, but we put ourselves entirely in the arms of Jesus. And we really ask him to open our hearts… And his Heart warms us, burns us. We burn with love and then we radiate. And as we burn with love, well, whether we are in prayer, or with the sick, or whatever, we are always burning with love and we see Jesus everywhere.
Meeting of the Fraternity of Jesus 25/06/77
I tell you this very deeply. You must really pray especially saying: “Lord, show yourself to me, manifest yourself to me, inflame me, burn me, consume me with your Love, so that we can set the earth on fire.”
Fraternity of Jesus Christmas 82 Retreat 12/30/82
You’ll tell me, “I did the worship, I had a good time with it; you know, I was a little dry.” But it doesn’t matter! Because you’re being subjected to ultraviolet light…. You say, “I’m here and nothing happened to me.”
So I say: “But yes, you are glowing.
– Ah, I didn’t experience anything.
– Okay, but it doesn’t matter if you feel something. The Lord doesn’t have to make you feel anything. But you did it in faith, you came, and the Lord is building you up, giving you strength.”
That’s a point.
Fraternity of Jesus Paray summer 83 retreat. Teaching 24/07/83
We can think back on all that the Lord has done for us. How we met Him? Thank Him for that and see if now we stay as alive and burning with Him or if we have let ourselves get a little cold.
"Emmanuel" weekend 25-26/10/75 Saturday 25/10/75
Let us ask the Lord to burn with love for our sinful brothers. You know that St. Dominic used to spend his nights saying, “But Lord, what will become of sinners?” He was always begging. This makes prayer much easier because, instead of falling asleep or remaining in dryness, when you see that people are suffering, you no longer have dryness. You say: “Lord, Lord, have mercy, have mercy, I ask you to help me to suffer for them…”
Community Weekend 25/01/81
Jesus, on the cross, suffered, but He suffered even more for all the souls that were in danger of being lost and He was happy about His sufferings because with His sufferings He said: “I save souls.” Likewise for Therese of the Child Jesus who, following His example, while she was suffering terribly, was so happy to save souls. She really had the fire of Love in her. So what we must ask for is this fire of Love, infinitely greater than suffering.
Fraternity of Jesus Christmas 80 Retreat Teaching 3
A little one who was very fast and quick was Therese of the Child Jesus. You saw that at the age of 24 – it didn’t take long – she was completely inflamed and burned out. Now, she really came to teach us this way – and there are not thirty-six ways: a very simple way for people as small and weak as we are.
"Emmanuel" weekend 25-26/10/75 Saturday 25/10/75
If we ask the Lord for this fire, we are burned and our sins burn with it. [...] We really have to ask the Lord for this!
Introduction to the teaching of Pastor Thomas Roberts, 2nd session of Paray-le-Monial, July 17-22, 1976
Talking about the Lord makes us burn and cleanses us from our sins. If love covers sin, how much love the Lord has! Ah, if we loved!…
Manuscript note
God wants to replace our heart of stone with his Heart burning with Love, to communicate to us his ardent desire to save souls, to get them out of atheism, materialism and hedonism. For this, he wants to touch our hearts with his Love, to pierce them, to break them. [Adoration, the source of compassion, leads us to evangelization. Jesus, having made us perceive the suffering of his Heart broken by sin and above all the indifference of men, asks us to announce to everyone, by all the means he shows us, the gentleness and tenderness of his Heart, his desire that every man return to him, let his pride melt away to let his heart speak and live. It is like a burning fire that the Lord wishes to kindle from our poor lives that together we dedicate to his service, to the growth of his Kingdom of Love.
Community Weekend 04-05/04/81
The priests of the parish have all come to worship with us. So it’s going to be contagious: from parish to parish, the fire is going to take hold and finally Paris will only worship at night and work during the day!… So I expect that you [invite?] also all our parish priests and parishioners to come and pray: “Come, it is very contagious!”
Week-end communautaire 04-05/04/81
I tell you this very deeply. You must really pray especially saying: “Lord, show yourself to me, manifest yourself to me, inflame me, burn me, consume me with your Love, so that we can set the earth on fire.”
Fraternity of Jesus Christmas 82 Retreat 12/30/82
They say that we are in a drought. […] Well, when we are with Jesus who suffers, we also suffer, you understand. And we don’t feel the drought so much! Or else it is a spiritual dryness that is really given by God. Then, at that moment, one really remains… one adheres to the Lord.
Fraternity Retreat August 78. 09/08/78 Morning
Continuous Adoration
Fraternity of Jesus Christmas 80 Retreat
One comes to be recharged in adoration, but then one must remain all one’s life in this love, so that when one sees brothers, one remains in his love and receives them in his love.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 31/12/79
I really like this “without me you can do nothing” because it’s magnificent, it’s radical, we can do nothing. So we don’t have to be worried. We say that we can do nothing, so we have to ask the Lord for everything.
Really, when we are in adoration, we remain in his Love, we ask for this grace to remain in his Love. But to abide in his Love is not only to be in adoration: one comes to be recharged in adoration and then one must live all one’s life with this Love, to abide in this Love, so that, when one sees brothers, one abides in his Love and receives them in his Love.
This is theoretical, but practically speaking, it is a life that grows in us every day, and only if we always ask the Lord for it, since we can do nothing without Him.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 31/12/79
Real presence
Community Weekend 21/06/81
We always have to protect ourselves from guilt: we always think that we are doing wrong, that it is not good, and this and that. So if we are really with the Lord, “perfect love banishes fear”: we are not worried, we know that He is there. If one has distractions, one says to the Lord, “I have distractions, I am a poor fellow.” As Teresa of Avila said, “These are the fruits of my garden.” “Well, Lord, these are the fruits of my garden.” But we put in the good will, so that, like that, we don’t come out of the oration tense. Even if you were a little upset, little by little you should be able to calm down. Because you are happy with someone who is next to you. […] It is very important to have this peace, to feel loved. Even sometimes not to feel it, but to know you are loved. To know it in faith. We know that God loves us, that He is immutable, that His feelings do not vary, that He continues to love us despite our imperfections and even if we have made a joke. There you go, you can see that it’s very simple: to relax and simply say to yourself, “Well, it worked or it didn’t work, but either way I’m happy because I’m with You; I’m with You!”
Community Weekend 01/04/79
Christ's love
Interview by Jean-Marc and Françou Morin in Saint-Maurice 5-8/08/88
The essential thing is the Lord, the interior life, adoration and prayer. If we do not live in prayer, in adoration and in the humility and gentleness of the Lord’s Heart, everything else is useless.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 08/79 Second Teaching
The only way to revitalize the Church
is through the Love of Christ.
Session of Paray 09-21/07/77 Introduction to the teaching of Mgr Gaidon
Jesus guides us in the adoration of his Eucharistic Heart, invites us to remain in his Love by adoring his Body for a long time (day and night) in order to let ourselves be touched by the breath of his Love.
Preparatory notes for a teaching 24/06/80
When you come out (of worship) after an hour, you will say, “How I was bored, how I was distracted!” And the others will say, “But it’s curious, you are radiant!” You will not feel it, but others will feel it. And you will live with love!
Session of Paray 09-21/07/77 Introduction to the teaching of Mgr Gaidon
Each one of us really has a grace of love and that is why we must ask the Lord for this grace, not for others, but for ourselves. And, at that moment, the Lord transforms our heart, and little by little it comes. But we really need to have hope by saying: “Lord, I knock, I know you will open the door for me, I am totally unworthy and I am counting absolutely, not on my merits, but on your Love”… This is the essence of everything.
Community Weekend 17-18/05/80
"from prayer group to community" Paray sessions 06/07/79
The most important thing is that we begin to love the Lord
and that He transforms our hearts.
"Emmanuel" inter-assembly day 13/03/76
On the other hand, if you do not welcome reserves of charity, love, prayer, when you have an action to do you will sink into activism.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 31/12/79
Everything is truly given to us, but it is this secret of abiding in his Love. He asks us to “Abide”. It’s a command, it’s an advice, it’s an order. And it is so easy that we say: “Oh yes, it’s too easy. No! That’s the point!
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat. August 78 09/08/78 Afternoon.
As Teresa of the Child Jesus says, everything we do out of love becomes love. [It is] not the services themselves that we do that really exist in the Lord’s heart, it is the way we do them with love.
Community weekend 20/09/81
When we have in our heart this burning furnace of love, of charity, well the radiation that we can have! And what we can transform! We can melt all hearts!
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 30-31/12/77
We’re missionaries. You leave if you can, and if not, you stay. You leave if you can, and if not, you stay but, in spirit, you are like Saint Therese of the Child Jesus (you see that it worked well enough!): Therese of the Child Jesus, patroness of the missions! A little one in her carmel like that, patroness of the missions! So what was she doing? It was not funny in her carmel… Well, she was working for a missionary. […] When you do something, anything, it is love that transforms.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 30-31/12/77
With this love that we have in our hearts, we transform our friends, our comrades, our loved ones, and, little by little, from close to close, we set one of these fantastic fires! This is what Jesus said. He said: “I have come to bring fire to the earth and what do I want but for it to be kindled. Well, that’s it. Right now the whole world is cracking with cold… It’s because we don’t have love. We have all the most advanced gadgets, we have everything we want, but we don’t have the essential, we are not loved and we don’t like.
Cycle of youth weekends 1981
Everything (of our time) matters.
Our day is timed out of love for the Lord.
Community Weekend 01/04/79
If you turn everything into love, then everything is love. That’s what’s extraordinary. And we don’t believe it because we don’t have enough faith. And that’s why our heart is a little divided at times. Otherwise, our heart would always be in joy because everything that happens to us, the pleasant and unpleasant things, we offer it all to Jesus.
Community Weekend 4/17/82
Therese used to say, “I offer myself as a victim to Merciful Love.” The word “victim” gives everyone the willies. It is obvious that she is not talking about justice (some people in the past offered themselves as victims to God’s justice for the reparation of sins and all the evil in the world), but she says: “I am too small for all that. I offer myself as a victim to Merciful Love. So, to Merciful Love, there is no danger, we must not be afraid of Merciful Love! All He can do is make us have such an intensity of love that we burn with Him and that finally it purifies us and then it also purifies, united to His sufferings, a little the sins of the world. So it is rather in this way that we must be able to go. But I believe that we can really go with confidence… and Mary also tells us so.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 08/79 First teaching
Lord, teach us to become humble, gentle and humble of heart. “Gentle and humble heart of Jesus, make our hearts like yours.” This is our vocation! We really need to feel it deeply.
And all this is taken in the graces of adoration.
Fraternity of Jesus Christmas 82 Retreat 12/30/82
Hope is not blissful optimism, says Peter. We know very well that things have been going badly since original sin… and they will continue until the end of time. At the end of time, the Lord says, “Will the Son of Man meet faith on earth?” He even says that “the charity of many will grow cold”. So that doesn’t prove that things are going so well. But we live in hope because we know that the Lord is risen, that He is in our hearts, that He is with us every day. So we live in this hope. It is also a theological virtue: God’s promises are fulfilled in spite of evil and sin… The essential thing is to think that God exists and that we must rely on him. So if it is said that we have to rely on him, we have to be able to love him… It is not us who will love him, it is him who will make us love him.
"Emmanuel" weekend 25-26/10/75
Adoration and Compassion
Worshiping the Lord makes us sympathize with all the sufferings of the world, makes us understand all the physical sufferings, but also invites us to pray for the conversion of sinners
Community weekend in Touraine 19/11/88
Meeting of the Fraternity of Jesus 25/06/77
In adoration, Jesus wants to give us the compassion of his Heart,
the sweetness of his Heart
Preparatory notes for a teaching 24/06/80
In the compassion of worship, we must say to the Lord: “Here, we pray to you for those who do not pray to you and who do not know how to pray to you”.
Community Weekend 21/06/81
We’re in a drought. So let’s say: “Jesus is a sick man. Well, let’s say: “Jesus is a sick man. He lives in the dark. [We can’t hear him, he’s so tired, he can’t speak, he’s in agony. So He is there and then we stay close to Him. We are bored but we shouldn’t be bored because He is suffering. So we are taken with compassion. We say to him: “Lord, don’t leave me with such a hard heart, let me [have] a little compassionate heart. Let me live with you, let me love you!”
Community Weekend 01/04/79
Community Weekend 25/01/81
Because you see, you must have a love of charity. So you ask the Lord for this and you find it; it is exercised, it is lived in adoration. If you have not prayed before seeing the lady […] you will make a blunder and (you will say) precisely what you should not say. […] But if you have really prayed, the Lord will speak through you without you knowing it.
Sessions in Paray 09-21/07/77 "From prayer group to community
Nids de résistance
The devil has succeeded in taking over the city and there are only nests of resistance left. These are the places of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
Community weekend 30-31/05/81
In the situation of a world dramatically in peril, Peter thought that groups united in the Holy Spirit would constitute “nests of resistance”. These nests of resistance are the places of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. These groups infiltrate the city, they are like “love grenades” that explode in the right places! It is a revolution of love. And, he says, we are everywhere: we are with Jesus.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 30-31/12/77
Strength / Surrender
This joy is really found in the adoration of the Eucharist, it is really our strength. And it is really, I would say, our specificity because it is there that we are recognized; [it is there] that we are really in the Heart of the Lord.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 08/79 First teaching
We are there, we say: “Lord we lose half an hour to be with you (all together) because we believe that you are the God of glory, the God of love. And we want to pay you this tribute, when the world does not pray to you, when the world is completely in darkness. So we pray.” Well that’s a tremendous power.
Community Weekend 21/06/81
I lived from adoration and did prayer
in Eucharistic adoration and the Sacred Heart.
Interview by Jean-Marc and Françou Morin in Saint-Maurice 5-8/08/88
It is so profound, so important to receive (the graces of the Lord) like a little child in joy. Everything is given […], everything is given to us by the Father with such joy. I really can’t tell you anything else: it’s fantastic! But really believe it. It is not imagination, it is a reality. And it is very important for our time. Not only for our “cenacle”. Because at the same time that Jesus says, “I come to you in joy,” He also says, “I come to you in strength.” He gives us his strength. It is not a soft sentimentality, it is something strong. “Love is as strong as death.”
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 27/07/86
One is only saved in contemplation, in adoration of the Eucharist. All the religious orders that have had an important influence have been centered on the Eucharist, adoration, submission to the Pope and Mary.
Manuscript note
And we know that we are not the ones doing the work. We are there to calm down, to listen quietly but not to stretch ourselves! So we don’t tense up and then we doze off. Well, we doze off! In general, this is the best moment when He takes care of us because, at this moment, we leave Him the peace and He can do what He wants in us.
Community Weekend 01/04/79
I had said that we felt that Paray-le-Monial
would become a capital of prayer and adoration.
Community Weekend 25/09/83
So (adoration) is not an escape, it is really the essential of our work: to put ourselves in the love of the Lord, in recollection and in listening to Him.
At that moment, the structures, the services, all that is put in place, and takes its true place.
Fraternity of Jesus Retreat 08/79 Second Teaching
