The following reflection was used as an introduction to one of our Paris prayer sessions:
So well did Roman Gaul take to Christianity, that France has been referred to in recent years by one of the Popes , as “First Daughter of the Church”.
On Monday, some of us discovered the church in Montmatre where the first Jesuits, on fire with a love of Jesus and a passion for living the Gospel with greater integrity, gathered and talked and nourished their faith with each other. And this was in the 16th century, at the height of the Protestant reform, which as Catholics, they realized had not arisen out of nowhere. Something had gone very wrong in the Church they loved.