|
Home > Our
Spirituality > Our Carmelite Saints
Pere Jacques of Jesus -
Discalced Carmelite, Martyr of Charity
 Pere
Jacques of Jesus, born Lucien-Louis Bunel (1900-1945), was immortalised
in the French film, Au revoir les enfants. He is remembered for his extraordinary
ability to bridge the differences of class, ideology, nationality and religion,
that often divide the human family. The son of working-class parents, with a lifelong
commitment to social justice, after ordination he joined the Carmelite friars,
and became director of an elite school near Paris, the Petit-College, at the age
of 34. When Germany invaded France in 1940 and permitted the Vichy French Government
to establish an oppresive collaborationist regime, Pere Jacques quietly joined
the Resistance. Without hesitation and with full knowledge of the possible implications
for his own safety, he accepted a request from Mother Maria, the superior of a
convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Sion, to provide refuge within his school
for three young Jewish boys. For this act of compassion, he was betrayed to the
Gestapo: he would pay with his life.
In the concentration camp of Mauthausen, he spent himself tirelessly
in the service of others. He was admired and trusted by all his fellow-prisoners
including non-believers and communists. He died two weeks after the liberation
of the camp by the Allies. The State of Israel has honoured him as a rescuer,
one of the "Righteous Among the Nations." A martyr, his cause
for canonisation was opened in 1990. In 1997, the US Holocaust Memorial
Museum mounted an exhibition recalling the rescue efforts of Pere Jacques,
wishing to honour the memory of someone who reached out to victims of the
Nazi regime at great personal risk.
Lucien Bunel was born into a working class family in Normandy on January 29, 1900. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1925 for the service of his home diocese of Rouen. Six years later, he entered religious life as a Discalced Carmelite and received the name of Père Jacques de Jésus. He became the founder and director of the Petit Collège, a preparatory school for boys at Avon, some thirty miles southeast of Paris. Following the Nazi occupation, he entered the Resistance and was arrested in 1944 for hiding Jewish students in the school. He was deported and finally died on June 2, 1945 as a result of his maltreatment at the Gusen concentration camp (Austria), where his heroic self-sacrifice made him truly a "Martyr of Charity."
Prayer for the Beatification of Père Jacques
O God, our Father, in your infinite goodness, you implanted deep
within Père Jacques, from his earliest years, an eagerness to love you
and to love all people with his whole heart.
You endowed him with special gifts for the education of youth; You chose him to
be a priest and you called him to the religious life as a Carmelite.
In the inhuman degradation of the concentration camps, you made him a living witness
of faith and love, until he had poured himself out completely.
O Father, grant us the blessings which we seek through the intercession of Père
Jacques. And, if it is your will, make him a saint within your Church.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
With the permission of V. Rev. Louis Cornet, Bishop of Meaux
Courtesy of ICS Publications, publishers of the writings of Père Jacques,
2131 Lincoln Road NE, Washington DC 20002
Our Saints - Other Links
|
