“Between the past where our memories lie, and the future where our hopes live, there is the present where our duties await.”

Reverand Father LACORDAIRE (1802-1861)
Dominican

“We cannot join with the crowd to rail against “the pious old ladies” and “the little old bigots” who seem to encumber our churches, who prevent modern man from entering and feeling at home. We respect these old women and we love them. Our own Christian tradition is not one which casts insults at these widows and grandmothers who have survived the passing of grandfather, and of children, who, their hands joined in prayer, have been left behind with their memories and their hope. These are women who go to the church to pray as they can for the salvation of the world, for the redemption of the world which is so desperate to be modern, women who mysteriously obtain what they pray for. In their movement to light a candle at the altar of the Virgin Mary, we see the movement of the faith… They are old, they are widows, they are weary, covering each day the distance to the church, each day, even in winter, in the rain… They are the honor guard of the Virgin Mary, who was also an old woman at one time, when she lived with St. John. And these women pray for us and for you, even if they are ignorant of it — but who would dare affirm such an ignorance?”

Jean MADIRAN (1920-2013)
French Journalist and Essayist