Thursday November 28, 2024 – Feast of Saint Geneviève in Laus with the Hautes-Alpes gendarmerie group
Introduction to the 4 p.m. mass
In 451, the Huns threatened Paris. Geneviève, who has devoted herself to God since childhood, persuades the panicked Parisians that the Barbarians will not attack the city and that there is no point in fleeing. Indeed Paris is spared.
A strong, peaceful woman of great authority, a woman who knew how to restore order and peace to the city during the worst trials, Geneviève remains a benchmark for all the gendarmes at the same time as she intercedes for them. In 1962, Pope Saint John XXIII solemnly designated Saint Genevieve as patroness of the Gendarmerie, whose commitments and sense of service he had been able to appreciate when he was apostolic nuncio in Paris before being elected pope.
In the Church calendar, the feast of Saint Geneviève appears on January 3, which corresponds to the date of her death, but this date is not favorable for the gathering of the gendarmes, it is celebrated by the gendarmerie around November 26, which corresponds to the feast of Saint Geneviève des Ardents, established by Pope Innocent II for the diocese of Paris in honor of the miracles of healing from the plague performed at the invocation of the saint in this city in the year 1130.
This is how the diocese of the armed forces, on which the gendarmerie chaplaincy depends, details the meaning of this celebration. Welcome to the ND du Laus sanctuary. We are happy to welcome gendarmes for major events in the department, such as the Monte Carlo rally or the Tour de France, and undoubtedly for the 2030 Olympics. But even more happy to welcome you to this basilica to pray to your patron saint.
Homily
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Meditating on these texts which were specifically chosen for your feast of St. Genevieve, wondering what the Holy Spirit suggested I say to you, a sentence from the Gospel of John, reporting the event of the baptism of Jesus by John -Baptiste, seemed to me to resonate with what you are experiencing: “Seeing Jesus coming towards him, John declared: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. » I will repeat the three parts of this sentence, starting at the end.
I. The sin of the worldit is the daily life of priests in confession, but it is also the daily life of the gendarmes on the ground. I guess there are happy moments and great joys in your mission, for example prevention actions. As far as current events are concerned, I am thinking for example when you secured the Olympic Games, or undoubtedly within a few days to secure the reopening of the ND Cathedral in Paris or the arrival of the Pope in Ajaccio; if any of you go there! However, I imagine that your daily life is not easy. You know the darkness of sin. There are certainly other causes than sin, such as addictions, poverty, mental illness, etc. But there is also sin. Sin is not beautiful, the sin of the world is not beautiful, to use the expression of St John the Baptist. We can analyze it in two ways.
It is first of all personal, individual sin. The source of personal sin is what we call the deadly sins. Pride, greed, envy, anger, lust, gluttony and sloth are the seven deadly sins. We often make fun of the capital sins, because we do not understand the meaning of this term “capital”: it comes from the Latin 'caput-capitis', the head. These are head sins, sources of other sins. Pride in itself couldn't be serious. But pride can lead to seeing a colleague as a competitor and dragging them through the mud. Gluttony, in itself, is not serious, and it must be distinguished from being gourmet, which is recognizing the gift of God, but if out of greed I deprive my little sister because I ate all the cake… It there are more dramatic things, for example, out of desire, I steal; out of anger, I kill, etc. And the source of deadly sins is our bad habits, vices, and the temptation of the devil. St John says that “sin is the transgression of the law”, that is to say the transgression of the commandment of love, to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself.
The sin of the world is also what Saint John Paul II called the structures of sin. Which leads to closing schools in New Delhi because there is so much pollution. Having to clean the coasts because to save money when an oil tanker degasses…. You can apply this category of sin structure to the cases you handle in Hautes-Alpes. It is, for example, structures of sin such as wars, corruption, climate change, which push young and old people onto the roads of exile and to pass through our mountains.
II. “Seeing Jesus coming towards him, John said: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. » Faced with the darkness of sin, John the Baptist points out Jesus to you: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. »Let's take this second part of the sentence: “the Lamb of God, who takes away” You help to alleviate it, but only Jesus, the Son of God, can take away the sin of the world. On the one hand, He came for this! To save us from the darkness of sin. He took upon us all our sins and in his sacrifice of the Cross, like a slain lamb, he in some way accepted that sin would cause him to die. We think of the hatred of the high priests, we think of the cowardice of Pilate, of the treachery of Judah; and also all our sins. But God did not leave him in the shadow of the tomb, he resurrected him.
So on the one hand Jesus came to take away the sin of the world.
On the other hand, Saint John, this time in his first letter, heard in the first reading, gives us a key to welcoming this salvation. : “Whoever abides in him does not sin; whoever sins has not seen him and does not know him. » We experience it, the darkness of sin is not only in others, in evildoers. It is also in us. What we call spiritual warfare is in each of our souls. The front line between good and evil runs through my heart. So I must welcome the Resurrection of Jesus also for me, that he remains resurrected in me. You know, the sacrament of forgiveness, which is also called confession or Reconciliation, is a resurrection. We were weighed down by the weight of our sins and we are freed from them. I invite you to confess before Christmas! especially if it's been a long time since you've done it. This sanctuary of Laus was desired by Jesus, who sent his holy Mother there, as a mountain refuge for sinners. And every day there are priests to confess.
To take up St. John, we sin if we do not remain in God, if we do not remain at the level to which Jesus raised us, children of God: “See what great love the Father has given us,” continues St. John, “so that we let us be called children of God – and we are. »
“Seeing Jesus coming towards him, John said: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. »
III. I come to the first part of the sentence: “Seeing Jesus coming towards him, John declared”.
It must have been something to see Jesus come to him! The apostles Peter and Andrew, we will have this text tomorrow for the feast of St Andrew, saw Jesus coming to him at the edge of Lake Tiberias. They immediately left their net and followed Jesus. Some of you have already had this personal encounter with Jesus. For you then Jesus became someone, and not a beautiful story from the past, or a simple teacher of wisdom. For others, it is perhaps during the Holy Year 2025 that they will meet Jesus. Pope Francis in his bull of indiction of the Jubilee 2025 which will open in the diocese on December 29, entitled “Hope does not disappoint” tells us his hope for this jubilee year: “May it be for all a moment of living and personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, “door” to salvation. He is our hope » SNC 1
“Who will make us see happiness? », asks the psalmist. Pope Francis responds in the same text: “But what is happiness? What happiness do we expect and desire? Not a passing joy, an ephemeral satisfaction which, once achieved, always demands more in a spiral of lusts where the human soul is never satisfied but always emptier. We need a happiness that is definitively accomplished in what fulfills us, that is to say in love, so that we can say, from now on: I am loved, therefore I exist; and I will always exist in Love which does not disappoint and from which nothing and no one can ever separate me. » NCS 21
The gendarme, like the priest, can be tired of hearing about people who are doing badly, about dramatic circumstances. This is what we can call compassion fatigue, because we suffer with people who suffer, and sometimes we ask the Lord Jesus: “Send me people who are okay!” » So we must anchor ourselves in the love of God. The Pope continues “The image of the anchor evokes the stability and security that we possess in the midst of the turbulent waters of life if we rely on the Lord Jesus. The storms can never prevail because we are anchored in the hope of grace which is able to make us live in Christ, triumphing over sin, fear and death.” SNC 25
“Seeing Jesus coming towards him. » In 3 days, it will be the first Sunday of Advent. We will have 4 weeks to let Jesus come to us. Come Lord Jesus, come into my life, come into the world. This is our hope. Amen.
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