Photo Credit: Paris Province of the Discalced Carmelite Friars

Homily

delivered by François-Marie Lethel, O.C.D.,
a Carmelite friar of the Paris province,
at the funeral of his brother, Guy Gaucher, O.C.D.,
a Carmelite friar of the same province,
the auxiliary bishop emeritus of Bayeux and Lisieux,
and the friend of Thérèse,
on July 10, 2014 in the Basilica of St. Thérèse at Lisieux

Dear Friends,

            Our brother Guy Gaucher brings us together to celebrate together the Passover of Jesus in this Basilica of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. He brings us together as his brothers, his friends, and each of us has a personal bond with him.

             He asked me to give this homily because I am his brother in the Carmelite Order, in our Province of Paris, and especially because we entered the novitiate on the same day, September 21, 1967, on the feast of St. Matthew. On the following October 2, we both received the Carmelite habit at the hands of Fr Bernard Delalande, Provincial.  Then, at the end of the novitiate year, we made our Religious Profession on October 3, 1968, which was then the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. After that, it was always Thérèse who brought us together with so many brothers and sisters, so many friends, believers and non-believers, present in one way or another at this moment..

            Our brother Guy himself chose the readings of Holy Scripture that we have just heard, and it is these texts that illuminate our Celebration. The words of St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans tell us the true meaning of his whole life and of his death: to live for Jesus, to die for Jesus, to belong to Jesus Dead and Risen, Unique Lord of the dead and of the living.  With the words of the Gospel of Luke, Guy invites us to relive, as he did, this journey of the two disciples of Emmaus on which the Risen Jesus came to meet them in the depth of their sadness, their inner turmoil, to revive in their hearts the flame of Hope, of Faith and of Love, so that their sorrow will turn into joy. But above all, through his own testimony, Guy comes to repeat to us these words of Jesus: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer his Passion in order to enter into his Glory?”

          Dear Friends, let’s listen to Guy himself, speaking to all of us at the end of his Spiritual Testament:

I thank all those who have loved me, formed me, helped me throughout my life: my parents, already gone; my family, and a great number of faithful friends in all ecclesial vocations and in the world. 

I thank above all her who entered into life saying “All is grace.”

I have tried to be in the service of her mission: to give her evangelical little way to the people of all five continents.  How she welcomes me!

I give thanks for her Doctorate, one of the high points of my life, that October 19, 1997 in Rome, Mission Sunday, the eleventh anniversary of my episcopal ordination, thanks to John Paul II.

Amen!  Alleluia!

          In these few lines, our Brother Guy tells us again in a magnificent way what was the most beautiful and most characteristic facet of his life, which is his extraordinary spiritual communion with little Thérèse.

          He reiterates this in a more developed fashion in his Simple personal notes:

On that October 19, 1997, Mission Sunday (the eleventh anniversary of my ordination as a bishop), I felt that my life had reached its goal, a goal which had been decided for me, almost without my knowledge.

Thérèse, patron of missions, of France, and of the world: the mission was at the heart of my life as a layman (Cœur vaillant, JEC, patro, Centre Richelieu), as a priest in Paris, as a Carmelite friar in HLM Orleans-La Source (such a beautiful time in my life, 16 years), as bishop (short-lived) of Meaux, then of Lisieux.

I owe first to Thérèse this flawless realism in the face of human weakness, the sin, the wounds, the walls, and the nights that sweeps away any naïveté, any narcissistic generosity and seriously confronts the unprecedented abasement of the Incarnate Word to “his poor little creature.”

I can say that Thérèse taught me much about the truth of the Gospel, making it livable, possible, because everything comes from God, in short, because “Everything is grace,” from which, consequently, flows constant thanksgiving.

Of course, she is not the only one who has enlightened me, but she has brought me from the most banal daily life into the world of holiness, which is at once loneliness and love, suffering and joy.

            For Guy, this same date of October 19 symbolized the deep bond between his Episcopal Ordination and the proclamation of Thérèse as a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II.  Recall that, exactly 11 years later, on October 19, 2008, Guy had the joy of participating in the beatification of the Parents of Thérèse, Louis and Zelie Martin, here in Lisieux. And it is from the Church of Heaven that he will participate in the beatification of Paul VI, to be held in Rome on October 19 precisely. Another lovely sign, because Paul VI was deeply Theresian. He was baptized on September 30, 1897, the very day of the death of Thérèse. In declaring, for the first time, two women, Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena, as Doctors of the Church, he definitively surpassed an obstacle that his Predecessors had believed insurmountable, and he reopened the way to the doctorate for little Thérèse.  But above all, in his very depths, Paul VI had lived, like Thérèse, a very painful interior night, which was for him the night of Hope.

            Dear Friends, our brother Guy thus opens his inner world, the “world of holiness” where "Thérèse is not the only one.”  He invites us all to enter with him into this very great Mystery of the Communion of Saints, into this wonderful “circle of Saints” painted by the Blessed Fra Angelico, where the saints of heaven join hands and extend their hands to us, to guide us together, as sisters and brothers, along the path of holiness that we are called to travel.  This is one of the most beautiful teachings of Vatican II!  For Guy, there were also the other saints of Carmel, especially the other two doctors, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, who are the “spiritual parents“ of little Thérèse, and also the Venerable Father Marie-Eugène of Child Jesus, founder of the Institute of Notre-Dame de Vie (Our Lady of Life).  Father Guy worked hard for the cause of his beatification, and he wrote Father Marie-Eugène’s biography.

          But in this “circle of saints,” our Thérèse always came in first; it is always she who held him by the hand (like Joan of Arc for Charles Péguy). Guy never stopped working for her, but even more living with her, loving with her, and suffering with her.

          Thérèse led Guy to Carmel.  Immediately after his novitiate, in 1968, he was called to work for the Critical Edition of her Works with a whole team, which was to culminate in the great Edition du Centenaire in 1992.

          But above all, our Brother Guy has fully lived the spirituality of Thérèse in its most interior dimension, which is also the most dramatic, in all the depth of the Passion and the Agony of Jesus. With Thérèse, he repeats to us Jesus' words heard in the Gospel: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer his Passion in order to enter into his Glory?”

          In 1972, he published his fine book, The Passion of Thérèse of Lisieux (a book that really touched me personally in those difficult years after 1968).  For Guy, this book was to have a mysterious meaning, prophetic, as the announcement of this period in which he personally relived the Passion of Thérèse in her sickness and in her interior trial.

          The period of the luminous and peaceful years of community life and of service in our Province of Paris would end in1986 with his nomination as a bishop, this “martyrdom of the Episcopate,” as he tells us in his personal notes :

I knew, in 1986, that accepting the episcopate could lead to martyrdom, and (without playing the martyr) I started to experience at Meaux a path of unexpected solitude, in complete powerlessness and in the darkest night.

I regret nothing of these three years. They were a great grace and a decisive stage in my life. Having experienced this, what worse could happen to me?

To go through this tunnel which seems interminable changes life.  One who has not lived it, what does he know?  (I mention the inestimable value of faithful friends, those in the medical profession and others).

Now I say: “Every vocation is a mission,” adding: “every mission is a passion.”

          After these three years of his passion, supported by many brothers and friends, especially by members of the Institute of Our Lady of Life that had welcomed him, Guy would know years of resurrection, of a great ecclesial fruitfulness here in Lisieux, as “Thérèse’s bishop,” which were to culminate with the Doctorate of Thérèse in 1997.  Becoming bishop emeritus in 2005, he retired to the residence of Quinsan, in Vénasque, near the community of Our Lady  of Life, and it was there that he wrote his last book, his great biography of Thérèse, published in 2010.

          After that, he found Thérèse near the Cross, in the last four years which were so painful, but always supported and accompanied by many friends. This was the last step of his way of holiness, lived with Thérèse, who said on the very day of her death:  “I do not regret having surrendered myself to love . . . Never would I have believed it was possible to suffer so much! never! never!  I cannot explain it except by the ardent desires I have had to save souls.”  Just before she died, Thérèse had fixed her gaze on Mary, the Virgin of the Smile, and, according to the beautiful expression of Father Marie-Eugène, “the light of the Virgin never shines more sweetly than in the darkness.”  She was present near our brother Guy; she is close to us right now as we prepare to celebrate her as Our Lady of Mount Carmel on July 16.

          Now, our brother Guy has entered into life, and he invites us to raise our eyes to the happiness of Heaven. Let us listen to his last words to us about this mysterious passage from death to eternal life:

 It will be a passage through a narrow door, a passover, a birth.

Because I see what I believe today (very badly), and it will be ineffable. Of faith in the vision. Ultimately, the unveiling of what was hidden, not the ephemeral light of the Transfiguration, but the opportunity to pitch one’s tent forever at the top of the mountain with Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, John, and a huge crowd that one cannot count ( .  .  . )

Jesus . . . it had to happen to him. Everything converges towards him: the earth and all its riches that I am leaving (unlike Bernanos, I can say that I really liked them), the great History of humanity.

Risen Jesus, Alpha and Omega, you are the “Door.”  You left this life to prepare the one which is to come, your own, that of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, the eternal Life you have promised us.

How many times have I quoted Thérèse’s words, “I am not dying, I am entering into life!” (LT 244).  Soon I will repeat this luminous phrase “for real,”  in another and more difficult way.

A friend often repeated to me, when we were talking of the inexpressible joys to come: “The best is ahead of us.”

May this departure be a blessing to all those I leave (temporarily).  This will be the best way to ask their forgiveness for my sins, voluntary or not, and to thank them for having been what they are.  (I mention no names; he has many names here).

A Dieu! Pray for me. We are all going to the eternal reunion, prepared by the merciful Love of the Trinity . . . .

English translation by Maureen O'Riordan, in thanksgiving.

I thank the homilist, Fr. François-Marie Lethel, O.C.D., and Fr. Guillaume Dehorter, O.C.D., the provincial superior of the Paris Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, for permission to translate this homily.  Their generosity reflects that of their brother.

Photos des obsèques de Guy Gaucher qui repose à côté de la 1ère tombe de Thérèse ... !http://t.co/2kj1h4tdKT pic.twitter.com/eo25V99G7Q

— Carmes de Paris (@carmesparis) July 11, 2014

 I thank the Carmelites of the Paris province for these beautiful photos of  the funeral of their brother, Carmelite friar and Bishop Guy Gaucher, "Therese's bishop."  His funeral Mass took place on Thursday, July 10 at 3:00 p.m. in the Basilica of St. Therese at Lisieux, and he was laid to rest in the town cemetery, near the tomb where the body of St. Therese rested from the day of her own funeral in 1897 until it returned to Carmel in 1923.  In communion of thanksgiving and in prayer that we might continue the mission he shared with her, "to love Jesus and to make Him loved."  "All is grace."

Jacques Habert, Bishop of Seez

please see "What if Louis and Zelie had known about Vatican II?" , a conference written and presented by Mgr Jacques Habert, bishop of Seez, for their feast.  This is on my Web site for them, "Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, The Parents of St. Therese of Lisieux."  I thank Bishop Habert for his permission and Gordon Henry for the translation.  The conference appeared first on the Web site of the Shrine at Alencon.  A blessed feast day!

Bishop Guy Gaucher after leaving the Mass of beatification
for Louis and Zelie Martin at Lisieux, October 19, 2008. 
Photo credit: Sanctuaire de Lisieux

     Bishop Guy Gaucher, affectionately known as “Thérèse’s bishop,”  has “entered into life,” in the words of his beloved sister Saint Thérèse, on the morning of July 3, 2014, in Carpentras, on the feast of the apostle Thomas.  What a great grace for a bishop, a successor of the apostles, to go to the Father on the feast-day of an apostle!

     Guy Gaucher was born March 5, 1930, in Tournan-en-Brie.  He was ordained a priest March 17, 1963, and made his religious profession in the Order of Discalced Carmelites on October 3, 1968.  At the insistent request of Pope John Paul II, he was consecrated Bishop of Meaux on October 19, 1986.  This date was to be important not only for the bishop he became but also for the whole Church, since it was on this date, October 19, that St. Thérèse was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1997 and that Louis and Zelie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse, were beatified in Lisieux in 2008.

     On May 7, 1987, Pope John Paul II appointed Bishop Guy Gaucher auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Bayeux-Lisieux.  Bishop Jean Badré, the bishop of the diocese at that time, welcomed him fraternally by entrusting to him “the mission of taking care of St. Thérèse.”

     A very cultured man and an authority on the novelist Bernanos, in his literary studies Bishop Guy Gaucher discovered St. Thérèse and became an expert on her life and spirituality. All acknowledged his expertise, and his word was an authority on that subject.

     Bishop Guy Gaucher leaves us a considerable body of literary work: books, articles, conferences, and symposia.  He was the ardent, enlightened witness of his older sister in the Order of Carmel.  He deciphers for us the spiritual experience of Thérèse, through the writings (no less considerable) “the greatest saint of modern times” has left us to introduce us to the merciful love of God and to love for the Church.  Monseigneur Guy Gaucher had the gift of explaining, in simple words most of us could understand, the spirituality of Thérèse, which had become his own, so that it might also become ours, faithful to the desire of the spiritual mistress of us all: “to love Jesus and to make Him loved.”

     An outstanding pianist, Bishop Gaucher could not resist the sight of a piano.  The keyboard attracted him and reminded him of how, when quite young, from time to time, he had been a pianist in a piano bar.  Listening to him play in the evening, one might revisit all the musical repertoire in our collective memory, with a little bit of off-beat flavor, from the talented fingers of the bishop--which he always remained.  Along with his sharp mind, these spontaneous moments in a relaxed atmosphere reflected as well the solid sense of humor he possessed.

     As a man in poor health, he lived the spiritual practice of abandonment into the arms of the Father, supported by his loyal friends and caregivers and the community of the Institute of Notre-Dame de Vie [Our Lady of Life] in Venasque (Vaucluse).

     Our brother Guy let himself be guided along his Paschal journey.  Grafted onto the cross of Jesus, he has passed from death to life and to the light of the Resurrection into which he has already entered.

     Monseigneur Guy Gaucher leaves the legacy of a rich, full, challenging, and inspiring life. Committed to Thérèse as perhaps no one else was, at the time of his departure from Lisieux, in June 2005 he wrote a letter entitled “Why I love you, O Thérèse,” paraphrasing the title of one of Thérèse’s poems, “Why I Love You, O Mary.” Bishop Gaucher wrote:

 “Thérèse said, ‘Who could have invented the Blessed Virgin?’ In the same way, one could ask: ‘Who could have invented Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face?’ At once  so near and so far away, so ordinary and so extraordinary, this little Norman woman, loved throughout the whole universe, whom we think we know and who always escapes us, because the last word of her being expresses something of the unfathomable mystery of the Love of God.”

      Being a man of great simplicity and of the freshness of the Gospel, Bishop Guy Gaucher wanted to be buried in Lisieux, near Saint Thérèse, whom he loved so well and to whose work he consecrated his life, and also close to Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, who brought him equal joy as a pastor.

      We will celebrate the funeral Mass for Bishop Guy Gaucher in the Basilica of Lisieux on Thursday, July 10, at 3:00 p.m. “Thérèse’s bishop” then will be laid to rest in the cemetery of Lisieux among his Carmelite brothers, not far from the first tomb of St. Thérèse or from the tombs of other members of the Martin and Guérin families.

      From our hearts we invite you all to be present with us or to unite yourself to us in prayer in this celebration, at which Bishop Jean-Claude Boulanger, bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux, will preside. 

      We share with the family of Monsigneur Gaucher, with all our Carmelite brothers and sisters, and with all his friends, their pain and their hope.

--Father Olivier Ruffray, Rector of the Shrine at Lisieux
 
Father Olivier Ruffray was appointed Rector of the Shrine of St. Thérèse, Lisieux, on October 6, 2013. A priest since 1989, Father Ruffray has served in various parishes and spent 14 years as pastor of Notre-Dame de l’Estuaire in Honfleur.

Father Ruffray grew up in Lisieux, and he says that St. Thérèse was like a big sister for him, always with him to show him the path to Jesus and teaching him to love the Church. He also admires the generosity and deep spirituality of Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, the holy parents of St. Thérèse, and prays for their timely canonization. 

We thank Father Olivier Ruffray for his generous permission to translate this tribute, which appeared in French on the Facebook page of the Shrine at Lisieux, and Mary Davidson for her translation.

 Bishop Guy Gaucher, who died on Thursday, July 3, was an authority on St. Therese of Lisieux and is best known to English speakers as the author of The Story of a Life: Saint Therese of Lisieux (Harper and Row, 1993), a truly invaluable companion to St. Therese's own Story of a Soul.  See other books in English by Guy Gaucher.  

 “I am not dying; I am entering into life,” wrote Thérèse of Lisieux a few weeks before her death in Carmel on September 30, 1897, at the age of 24. Her dear friend, Bishop Guy Gaucher, went to join her on July 3, 2014, at the age of 84 years. The phrase “All is grace” perhaps expresses best the desire of these two souls as they greet each other in the love of Christ.

“All is grace!” It was reading these words at the end of Diary of a Country Priest, by novelist Georges Bernanos, that guided the young Guy Gaucher, aged 18, toward Thérèse. He would become an authority on both subjects, even preaching a retreat in a Carmel in 2004 on the affinities between the great Georges and Thérèse (“All is grace,” Cerf, 2009). Bernanos might have quoted these words of Thérèse, his spiritual master, but Guy Gaucher found in them the beautiful flower of his life. When he sought the source of the text, he discovered the true face of Thérèse and her spirituality based on trust, mercy, and hope. From that day he never left Thérèse.

Ordained at age 33 in 1963, Bishop Gaucher was professed in the Order of Discalced Carmelites on October 3, 1968. When he was appointed Bishop of Meaux in 1986, the change from the life of a contemplative religious to that of an active bishop was a trial. A few months later, he rediscovered his beloved Thérèse when he became auxiliary bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux until 2005, when he reached the age limit. He was a member of the team that published the New Centenary Edition of Thérèse’s writings. Bishop Gaucher devoted all his energy to making known the life and writings of St. Thérèse, who was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II in 1997. In 2010, Bishop Gaucher published a definitive biography of Thérèse (Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux: Biographie, 1873-1897.  Cerf, 2010), containing more than 700 pages.

The friends of our friends often become our friends. So it was through Thérèse that I met Bishop Gaucher. I visited with him several times in Lisieux, together with my wife and his faithful secretary, Sister Monique-Marie, who accompanied him until the end of his life. I remember his good nature, his simplicity, his sense of history. Quiet and with a subtle sense of humor, he loved playing the piano, inviting friends out for crepes, making notes in a small notebook, and sharing his experiences as he traveled around France with the reliquary of Thérèse.

Bishop Gaucher also visited Quebec several times. He was there in 2001, during the pilgrimage of the relics of Thérèse in Canada. He writes in the journal Thérèse of Lisieux in January 2002: “Once again, I saw with my own eyes, always astonished that I was seeing the same sight again in a completely different context-- Moscow, New York, Manila, Rome, Belgium: the crowds that come from who knows where, who wait in silence, in prayer before the reliquary, confessing their sins, listening to the Thérèsian teaching. All these families, the disabled, children, the elderly, all these friends of Thérèse who have a secret relationship with her, some of whom had not set foot in a church for decades …”

Guy Gaucher had the look of a child who would “sing God’s mercies” with Thérèse. He wrote the foreword to my book Thérèse of Lisieux, A Hope for Families, revealing my love for the saint which, in fact, reflected his own: “I have seen in this book that love for the young Carmelite of Lisieux comes alive.”

Dear Guy, I hope you are now with Christ, St. Thérèse, her Blessed parents Louis and Zelie Martin, and all the others, so many brothers and sisters of the same Father. You have not left; you have arrived. You have not died; you have entered into life. On this day, July 3, Thérèse confided in her last conversations that with her death “I will do all that I please.”  I hope that, like Thérèse, you will spend your Heaven doing good on earth.

I remember presenting a program with you on Thérèse for Radio Ville-Marie in Montreal. Toward the end, the facilitator asked for a sentence that summarized the Patroness of the Missions. I read this excerpt from one of her letters: “It is confidence, nothing but confidence and trust, that will lead us to love.” You chose this amazing sentence said by Thérèse on July 13, 1897, and it reveals something of your life also: “The Good Lord will do all my will in heaven, because I've never done my own will while on earth.”

The funeral of Bishop Gaucher will be celebrated in the Basilica of St. Thérèse in Lisieux on Thursday, July 10, at 3:00 p.m. The Mass will be celebrated by Bishop Boulanger, bishop of Bayeux-Lisieux. The homily will be given by Carmelite Father François-Marie Léthel.