HOMILY OF BISHOP YVES LE SAUX: DOUBLE JUBILEE

Delivered at the 150th Anniversary Celebration, Basilica of the Visitation, Annecy, July 2025

The passages of Scripture chosen to celebrate the memory of Blessed Louis Brisson, your founder, seem to me to be crossed by the question of the fruitfulness of our Christian life, the fruitfulness of our ministry. It is about bearing fruit. What are the conditions of fertility?

In the book of Isaiah, with a certain violence, God laments:

"Could I do more for my vine than I did? I was waiting for beautiful grapes, why did she give bad ones?"

We must hear these words, not as a condemnation or reproach, but as a cry of pain, as suffering due to an injury. God is wounded. How the heart of Christ was pierced by the spear.

“He who abides in me and I abide in him bears much fruit. For without me you can do nothing.” Bear fruit. The condition of fertility.

The first condition of fertility is, as you know, to abide in him and that he abides in us. When Jesus calls the Apostles in the gospel of Mark, it is primarily to be with him.

"He instituted twelve of them, so that they would be with him and send them to proclaim the Good News." Our first requirement is to be with him. The mission flows from being with him.

Of course, it touches on our prayer life. But not only to the time we devote to prayer, but to our intimate, personal union with Christ.

I would like to quote Blessed Pierre Brottier, whose active life cannot be doubted:

"Where does it come from that many works, even if they were well organized, produce little result? It’s the essence of the organism that is missing. There are hands, feet, a head, several tongues, and a heartfelt point. The heart of a work lies in the inner life.

The priestly ministry implies the insertion of our persons into the mission of Jesus Christ, and therefore the essential and fundamental thing in the priestly ministry is the deep and personal bond with Christ. Everything depends on it. This must be the keystone of the life of the religious and the priest.

A priest must be a man who knows Jesus from within, has met him and learned to love him. That is why the priest must above all be a man of prayer. Without a strong spiritual consistency, he cannot persevere in the long run in his ministry.

He must also learn from Christ that in his life, the important thing is neither self-realization nor success. It is not a question of building an interesting life or being able to create a community of admirers or supporters, but of acting for the good of others. At first, this counters the natural gravity of our existence, but over time, we realize that the progressive insignificance of the self is the authentic liberating agent.

"If some priests today feel overworked, tired, it is sometimes the result of an exasperated search for performance and success. Faith then becomes a cumbersome baggage that is dragged with difficulty, instead of being the wing that makes it fly." Cardinal Ratzinger.

The interior communion with Christ gives birth to participation in his love for men, in his will to save them, to help them.

In this, the correct understanding of the spirituality of the Sacred Heart is central.

We must constantly find the path of the Heart.

Instead of seeking superficial satisfactions and playing a role in front of others, we must return to our heart.

In a liquid world, it is necessary to speak again of the Heart, to indicate the place where every person makes his synthesis, where concrete being finds the source and root of all other forces, convictions, passions and choices. Where we can have a true dialogue with the Lord, where God speaks. But is there still a space of deep silence within us?

I invite you to read with great urgency the encyclical of Pope Francis on the Sacred Heart.

And you know it, the true challenge of the Christian life, of the religious life, is the duration. To remain is to last. To last in time. And with time, there are only three possible options: or after a few years, disappointed by others, ourselves, we leave, all sad like the rich young man of the Gospel.

Yes, we save appearances, but we build a double life, we become lukewarm.

The right option, and it is the only one possible, in reality: we descend deeper into charity, simple union with Christ and forgetting ourselves, to serve our brothers and sisters. Then, with this Heart, human and divine, we can grow in humanity, in simplicity, in mercy. And finally, one enters into Trust.

It is also good to remember that the fecundity-bearing of the fruit – is different from the fact of succeeding in the sense of the world. It is not about success.

I have in mind the expression of Pope Benedict XVI: «The God method». That of the parable of the grain set aside, the grain thrown into the ground and which must die to bear fruit. Evangelization is not first of all to attract at once, by new and more refined methods, the great masses of those who have distanced themselves from the Church. Evangelization is not satisfied with the fact that, from the mustard seed, has grown the great tree of the universal Church.

But one must constantly and anew dare to be humble, the little grain carried in the earth, letting God choose when and how he grows. «Success is not the name of God», but fertility.

Sometimes, we live in too great a security of the large existing tree, sometimes in the impatience to have a bigger tree, more vigorous. We must accept the mystery that the Church is both the great tree and the mustard seed.

In the history of salvation, it is always at the same time Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

The goal is not to increase the power and extension of our institutions, but we must put ourselves at the service of the good of people, making room for the One who gives life, true life. We have to live ceaselessly as a disappropriation of ourselves, offering ourselves to Christ, and with him, for the Salvation of Men. It is the fundamental condition for authentic fertility.

You will, in a few moments, renew your vows. May it be for you a new adhesion to Christ, dead and risen. "The disciple is not above his master; he must be content to be like his master."

Thought of the Blessed Louis Brisson: "It is by becoming nothing that one works usefully and operates."

There is no other path than the one that Jesus took.

It seems to me that this is the path taken by Blessed Louis Brisson, who was said to have a "heart that beats at the time of God’s heart." That is to say, the rhythm of his life was at the rhythm of God’s heart.

I was also marked, in what I read about him, by his ability to welcome the Providence of God, to welcome God’s will, through the happy or more painful events that marked his life, even the conflicts with his bishop. Attitude in which he was encouraged, perhaps even led by Mother Marie de Sales Chappuis, superior of the Visitation.

The other condition for abiding in God and His Love is to abide with one’s brothers; it is fraternal life. This is true for every Christian, but it is particularly true for religious. Fraternal life is, first of all, a joy and sometimes a concern, even a pain, when one sees that this or that person isolates themselves. Fraternal life, in any case, is always a choice, a choice to be renewed regularly.

Fraternal communion, especially among priests, is today and tomorrow the first requirement.

Mutual charity, within the body that you are, that we are, is perhaps the decisive issue, because it is, in a sense, what is most difficult to live. Indeed, God put different people together. Each of us has a temperament, a history, charisms, wounds, worries, differences.

(If I were the Demon, that’s where I would attack. You know he is the Divider.)

It is not for nothing that on the evening of the Last Supper, Christ prayed for unity. The challenge is to learn to maintain, at all costs, the reflex of mutual love, of mutual aid without compensation. It is not primarily about management.

The Lord has established us in a family-type bond. We do not choose our brothers and sisters, we receive them, we are given to each other.

François de Sales - in French - uses the expression 's 'inter porter'.

Make my joy perfect, having the same feeling, the same love, the same soul, the same thought. Do nothing out of partisanship or vain glory, but let humility make you see others as being superior to yourself. Have in yourselves the sentiments that were in Christ Jesus." Saint Paul tells us in the Letter to the Philippians.

Allow me to quote again your founder, Blessed Louis Brisson. He makes the decision forever: "Forever, speak little of the next and always to say good about it."

It took me a long time to understand these words of Saint Paul: why and how to consider others as superior to ourselves? We have to look at others as superior to ourselves because it is simply true.

Since we are in this Basilica, near Francis de Sales and Saint Jeanne de Chantal, let us ask the Lord through their intercession to do with us what we cannot do with our own strength.

Let us beg the Holy Spirit so that joy may be in us and that this joy may be perfect. The joy promised by Jesus is in reality, only the other name of the Holy Spirit.

Let us ask Saint Francis de Sales for gentleness, humility, and above all, courage.

QUOTES FROM BLESSED FATHER LOUIS BRISSON ON THE EUCHARIST

Is it really true, Lord, that when I speak this word, I hold you in my hands and adore you face to face? Yes, I believe it, I feel it, I see it. What should I say about this union you enter into with your priest at the Holy Sacrifice?

This is my Body: it is yours, Lord Jesus, it is mine. This is my Body, it is yours. The regeneration of the Redeemer on the cross, all the majesty of the Son who is at the right hand of the Father is before my eyes, in my hands, near my heart.

This is my Body. It is mine because I am of your Blood, the bone of your bones, the flesh of your flesh. You are my God, made Man like me, and you want me to be Man, made God like you. In substance not, but in likeness. In reality no, but in charity.”