A Retreat in a Foyer de Charité by Martin Blake

Some years ago I had the joy and privilege of being me of two hundred adults who kept a five-day retreat in silence from Boxing Day till New Year's Eve. Not far away were a hundred children making a retreat tailored to their age.

Where, I wondered, in the U.K. could all these families spend five days in close union with Jesus and Mary? And Courset near Boulogne is just one of sixteen similar Foyers in France. Something is stirring in the Church in France, and it is important.

I crossed from Dover to Boulogne in 90 minutes and took the road D34 1 towards Desvres, a distance of 19 kms. A couple of kilometres beyond lies the village of Courset, in the heart of which stands a handsome nineteenth-century château surrounded by a park. This was the property discovered in the early seventies by le Père Michel Tierny who established a Foyer here to serve the north-west corner of France.

Arriving in mid-afternoon I was greeted by one of the community and given a cup of coffee and biscuits before being shown to my room in the guest block. This has been built in the last ten years and consists of sixty rooms, same double, on three floors, all facing south, and each with its own shower, basin, and lavatory in a cubicle.

The afternoon conference was in progress. This ended at 3.30 and I saw my fellow retreatants. Smiles were the only form of greeting for the next four days. At 4.30 we assembled in the chapel for the daily Rosary. Following the encouragement given by Paul VI in "Marialis Cultus" (1976) liberties have been taken with the traditional rosary.

The five mysteries of the day are spun out over 35 minutes with much guided, meditation. Only two or three Hail Marys are said — slowly — at a time, and even the words in French have been retranslated: Réjouis-toi, Marie, comblée de grace, le Seigneur est avec toi ...

5.15. Tea. Yes, really! But very French: without milk, and taken in breakfast bowls. Tasty bread and little bars of plain chocolate to eat.

5.45. Evening conference. There were three of these a day given by Fr. Tierny. They took place in the beautifully modernised village hall a hundred yards from the château because this year there were too many to fit into the regular conference room below the chapel. Here we started with some practice of the music to be sung next day; this was led by a young lady member of the community.

Then Fr. Tierny came quietly up to the rostrum, and after a prayer to Our Lady, he told us the theme of his talk. To say he then kept his audience spell bound for the next three quarters of an hour might be an exaggeration, but he is certainly a very powerful and compelling speaker. The general title of this retreat was "Jesus, the gift of the Father's tenderness".

In the course of these days Fr. Tierny gave us a brilliant revision of fundamental Christian doctrine, fluently expressed and graphically illustrated from the Bible and from his wide experience. From time to time he would tell us an amusing story or reminiscence. Fortunate those priests formed by him when he was a professor at the Grand Seminaire in Lille before it closed down in 1969, and fortunate the members of the Courset Foyer whose spiritual Father he is.

6.45. We move back up the hill in the dark to the chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed on the simple round heavy wooden altar. There is adoration for an hour. This is the very core of the life of each day, after the morning Mass. We were made for contemplation. But there is so little adoration amid the distractions of the world. This is what we have come to the Foyer for. Now we are really in the presence of God.

7.45. The evening meal. We sit down by eights at octagonal tables after saying, or more likely singing a grace. The French are great singers, at least in this Foyer. High-quality classical music is piped into the huge refectory, seating 200, while we consume four courses: soup, cooked dish, cheese, sweet.

The food is brought to the tables and the empty plates collected on trolleys by members of the Foyer. Everything is simple and in good taste. The community eat with the guests, the hundred or so children attending the retreat with their parents eat in another dining room.

9.00. The final activity of the day, evening prayers. This consists of a series of prayers taken from the Foyer prayer book, interspersed with meditations led either by le Père or another Foyer member. A selection of psalms, litanies and traditional prayers are contained in it, and there is a short hymn book. I recognised a number of familiar tunes borrowed from outr-Manche, the home of the hymn. And so to bed.

Strains of Music

Next morning I was awakened at 7 o'clock by the distant strains of music, piped into the corridors but not the rooms. Then a bell was pealed to warn us that at 7.45 morning prayers would be said (and sung) in the chapel.

These always started with the act of consecration to Jesus through Mary devised by St. Louis Grignion de Montfort. His book "Le Secret de Marie" greatly influenced Marthe Robin, inspiration of the Foyers, as a young woman, and his spirituality remains the foundation of' the life of each Foyer.

Breakfast followed at 8.15 and at 9.15 we were assembled in the village hall for the first conference. Short choir practice, and then le Père, who might have been up till the small hours counselling retreatants, looking fresh as a daisy, began another brilliant exposition of some basic Christian theme.

In the course of about a dozen conferences he dealt with Creation, the Fall, Redemption, the Mass, Our Lady, St. Joseph, Prayer, Penitence, and much else. Always he placed all this right where we were in the world, and in a world which is largely ignorant of the significance of Christ and His Church.

Particularly memorable were his commentaries on the Woman at the well, and the Good Samaritan. Again and again he had some quotation from Marthe Robin which helped.

After this there was an hour's break, before we came back to the village hail for the climax of the day, Mass at 11.30. The children now joined the rest of us and there was a bit of a squash. On the Feast of the Holy Family a number made their first communion.

How beautifully le Père spoke to the children and involved them. I felt that here were being laid the foundations of future vocations to the priestly ministry, vocations which have sadly diminished in France in the last twenty years.

We, however, had ten priests attending the retreat, some quiet young, so there was no shortage of confessors when on Tuesday le Père, like the Curé de Cucugnan and St. John Baptist organised a large-scale scrub. I forgot to mention that the instrument used to accompany singing in all the Foyers is the zither. An unusual and original choice, hardly' heard in the U.K. since "The Third Man", I can recommend it, and it makes a pleasant change from the guitar.

Our Lord's Presence

And so, filled with Our Lord's Real Presence, we moved to lunch at 12.30, the main meal of the day. Again four courses, followed by coffee. Le Père tells the story of how in the early days they economised by serving only three courses.

When the invalid, bedridden Marthe, with her usual cheerful curiosity about every detail regarding her friends' lives asked what the retreatants had to eat at Courset, le Père replied, "a starter, a main dish, and a sweet". There was a pause, and Marthe inquired "et le fromage?" Ever since, cheese has been served at both meals!

Thus the five days succeeded one another all too quickly. On Monday there was an all-night vigil, and we took it in turns to pray for an hour before the Blessed Sacrament. The same happened after the New Year's Eve Midnight Mass.

In those hours we tried, in Marthe's words, "to go beyond the threshold of our souls", to deepen our love of God, and to make it possible to return to the world better able to help our friends and neighbours in their quest for reality.

There are about 20 full retreats at Courset during the year plus a number of days of recollection and weekends. There is no set charge; you pay whatever you feel is right and you can afford. If any reader is interested to pursue the matter, or feels, for example, that we should have a Foyer in the U.K., then they can contact: foyers@foyers.org.uk

The address of the Foyer near Boulogne is: Foyer de Charité-de Courset, 62240 DESVRES, FRANCE. The original Foyer and headquarters of the movement is: Foyer de Charité, Châteauneuf-de-Galaure 26330. For further information on the Foyers of Charity worldwide and on Marthe Robin: http://www.foyer-de-charite.com/