Mary, Doms Gondard and Lafond, and the MSM

The MSM's members are required to wear the Miraculous Medal (Rule, XIV.2: “He will always wear the Miraculous Medal in witness to his fidelity to his Queen”), although our own particular focus of Marian devotion (at least since 1964) is “La Vierge qui va enfanter” [Matri Futurae Dei Nascituri; ‘the Mother of God as yet unborn’] in the “Notre-Dame de sous Terre” Chapel in Chartres, rather than the Rue du Bac.

The story is that the original wooden Black Madonna there was sculpted by Druids who foresaw the coming of Christianity to Gaul (and indeed to Europe and the world). This is linked to an apparition. According to some, the first message delivered by Mary in France took take place at Chartres, when she appeared as “The Virgin who will give birth” (variously told as occurring in 100BC, 50BC and 5 AD) on the site of what is now the Cathedral.

At an earlier point in its history and at a proximate level, the Marian inspiration (or predestination) of the MSM also seems to have had something to do with a vow formulated by Dom Gabriel Gontard on the Feast Assumption 1944 (just one year before he met Dom Lafond and approved his Chivalry project), after the recent bombing of the 7th Century Marian Chapel of “Notre-Dame de Caillouville” on the grounds of St-Wandrille Monastery in Normandy. At that time, he is reported to have vowed that he would rebuild Mary’s Church at that place. The intersection between this vow and Dom Lafond’s belief that “chivalry constitutes a radical reversal of profane values” (Rule, Prologue 7) and that “Christ shall come again in glory by Mary to take possession of his Kingdom as a victorious knight” (Rule, Prologue 9, my italics) may have been significant in Dom Gontard’s support for the MSM.

Each in their own way, both of these men wanted to rebuild France and the Church after the war. Indeed, Dom Lafond reminds us that the MSM was “Founded at the end of the Second World War” (Rule I), “combats ideologies which threaten the dignity and the liberty of men created in the image of God, and opposes by all suitable means every totalitarian movement aiming at subjugating the world… It strives to establish the temporal city on the foundations of… the Gospel” (Rule I.4c), and that “the assault led by the forces of hell against Christendom entails to a large extent an ideological aspect” (Rule I.6). In order to achieve victory in this struggle, Dom Lafond saw the Blessed Mother as key, in that “Wherever Mary is Queen, Jesus Christ will be King” (Rule, IX.6), that it was she who trampled Satan underfoot, she “who is called victorious in all God’s battles” (Rule XIII.1), and that “Beneath the light of [her] pure look, we come to seek new strength for the combat” (Prayer to Our Lady of Chivalry).

And so both men saw Mary as the inspiration and the means to rebuild a moral, Christian, Marian France, and established the MSM to that end.

Serendipitously, this journey ultimately, within 20 years, led the MSM to Chartres and to the canonical erection of the MSM in the spot where Mary may first have appeared in the country, and indeed the world.

It seems appropriate that Dom Lafond would then ask the members of the Militia to wear the Miraculous Medal, as some of the words in the First Message of the Rue du Bac were: "My child, the good God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will have much to suffer, but you will rise above these sufferings by reflecting that what you do is for the glory of God… Do not be afraid. There will be bad times to come. Misfortunes will come crashing down on France... The whole world will be turned upside-down by misfortunes of all kinds… you will recall my visit and will have the protection of God.”