Saints Extraordinaire

St Catherine praying at the feet of Mary

In a little corner of the left bank of Paris, just behind the trendy St Germain area, is "Religious Orders HQ".  We came here to visit the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal, but found also the motherhouse of the Mission Etrangers de Paris (MEP), and the Espace Nicholas Barre of the "Souers de L'Enfant Jesus"!  Without them, my life would indeed not have been the same!

The visit to the Chapel was one of the more significant stops on our mini-pilgrimage.  Hidden behind an insignificant little entrance way on the Rue du Bac, this is the original quarters of the Sisters of Charity (also called the Daughters of Charity), co-founded by St Vincent de Paul and St Louise Marillac.  It was here that the Virgin Mary appeared to St Catherine Laboure, then merely a novice of the order.  A detailed account of Catherine's story is here, but I shall give a short summary: Catherine had a vision of Mary, seated on a chair.  Mary asked her to have a medal made, with the image of Mary with beams of lights emitting from her hands on one side, and with the Sacred Hearts of Mary and Jesus on the other.  Around the person of Mary, the words, "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee". Thus, the medal is more properly known as the "Medal of the Immaculate Conception", and confers graces and blessings on the wearer.  Catherine had the medal made but her identity and role in its making was kept secret for most of her life.  She was subsequently canonised as a saint.

The Chapel at Rue de Bac

The Chapel of the Miraculous Medal itself is a shrine containing the perfectly preserved bodies of St Catherine Laboure and St Louise Marillac.  It also holds a reliquary containing the undecayed heart of St Vincent de Paul, which had been removed earlier from his then undecayed body.  Unfortunately, the body of this great saint subsequently decayed after being affected by a flood.   We visited his shrine later on, just around the corner.

Anyway, we had timed our visit to the chapel in good time to attend the morning mass, but it was quite crowded what with all the groups of pilgrims coming from all over and seats were in short supply.  So we had to split up. But we were fortunate, for others could not even get a seat! I took some time to admire the chapel - it is truly a little jewel, with lovely mosaics covering the arch above the altar, and on the side chapels.  On the left of the altar is St Joseph, bearing the Christ child, and on the right, Mary holds a globe in her hands.

It was a powerful experience being there for mass and even after, as the pilgrims stayed back for quite some time after mass ended, to venerate the saints and to pray at the foot of the altar.  Thereafter, we went to the little shop and bought lots of medals and got them blessed by one of the priests who said mass.

We went next to the Shrine of St Vincent de Paul, just around the corner. It was behind yet another nondescript door but what splendour awaited us on the other side!
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Magnificent shrine of St Vincent de Paul

The shrine is richly decorated, with an ornate ceiling and pillars along the sides.  The bones of St Vincent, covered in wax to create a wax model, are in a transparent case above the altar, and apparently you can get nearer if you go up a staircase behind the altar.  Well, we did not know it at the time and so did not go up...

Two other, lesser known saints lie along the side aisles of the church - St Jean-Gabriel Perboyre and St Francois-Regis Clet, both martyred in China.  More of their background is told in this article.  These two martyrs are priests of the order of the Congregation of the Mission (CM), which is a missionary order set up by St Vincent de Paul (again).  They are also called Vincentians, or Lazarists.  The main church is this shrine of St Vincent de Paul and hence this is where the other two saints were laid to rest.  Interestingly, the one society St Vincent did not found is the Society of St Vincent de Paul!  It was in fact set up as a lay society by a French lawyer, Blessed Frederic Ozanam, who was inspired by St Vincent to do this work for the poor.

After the visit to the shrine, we went back to Rue du Bac to have lunch at La Grande Epicerie de Paris, the food section of Le Bon Marche, Paris' oldest department store.  We had a simple sandwich there and thereafter made some purchases (mostly goodies for the office) before making our way onward.

The "Meridian Line"

After lunch, we went on to our next stop, the Church of St Sulpice. St Sulpice was born in 570AD (!) and died in 647.  He was the Bishop of Bourges and was greatly concerned with the poor and the sick.  The current church replaced an older one on the same site and was built by the then Parish Priest, Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657).  It is the second largest church in Paris, smaller only than the Notre Dame and includes a seminary as well.  There are a number of interesting features about this church, such as its impressive pipe organ, and more unusually, its "gnomon", which is an astronomical device meant to help determine the dates of important church feasts.  The gnomon was featured in the Dan Brown book, "The Da Vinci Code", and called a "Meridian Line".  It was meant to act as a red herring to confuse those who sought the grail... ... but the use, and description of the line in the book were in fact erroneous.  Even so, due to the book's popularity, the number of visitors to the church increased, all looking for this device.  So much so that there was apparently a small notice indicating that a lot of the details about the gnomon in the book were in fact wrong.  I didn't see the notice, but then again I never even realised that the obelisk had anything to do with the Da Vinci code ...

After this visit, we had certainly seen enough churches for the day, so we went to the Cafe de Flores for hot chocolat and tarte au citron.  Then back home to rest.

More photos of the Miraculous Medal here, of the Shrine of St Vincent here and of St Sulpice (from both this and a previous trip) here.