The mystery of Louis XVII

« This innocent child who never came to terms with the errors of his father, his grand father or his great great-grandfather, died as an expiatory victim, for the salvation of the Monarchy and of France. If there is any hope, and there is hope! If there is to be a resurrection, and there will be a resurrection! France will come back to its great royal way, of eldest daughter of the Church, when she will have understood the meaning of the life and the death of the little King Louis XVII. » (Georges de Nantes)

I know some pilgrims who, on Saturday, May 1st at Chartres, performed the First Saturday of the month devotional exercises, requested by Our Lady of Fatima, by meditating on The Mystery of the Redemption of France, our country: France which has been the object of so many divine favours in the times of the joyful mysteries of her Sacred History, who entered into the sorrowful mysteries of expiation from the time of the Revolution until today. We await, however, the glorious mysteries of her Resurrection! And already the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Queen of France offers us a token of this Resurrection: The Heart of the Little King Louis XVII, a signal relic, which speaks to us of humiliation, annihilation, obscurity, but also of joyful expectation of the Resurrection of the flesh, by which this heart, today mummified, will begin once again to beat. This is what we believe! They are an earnest of our hope for France, since he was in the worst years, those of the Terror (1793-1794), her « head », her « leader » while at the same time the « Suffering Servant », the salutary victim for his people!

One day, at the Temple 1, Madame Elisabeth was reading aloud. It was a text concerning the first Christian martyrs. The little Prince interrupted her:

« Aunty, are we martyrs?

– Yes, if we willingly offer to God what we are suffering.

– I, however, would prefer not to be a martyr…

– It will be our merit if we accept what God sends us. »

The angelic princess! One might think one was listening to the Angel of Fatima: « Accept and bear with submission the sufferings which the Lord will send you… » At the same age as Jacinta, Louis XVII accepted everything with heroic abnegation, in virtue of which he is for us, our Father said at Reims on 8 June 1993, « an example of holiness, a source of grace and a protection in all difficulties and perils, as he will one day become the patron of the restored Monarchy, between St. Louis and St. Joan of Arc ».

AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART

« Gens et regnum quod non servierit tibi peribit ; et gentes solitudine vastabuntur. » The Church sings this antiphon to celebrate the reign of the Sacred Heart. Whatever rises up against It will perish: empires, religions, gnoses, and humanisms. It alone endures and spreads, heralding the eternal Kingdom of Heaven. Every temporal power that does not proclaim Christ’s kingship, even if it is recognised by the Church, and obeyed in temporal matters, is doomed to disappear and the saints do not cling to it. Such was the case for the old anointed monarchy itself because it refused to fall to its knees before the Sacred Heart. Such is the case for the regimes that followed each other in France from the Revolution to our present day.

So, we had not gathered at the Mutualité on Sunday, 9 May, after having honoured St. Joan of Arc, our Country’s Saint, to talk about Europe, but about France and France alone, the « eldest Daughter of the Church », a « predestined Nation », the « tribe of Judah of the New Covenant », whose history is sacred, by virtue of a pact sealed between Christ and the Franks which presided over her foundation, directed her course and explains her remarkable destiny, today as in the past.

To understand France in that way is surely supernatural. It does not imply credulity or superstition or fanaticism. So they claimed against the Abbé de Nantes during the twentieth century, just as they did against Msgr. Freppel in the nineteenth. The real purpose was to contest and refuse its lesson, but it implies faith, the true Catholic faith according to which God is, Living and true, the unique, the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier of His elect. This is why the Catholic historian, worthy of such a title, is not surprised to encounter God at work in the concert of nations. He only requires to see, to touch the proof of this, with all the guarantees of a truly scientific approach, that is to say, positive, methodical and critical.

From this point of view, there is no “Louis XVII affair” or “enigma”. This King really did die in the Temple on 8 June 1795, after having been under guard there, day and night, from 13 August 1792 until 8 June 1795, without the slightest possibility of escape or substitution. The opposing theses, called “survivalists” 2, were invented later on, from a novel of the imagination, which has upset weak minds even until the present.

On the other hand, there is a « secret », related to the marvellous designs of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the French Monarchy. In light of this, we discover the central place that King Louis XVII occupies in the Sacred History of France, and the providential character of the « invention », of the « recovery » of his heart.

Jesus’ Heart, desiring to show to mankind Its burning love and to spread it throughout the world, spoke on 17 June 1689 to the heart of the King of France, his « eldest son », asking him to consecrate to His adorable Heart, which wished « to triumph over his and, through his mediation, over that of the great ones of this earth ». Louis XIV turned a deaf ear, as did Louis XV following his example. As for Louis XVI, he turned a blind eye to the danger which arose as a foretold consequence of this arrogant rebuff, placing greater trust in the virtues of his personal goodness towards his people than in his sacred duty:  inflicting a just punishment on those who were overthrowing the ancient order.

The chastisement, however, did come, and it fell firstly on our Kings who had preferred their own thoughts to those of the Sacred Heart: on 17 June 1789, one hundred years to the day after the request for the consecration of 17 June 1689, the Third Estate proclaimed itself to be a Constituent Assembly. The Revolution was set into motion and it would go to the very end… to the point of killing the Lord’s anointed, Christ’s lieutenant in France. For two hundred years now, France has persisted in this revolt and this public apostasy, refusing to humiliate itself, refusing to do penance. Today a grace is offered to her, that of turning towards the victim who paid for her crimes, in the innocence and the purity of his heart, so that his blood may fall on us as a shower of grace and mercy.

Depending on whether we are drawn, touched by this remarkable child, or quite the reverse, we reject him – “survivalism” is a way of rejecting him – well then, we shall partake in his grace or we shall harden our heart, and France will be saved… or lost.

This « mystery » enclosed in the short life of Louis XVII takes place in three evangelical stages: from the joyful mysteries of a little prince charming, we pass on to the sorrowful mysteries of a despoiled king! but punctuated by a presentiment of the glorious mysteries to come! Resembling in a way, perhaps unequalled, the life of Our Lord, figured by the close union of this child’s heart with that of his cherished mother, his Mama-Queen, the heart of his heart.

Louis XVII was, of all the long line of our Kings, the most perfect instrument of the mysterious divine design, which is not one of judgement, not yet! but one of mercy on our country, and which passes through the royal ways of sorrows, martyrdoms and crosses, to the restoration of the Kingdom of Christ in France.

From St. Louis, prisoner of the Mamelukes, and later on dying of the plague at Tunis, laying on ashes, his arms stretched out in the form of a cross, through  Joan of Arc on her stake, down to Maréchal Pétain who made the « gift of his person to France to attenuate her misfortune », there is Louis XVII, born in the most beautiful palace, after that of Heaven, and who died ignominiously, immured alive at the age of ten years… forgiving his enemies as Jesus did.

In the whole world, this is the only full and definitive response to the distress of our tragic present day which grips us seeing France threatened by a misfortune worse than a foreign invasion: that of her disappearance, her decomposition pure and simple in a Europe under German leadership, as in the times of Philippe Auguste and Philippe Pétain, or English, as in the times of Joan of Arc, or Turkish as in the times of the Crusades! 

Brother Bruno of Jesus

 

 

Temple : the name given to an ancient monastery in Paris that was fortified by the Knights Templar. This is where the royal family was imprisoned during the French Revolution.

The “Survivalists” theses are those that maintained that Louis XVII had been smuggled out of the tower of the Temple where he was imprisoned, another boy having been substituted for him. These theses were sustained during the XIXth century by the writings of a series of impostors claiming to be Louis XVII.  The genetic analysis of Louis XVII’s heart puts a definite end to the vain discussions to which these theses gave rise.