Magnificat Vol. LX, No. 1 25 The Count and Countess de Fontgalland took their two sons to Lourdes in July 1924. Guy was enchanted. He received Communion two days in a row at the Grotto of Massabielle, where the Virgin had so often appeared to Saint Bernadette. The day before their departure, while the family was having lunch, the child assumed an air of unaccustomed gravity and announced: “The Blessed Virgin told me a secret.” “Tell me quickly, sweetheart,” said his mother. “No. Secrets are for two, not three.” Ah, what a sword would have pierced his mother’s heart if she had known that secret, the secret the Virgin had told Her son: “I will come and take you soon! You are going to die soon.” Guy suddenly became even more pious after his return from Lourdes. At night, he would say his rosary in bed, and he talked with the Blessed Virgin more often and with great affection. On Sunday, November 30, 1924, his eleventh birthday was celebrated joyfully with his family, with an eleven-candle cake and even champagne! And then “suddenly, swiftly, brutally, Guy took to his bed on the anniversary of his baptism, the night between Sunday, December 7, and Monday, the 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception”. That is when those around him witnessed a beautiful transformation, or rather a total, wonderful blossoming of the soul of this child, who loved Jesus with all his heart, who “in his first encounter with Him, had given himself entirely, and whose love for Him had been strenghtened in each of his many Communions. And now, through suffering, he was to rise ever higher, purify and detach himself to go with a great sweep of his wings up to Heaven, the place of everlasting happiness!” It was especially during the torments that preceded his death that this elevenyear-old child showed his love of God. Let us read what he said: “You ask me how I picture Heaven, where I am going? I can’t picture it: for me, Heaven is Jesus! – I would have liked so much to make Good Jesus known and loved throughout the world; I would have gone there in an airplane invented by me... I dreamed of being a priest. Jesus told me He wanted to make me an angel! – Oh, how I suffer! Dear little Jesus, I offer to suffer for as long as You want. I love You, On his bed, slightly raised, his baptismal cross on his chest, his fine silver rosary wrapped around his clasped hands, Guy seemed to be asleep... “He was beaming,” said his former Father Rector who came to see him. “When you are near him, you do not want to say a De profundis, it is the Magnificat that escapes from your heart and lips!” AN ANGEL TAKES FLIGHT Last sufferings and death of a predestined little child
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