COMMENT: HE AND I - biographical sketch

Hi, Mary,
Thank for your love of the passages of
YOU AND i by Gabrielle Bossis.

It is a pity that the book is only available in RARE books.

You tried opening Online Link and I see there is a problem downloading.

Following the quotation, "Each soul is my favourite...", belongs to the Biography and I will send it.

Give me the time and we can send the corrected Online version of the text.

See below ............

Thank you for the greetings for the Solemnity of Saint Bernard. It is the Abbot of Citeaux who has 

very aptly sponsored the 900th anniversary year of Prayer for Vocations.

  The ninth centenary of St Bernard’s entry into the Abbey of Cîteaux  
Attached the Prayer on the Blogspot sidebar in place.  

Yours.... 

Donald

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: mary t. ...
To: Donald
Sent: Monday, 20 August 2012, 5:00
Subject: Skype

Donald,
It was really great having a chat with you and N... recently on Skype. 

A very Happy and blessed  Feast Day of St. Bernard to you and all the dear monks at Sancta Maria Abbey and may he intercede with Mary to whom he was so devoted for more Cistercian vocations. He well knows how Jesus cannot refuse His Mother anything.

I tried opening the link for Gabrielle Bossis's  'Jesus and i "but got the message"cannot open because the script is too long!! 

So now Donald, I would be grateful if you can just send me a page or message now and again. 

I find it really a beautiful work full of teaching and love.
So gentle, so gracioius, so challenging, so humble so simple, so revealing of the heart of God. 

I could go on but I will just say it really touches my heart.

..........

Yours,

Mary.

COMMENT: HE AND i

from Biographical Sketch of Gabrielle Bossis  

  

He and i - Gabrielle Bossis

"Each soul is my favourite" says the Voice, "I choose some only to reach the others."

"Take care in setting down My words," says the Voice, "so that what springs from My heart may belight and joy easy to capture..." Having done this, I can only hope and trust that the reader may find what I have found in these pages - what the Voice describes as "a never-ending beginning again of the joy of hearing Me". 

                                                                                           from Preface. E.M.B.

Biographical Sketch of

GABRIELLE BOSSIS

 The youngest child of a family of four children, Gabrielle Bossis was born in Nantes in 1874. From an extremely shy, fearful and tearful little girl, more often found by herself in corners than playing with other children, she grew up into a graceful, gay, high-spirited young girl, very sociably inclined, though then, as from her childhood, possessed of a secret yearning for God and the things of the spirit which led to frequent contemplation.

As her father belonged to the wealthy middle class, there was no need for Gabrielle to earn her living. Her early years passed peacefully in her home at Nantes or at their summer residence in Fresne on the Loire River. Yet she was always very active. She obtained a degree for nursing, helped out in various parish projects, embroidered church ornaments for missions and practiced the fine arts of the day - music, painting, illuminating and sculpture, while still finding time for her favourite sports, horse riding, dancing and many social activities.

When the hidden treasure of her unusual inner life came to the notice of the Franciscan priest who was directing her, he felt convinced that she had a vocation for the convent and brought pressure to bear to induce her to become a nun. But Gabrielle resisted his suggestion with great determination,feeling led by an interior guidance more impelling than this, to remain in the world. No doubt it wasthis same guidance and the supreme attraction of a love surpassing all human loves that led to her refusal of the many proposals of marriage that came to her.

Quite late in life she discovered that she had another talent - that of writing the kind of entertainingand thoroughly moral comedies so much in demand by church clubs, a task "not so easy as oneimagines," as Daniel Rops commented. Her first play, written for a club in Anjou, in which sheacted the principal part, was such a success that before long her name became known throughoutFrance and even in far distant countries. From this time on, right up until within two years beforeher death, she travelled extensively, producing her own plays and continuing to act the principal

role. Those who remember her still remark on her extraordinary youth of mind and body, the goldenhair that resisted the touch of time well on into her later years, the infectious laughter and her unfailing charm. On very rare occasions in her early life, Gabrielle had been surprised by a mysterious voice whichshe felt with awe, though sometimes with anxious questionings, to be the voice of Christ. It wasonly at the age of 62, however, while travelling to Canada on the 'Ile de France', that this touchingdialogue with the inner Voice began in earnest, continuing until two weeks before her death on June9, 1950. The journal that she kept of her tour through Canada right to the Rocky Mountains is an extraordinary revelation of the double role she was called upon to play on life's stage - that of acontemplative and an exceptionally active woman exposed to all the hurly burly of life in the world. For the most part this document might be the travelogue of any gay, charming woman, muchyounger than she, possessed of a keen sense of humour, very much alive to every aspect of lifearound her and delicately sensitive to beauty. It is all the more astonishing for the reader to comeacross those sudden interruptions when the Voice recalls her to His ever-present Presence in wordsthat touch the very depths and heights of mystical experience, words so simple yet so august as torecall those lines from the Song of Moses: "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distilas the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb and as the showers upon the grass. "At the instigation of the Voice the travelogue ends with the Canadian tour. From there on, however,we can still trace her wandering footsteps by the colourful place names recorded with the sayings:Carthage, Tunis, Algiers, Constantine and numerous names in France, Italy and other parts of Europe. Most of the time the only retreat she had for contemplation was the inner temple of her soul, for it was on airplanes, trains, buses, in the 'metro' during the rush hour in Paris, on the busystreets of great cities, even on the stage in the midst of a performance that the Voice spoke to her. From the Word within her Gabrielle learned of her mission: to record and publish what she heard sothat people might know that the life of intimacy with Christ was not reserved for those in cloisters but for every man, woman and child no matter what his state in life might be. As the first volume of the carefully recorded sayings of 

 Lui et mo http://www. scribd. com/doc/98805520/He-and-i-Gabrielle-Bossisi PAGE Head

was published anonymously in 1948, she lived to see its phenomenal distribution. No one guessed at the authorship and when, subsequent to her death and atthe ever-increasing demand for more of her notes, a second volume prefaced by Daniel Ropsrevealed her identity, so well had she hidden her secret that her friends were utterly astonished. Three more volumes followed at the request of grateful and enthusiastic readers: then a sixthvolume giving her biography, and at still further request, a seventh with more of the dialogue. "Thislittle book will go to the ends of the earth," said the Voice. And in recent years, more than ever weare seeing the fulfilment of these words as translation after translation is being published anddistributed far beyond the boundaries of Europe. Thomas a Kempis once said that those who travel a great deal rarely become holy, and Our LordHimself, that it was easier for a camel to go through the needle's eye than for a rich man to enter intothe kingdom of heaven. Yet Gabrielle travelled widely and was very wealthy. The Voice had aremedy for both situations: "Don't talk about your travels any more; they are for Me," It said. Andwhen she thought of giving some embroidered cloths for the altar: "Don't buy them; make them withyour own hands. "Until the illness that carried her off, Gabrielle's health was impeccable. Yet when death came, shewelcomed it as she had welcomed life - with the same high-hearted love and joy. "My heart isgetting weaker every day," she wrote on May 9, 1950. "I have taken neither food nor liquid for threedays. So I shall be leaving soon. Rejoice with me. Magnificat. . . and there will be no more partings. "When the moment of the "great Meeting" drew near on June 9, at the beginning of the octave of Corpus Christi, was she able, I wonder, to remember those prophetic words spoken to her by theVoice on Corpus Christi just one year previously: "The last altar of repose, you know, is in heaven"?As her testament she left us "the peaceable record of heaven". Heaven - from the Greek word not for tomorrow in some far off Elysian field, but an eternal now, here as hereafter, by our at-onement with Him in the Christ-consciousness. Gabrielle Bossis name will never go down in history for anything she accomplished, but what was accomplished in her flows and will go on flowing to us when history has been lost in eternity. She was no one and she was everyone, for in her self-effacement and receptivity she became the little wind instrument through whom the Voice speaks to each one of the readers of HE AND I. For we feel not so much that we are reading as that we are being read, watched, followed.

"Each soul is My favourite," 

says the Voice. . . "I choose some only to reach the others. "E. M. B.