"This was the 9th September, 1909. I had come [to Grey] nearly every year, and the Parish Priest of Violot was with me. They gave me handsome vestments put out for a prelate who was to come and who didn't arrive. I began my Mass. The Abbe Lemoine was in the interior of the chapel to the right, on the kneeler which is still there. The Blessed Virgin appeared to me suddenly, and at the same time the devil. It caused me violent emotion. I was in great doubt but I did not dare to believe because of my unworthiness, that I was facing the Most Blessed. It was so much beyond me. The Blessed Virgin came down from the ceiling, throned in great glory, so gently, so gently. She was as if in a furnace of light. Her glory went through everything gradually. The candles, the chalice, the altar vestments and I, like the sun going through water. How far did the glory reach? You need to know what the glory of God is, when you think of what He gives to the dearest of His creatures. It was just like a sun. I never saw the end of it. She came down from the ceiling like that, with Her hands joined. She wore a little smile before letting Her voice be heard. When She uncrossed Her hands, it seemed to make an eddy around Her."
"She first exchanged a word or two with the demon. During the descent, She said to Lucifer, who appeared behind Her, 'Is that you?'
(Lucifer) ; , I have leave from the Father.'
‘So be it.' replied the Blessed Virgin
Then, as if She were questioning him, 'You know how to obey the Father?' He gave no answer but I felt crushed. She extinguished Her glory. The lesser glory never left Her during all the Mass. I still stayed at the Dominus Vobiscum. Had I dared, I would have fled into the vestry, if I had not been at the altar. When I looked at the Parish Priest of Violot, he put his two hands over his face and his face in his book, and leaned his whole weight on the kneeler. I kept saying, ‘I shall be well defended.' She talked. She asked me questions. I did not dare to answer. She stood upright. She was of middle height. With the movement that She made, there was like a little storm of glittering spangles. Her crown only appeared when She stood up. Her feet were just about the height of those chairs. She stayed a little above the ground. With the right hand, She signed to me very maternally, 'Go on,' to give me back my courage. I said within myself, ‘If you are the Blessed Virgin, show me.' She said: 'I am the Mother of God.' When She said, • I am the Mother of God,' very gently, I seemed to melt away within. I did not doubt the word of the Mother of God. I believed Her, but She came in poor company (the fiend)."
"When I commemorated the martyrdom of St. Gorgonius She smiled gently. It was the prayer of Her Nativity. At the ut quibus beatae Virginis, I bowed to Her. She bowed to me, very graciously. What humility, even in Heaven and for me, a mountebank of the umpteenth class 1 I saw Her reflection in the glass before me in the altar-card. The interview went on, and so as not to cause too long a break, She signed to me to read the Epistle."
“The little altar server said: 'Is it the Blessed Virgin, Father? ' as he took the book from the Epistle side to the Gospel side. I said to him, low, e Don't talk, you will make Her go away,' She looked on him with motherly tenderness. She stayed aside to let him pass and took Her place again at the middle of the altar. When I said the Munda cor meum, She left the middle of the altar and went to the Gospel side."
" After the Gospel, the priest comes back to say the Credo. She took her place again at the side of the priest, almost in front of the book. She let him begin the Credo; at the Incarnatus est, She bowed as if to say, 'That is so.' At the Sub Pontio Pilato, She put forward Her closed hands upon the altar, clenching Her fists in a gesture of mighty sorrow. Her arms were just beside me (and he showed a distance of five inches). I was so upset that I made a mistake. I muddled things. When She saw that I wasn't getting over it, She went on with the Credo as if She were saying the Mass. My mistake had given me such a shock. She put me back where I stopped, very gently. (And, smiling, he said): She knows Her prayers well."
"At the Memento, She recommended the priest to ask more. There is great store, and still greater to be given."
"The Blessed Virgin foretold the War. She spoke to me very maternally, about my childhood, founded the pilgrimage of Our Lady of the Woodland; told me She wanted a new congregation. With great energy She condemned modernism, treated of several different matters, defending me from Lucifer."
"She was dressed in a deep blue gown, with Her white veil, the sleeves gathered in at the wrists, and bare feet. The neckline of Her dress is just below the chin. The gown is ample and quite simple. But anything She wore would be equally becoming. Her proportions are perfect. Everything in Her is perfect. Her eyes are very changeable; they can take all the colours, but there is one settled colour all the same. When She lived on earth they were neither brown nor altogether blue. Rather periwinkle. Her ears are visible. So is the start of the hair on the forehead. In the same way you can see the plaits of hair at the side. The only statue resembling her in the least is the one (Rue du Bac, above the entrance door of the Ladies of Charity), where She is giving an audience to Catherine Laboure, That has the face, just as long, but She has not that forehead. She looks too young in that statue, and yet you cannot make Her old. I have never been able to tell Her age. The Virgin is very dark. (' I am black, but comely.') Her demeanour is very simple. She seldom inclines Her head but looks you straight in the face, just like Her Divine Son, but you feel that beyond, how Their gaze pierces into the entire world."
"When the Blessed Virgin speaks as a mother, She wears a crown made from a spray of roses, of lilies, and of daisies, with a silver band, quite narrow, at a third of the height. These flowery sprays are arranged like the fingers; a white rose, almost open, a single lily, almost open, and a daisy. Naturally, these flowers often repeated, form a circle. As for the green branches at the base of the crown, they are very sober in colour. It is a bell-shaped crown. You could pass your hand between Her crown and the veil on Her head. But when She condemned modernism, She wore a crown of matchless beauty. If the crown of flowers can be copied, the other one, the great one, cannot be even dreamed. It is made up of clusters of jewels and light. The jewels are very fine, small for the most part and a few large. They are harmoniously arranged like the grains in a ear of corn, with sparkling lights inset between the stones and throwing them into relief. There are blue stones, some red, some violet but less numerous than the blue. Amongst the most beautiful are the pale blue stones. I am almost sorry I didn't ask Her for one. Of those stones, some hang and others cluster. There is quite a play of lights, some outside and some inside the crown. It is like a diadem, rising in the middle. All that I have seen in the museum look like cobble work beside a finely finished shoe. There is no crown on earth like that. She wears it when She speaks as a sovereign Lady. She is majestic. She wore it without the glory, or else She would be frightening and She does not come to frighten."
"After the Credo, She spoke of the War in very sorrowful tones. 'It will be slow to kindle. It will set all Europe on fire. It will set the world on fire. There will be about five millions killed, but (turning towards Lucifer) I shall save many in spite of you.' The fiend said, ' They'll pass through the gorge of the Vosges.' The Blessed Virgin, 'No, no, they will pass through Belgium.' Satan said, ' They are just as guilty on one side as the other.' Satan understands guilt very well. The Blessed Virgin half turned towards me and the bottom half of the church filled with a white cloud which opened. The wall disappeared and then I saw there a town with a mighty river. I think it is Belgrade. I saw the pictures of the War. I had a curious sensation. I felt quite well that I was in the church, but I was also transported far away. I cannot exactly reckon the thing up. I have perfectly reckoned up the favour the Blessed Virgin was doing me by showing me those countries. She brought me through an immense landscape. I am giving you very incomplete explanations but I cannot find words for these things. I saw ships of war with enormous funnels. I saw the landscapes, but later on I took awful trouble to place them and that wasn't possible at all. You see the great rivers, mountains, sea. How place them on the maps? All is not over. There are scenes which I did not see unfold. The best for you just now is to keep quiet."
"The Priest recommended his Parish to the Blessed Virgin. The Blessed Virgin protected it in a special way during the War, especially on the day of the explosion. She looked at me very steadily; 'While he is alive, the Germans will not pass this way-at Le Pailly.' After a little silence She added, 'Even after his death. That is his cradle, the village where he was born. J shall be the Proteetoress of those lands! ' Just then the pictures of the War left off and the wood came on the scene. They have nothing in those countries, nothing ….no pilgrimage. Lucifer said to Her, ‘You are already called Our Lady of Lourdes; you are going to call yourself Our Lady of the Woodlands.' She turned Her head lightly. I followed the direction and She showed me a shanty. I saw the shanty, I saw the little statue; perhaps She shows it because of its gestures. The Virgin (it is awkward and badly done) spreads Her cloak to protect us and the Child is blessing the earth on which there is no cross. Just at this moment, She stood aside a bit to let the boy with the book pass."
“I had not been to the Bois Guyotte for many years but I recognised it at once. I saw it twenty-five miles away as if I were in it. The wood was being cut way altogether. At Gray I saw the forest all in disorder and I saw people in the wood, cross-cut saws squaring the tree trunks, perhaps more than a hundred persons. There were horses, harnesses. I could hear carters swearing under the eyes of the Blessed Virgin, and they did not check themselves. The wood was in a lamentable condition, trees cut down, stripped, branches everywhere hanging down to the ground. It was in September and the wood was already turning russet. The house was shown to me just as it is, but in a lamentable condition. Still there were a good few panes of glass left but these had all gone when I bought it. There were great slabs of plaster fallen down. There was no sanctuary naturally. I saw it close up. Just at that time, the chapel, which had formerly been a hunting-lodge, had become a woodman's shelter. Of the other hut which I had known near the well, there remained one post."
"I will not say anything much of what was told to me concerning the monasteries. She spoke to me a long time about the community at Gray. She visits the communities. She told me so. She visits them. She taught the holy Women Herself. She had grouped the holy women, the widows, and she had them with Her. She was with Her apostles. The scattering of the congregations were a punishment rather for the people than for individuals. She showed me all the monasteries in France in times past and times to come, with their inmates. I saw Clairvaux.' and Pere Lamy sketched a complete picture of this ideal monastery in the heroic time of St. Bernard, with its blessed Abbot and its monks, whom he described one by one. He spoke also of the future religious of Grossesauve re-populated. As I knew the district well, my attention was focussed on the priory. I remarked how the ancient building was made and I saw the monks that lived in centuries gone by. They were shown to me in procession, two by two and four by four, with their heads down. They went into the three hundreds. The desert shall again be peopled and I saw buildings that are to be."
“Later on, when Madame Caillier asked me to pray for Remiremont, I found the very place when I found myself with Her [the Blessed Virgin] in front of the Holy Mount. I picked out Remiremont from the many landscapes which I saw then. I saw many of those abbeys. They died out gradually under commendatory abbots. The monks were not numerous, only enough to till the ground, and the revenue was very small. I have seen white monks, brown monks and black. I don't want to say how touched I was by that. What interested me was to see the congregation bud and grow. I shall be a foundation stone. The monasteries will flourish again, the convents will fill up again After these calamities, souls in great numbers will come and dwell in them again."
“She talked to me and gave me a plan of my own daily life, up to and including the Sub tuum at the end of evening prayer which was not always recited well. She reminded me of the sabbatine privilege. ‘You must do what is laid down.' She is very strict on respect for the Pope's orders. She went over my whole life. The Blessed Virgin explained to me all my childhood. She said that without Her I would have been killed a hundred times, when I was doing antics in the pear tree. The pear tree was in the fruit garden of my father and mother on the other side of the road from their house where the barn is. Then how She had saved my life when I had typhoid fever. Neither the doctor nor my mother knew what it was. It was cured in one day by toast and water. Then She spoke to me of the burning down of our house. She told me who lit the fire. It had brought my family to the greatest wretchedness. My outfit was already in the making for me to go to the little seminary. I was 19 years old and the fire made me put it off. I could only go after my military service. She said, ‘I wanted him a priest; you see, he is a priest."
“She also spoke to me about the miraculous medal. She spoke about a plaster statue after the medal which someone had given me a long time ago. In my childish faith I thought I was doing something wonderful painting that statue; a veritable daub. I had painted the Blessed Virgin white, Her cloak blue, Her veil white. In some wild notion, I had painted the girdle yellow. ‘He thought to give me a yellow girdle,' She said, ‘it was ugly, very ugly,' laughing very heartily, ‘but I liked the intention.' I was 8 years old or a little less. That statue was burned in the fire. The Holy Mother said, ‘For a moment, I meant to save that statue, but there was no need.' I went looking for that statue in the remains of the fire and I gathered up bits in my hat. I carried that rubbish to the new house and I buried it at the root of the black¬currant bush. The Blessed Virgin added, ‘He put them in his hat.' not have happened. She asked for penance, a return to God, but no one put it into commission. I thought I said enough of it at La Courneuve. I repeated it every time, every Sunday. People used to say, 'He is a good man, but he is always on about the War, and you must do this and that; there's a bee in his bonnet! They said simply that I had a slate off. They used to say, , He said it; he said it again and you will see he will say it on Sunday.' Afterwards they say, ' Ah, if we had only known I..' ‘But I told you often enough.' 'Oh, but we didn't believe it! She asked for holiness in family life. She asked us to give up disorder and go back to orderly lives and then all will be restored. God does not demand more for forgiveness."
"I have not told you a tenth of what I saw. There are many things that I cannot set down. There are things it would not be good to say even forty years hence. And then the present time is perhaps the least favourable that ever was for revelation. I don't speak for one fraction of the people, the fervent Catholics; those simply do not need revelation."
"I have made notes (accidentally destroyed by Miss Delarue), but even in those notes you will find lines of full stops at certain passages. I took those notes on the back of funeral notices. They are in the boxes where I put my papers at Le Pailly. Only a year after did I speak. of them. Now I am getting old. I shall die very soon from now and I feel more free. I have read passages from these notes on the apparition at Gray to a priest among my friends. He said to me at the end of the reading, ‘But it is you that is in this; I guess it. It must be well founded.' I answered him that it was very well founded. 'What especially astounded the late Bishop of Langres is, I believe, Father, that dialogue between Mary and Lucifer, and also the somewhat candid style of the conversation.' She speaks as She chooses, She is not high-falutin'. She said to me, ' I am coming into the family circle.' "
Father Lamy’s only nephew was killed during the war. It was a huge loss for himself and his sister Rosine Vauthelin, whom he especially loved.
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