Gérard RaymondGerard Raymond

A partir de cette Retraite, ses immenses désirs de sacrifice s’enflamment toujours plus, aussi, il se rend compte de sa faiblesse. Sans cesse il se reproche son inconstance à suivre son règlement, sa paresse, son peu de volonté. A ce sujet, un Prêtre écrivit après la lecture du journal du jeune séminariste: « Dans sa profonde humilité, il attribue à la négligence ce qui n’est que l’effet de la maladie; car déjà, il est sournoisement travaillé, sans le savoir. Par le mal mystérieux qui le conduira au tombeau quelques mois plus tard ». Les notes des derniers mois de sa vie font de fréquentes allusions à la mort prochaine qu’il entrevoit. Le 19 juin 1931, il écrit: « L’affaire du Salut est personnelle. Dieu nous a fait sans nous… Je veux être prêt à mourir n’importe quand; aujourd’hui je suis prêt, ô Jésus venez si c’est le temps…. Vous savez, ô mon Dieu, la mort que je Vous demande, malgré mon indignité. Puissé-je mourir martyr! Tout comme Jésus, jusqu’au bout… Pour Vous, pour Votre amour et pour sauver les âmes. C’est là le seul moyen que j’aurai de répondre un peu à Votre amour, et encore ce ne serait pas assez. Je veux me mortifier toute ma vie, vivre en Saint pour mériter cette faveur, cette mort si belle… Je veux Vous suivre, je veux Vous aider pour ramener les pécheurs… Vous donnez Votre vie, je Vous donnerai la mienne; Vous souffrez, je souffrirai; Vous mourez pour eux et pour moi, je mourrai pour eux et pour Vous. Dès ce moment, attachez-moi à Vous pour toujours. O Jésus, et avec Vous, avec Vous seulement, je monterai jusqu’aux sommets ».

 

Le dernier jour de décembre de cette année 1931, il est seul à la maison parce que ses parents sont partis à Montréal pour assister à la Profession Religieuse de leur fille aînée, Soeur Marie-Camille, le la Congrégation Notre Dame. Il écrit dans son journal: « Un mot avant que l’année se termine. Ma dernière année complète dans le monde n’a pas été ce que j’aurais souhaité qu’elle fût au point de vue spirituel. Depuis le début des vacances de Noël, je vivote vaille que vaille. D’abord je suis malade: fièvre, grippe, mal de tête, mal d’estomac, etc. Aujourd’hui je suis un peu mieux, mais encore assez mal. Je pourrais me servir ce ces jours de maladie pour m’élever vers Dieu, je reste collé au sol ». « Je vois bien des points noirs dans l’année qui s’en va. Je veux que celle qui s’en vient soit toute blanche. Blanche… ou rouge, car je suis prêt. J’accepte toutes les douleurs, tous les sacrifices que pourra m’apporter 1932. Résignation joyeuse, conformité à la Volonté de Dieu, c’est bien le moins que je puisse faire quand mes résolutions sont si faibles, ma volonté si débile. Acceptez, Jésus, ma bonne volonté, et transformez-la en volonté durable et constructive ».

 

Et voici les dernières lignes de son journal, à la date du 2 janvier 1932: « Je suis encore malade un peu. En ce début de l’année je viens de cracher ce soir, pour al première fois de ma petite vie, un peu de sang. Il se peut que cela ne soit pas grave du tout… Il se peut que ce soit grave… peu importe. Je suis prêt à tout accepter. Donner mon sang en pleine vigueur de jeunesse, cela vaut bien le martyre lointain et problématique d’un vieillard de demain? Faites de-moi, Bon Jésus, tout ce que Vous voudrez. Faites-moi souffrir si cela Vous plaît, je suis si lâche pour acquérir des mérites autrement. D’avance, Jésus, j’accepte tout, tout… Et je suis fort, avec Vous souffrances ». Les 8 et 9 janvier Gérard va encore au Séminaire; ces sont ses deux derniers jours de classe. Le 22 une assez forte hémorragie survient. Sont état s’aggrave et le 15 février, il doit prendre le chemin de l’Hôpital Laval. Et quittant ses parents, il dit tout simplement: « C’est la Volonté du Bon Dieu ». Pas un mot de plus. Le 5 juillet il s’éteignit paisiblement durant la nuit, après une hémorragie. Les parents de Gérard, Camille Raymond et Joséphine Poitras, lui survécurent longtemps. Son père mourut en 1965, peu après la fin du Procès informatif Diocésain pour la Cause de Béatification. Sa mère atteignit l’âge de 101 ans et mourut en 1977. Elle eût le bonheur de recevoir les derniers sacrements des mains de son dernier fils, François, devenu Prêtre. Chaque année, pour l’anniversaire de sa mort et pour la Béatification de Gérard Raymond, une messe est célébrée à à l’église Sainte-Angèle de Saint-Malo de Québec.

 

Texte extrait du journal « Magnificat » n° 42, de novembre 2007

 

Prière pour la Béatification de Gérard Raymond

 

Seigneur Jésus, qui avez comblé de grâces Votre fidèle Serviteur Gérard Raymond, c’est en toute confiance que nous recourons à son intercession. Faites qu’en considération de ses mérites, nous puissions obtenir la faveur (…) que nous Vous demandons et toute soumission à la Volonté de Votre Père. Alors nous aurons la joie de témoigner de son crédit auprès de Vous dans le Ciel et de contribuer ainsi à sa Glorification sur la terre. Amen.

 

Imprimatur

Paul Nicole V.G.

Québec, 16 août 1982

 

Cause de Béatification de Gérard Raymond

Séminaire de Québec

1, rue des Remparts

Case Postale 460

Québec (Québec) G1R 5L7

 

« Love, Suffer, Love »

About two years ago, I was doing research in the Gérard Raymond papers held in the archives of the Séminaire de Québec.  These consist mainly of his student writings, most notably his journal, but one also finds several thick files of letters and testimonials from around the world, each attesting to the exceptionally virtuous life of the 19 year-old seminarian, or soliciting special favours through his intervention.  One letter in particular caught my eye, primarily because it was so touching.  In phonetically broken French, a certain Mrs. Rosaire Doyon, on 16 October 1936, writes asking a seminary priest to intercede on her behalf with Gérard Raymond so that he can ask God to watch over her husband, who, she says, is not frank with her.  He drinks and returns home late in the mornings, hides money from her and their six children, and comes and goes as he pleases.  She is particularly worried about her eldest 15 year-old son, who may follow in his father’s bad footsteps.  She herself is not well, and she is also concerned about what the neighbours may be thinking.  She asks that, in his response, the priest not mention any details of her difficulties, as this would only worsen things.  She also asks for heavenly protection for her husband, and that he be made to see the error of his ways.[1]

         Our sensibilities cry out against the injustice of such a situation, where a woman with few options in life finds herself caught in what was undoubtedly a cold and abusive marriage.  We also see here, however, a vivid manifestation of faith: an absolute belief and hope that, through the intercession of some exceptionally holy individual—in this case, Gérard Raymond—the trials and tribulations of earthly existence can somehow be made bearable.  We have here the beginning of the cult of saints.  How can a woman caught in such desperate straits come to believe that a young seminarian who had died only four years earlier could act as a divine intercessor on her behalf, and help bring her husband back to her safe and sound?  This woman believes in the power of conversion; it is, perhaps, the one thing that sustains her.  Her lonely, heart-wrenching letter may well be addressed to an earthly man, a priest, but her prayer—for that is what it is—goes well beyond this world to another man.  This man, who was young, strong, pure and selfless, can empathize with the depth of her pain and suffering, for he too suffered much.  She wants to put her longing in the strength of such a man who, rather than ignoring her, will give her the life to which she believes she is properly entitled.  Equally important, she is seeking protection—a sort of heavenly peer influence—for her own son.  She wants the saintly Gérard Raymond to act as a protective older sibling to this young son, who is far more at risk of straying from the path of goodness because of his age and immaturity.

 

The Young Québec City ‘Martyr’

 

Gérard Raymond is not an official saint of the Catholic Church.  He has not even reached the first stage of being declared Venerable.[2]  Yet for over seventy years, there has been a small but persistent cult to him.  Every year, on July 5^th, the anniversary of his death, a mass is held in Québec City to ask for the grace of his beatification.[3]  Pilgrims occasionally still visit the family plot where he is buried.  Who was this elusive young man, known almost exclusively through the pages of a journal which was discovered and published after his death, and which still sells, albeit in rather small numbers? 

         Gérard Raymond was born on 20 August 1912 into a typically modest urban Québec City family, the fourth of eight children.  His father, Camille Raymond, was a tramway conductor, while his mother, Joséphine Poitras, as with most Catholic women of that era, maintained the household.  Very little is known of his brief life, except for those events recounted in his journal—written during his last four years—and which quite naturally reflect his own selective priorities and interests.  In 1924, at the age of twelve, he entered the Petit Séminaire de Québec as a day student, where he remained until he was forced to enter hospital in January 1932.  Diagnosed with tuberculosis, he died on 5 July 1932, at the age of nineteen.  From the seminary archives, we know that he was a bright and diligent student, often finishing first or second in his class.  From his journal, we also know that it was his intention to enter the Order of Friars Minor upon completion of his studies.  In particular, he wanted to become a Franciscan missionary to China, and he would often express a burning desire and willingness to die as a martyr for the faith.  Most of the other details of his short and uneventful life come from the journal, but also from a popular hagiographic text published anonymously in 1932, a few months after his death, with a particularly suggestive title: Une âme d’élite: Gérard Raymond (1912-1932).  Its author was undoubtedly Oscar Genest, priest and spiritual director of the students at the seminary.[4]           

         This text is important for a number of reasons.  First, the seminary must have distributed it—together with holy cards of Gérard Raymond—rather widely to religious congregations, parishes and schools throughout North America, for its archives contain many letters of acknowledgement and thanks.  These documents provide the researcher with a uniquely rich look at the particular worldviews of these recipients—clerical for the most part—for they are loaded with luxuriant and nuanced commentaries on the religious meaning and import of the life of the young Gérard Raymond.[5]  Second, Une âme d’élite is very much a classic hagiographic text, in the sense that it does two things: it makes a case for the sanctity of Gérard Raymond, and it proposes his life as a compelling model for other Catholic youth.  In so doing, it offers much by way of insight into how the French Canadian Catholic clerical culture of this distinctive era understood and defined not only adolescent spiritually, but lay sanctity more generally.  Third, and perhaps most significant, the book essentially consists of a prolonged spiritual commentary on Gérard Raymond’s own journal.  Because it was written by the spiritual director of the seminary, a person directly responsible for the welfare of the souls of the young students, it has much to say about how this clerical authority chose to “construct” Gérard Raymond as a potential saint, by drawing and emphasizing particular elements from his life, and how these might be relevant, in turn, to the lives of other seminary students, both present and future.  In this regard, the choice of title is quite revealing: it bespeaks an overriding concern with Christian perfection, particularly for young males, as a task best suited to strong, exceptional or elite types, as might be the case for an athlete or a soldier.  There is another sense in which the term “elite” can be understood here.  Because they ran a collège classique[6] the priests of the seminary were indeed forming a French Canadian elite of future lawyers, doctors, notaries, politicians or clergy.  For the priests, this elite would naturally need to possess the sorts of qualities and virtues that Gérard Raymond so well embodied if its members were to occupy the rightful place that belonged to them in society and in the French Canadian Church.

         Gérard Raymond’s reputation for sanctity rests almost exclusively on his journal.  The document is exceptional in that it provides the reader with an intimate look at the spiritual development of a young French Canadian Catholic man of the early part of the twentieth century.  Its first entry is dated 23 December 1927; its last, 2 January 1932.  Published by the Séminaire de Québec, it is reminiscent of the remarkably popular auto-biographical spiritual text by St. Thérèse de Lisieux, Histoire d’une âme.  In fact, Gérard Raymond may have modelled his entries on those of Thérèse.  In his journal, he writes about how much he was impressed with her writings and spiritual insights, and he often invokes her as one of his special patrons.  It is also important to note that the seminary itself edited and published the journal, and that selective parts of the original manuscript (mostly detailed summaries of sermons heard and recorded by Gérard) were removed from it.[7]  This parallels the process at Lisieux, where the Carmelite convent edited and arranged for the first publication of Histoire d’une âme, thereby almost single-handedly being responsible for the spread of the cult of the young Thérèse Martin, who would arguably become the most influential Catholic saint of the twentieth century.[8]

         Raymond Lemieux, a scholar of Québec Catholicism, characterizes the major focus of the spirituality of Gérard Raymond, as reflected through the pages of his journal, as: “…a sharp awareness – and sharpened by the institution to which he submits himself – of the distance between daily life and the ideal, an awareness of work always needing to be redone to bridge the chasm, the challenge and necessity of perseverance.”[9]  He further delineates the young seminarian’s personality as comprising the threefold aspects of the model student, the pious adolescent and the elite soul.[10]  When reading the journal, one is struck by a number of recurring themes: the overriding concern with perfection in all aspects of life, and the consequent guilt which inevitably comes from not attaining it; the emphasis on penance and suffering, whether self-imposed or not, and how this imitates Christ and the tribulations of the martyrs; and the overly punctilious observance of Catholic rituals and devotions.  The motto of the young student was: “Aimer, Souffrir, Aimer” (To love, to suffer, to love).  The picture of Gérard Raymond that emerges from his journal is that of an exceptionally religious yet determined youth, insecure and often guilt-ridden, who wanted to be perfect in all things, whether his studies, his faith and devotional observances, his home life or his relationships with peers.  In psychological terms, he might perhaps be viewed today as a bit of an obsessive-compulsive.

         Above all else, however, stood Gérard Raymond’s burning desire to be a saint and a martyr: “…as of today, I give myself to you, do with me as you wish, I know that it will be good.  Make of me a saint, and if possible a martyr.”[11]  Such an idealistic Catholic ambition for sanctity and martyrdom—much more common in that era than was often admitted—served as a powerful template.  In reflecting homogenous Tridentine ideals of Catholic perfection and perfectibility, it provided individuals, particularly youth, with the necessary inspiration, impetus and models for the forging of their fragile identities.  In striving for sanctity and martyrdom, Gérard Raymond thereby became both himself and a good Catholic, for the two were seen as indivisible.  The ideal of the martyr-saint bridged a chasm between the world and the Church, between this earth and the heavenly promise, between ordinary humans and stronger, more elite ones.  What more could any typical adolescent look or ask for?

 

The Ideal of Heroic, Sanctified Masculinity

        

Since ‘‘Une âme d’élite’’ and his journal were both officially published by the priests of the Québec City seminary, Gérard Raymond’s exemplary youthful sanctity could be said to be a clerical construction.  This does not detract from the merits of the youngster’s life.  Rather, it points to a common process in saint-making: that it is often those with particular vested interests—sometimes very legitimate ones—who are the real advocates of sainthood for a given individual.  The seminary priests were the ones who wrote about Gérard Raymond; who edited and distributed his writings; who had images and holy cards of him printed; who composed prayers in his honour and organized novenas for his canonization; who kept alive his memory; and who proposed him as a model for other French Canadian Catholic youth.  They created the saintly and ascetic Gérard Raymond.  Without them, it is fairly certain that he would have remained unknown.  Why, therefore, did they do it, and what sort of young man were they interested in fashioning?

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