It’s also an opportunity to offer the sacrament of reconciliation to people far removed from the Church.
“Once I was in the Jura [a region in France],” Bigot recalled, “and the parish priest made himself available for confessions. At the end of the evening, he was incredibly happy, having heard the confession of someone who hadn’t confessed for 30 years.” Still overwhelmed by the story, Bigot reckoned that “for that person alone, it was worth the 800-kilometer round trip.”
“Thérèse attracts whoever she wants,” Bigot said. “Once I was in Poitiers, in a very dechristianized region — there was no monstrance, the microphone didn’t work, nor did the lighting, and we thought there would be no one, that it wasn’t the style of the people here… and the church was full!”
‘We don’t see many miracles because we forget’
Bigot spoke about the graces she has witnessed. Writing a letter, she said, allows us to see God at work in the little things. “We don’t see many miracles in our lives because we forget what we’re asking the Lord for,” she said. “I myself forget what I’ve written in my letter, and every year I’m surprised.”
Bigot likes to tell a story that spanned three years.
“In 1998, I was on my way back from New Zealand, passing through France and going through a difficult time for my faith. I had to host a rose petals evening, and I was feeling very bad inside. I saw a couple of friends in the congregation, members of the community, who couldn’t have children. I prayed: ‘Listen Lord, I ask you for one thing, and that is to give a child to this family, to this couple.’ I returned to the United States and received my letter a year later. I hadn’t heard from this couple, I didn’t know what had become of them. A fortnight later, I received an announcement saying ‘Jeanne was born.’ I cried. It was as if the Lord was saying to me, ‘I’m taking care of you, too.’”
But the story didn’t end there.
“At a rose petals evening in the United States, I testified about this in my poor English, and a woman heard me. A mother herself, she was touched and decided to pray for her dentist, who had been married for 14 years and had no children. Three months later, she went to his office for a cleaning, and the dentist told her, ‘We are pregnant.’ The following year, they had twins. On hearing this testimony, a woman asked for the grace that her daughter, who kept having miscarriages, could have a child. The next month… she was pregnant.”
Holding back tears, Bigot marveled at this “contagion of witness.”
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“People have found jobs and homes, and experienced reconciliation, healing, and other crazy things,” she told CNA. “These evenings have successfully spread to France, Italy, Germany, Kazakhstan, the USA, Alaska, Mali, China… Thérèse is loved everywhere. She has succeeded in reaching intellectuals, children, and all generations.”
Not a list to Santa Claus
So, what’s the difference between this letter to the Little Flower and a letter to Santa Claus?
“In the letter to Thérèse, I commit my faith, my hope, in a surge of trust, because Thérèse’s message is that God is Father and that he takes care of me,” Bigot explained. “It’s not magic; you don’t press the dispenser… You put yourself in God’s presence and ask him for ‘the impossible through the intercession of Thérèse.’ What seems impossible in my life today? It’s all the places where we beg: Lord, I need you. I entrust to him the important things, with all their weight. It’s not easy. You see people crying as they write their letters.”
Bigot also said we should never make “an idol” of Thérèse, because “it’s not her who hears, it’s Jesus,” she pointed out, saying that “the rose petal evenings always have a taste of heaven,” and we should all “take the graces when they come.”
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