at Mont Blanc - more

At the age of almost 70 (!) years we see Fr. Dehon in the Mont Blanc mountain region not far from Chamonix (approx. 9 August 1912). This is the same Fr. Dehon, who tells his spiritual director P. Freyd many years before he was convinced of his imminent death, the same priest of whom the people of La Capelle on the occasion of his First Mass thought he wouldn't say many more masses, the same Dehon, who is afflicted again and again by illnesses, the same Dehon who tells us - starting with his 60th anniversary - almost every year in his Notes that he will die quite soon - this Fr. Dehon we meet in the Swiss Alps in his late 60's! In fact the matter of Fr. Dehon's illnesses and vitality is a quite interesting by not a well examined topic.

But let's turn back to the photograph: On Dehon's side we see P. Adriane Joannes a Coenaculo Guillaume, on whom Fr. Dehon counted so much for the government of the Congregation but who died as superior of Louvain in 1915 at the age of 29:
"He was talented, very cultivated, very virtuous. I counted very much on him. He is one of those who understood me the best, and who could have maintained the Work [Congregation] in the spirit I desired to give to it. God takes him away, Fiat!" (NQT XXXVIII/1915, 58)

In August 1912 Dehon spends his holidays together with Fr. Guillaume whose health was suffering The initial sentence of these holidays is so typical for Fr. Dehon:
"August. Some pilgrimages with Fr. Guillaume. This is the best type of vacation, something good for soul and body." (NQT XXXIV/1912, 108).

On the 9th of August Fr. Dehon writes the following:
"In the evening of 9 August - Chamonix. The grandeur of nature tells us about God as it does Christian art or the memory of the Saints. The Bossons! Mont Blanc! La Mer de glace. We had sufficiently clear weather. The Bossons descend from Mont Blanc like cascades of ice. Without any doubt they are the largest glaciers in Europe. With the funicular railway I was able to visit the Mer de Glace. In 1864 I went there together with my brother by mule. That was almost 50 years ago." (NQT XXXIV/1912,120s.)

In 1864 Fr. Dehon visited Switzerland for the first time with his brother Henry and his sister-in-law Laure on their wedding-trip. On many occasions he returned to the Alps, on his way to Rome, on holiday trips (as it was the case in 1912) or, as in August 1903, for health reasons.