Listen To The Silence: A Retreat with Père Jacques

Paperback: As a diocesan priest, Père Jacques Bunel (1900-1945) was frequently in demand as a preacher in his home diocese of Rouen (Normandy). Along with his duties as educator in a prep school in Le Havre, he spoke at important public occasions. He was chosen to give the sermon that marked the five hundredth anniversary of the death of St Joan of Arch in the Cathedral of Rouen, the city where she was burned at the stake.

Afterwards, when he became a Discalced Carmelite friar (the cover photo shows him on the day he professed his vows), he continued to exercise a preaching ministry. Carmelite nuns invited him to give conferences and to preach as retreat master. 

The Carmelite community at Pontoise received from him a seven-day retreat in the late summer of 1943. This book contains the talks he gave to the nuns: they are inspiring, but also warmhearted reflections, on questions of key interest to his audience. Among the topics were love for Christ, for His Blessed Mother, the nuns' Carmelite contemplative prayer life, and their religious observance, but all received deft treatment from this confrère who eventually became famous for his compassionate assistance to the persecuted in World War II.

We owe the full texts of those talks, as well as helpful notes and an introduction, to Reverend Dr Francis J Murphy - Father Murphy was a diocesan priest who became a good friend of the Carmelites through his interest in Père Jacques. He taught at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. This collection of talks extends the knowledge Father Murphy provided to the public in the biography volume he named and published at ICS Publications with the title: Père Jacques, Resplendent in Victory (1998).

Listen To The Silence: A Retreat with Père Jacques (2005) is translated and edited by Francis J Murphy.

About the author: Père Jacques de Jésus, OCD (1900-1945) was a French Roman Catholic priest and Discalced Carmelite friar. 

While serving as headmaster of a boarding school run by his Order, he took in several Jewish refugees to protect them from the Nazi government of occupation, for which he was arrested and imprisoned in various Nazi concentration camps.

Père Jacques was one of those who undertook efforts to help Jewish people during the Nazi occupation of France. His efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, resulting in his death at Linz, Austria, after having suffered in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex in 1945, weeks after its liberation by Allied Forces.

Père Jacques was named one of the "Righteous Among the Nations" by the State of Israel in 1985, as a non-Jew who risked his life during the Holocaust to save Jews. French film-maker Louis Malle paid tribute to Père Jacques, who was his primary school headmaster, in the 1987 film Au revoir les enfants. The cause for his canonization by the Catholic Church was opened in 1990. (Wikipedia)