Who is Armand Marquiset – the founder of Little Brothers

Mario Cipriani on Armand Marquiset

0.1 Remembering Our Founder

Our founder left this world in 1981: we have now a little perspective from which to view the meaning of his life and work:
Armand Marquiset was an extraordinary man, with many talents, music as well as cooking, interior decorating as well as public relations and the art of fund raising. He had essentially the temperament of a founder.

He had already established, before World War II, organizations for impoverished artists, for disadvantaged children in the suburbs of Paris. In 1946 he created les petits frères des Pauvres, the main work of his life. Later he established Brothers of Men (1965) and Brothers of Heaven and Earth (1969), and in a way, they shifted what he had wanted to do in creating the petits frères to a different context: the work in the third world for Brothers of Men; or to the loneliness, the anguish, sometimes the desperation of very disturbed people with Brothers of Heaven and Earth.

In these three organizations we find the two basic intuitions of Armand Marquiset: the notion of serving the poor and the profile of the "Little Brother."

0.2 Serving the Poor

For Armand Marquiset, serving the poor meant bringing them respect and love. This is an idea found in the Gospels; it is an idea held by many humanitarian founders. It is not then strictly original to Armand. In the providence of God, however, there periodically arise souls able to recover the purity of the original message and to revive it in us, to rescue us from the routine of life and to wake us up. Moreover, Armand Marquiset added to this timeless message his own individual touch.

One fundamental principle of the petits frères is the importance of superfluity, the necessity of luxury for the poor, which translates into the motto,
"flowers before bread."

The other fundamental of serving the poor for Armand is to give love. This is evident in all that he said and did with the petits frères. It is perhaps said most forcefully in his later writings, those of his last years, when he wished to retain only the essentials:
"The greatest poverty is the lack of love".
"To be poor is above all to be poor in love".

To be sure, the Little Brother must help the poor solve their material problems, and he must do so with discretion and respect. But above all he must be brimming with love, transparent with love. Then the poor, feeling themselves recognized and loved, can bloom anew and in turn give love. Love: it is the only truth.

0.3 The Profile of the "Little Brother"

For Armand Marquiset, who is the Little Brother? He is a man who, like himself, has yearned to love and serve the poor. "A man?" Yes. In the beginning all the petits frères were men. It was customary at the time, and Christian charitable organizations rarely mixed men and women. Since then things have changed-and Armand changed with them. The Brothers of Heaven and Earth, for example, included men and women from the beginning.

"A priest?" Considering our 'name, one might think so. Nevertheless, no. Armand repeatedly said that he never wanted to be the founder of a religious order or congregation. At one time there were discussions with Rome looking toward official Church recognition, but for various reasons, nothing came of this. Armand wished to protect the independence of the petits frères, their complete openness to all.

"A Christian, all the same?" Yes! But in a broad sense. Presenting the young Brothers of Men to Pope Paul VI, Armand said: "Holy Father, these young people go to serve the poor in Asia or Africa. They are Catholics, Protestants, nonbelievers ..."

What was important for him, what characterized the Little Brother, was the capacity to love with all his might, to be burning with love.

0.4 For All the Poor

Certain historical circumstances (the war, and at its end the destitution of many old people in the large cities) explain why the petits frères concerned themselves with the elderly. Armand, when he spoke of the petits frères, said that they were made for "all the poor." In Paris, in 1946, he chose the aged, because at that moment in that place, they were the poorest.

He found there at once a field especially suited for work according to his ideas, according to his heart: to bring flowers before bread and to give love to people who were cruelly forgotten. This immediately struck a chord among old people beaten down by life. But this work, which just happened to begin with the aged, in the end remained confined to them. The old people grew older. Their problems grew numerous, grave, complicated, requiring a response ever more adaptable and competent. The petits frères wished to remain loyal to each person until his last day. In so doing, however, we were left very little time to reach out to other kinds of poor people. Still, in the thinking of Armand Marquiset, one type of work with the poor has no priority over any other type. He would have subscribed to our efforts today to come to the aid of the "new poor."

If in reality, however, we occupy ourselves primarily with old people, then let's do it well-with all our resources, intelligence, imagination, loyalty, affection, and love.

Recollections of Armand Marquiset

1 Prelude

One of my first memories of a coddled and spoiled childhood is those succulent meals to which my great grandmother privately invited me. She had an extraordinary cook and I made up the menus for these love feasts.

I spent four years of my childhood at the Normandy Grammar School, which I hold in happy memory. I was lazy and worked little. One summer, at Montguichet, my parents told me that at the beginning of the new school term they were sending me to the Jesuits of Angers. "And there," my father said to me, "you will have to work, which has not been the case at Normandy." And he added: "Moreover, with the Jesuits of Angers you get up at 5:00 a.m."

Horrified, I declared that I didn't wish to go to the Jesuits of Angers. But my parents told me that I would go.    

I immediately decided on a counterattack. There were two shrubs in the garden, one of which had white blossoms and the other red blossoms. I had been told that the red blossoms were poisonous but that the white ones were harmless. Prudently I ate three white blossoms and returned to the house. I assumed a tragic air: "I will not go to the Jesuits of Angers; I have poisoned myself." General panic. They asked me: "You haven't eaten the red blossoms?" "Yes, I have eaten the red blossoms." They rushed me to the pharmacist, who gave me an antidote. I no longer remember the effect of the antidote, but no one spoke to me of the Jesuits of Angers. They sent me to Franklin. This was also the Jesuits, but in Paris. I was a very mediocre student distinguished only by my absolute incapacity for mathematics. My parents forced me to take private lessons from a priest. He exerted himself to write many signs on the blackboard. "Do you understand?" "No." He grew impatient, came toward me, squinted his eyes at me, again made his hieroglyphics on the blackboard, and once more turned to me: "Little cretin, do you understand this time?" I understood no better. Faithful to this incapacity, I was a zero in math.

My father asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I replied that I wanted to be a musician. I passionately loved music, and I wanted to be a composer. I thought that was the only career on earth in which I would not be a failure. My mother opposed this plan. (Had she the premonition that I would not keep on with it?) My father took no notice and I undertook my studies with Nadia Boulanger (photo right).

1.1 The Golden Sprig

The French government gave an annual pension to the parents whose sons had been killed in the war, but as usual it was inadequate. And so, a woman from Toulouse, the Marquise de Saint-Vincent-Brassac, had created an organization called the Golden Sprig. She asked people to give their jewels, their gold trinkets, which they sold to the Bank of France. With the funds they bought government stock and doubled the state pension and thus helped the parents who had lost their sons.

Photos: Chateau of Montguichet, outside Paris, where Armand Marquiset was born. In 1950, this became the first vacation home for the elderly.

Madame de Saint-Vincent-Brassac, having wanted to create a Paris chapter of the organization, was told: "Madame de Laumont lost her son in the war and will be the best president that you could possibly find." My grandmother accepted and offered the vice presidencies to Marshall Foch and to Madame Poincaré, who accepted.

With the prompting of my grand-mother, The Golden Sprig rapidly became an important activity in Paris and many pensions were paid to parents whose sons had been killed.

At this time I was about 21 years old and I accompanied my grandmother on visits to the homes of many old people, or rather to many old women living alone. One of these fell into my arms, kissed me, and said: "You remind me of my son." That certainly was (although I was ignorant of this at the time) the beginning of the petits frères that I created 25 years later.
    

1.2 Hollywood

In 1929, I rented a sumptuous villa with 50 hectares of grounds in Vasouy, near Honfleur. Each week I would invite lots of friends that I would pick up and bring back in a bunch to Paris in my red Talbot that I called "Modesty."

I wished to dazzle my grandmother, and I invited her to Vasouy. A bit shocked by the life I was leading, she said to me: "My poor Armand, you will die in poverty." "Perhaps, grandmother, but I will have had a good time."

At the beginning of 1930 I left for the United States. Wanting to make the acquaintance of the movie world, I went almost at once to California. shortly after my arrival, I was invited to a dinner party given by Mary Pickford. In a short while I met all the artists of the day. I got to know Joan Crawford, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., the ravishing Mary Brian, Buddy Rogers ...
 

1.3 Return

I was in the United States for three months. At the end of the third month I received a letter from my mother:

"Your grandmother is not well." I took the first boat for France. Upon my arrival I cabled my grandmother. That same evening, we dined together privately and spent the entire evening together.

One week later a second hemorrhage took her away.

After her death I came to understand the profound meaning of love. We feel its power here on earth, but our love thirsts for eternity.

	Armand's Grandmother .. Left: La Baronne de Laumont (1855-1930) in her later years. Right: Marie de Sassenay (her maiden-name) as young lady around 1872;

I was incapable of continuing to compose music. I went to Nadia Boulanger and I told her that I had decided to abandon my music and to serve the poor. She replied: "You are talented and capable of making a career as a musician, but in life only one thing counts: to speak to God. It matters little whether you speak to Him through music or through the poor, so long as you speak to Him."    

1.4 The Artists

In the winter of 1930-1931 I began to occupy myself with the Loaf of Bread Organization for tramps. I perceived that some of those who came were unemployed artists. With several friends, we decided to create "That the Spirit May Live" (Pour que l'Esprit Vive).

We found a local street of the Abbé-de-l'Epée where we opened an office. We made arrangements with small hotels and restaurants to feed and house young people who could not earn a living.

Quickly they constituted a group of musicians, some of whom were very talented. We had them play. We got them invited to the home of Princess Polignac. To have played for her was as important as having gone through the Conservatory.

That the Spirit May Live organized exhibitions of paintings and also allowed students to complete their studies.    

1.5 Lourdes

At a particularly difficult moment in my life, I decided, since I pretended to love the poor, that in order to best know and serve them, it was necessary for me to be poor myself. I rode a bicycle from Paris to Lourdes without money and begged for charity. That was in September, 1933.     

1.6 The Children of Lilas

In 1934 I founded the "Friends of the Suburbs." It sought to come to the aid of poor suburban children with clubs, holiday camps, and assistance to many families.

We began with Petit Nanterre and continued in 1936 with Lilas. In Lilas, where we had been unable to find any vacant space, the inauguration for Christmas took place in the street. We attached a Christmas tree to the hood of an old Citroën, and we distributed toys to all the kids we passed, saying to them: "In two months we will be here." Two months later we opened, in effect, a hut in the woods.

Armand during the world war II  

1.7 The War

I was mobilized in 1939 and because I was a "service auxillary" I was stationed in a regiment near Paris. There I was surrounded by many men who were for the most part without money and whose preoccupation was to send their wives and children to the country; but they hadn't the means to do so.

With friends I immediately created an organization: "1939 - To Serve."

We organized, among other things, a gala, with several wellknown artists from the Opera and the Com6die Française, which was a great success. We were able, thanks to the proceeds from this gala, and to some donations, to send, to the great joy of my comrades, a rather large number of families to the country.

After the Arrnistice I was demobilized.

As I wished to continue to serve, one of my friends advised me to see the directors of the National Reserve (Secours National) located in Royat. I went there and offered my volunteer services to the directors.

Three weeks later, I received a letter: "The people of Alsace-Lorraine, expelled by the Germans, are arriving by tens of thousands. Many of them are crowded together in a camp at Lyons. It is necessary to find employment for them and to relocate them throughout France. Will you go there?" I answered at once: "Of course."

One year later the National Reserve told me that there was an urgent problem: the internment camps were opened. These camps were filled with many refugees of countries occupied by Germany, of Jews, of foreigners, and of communist resisters. For each internee the camp directors received the same number of food tickets as were given to civilians, but in certain camps fraud and the black market prevented internees from receiving the amount of food corresponding to the tickets.

I quickly surveyed the state of things and decided to establish in all the camps food distribution centers for use by the most undernourished internees. In these camps no one died of hunger.

Then in November, 1942 I was sent to North Africa to see to the camps there. Several days later the invasion took place-which pleased me personally-but my mission to North Africa no longer had a point, owing to the opening of the camps.

Preoccupied with returning and continuing my mission in France, I obtained from General Giraud a pass for Madrid whence I could seek passage to France. He told me that I would probably be shot by the Germans. I told him: "My life is consecrated to God's poor and to those who suffer: I'll take the risk." But for the next two months each time I heard a car or quick steps behind me, I said to myself: "This is it, it's the Gestapo."

After the bombing of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, we feared bombings of Paris in 1944 and I had 150 children of Lilas brought to the Auvergne area, who were looked after by "The Friends of the Suburb." We placed them in the homes of many farmers around my house at Saint-Victor. At the end of the summer, after the liberation of Paris, we sent them back to Lilas. Thus was completed the work of "1939 - To Serve."

2 The petits frères

2.1 The 7th of July. 1939

From 1930 on, I was each day more occupied by my work in the service of the poor, but I had at the same time an agreeable life, money, a home, vacations. Increasingly I realized that he who gives not all gives nothing. The idea of the petits frères gradually crystallized: to be entirely devoted to the poor. But it was necessary to give up many things. It was not easy.

I went often to pray at Notre Dame, to ask for the grace to accept the petits frères. It was like a game of hide-and-seek. The more I wanted them, the less I felt myself ready to say the final yes. 

Friday, July 7: I was in Notre Dame when suddenly I felt that they were literally founded on me, that they entered me like a hurricane. Everything was transformed. I had said yes to the petits frères. When I left the cathedral, I had the impression that I was soaring. This day was the most beautiful of my life.

2.2 The Poorest

I decided to set up in Lilas, in the midst of my kids, and to begin there my life as a Little Brother at Christmas, 1939. But I was mobilized and consequently unable to create the petits frères.
When the war ended in 1945, I said to myself: "your rendezvous with the petits frères takes place now or never." I went to find my friend the Abbé Audouin - remarkable man - then curé of Saint Ambrose, with whom I had long worked on the Loaf of Bread.
The Abbé Audouin said to me: "My little Marquiset, the great victims of the war are the old. They have for the most part used up their savings during the war; the shortage of everything, the black market has been the cause. They are barely hanging on to their homes. Many are disabled. They are the poor of today, and you should concern yourself with them."
He added: "Your program is a new and wise form of charity. The church adapts itself to all times and is always present. You have my full support."
I answered him: "I agree. I ask only that you put me up, give me a list of poor people, and I will become, soon followed I hope by other petits frères, a free domestic servant."

2.3 Easter, 1946

When I had decided to begin my life as a Little Brother at Easter, 1946, I rented a sleeping room on Boulevard Voltaire. The Abbé Audouin had given me a list of 100 poor old people in the area, and it is there that I made the first 100 Easter packages, which I began to distribute on Good Friday and finished delivering on Easter Sunday.   On the 100 food packages, I had noted 30 addresses of those who seemed the poorest, and soon I began to deliver two meals a week to those thirty initial old friends. As I was alone at the beginning, in order to cook and deliver these meals I would begin my rounds around noon and return home, a bit fatigued, around 6:00 in the evening. Among my first clients there were the concierges of Guillaume-Bertrand Street, Mr. and Mrs. Locatelli, lodgers on the first floor. Mr. Locatelli was aged and, his wife being out, I fed him. On her return, Madame Locatelli said simply to me: "Well, Mr. Marquiset, one can say that it was God who brought you ..." I can only agree with this short and precise account of the founding of petits frères.

2.4 Flower of the Fields

Flower of the Fields - because she gathered flowers in the Vincennes woods or on the fortifications and brought them to the petits frères - was a small and simple woman. She had had seven children and all had died. Her husband was 90 and she was 78.  During the days of Easter, 1946 the petits frères several times a week delivered hot meals to them in their home, because they were very poor. Two years later her husband left this world. Henceforth Flower of the Fields had only one family: the petits frères.

When in 1950 Montguichet, first "Chateau of Happiness," opened its doors, Flower of the Fields was naturally among the first invited. There, she immediately found herself at home. She spent many hours in the fields and when the grass was high you couldn't see her head above it, and she would come back with huge bouquets of wild flowers.

2.5 Who Are You Doing This For?

Madame Bestel was very old, deaf, almost blind, very poor and a bit of a coquette around the edges. It was at the beginning of the Little Brother and she was one of the first people to whom we brought meals three times a week. One day, after having left her, I realized that I had left all the desserts at her place and I thought: "Ah, she will have eaten them then."

When I went back to her two days later she said to me: "Well then, my little one, what happened to you? Nothing? Yes, you forgot the desserts at my house. I had to call the neighbors to eat them. There were too many." That day I left her, again forgetting the desserts, the pastries with little candied cherries ("beaux diplomates avec des petits crieses confites"). The next time, Madame Bestel said to me: "Well, my little one, you have again left the desserts with me! Ah, yes! My little one, what happened to you? If I were again twenty years old, I would say to myself: I have charm, I have made him lose his head, but at age eighty-six! Well, then, who are you doing this for?" I pointed at her: "For you." "But no, my little one, tell me the truth. At your age, one has a pretty girlfriend. You will not make me believe that you do this for me." I said to her: "Oh yes," again pointing at her. She persistently refused to understand. One day, I changed my tactic: instead of pointing at her I pointed at the sky. She said to me: "Ah! I understand. You are going to her on the top floor."

2.6 Achy

In 1952 the petits frères, wishing to enlarge the number of people invited on vacations, looked for a chateau. They found a magnificent Louis XIII chateau: the Chateau Achy, built in 1643, the year of the King's death. Sixty-five rooms, twenty-one hectares of park, for 8,500,000 francs. They didn't have the first cent - never mind: it must be bought. "We will find the money." They asked for six months to pay. A generous lady donor gave a check for 1,500,000 francs. In four months, the petits frères had paid in full. It took two years and a Little Brother making 1500 trips - during the night - to bring all that the petits frères had received in furniture.

On the first floor was the Henri II room, the Louis XIV room, the Louis XVI room, the Empire room. On the second floor was a marvelous drawing room where everything was white. On the side was a room of blue velours that they offered to a Russian princess who had fled the Revolution and lived in a sleeping room on the seventh floor. When the petits frères said to her: "You will be on the side of the white drawing room," she answered them: "If you knew how I have forgotten what is said in drawing rooms!"

2.7 La Princesse

The petits frères named a charming old couple, Mr. and Mrs. Gey, Prince and Princess of Achy. They had a small Louis XV apartment, small living room and bedroom, and in 1954 when Achy was completely furnished, we celebrated the diamond wedding anniversary of the Prince and Princess of Achy.

In the evening there were fireworks. The Princess of Achy received 300 gifts and among them the most beautiful was a diamond ring. Since the beginning of petits frères, each time an old couple celebrates their diamond wedding anniversary, the petits frères give the elderly woman a diamond ring.

2.8 La Prée

Some time after this, the Princess of Achy died, and she was buried with her diamond. A week later the petits frères received a letter saying:
"General B. would like to donate an ancient Cistercian monastery to a religious movement. If you are interested, here is his address."

We wrote to him and he answered: "Come." He welcomed us at the station and said: "I know you well and I love you, above all because of the diamond ring." Gabriel Bertrand turned to me and said: "The first gift of the Princess of Achy."

We then left for La Prée and were dazzled by its splendor. This Cistercian monastery was built by Saint Bernard in 1128, and the Cistercians occupied it until the Revolution. La Pr6e became the spiritual jewel of the petits frères, as Achy was the temporal jewel, and what charmed us was La Pr6e issuing from Achy thanks to the diamond ring.

The diamond ring given on the occasion of the diamond wedding anniversary was first of course a gesture of giving joy to one of the dear old friends of the petits frères. But it for the petits frères it is a gesture of love, it is beyond this and above all a gesture of respect. In each of their dear old friends, the petits frères see the Lord and as such they try to serve Him, to cherish Him, clumsily, insufficiently.

La Prée

2.9 Christmas

At Christmas 1962 there were 102 parties in the Paris area alone. Ah, those Christmas parties. Where the first flowers smile Christmas, the silver wreaths sparkle Christmas, the trembling flames of the red candles give warmth to Christmas, the turkey crackles Christmas and especially, above everything, the kiss of Christmas, the tender, so tender kiss of Christmas in which the heart suddenly fills all space.

There were also the Christmas packages. That year we needed the Grand Palace in order to store the huge quantity of Christmas presents for 1962. And we needed a chain, an immense chain of arms. Thirty thousand Christmas presents were made in Paris and swallowed up by Paris. The petits frères houses in Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, and Lille grew and so did the number of Christmas presents for those invited to parties at their many centers. New towns joined the others, ever more numerous. In America, Chicago enlarged the number of party sites, as did Montreal, the petits frères' new outpost of love, begun in July, 1962.

Because of the cold, violets were not to be found and yet each bearer of a home-delivered Christmas meal went up toward the roofs of Paris with meal in hand and, sitting on the carton, a bouquet of violets. This bouquet of violets was, for the one who brought and the one who received it, a little like the engagement ring that the lover offers to the one of his dreams.

2.10 Ma Jolie (My Pretty)

When the petits frères encountered her for the first time, it was at the grocer's. She was holding a leek and saying: "Seven francs, that's horribly expensive!" Several days later the Little Brother who had seen her with her leek knocked at her door. And since that day the petits frères have gone back often. She told them her life story.

She had been a dressmaker, had had many employees, a large suite, many clients. Then her husband was dead and old age had come; she could not keep her employees, she had to take this little room ...

When the first vacation for our old friends took place in 1950 at Montguichet, naturally the petits frères took Ma Jolie, and she had a large green room with Louis Phillipe furniture that suited her dignity, and four large windows from which she could see the lawns, trees, and flowers. The following year they offered her an even grander room at the chateau d'Achy entering directly onto the grounds, without steps or slopes, because, alas, Ma Jolie would have been unable to move about.

One day, her favorite Little Brother having come to see her, she looked pensively at him and said: "Never have I loved anyone like I love you." He answered her: "May it not be that God has given us one to another for an eternal love?" "Yes," she said slowly, "it is an eternal love." Her condition worsened. The chateau d'Achy closed, but Ma Jolie stayed, surrounded by petits frères. A week later she left Achy. The Little Brother who loved her went, with many others, to accompany her to the little cemetery of Achy, so peaceful.

It was a sunny, it was a sweet autumn day, the light was tender, all was serene.
 

3 Of the Earth and Heaven

3.1 India

For a number of years, I had announced that I would hand on the petits frères to the younger generation. It is now done. That said, remain the founder. I do not believe that the younger generation wished to forget me and, for my part, I could consider the petits frères as none other than the life of my life and the soul of my soul.

But having passed on the work and being yet alive, I had to find something to quench my insatiable thirst to serve. Providence had provided that I go to India. I had been overwhelmed by the poverty of India. In Calcutta I had the impression that I was in the poverty capital of the world.

3.2 Pilkana

There was in Calcutta a Selesian Father who lived in one of the poorest sections of Calcutta: Pilkana, in the heart of an immense shanty town of half a million inhabitants. The priest took me among the filthy narrow streets, in the midst of huts built with never mind what, when a man rushed up to him and explained something to him with great vehemence. The father said to me: "He has lost his son and doesn't know how he will be able to bury him; well, I have no money. But what can I do about it?" I said, "How much do you need? 100 rupees?" "Oh no, 20 rupees will do it."

What bitter facts: how easily in Europe we spend the equivalent of 20 rupees and there, in Calcutta, this man did not have that sum to bury his infant son.

3.3 The Roses of Calcutta

In Calcutta we had several times seen the extraordinary Mother Teresa, founder of Missionaries of Charity. She invited us to come and assist with Christmas dinner at the "death house."

We went to the Calcutta market to order 140 bouquets of twelve roses each, in addition to cakes and tangerines. Christmas day we went to collect all that, and we left for the death house.

We began by giving the roses. Many held out their hands; others with atrophied hands held out their stumps; others gave them to those who could not hold them. I bent down to place a bouquet next to a woman whose body was shriveled. Mother Teresa said to me: "These are her first flowers of eternity. She came here to die."

These bouquets illuminated the room and, beside these poor skeletons, took on an extraordinary majesty.

This is how we celebrated the first Christmas in Calcutta, and I believe that my last sight on this earth will be perhaps of those red roses in the midst of those bodies. Was it the great respect that we ought to show each body who surrounds the soul that God gave us? Was it something more? Never have I had a sense of the divine comparable to that given by those flowers, which became the incense with which the priest honors God. All those bodies were God and the roses were the incense.
 

3.4 Brothers of Men

When I returned from India I said to myself: "Can you do this thing? Yes, you can do this thing."

When I spoke of feeding the children of the Third World, many people cried out: "You're crazy. It's a drop in the ocean." I answered: "The ocean is made up of drops."

We fed the children three times a week. Although it would double the cost, I believed that in order to have a clear conscience, we should feed them every day. People said: "But we don't have enough money" or "we don't have the time."

While I couldn't foresee in 1968 the ailment that would strike me in 1969 and end my work with Brothers of Men, I felt, being unable to tolerate the heat and having very poor support in India, that I could no longer live the life of the Brothers of Men.
 

3.5 Brothers of Heaven and Earth

Being unable to live without serving, I asked myself how and whom to serve. It was during the long days following the Assumption in 1968 that the name burst forth: "Brothers of Heaven and Earth." It was a thousand times greater than our poor powers, but I felt that it was the truth.
 

In effect, it was the mover that had given me life all these years. It was germ of all my organizations, but the name had never been spoken. This name expressed the aim of all these organizations. Today we must dare, today we must say it out loud, even though we know how much we would be its poor servants: we must live on the earth but our heads must be turned towards heaven.

Where else should we turn for help - for love?

Having created a movement to help artists and intellectuals, "So That The Spirit May Live" in 1932; a movement to help children in the suburbs of Paris in 1934, "Friends of the Suburbs"; les petits frères des Pauvres in 1946 to help elderly people; Brothers of Men in 1965 for the Third World; there remained those from age 20 to 70 and above all, among them, the depressed, the isolated, the sick in their homes, the suicidal and those who have attempted suicide - who have failed and who need to be brought back into the stream of life - all these, very many, who have such problems: to care for all who come and above all to radiate tenderness, the ultimate degree of love.

In Notre Dame cathedral on December 8, 1969, before a gathering of about one hundred friends, we finally announced the creation of the Friends of Heaven and Earth. The name was put forth - it would remain to live and to grow in the givers of tenderness.

I founded the petits frères with passion and, I hope, with love. I founded Brothers of Men with a sad heart for all the hungry of the earth and with the hope of relieving as many as possible. I now see the Brothers of Heaven and Earth with a weakened body but perhaps with a soul more than ever before concerned for others, a soul joined to eternity, awaiting "the day and the hour," hoping to serve until the end, hoping to continue to the end living this marvelous gift that God gave me in Notre Dame of Paris on Friday, July 7, 1939.

written by Cipriani, Mario*: Nouvelles des petits frères, M. Christolhomme (publisher), Paris 1990, Nr. 94;
translated into English by Roger Nash**, Chicago 1991.

* Mario Cipriani: One of the earliest Little Brothers, volunteer since 1946. He became head of the organization in France after Armand Marquiset's departure. Jean-Mario Cipriani died on Sept. 8, 2000.
** Roger Nash:  National Executive Director of the US Little Brothers for over a decade. Retired since Feb. 2005  

 
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