Gabrielle Bossis: Life, Messages from Christ, and Prayers

Gabrielle Bossis was a French writer, actress, and Catholic mystic of the 20th century. She was a great disciple of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. She had the chance to see Christ on several occasions, during mystical visions. Between 1936 and 1950, she recounted all these dialogues with Jesus, who appeared to her as an "inner voice," in her work He and Me.

Biography of Gabrielle Bossis

Gabrielle Bossis was born on February 26, 1874, in Nantes and was the youngest of four children. She grew up in a well-off family. In 1880, at the age of six, she entered the school of the Faithful Companions of Jesus in Nantes. Despite her young age, she was noted for her great intelligence. Six years later, at twelve years old, Gabrielle made her first communion.

Surprisingly, she did not become a religious sister after her studies, despite her deep faith and great piety. She decided to lead a lay life, consecrated to the Lord, remaining single. Gabrielle gradually developed a profound interior life totally directed towards God.

During the First World War, she served as a nurse, first in a hospital and then on the front, near Verdun. Unfortunately, she lost her nephew Jean Caron during this war and was deeply affected by it.

From 1923, responding to a request from the priest of Fresne-sur-Loire, she began writing plays with a light and joyful tone, combining Christian values with a good moral. All these plays had a religious aspect. Gabrielle played the main role. Her works were performed in many parishes and youth groups and quickly made her known throughout France, in many European countries, in North America, North Africa, and Palestine. In thirteen years, between 1923 and 1936, Gabrielle wrote, directed, and performed thirteen comedies and fourteen sketches or ballets.

On August 22, 1936, at the age of 62 and while traveling to Canada, Gabrielle heard the Lord speak to her for the first time. A mysterious inner voice called her "My little girl". This voice spoke to her many times until her death fourteen years later. Gabrielle wrote down all the messages received in notebooks. She wrote thirteen in total. In 1944, she showed her notes to a Jesuit friend, Alphonse de Parvillez, to the Bishop of Nantes, Jean-Joseph-Léonce Villepelet, and to the dean of the faculty of theology in Paris, Jules Lebreton. After discussing with these three men, she decided to publish anonymously the first of seven volumes of her journal entitled He and Me, in 1948. Before that, she had obtained the Imprimatur and Nihil obstat (official permission to publish given by an authority of the Catholic Church, described in canon law) from the Bishop of Nantes. This authorization therefore meant that the content of Gabrielle's notebooks did not contradict the doctrine of the Catholic Church in matters of faith or morals. Upon its publication, the work met with immense success. The publication even continued until 1967 and was translated into several languages.

Gabrielle became a tertiary of Saint Francis on October 25, 1936 in Notre-Dame Cathedral in Montreal, under the name Sister Marie of the Heart of Christ. She thus became a lay member of the Franciscan order and committed to serving God by following the rule of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Unfortunately, in 1949, she had to undergo surgery for breast cancer, which quickly spread to her lungs. Gabrielle Bossis gave her soul to God on June 9, 1950, in Nantes.

Excerpts from He and Me by Gabrielle Bossis

"Do you know what we are doing by writing these pages? We are removing the prejudice that the intimacy of the soul is only possible for the religious in their cloister, whereas my secret Love is in reality for every soul living in the world".

"I want my fire in you not so that you burn alone, but so that you propagate the secret fire..."

"Oh! My daughter, can you know the path this little book will take? Ask me to go to the most miserable, those spiritual paralytics, those desolate without hope, those possessed by desires for money. Ask that I pass through this little book as I passed long ago, healing, drawing to myself..."

"Through you, I return to the soul to reassure and encourage it to draw near...even if these souls do not know how to speak to me, let them come tell me: 'I don't know what to say...it's the first time!'"

"And if they do not know what name to call me, let them love me without a name and say their love without words. I am here, dear souls, and I am listening to you. Why wait?"

"My mother made My body grow; you, work to make my Mystical Body grow".

"Ask unceasingly that the Spirit of holiness come to possess you. Ask through Her whom he covered with his shadow, My Mother, your Mother".

"Every grace has reached you through priests. Pray for priests. Help them. Through prayer, what cannot be done? If you ask me, I will illuminate the priest".

"Oh! My little children, how I love you... Consent to be loved. Work to believe. Let yourselves be done... that is already much. So many put all their strength into getting rid of Me..."

"Each soul has its way of loving. Do not deprive me of yours".

"Oh! May each soul approach with you, expose its needs to Me, show Me all its weaknesses, and ardently desire from Me the healing".

"Ask for love. Ask for holiness... Ask Me for it every day. You, expect "everything" from Me. That will be a proof of your love".

"Do you remember? When you were little and you looked for Me, you would go hide in the dark room, behind your grandmother's kitchen; there was in a corner a large rolled-up doormat: you would get inside it and when people said 'where is Gabrielle?', you would think 'I am with the good God...'. And you remember, on summer evenings, at Le Fresne, you would go alone onto the terrace, looking for Me between the Loire and the stars; and you would say 'I am going to think...'. It was Me you were seeking. And I let myself be caught. But you did not know it yet. Ah! How I have loved you, My little girl!".

"You remember the day of your first communion, you did not dare move, so much you knew that I was in your body? Yes, I am there."

"Occupy yourself with My Love... There is no orphan as abandoned as I am."

All the Works of Gabrielle Bossis

Comedies

• The Charm

• The Illusions of Madame Dupont

• The Ember Gatherer

• The Merchant of Tears

• The Lioness

• Doll's Soul

• Street Singer

• Wild Grasses

• An Old Maid and Thirteen Kids

• Honeymoons in Reparation

• The Little Four-Sou Candle

• A Husband in Cotton

• Two in Troyes and Six in Sète

Ballets

• The Mechanical Dolls

• The Soul of the Clearing

• Queen Marie-Amélie at Serrant

• The Circus of Giants

• The Woman Who Lost Her Shadow

• Roses and Doves

• The Hours Lived

• Seaweed and Breezes

• And There Was Once

• The Woman with Forget-Me-Not Eyes

• The Jewelry Boxes

• The Hearth Crickets

• The Capital Sins

• Six Wives for One Husband

Mystical Journal

• Gabrielle Bossis, HE and me: spiritual conversations, vol. 1, Editions Beauchesne, 1948

• Gabrielle Bossis, HE and me: spiritual conversations, vol. 2, Editions Beauchesne, 1950

• Gabrielle Bossis, HE and me: spiritual conversations, vol. 3, Editions Beauchesne, 1993

• Gabrielle Bossis, HE and me: spiritual conversations, vol. 4, Editions Beauchesne

• Gabrielle Bossis, HE and me: spiritual conversations, vol. 5, Editions Beauchesne, 1953

• Gabrielle Bossis, HE and me: spiritual conversations, vol. 6, Editions Beauchesne, 1957

• Gabrielle Bossis, HE and me: spiritual conversations, vol. 7, Editions Beauchesne, 1967

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