Fr Augustine Mary of the Blessed Sacrament
Gerard Brady
“This is the silent music, because it is knowledge tranquil and calm, without audible voice; and thus the sweetness of music and the repose of silence are enjoyed in it. The soul says that the Beloved is silent music, because this harmony of spiritual music is in Him understood and felt.”
St John of the Cross (Spiritual Canticle – Commentary on Stanza XV)
In May of 1847 Hermann Cohen entered the now demolished church of St. Vàlere in Paris. He was in desperate need of funds as he had since his youth been addicted to gambling and when an aristocratic friend of his asked him to play the organ for a benediction service he agreed. He was unmoved until the priest raised the host and then was touched deeply. He found himself bowing without understanding why. He returned to the same Church a short time afterward to attend Mass and at the elevation was moved to tears. Thus began the spiritual journey of the future Fr. Augustine Mary OCD. A twentieth century French journalist who similarly entered a Parisian Church (on a whim while waiting for a friend), entering an atheist and emerging a believer, stated dramatically that he would have been less surprised if he had gone into Paris Zoo and come out a giraffe! (1)
Hermann Cohen was born in Hamburg in 1820 to Jewish parents of the reform branch of Judaism. He began having piano lessons at the age of four and proved to be a gifted student eventually giving concerts by the age of seven! His mother Rosalie took him to Paris where after some trouble she managed to persuade Franz Liszt to take him as a student. He soon became Liszt’s favourite who introduced him to his social circle, a signal assortment of artistic and intellectual luminaries including George Sand and the Reverend Robert de Lammenais.
When Liszt fled to Geneva with his aristocratic mistress Cohen begged to be allowed follow him and after initially being reluctant took the boy once more under his wing. That same year Cohen participated in a concert with Liszt and two other pianists. It was such a success that Liszt gave the boy 10 students to teach. Hermann was 13 years old.
Between 1835 and 1841 he was part of Liszt’s entourage but after he was accused of embezzling funds from concerts Liszt had given he was dismissed. He spent the next five years touring Europe giving concerts, with his Mother and sister in tow eventually settling in Paris in 1846. At this stage he was living a dissolute life centred on gambling and sensual pleasure. He was also deeply unhappy.
After his encounter with Christ in the eucharist in 1847 he had difficulty finding help to explain what was happening to him. “Finally – he wrote – after surmounting many obstacles, I made the acquaintance of Abbot Legrand, legal advisor to the Archbishop of Paris. I told him what was taking place within me. After listening to me, he told me to stay calm, to persevere in my present disposition, and to trust in the paths that Providence would without fail reveal to me” (2)
He became acquainted with the Ratisbonne brothers, Marie Theodor and Marie Alphonse, both converts from Judaism who had jointly founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, a religious congregation dedicated to bringing the Jews to Christ. It was in this congregation’s church in Paris that Herman Cohen recieved baptism on the 28th of August (feast of St. Augustine) taking the name Marie Augustin Henri. He was confirmed later in that year.
Almost from the beginning of his life as a Catholic he experienced a strong calling to be a priest and after speaking with a number of priest members of various orders he made a retreat to assist him with his decision where he came across the writings of St. John of the Cross. Thus he approached the reformed Carmelites. There were a number of impediments to his entrance however. Canon law forbade recent converts from entering the religious life and he had to obtain a dispensation. He was also in debt and these debts needed to be cleared before he could enter the novitiate. The dispensation was duly obtained and after giving concerts and teaching to clear his indebtedness, the neophyte entered the Carmelite novitiate at La Brousse in south western France in 1849. He was professed in 1850.
During his novitiate year his mother came to see him and was most distressed to see him shaven headed and wearing sandals. She made effort to get him to leave but he of course refused to countenance it. Hermann’s example was having an effect on some of his other family members and in 1856 he went to Paris to secretly baptise his young nephew. This was kept a secret from the boy’s father, Fr. Augustine’s brother. But when the boy refused to join his father in a Jewish prayer the secret came out. “His father was furious and put the boy in a non-Catholic school under a false name refusing to divulge to anyone where the boy was. He was even kept from his mother. After a few months the father relented and the boy went home. Soon afterwards Hermann’s elder brother, Albert, converted and two of his daughters later became nuns.” (3) His mother however remained resolutely opposed to Christianity.
Fr Augustin was dispensed from some of the studies for the priesthood and was ordained in 1851. “I still haven’t recovered from the experience; nor do I wish to. Let love build up in this poor soul of mine that is so incapable of responding to the favors with which it has been showered so lavishly. Pray that I may be faithful, and grateful, and that I may love the Cross and desire the glory of God. My first Holy Mass! I was happy to be able to touch and hold Jesus in my hands”
Fr. Augustine was sent on a preaching tour and spent many years travelling in France and abroad also opening new monasteries for the Order. One notable sermon took place in Paris three years after his ordination, his first visit since being ordained. He was trembling as he entered the pulpit.
“Dear brothers! The first thing I should do on entering Christ’s pulpit here is to beg forgiveness for all the evil that I had the misfortune to commit in this city. By what right—you may well ask me—do you come here to talk to us and urge us to pursue virtue and piety? By what right do you seek to elucidate the great truths of the Faith and speak on the subject of love, of Jesus and Mary, whom many times you profaned to our face. We saw you in the company of public sinners. The plaything of every possible erroneous teaching, you did evil things in public and insulted us with your shameful conduct. Thou wast wholly born in sins, and dost thou teach us? Yes, my brothers, I confess that I have sinned before Heaven and you….I have no right to your favor. I am ready, brothers, to beg your forgiveness both publicly and solemnly, to kneel, candle in hand, at the gates of the church with a rope around my neck, and beg the mercy and prayers of all those who enter. I come here covered in a penitential habit, for I belong to a strict religious order. My head is shaved and my feet are bare.”
The following year, 1855, while preaching Advent in Lyon news came to him of his mother’s death. He had prayed many times for her conversion and was devasted that she had died without baptism. He confided his distress to the Curé of Ars who told him “Hope! Hope; you will receive one day, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception a letter that will bring you great consolation.” (4) These words had been forgotten when on the 8th of December 1861, six years after the death of his mother, a priest of the Company of Jesus handed Fr. Augustine a letter. It was from a person who had died in the odour of sanctity and who was well known for her written works on the eucharist. Part of the letter described Our Lady’s words addressed to her Son and read; “I beseech you, do for the mother of my servant Hermann, that which you would like to be done for your own, if She was in her place and if you were in his. The soul of his mother is his most precious good; he has consecrated her to me a thousand times; he has consecrated her to the tenderness and solicitude of my heart. Could I suffer her to perish? No, no, this soul is mine; I will it, I claim it as an inheritance, as the price of your blood and of my sufferings at the foot of your Cross… hardly had the sacred suppliant ceased speaking, when a strong, powerful grace, came forth from the source of all graces, from the adorable Heart of our Jesus, and came to enlighten the soul of the poor dying Jewess; instantly triumphing over her stubbornness and resistances. This soul immediately turned herself with loving confidence towards Him whose mercy had persued her as far as the arms of death and said to Him: “O Jesus, God of the Christians, God whom my son adores, I believe, I hope in Thee, have pity on me.” (5)
In 1870 after the outbreak of the Franco Prussian war Fr Hermann was asked to go to Berlin to minister to French Prisoners of war. While hearing confessions and administering the last rites of the Church he contracted small pox and died on Jan 20 1871. He was 41 years old.
Fr. Augustine Mary pray for us.
(From the upcoming edition of ‘In Principio’ the district magazine of the SSPX in Ireland)
- Andre Frossard (1915-1995)
- Sr. Maria Baptista OCD, Kunstler und Karmelit, Credo-Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1956, P60
- Sister Mary (religiouswriting.com)
- (pp. 126-129, Vie du R.P. Hermann, en religion Augustine-Mariae du T.S. Sacrament, Carme Dechausse, par M. l’Abbe Charles Sylvain, Paris, 1883 (From the French life of Rev. Father Hermann, in religionAugustin-Marie of the Most Holy Sacrament, Discalced Carmelite, by Fr. Canon Charles Sylvain, Paris, 1883).
- ibid
In Civitate Dei Nostri 