Miss Marcelle Caya, a full-time Pilgrim of MICHAEL for the last 45 years, still ranks annually among our best apostles to solicit subscriptions to MICHAEL. Here is what she said at our 2014 Congress in Rougemont:
We, Pilgrims of St. Michael, as lay people, have a vocation that Vatican II explains as follows:
“The laity derive the right and duty to the apostolate from their union with Christ the head; incorporated into Christ’s Mystical Body through Baptism and strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit through Confirmation, they are assigned to the apostolate by the Lord Himself.” (Decree Apostolicam actuositatem on the apostolate of the laity, n. 3.)
Our charisma is certainly to do apostolate work for Social Credit to obtain justice in the world so that, to use Pope Benedict XVI’s words in his Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, “in God’s family, no one ought to go without the necessities of life”. It was certainly with this spirit that Louis Even founded our French-language periodical Vers Demain 75 years ago (and its English-language version MICHAEL, 58 years ago), in collaboration with Gilberte Côté-Mercier and Gerard Mercier.
The charisma of the work of the Pilgrims of St. Michael is both spiritual and temporal. Our founders have always emphasized individual effort, and they gave us the example. Each pilgrim must do his/her part: dedication, self-sacrifice, apostolate. They also taught us a great devotion to Our Lady, Queen of Heaven.
Since the beginning of our Movement, our founders trained volunteer apostles to solicit subscriptions to Vers Demain and MICHAEL, so disinterested that they do it without being paid; their only reward being the satisfaction of having accomplished their duties for the love of God and love of neighbour.
For us, the apostolate work means visiting families from door to door, to invite people to pray a decade of the Rosary, and to solicit subscriptions to our magazines in four languages.
MICHAEL is a periodical of ideas whose purpose is to guide public opinion to obtain a better temporal social order. We can not have a better temporal social order without an intimate union with Christ and His Church.
In order to get a better world, we must change people’s minds. A periodical is a very effective way to change the world because it comes regularly into the homes, thus creating a contact, a relationship, even a friendship.
A good periodical can be highly beneficial to the person who reads it. However, to read it, one must first get it into one’s home and hold it into one’s hands. And to get it in one’s home, one must subscribe to it. And to be able to subscribe to it, someone has to present it to us. In other words, to get subscriptions, it takes people, apostles who solicit subscriptions to MICHAEL.
We have magazines that must reach families, and the best way to reach families is to go directly to the people, to go see them in their homes.
What a joy it is to be apostles of MICHAEL; what joy we have when we go and visit families to pray with them, to present our magazines which are a light, a beacon of hope in today’s dark world. What an honour to work to change minds, to participate in the advent of a more just and fraternal world, in keeping with God’s plan.
The door-to-door apostolate work has been part of our Movement since its very beginning. Gilberte Cote-Mercier was the first to visit families to solicit subscriptions to our periodical. Our founders placed great emphasis on soliciting subscriptions to MICHAEL and Vers Demain, because our magazines are the structure, the very foundations of our Work.
This year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of our French-language periodical Vers Demain (literally, Towards Tomorrow). The latest issue is the 929th edition, for MICHAEL (in English) the 381st edition, the 78th edition in Polish, and the 59th edition in Spanish, for a total of 1,447 issues. If we could add up all the copies printed and distributed over all these years, we would just have a small idea of how many people who were contacted, who welcomed our message and made it known to others.
Reading MICHAEL certainly led to many conversions. I am convinced that there are many people who are in Heaven now who owe their eternal salvation to reading MICHAEL.
Without MICHAEL and Vers Demain, there would be no St. Michael House, no House of the Immaculate, no Pilgrims of St. Michael, no Social Credit now spread all over the world; there would not be you all here present at this Congress, you whom we love and are so pleased to welcome.
The Rosary Crusade is the new evangelization. All these days of apostolate work are always very successful; these are days of personal effort, days of light, joy, peace, heavenly days. The peace that we want to give every family we visit, it is the peace that Christ promised us in the Gospel, and this peace falls on us.
We like doing the Rosary Crusade and we love the people we visit. The charity that we practice by going out to visit families, and the charity that families practice by receiving us, is all about God’s grace.
The Rosary Crusade apostolate is an opportunity for us to fulfill our right and duty to be apostles, united in the Mystical Body of Christ by Baptism, strengthened by the Sacrament of Confirmation by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Lord Himself who sends us to visit families, to bring them conversion, joy, and hope. Being convinced that God is the Lord of history, we are confident that when we do good, the Kingdom of God is present among us. Thank God!
Marcelle Caya
Pilgrim of St. Michael
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