Conversations

What moves us first of all in these ‘Conversations’ is, in the words of Father Boucher CSsR, Van’s spiritual director, ‘The unbelievable familiarity and … the tenderness of which Brother Marcel has been the object on the part of his heavenly interlocutors. On reading the little sheets that he handed over to me each week I had the feeling that this very small Redemptorist brother whom Jesus, Mary and Thérèse were leading by the hand would have a role to play in the Church and in the world.’ Indeed, ‘Jesus, from the time of his first conversation, expressed to him his wish to choose him to serve as an intermediary of his Love towards his Vietnamese compatriots,’ in order to be the apostle of souls… We are only at the beginning of what little Van has to tell us to do here below: ‘O Mary, my particular mission is to be the apostle of souls, and the apostle particularly of children. It is only later, in heaven, that I will be able to fulfil it perfectly.’ Private revelations must not be read in a spirit of curiosity but always in a willingness to allow ourselves to be led to the centre of our faith, towards God and his will, towards Christ and his love : the Conversations lead us right to the centre, to the immeasurable love of Christ. They invite us, through the little apostle of his love, to become so in our turn. from the Preface by Cardinal Christoph Schönbor Conversations, now published in English, is the second volume of the four-volume French language Œuvres Complètes of Marcel Van (1928-1959), responding to the desire of the late Pope John Paul II for the life stories of the twentieth-century witnesses and martyrs to the Faith to be gathered together. The first volume, Autobiography, was published in English by Gracewing in 2006.