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.