in Vendée, a carriage pilgrimage for Mary
The Traversaine de Marie has just started! Until August 22, a horse-drawn carriage, carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary and accompanied by many walkers, will tour the Vendée. Everyone can join for a day, a week… or a month!
Since the beginning of the year, a hundred volunteers have been busy around the great summer spiritual project of the Vendée: the Traversaine de Marie. After the Troménie de Marie, in Brittany, during the summer of 2022, it is in this region that this march, both festive and prayerful, will take place.
The birth of the project
“It was in La Chèze, in one of the places where Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort preached at the beginning of the 18th century to encourage Marian devotion, that participants in the Troménie de Marie had the intuition to reproduce this initiative in Vendée”, explains Gonzague, the president of the association which was founded to organize this event.
As “troménie” is a term of Breton origin (too small designating the “tour of a sacred space”), it was necessary to find a regional equivalent. However, in the Vendée dialect, the “traversaine” is a side road. “This word also brings to mind a holy crossing: Mary cleanses the places she crosses”, adds Coline, initiator and coordinator of this project.
The event thus named, the dates were set from July 15 to August 22, 2024. For six weeks, walkers would take turns to tour the diocese, following a horse-drawn carriage that would carry a statue of Notre-Dame-de-France.
One step, three goals
The purpose of this event is threefold: “On the one hand, explains Gonzague, to pray to the united hearts of Jesus and Mary, in a spirit of ecclesial unity and mercy, under the patronage of Saint John Paul II who came to Vendée in 1996; on the other hand, to rediscover the spiritual, historical and artistic heritage of our region.”
This initiative, rooted in the local parish soil, will also have the effect of creating links between the faithful of the parishes of the same parish group. “But it goes far beyond this framework,” adds Tanguy, one of the section leaders. “It is not reserved for practicing Catholics: everyone can join in!”
A tailor-made program
Everyone will make their own programme: walkers will be able to take part in this event for one or more stages, or even join for a few hours. During these six weeks, the carriage will travel nearly 600 kilometres between the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Maillezais and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption de Luçon, passing through Fontenay-le-Comte, La Châtaigneraie, Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, La Gaubretière, Chavagnes-en-Paillers, Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne, La Garnache, Beauvoir-sur-Mer, Soullans, Coëx, Les Sables-d’Olonne, Bourgenay, Talmont; and finally, La Roche-sur-Yon, where Monsignor François Jacolin, bishop of the diocese, will celebrate mass on Monday 19 August. “To encourage this initiative,” Gonzague said, “he has already given his blessing to all the volunteers and walkers who will join us.”
The course of a day
Each day, the walkers will complete a stage of approximately 15 kilometers. Here is the program for a typical day: mass (around 8:30 a.m.), walk, picnic (around noon), continuation of the walk, arrival in procession at the stopover town (from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.), setting up camp, dinner, vigil.
“The marches will be led by volunteers,” Tanguy explains: “rosary, meditations, songs and historical or cultural commentaries on the places we will pass through. In the evening, an activity (conference, show, concert, etc.) will be offered to participants and residents of the stopover towns.”
And in practice?
“Everyone can come where they want and when they want,” announce the organizers. However, pre-registration on the Traversaine website will make the work of the volunteers easier. “This registration is also mandatory for the passage of the Gois, which will take us to the island of Noirmoutier, specifies Tanguy: to match the tide times, we will make this crossing in the middle of the night, by the light of our torches.”
Thus, to the rhythm of the horse that will pull the carriage, the statue of Notre-Dame de France will pass from bell tower to bell tower, like the Olympic flame that had passed, a few weeks before, from village to village. And it should, it too, arouse the enthusiasm of the inhabitants!
