Our Lady of Good Help

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Bernadette saw the lady.  So did Adele.

A year after a beautiful lady in a white dress appeared to 14 year-old Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, France, a lady--clothed in white with a yellow sash--appeared to Adele Brise in October, 1859, in the woods of Robinsonville, Wisconsin.  

  

The lady appeared to Adele three times.  The first vision came to her when she was walking to church one Sunday.  In a blinding light, the apparition appeared between a maple and a hemlock tree.  Adele was paralyzed with fear. 

She told her mother what she saw.  Her mother thought that perhaps a departed relative was asking for prayers. 

The next Sunday, fearful, Adele was accompanied by her sister and a friend.  Adele, deathly pale, screamed and fell to her knees in fright when the lady appeared to her again in the same place.  The companions saw nothing of the apparition.

Adele went to confession to the missionary of the Order of the Fathers of the Holy Cross and told him about the apparition.  He told her to ask the lady, “In the name of God, who are you and what do you wish of me?”

Once again with companions, Adele was in the woods when the lady appeared to her the third time.  Adele dropped to her knees and slowly asked the question.  Again, only Adele saw the apparition who told her, “I am the Queen of Heaven.”  The lady admonished Adele.  She told Adele to teach the children and pray for those who were falling away from religion, whose children had no knowledge of the mysteries of the faith.

 

Adele’s family had come to America from Belgium.  It is believed that Adele aspired to become a nun even before they lived in Wisconsin.  After her experience with the visions of the lady, Adele went from home to home and village to village to teach children the faith and sing hymns with them.  She taught children simple prayers and catechism in preparation for their First Communion.

Shrine at the Apparition Site

A neighbor donated land at the spot of the visions.  Adele’s father, Joseph Brise, built a 10’ X 12’ log chapel at the apparition site.  There was a second chapel built at the same location and the third is the chapel that stands at the site today. 

Chapel 

As was the case after Bernadette’s experience, originally, clergy declared Adele’s accounts of the Marian apparitions to be myths.  Adele was refused church sacraments; excommunication was threatened. 

Bernadette became a nun and ultimately a saint.  Adele became a lay preacher and a teacher.  Adele founded a secular third order community called the Sisters of Good Help and ran a school. 

School

The prominent miracle at the chapel happened on October 8, 1871 during the Peshtigo fire.  On the same day, the more widely known Chicago fire destroyed four square miles and killed 250 people.  That night, the fire at Peshtigo caused over 1,500 deaths—the most deaths by fire in U.S. history.  It raged with a fire so intense it was described as having the power of a hydrogen bomb.  It spread throughout part of Upper Michigan and northeast Wisconsin including southern Door and northern Brown and Kewaunee counties in an area the size of the state of Delaware.  Fire burned Robinsonville, the location of Adele’s chapel, and obliterated the town of Brussels.   

Eyewitness survivors said that Adele and neighbors who had fled to the chapel for protection that night carried the statue of Mary in procession around the grounds and prayed the rosary on their knees.  Houses and fences in the neighborhood burned with the exception of the school, chapel, and fence surrounding the six acres of land.  All inside the fence had been spared.

A path of about eight to 10 feet around the enclosure “now shone out like an emerald island amid a sea of ashes,” according to Fr. Peter Pernin, the missionary priest who wrote about the Peshtigo fire and the chapel at Robinsonville in his memoir, The Finger of God was There. 

Since then, others have professed miracles at the site and have left their wheelchairs, canes, leg braces, and crutches at the chapel as proof they have been cured.   

  

Grave of Adele Brise

Sister Marie Adele Joseph Brisse died July 5, 1896 at age 66 and is buried on the chapel property.  On December 8, 2010, the site where she experienced the Marian apparitions received official church recognition.  Bishop David Ricken of the Catholic Church declared the apparitions as worthy of belief making the site the only one in the United States to receive church approval.    

On August 15 each year, the bishop holds a mass at the chapel.  It attracts a very large attendance, many coming from across the country to participate and join in a procession on the grounds.     

A Walk to Mary event will be held on Saturday, May 3 with a 21 mile pilgrimage from St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help in Robinsonville (now Champion, WI). 

Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt has invited Pope Francis to hold mass at Lambeau Field and to take a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help in the fall of 2015.  Pope Francis has not confirmed a visit—yet.    Perhaps Divine Intervention is needed to make a papal visit to Green Bay happen but people are also encouraged to show their support for the mayor’s plan on his website at www.popetogreenbay.com . 

Photos are of the small shrine on the property.