Gabrielle Bossis: He and I

For fourteen years, from 1936 to 1950, French Catholic laywoman, nurse, playwright, actress and mystic Gabrielle Bossis received messages from Jesus, which he asked her to write down verbatim, so they could be published after her death. The messages were officially approved by the Bishop of Nantes and published under the guidance of two esteemed Jesuit priests, Fathers Lebreton and Parvillez, under the title Lui et moi (He and I). The writings show the joy this woman had in pleasing Jesus, and in performing plays at youth patronages.

Gabrielle Bossis lors de sa première communion en 1886. / © CC BY-SA 4.0/Megalonzerg

Reasons to believe:

Gabrielle Bossis’ inimitable writing style is reminiscent of St. Gertrude of Helfta, and more recently, of Vassula Rydén, two other mystics who transcribed Jesus’ words.
Her writings were first published anonymously, with the Church's nihil obstat and imprimatur indicating that their content does not contradict Catholic Church doctrine in matters of faith or morals.
The intimate conversations with Jesus that Gabrielle reports are imbued with sweet, deep and passionate love, poetry, and divine teachings from Jesus Christ.
Her diary met with immediate success and was translated into several languages. These writings led to numerous conversions and inspired many priests and religious, such as Don Patrick de Laubier and Father Pierre Descouvemont.

Summary:

Born in 1874, Gabrielle gained great spiritual nourishment from the conferences given in Nantes by Father Larose, a priest charged with starting and running the first parish in Brittany dedicated to the recently canonized Therese of Lisieux. Gabrielle herself followed that saint’s "little way of spiritual childhood" intensely.

At the age of twenty, Gabrielle contemplated religious life, but eventually felt that her vocation was to "remain in the world", as people would say then, while already experiencing a very close intimacy with the Lord.

Greatly attracted by the figure of Francis of Assisi, she decided to join the Franciscan Third Order. She had plenty of suitors, for she was an attractive young woman, but she turned them down. She enjoyed teaching catechism and making beautiful liturgical ornaments for the missionaries.

She also studied nursing, which enabled her to serve the wounded in local hospitals and then in Verdun during the 1914-1918 war.

What no one suspected about her were her long hours of prayer and austerity. She slept on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, and the hairshirt she wore at night was found after her death. What everyone knew and appreciated, however, was her joie de vivre, her enthusiasm and her infectious laugh. Her nephews and nieces loved coming to Aunt Gaby's house and playing with her!

The parish priest of Le Fresne-sur-Loire so appreciated her charismatic touch with the young people she was catechizing that he asked her to write comedies for the patronages. At the age of 49, she took up the challenge. Her thirteen plays - a new one every year - were so successful that she was invited to perform them all over the world.

In August 1936, she was invited to go to Canada to teach young girls to dance and act.

Then one day, on the ocean liner, Jesus began to speak to her directly, asking for her love! Gabrielle didn’t hear an external, audible sound, instead Jesus spoke to her in the depth of her heart (interior locutions). She had to transcribe his words literally so that they could be published after her death. She didn’t see Jesus, but Father Alphonse de Parvillez, an excellent Jesuit priest who became her spiritual director in 1929, confirmed to her that it was really Jesus speaking to her, and asked her to write down all the messages.

Over a period of fourteen years, Jesus invited Gabrielle to go on a veritable honeymoon with him, to go through her day with him, in him and for him, and to do all her activities as an actress and theater director with the deep joy of pleasing him. He asked her to "console" him, to repair, with her inner smiles, the pain caused to him by indifferent Christians who neglect to visit him in the depth of their heart.

Every Thursday, Our Lord eagerly looked forward to Gabrielle’s "holy hour" of Eucharistic adoration. He's such a loving husband, he told her, that he delights in receiving every act of love (he called Gabrielle his "little girl"), not because he “needs” them, since he's infinitely happy as the Son of God, but because he "desires" them!

Jesus asked Gabrielle to have these messages published, so that those who would read them later would understand that they too can experience this profound closeness with him, whether leading the busy life of a theatrical performer, or in the quiet enclosure of a Carmelite convent.

These messages were published by Beauchesne's in a series of seven small books, under the title requested by Jesus himself: Lui et moi, the first in 1949, anonymously, while Gabrielle was still alive, and the others from 1950 to 1957.

They have also been published more recently in chronological order in a single volume, by Rassemblement À Son Image publishers.

Gabrielle died on June 9, 1950, of breast cancer that rapidly spread to her lungs.

She was buried in the Fresne-sur-Loire cemetery, with an epitaph which she had herself composed in June 1936, reflecting what she had striven to live until the end:

"O Christ, my Brother,

To work beside You,

To suffer with You,

To die for You,

To survive in You."

Père Pierre Descouvemont