Listen to the Silence: A Retreat With Pere Jacques

The Carmelite nuns at Pontoise invited Père Jacques to give conferences and to preach as retreat master. They received from him a seven-day retreat in the late summer of 1943. This book contains the talks he gave to the nuns: they are inspiring, but also warm-hearted reflections, on questions of key interest to his audience. Among the topics were love for Christ, for His Blessed Mother, the nuns' Carmelite contemplative prayer life, and their religious observance, but all received deft treatment from this confrere who eventually became famous for his compassionate assistance to the persecuted in World War II.
As a diocesan priest Père Jacques Bunel was frequently in demand as a preacher in his home diocese of Rouen (Normandy).
Along with his duties as educator in a prep school in Le Havre he spoke at important public occasions. He was chosen to give the sermon that marked the five hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Joan of Arc in the Cathedral of Rouen, the city where she was burned at the stake.