The Mother Who Came Back for Her Son

Fr. Scott Haynes

Paris, 1943. The city lay under German occupation, and after nightfall the streets belonged to patrols, soldiers, and fear. A curfew was in force, and anyone venturing outside without good reason risked being stopped, questioned, or arrested.

Late one night, Father Paul Labutte (1905-2000) was awakened by a persistent knocking at the door of the church or rectory where he was staying. When he opened the door, he found a woman standing there in great distress. She told him that he must come at once because a man was dying and needed a priest.

There was an urgency about her appeal that Father Labutte could not ignore. Going out into occupied Paris in the middle of the night was dangerous, especially during curfew, but a priest could hardly refuse when told that a dying person was waiting for the Last Sacraments.

The woman gave him the address of the house. According to the account, she also wrote the address on a piece of paper so that he would be able to find it.

Father Labutte set out through the darkened streets.

When he reached the address and knocked at the door, however, he encountered something entirely unexpected. A young man answered. He was not dying. In fact, no one in the house was seriously ill.

Father Labutte explained that a woman had come to him during the night and had urgently asked him to come to this address because someone here was dying and needed a priest. The young man was bewildered. He knew nothing about such a request. No one had been sent to summon a priest, and there was apparently no reason for Father Labutte to have been called.

For a moment, the priest seemed to have made a journey through the dangerous nighttime streets of occupied Paris for nothing.

Yet Father Labutte was already there, and Providence had apparently brought a priest to the young man's door. Their conversation turned toward the state of the young man's soul, and Father Labutte asked whether he would like to make his confession.

The young man agreed.

Whatever had brought the priest to that house, the visit now had a purpose. The young man confessed his sins, Father Labutte pronounced sacramental absolution, and the man was reconciled to God.

When the confession was completed, Father Labutte prepared to leave. He stepped from the house and had scarcely begun his departure when the air-raid warning sounded.

The city suddenly entered the confusion and terror of a bombing attack.

At that moment Father Labutte had to make a decision. He could attempt to run back toward the church. He could turn around and return to the house he had just left, remaining there with the young man. Or he could go instead to a casualty clearing center, one of the intermediate emergency stations established to receive the wounded during air raids.

He chose the casualty clearing center.

Such a place stood between the scene of destruction and the hospital. The wounded were brought there so that medical personnel could assess their condition. Those who might survive with hospital treatment could be transferred onward, while others whose injuries were too severe might remain at the clearing station and die there. During a major bombing, a priest could therefore be urgently needed, because within minutes wounded men and women might arrive requiring absolution, the Anointing of the Sick, prayers for the dying, or simply the presence of a priest during their final moments.

Father Labutte hurried there.

Then the bombs fell.

Among the casualties brought into the clearing center was the very young man whose house Father Labutte had just left.

The priest had spoken with him only a short time before. He had been alive, apparently healthy, and certainly not a man whom anyone would have expected to require the Last Sacraments that night. Yet now, because of the bombing, he had been mortally struck and died.

Only then did the strange summons to Father Labutte begin to make sense.

The young man had not been dying when the priest arrived at his door, but he had in fact been very near death without knowing it. Before the bombing came, he had been given the opportunity to confess his sins and receive absolution.

Afterward, Father Labutte examined the young man's wallet in an effort to identify him or learn more about his family. Inside he discovered two photographs of a woman.

One showed her while she was alive.

The other was much more unusual. It showed the same woman lying in her coffin after death, with a crucifix placed in her hands.

Father Labutte stared at the photographs.

He knew that face.

It was the woman who had appeared at his door in the middle of the night.

She was the woman who had pleaded with him to go to the young man's house because someone there was dying. She was the woman who had given him the address and, according to the account, had written it down for him.

Father Labutte now wanted to know who she was.

He made inquiries and eventually reached members of the young man's family. There he learned that the woman in the photographs was indeed the young man's mother.

Then came the detail that transformed an already extraordinary coincidence into something far more mysterious.

The mother had been dead for four years.

Father Labutte did not simply accept the explanation and leave matters there. He wanted some means of verifying what he had experienced. He still possessed the piece of paper on which the woman who had visited him had written her son's address.

He therefore asked the family whether they had anything written in the mother's own hand from the years when she was alive.

They supplied him with samples of her handwriting.

Father Labutte compared them with the writing on the paper he had received that night.

The handwriting matched.

According to the account, therefore, several details converged. Father Labutte had seen and spoken with the mysterious woman. He had received the address from her in writing. He had gone to that address and found a young man who knew nothing about anyone summoning a priest. The young man nevertheless made his confession and received absolution.

Within a short time the air raid began, Father Labutte went to the casualty clearing center, and the same young man was brought there mortally wounded. In the man's wallet the priest found photographs of the woman who had summoned him, including the remarkable photograph of her lying in her coffin with a crucifix in her hands. The family then confirmed that she was the young man's mother and that she had been dead for four years. Finally, samples of her handwriting reportedly corresponded to the handwriting on the paper given to Father Labutte.

Whatever judgment one makes about the extraordinary element of the account, its spiritual meaning is difficult to miss. A young man began that evening with no reason to imagine that death was near. Before the night was over, he would stand before God. Yet shortly before his death, a priest had been brought to his door, and he had been given the grace to confess his sins and receive absolution.

The person who appeared to have brought the priest to him was his mother.

She had been dead for four years.

If Father Labutte's account is accepted as he related it, then the incident becomes a remarkable picture of a mother's concern for the salvation of her child. The grave had ended her earthly life, but it had not made love meaningless. At the very hour when her son unknowingly approached death, a priest was sent to him, and the son received the sacrament that prepared his soul for eternity.

The mother had once cared for his body, watched over his childhood, and perhaps prayed for him throughout her earthly life. Four years after her death, according to Father Labutte's testimony, she appeared one final time for something infinitely greater.

She came for his soul.