Notre Dame's Grotto / by Dorothy V. Corson
Sacred Heart's Lady Chapel
The work on Notre Dame's new Our Lady of Sacred Heart Church was progressing, slowly but surely. It would take another fourteen years before all the chapels were completed. Meanwhile, in 1874, about the same year Mother Angela built her indoor Grotto, Father Sorin's nephew, Rev. Auguste Lemonnier died.
Reports of his death indicated that the present Lady Chapel with its Madonna, in Sacred Heart Church, was to have been an Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel; a memorial to Fr. Lemonnier in fulfillment of his deathbed request of Father Sorin. Father Lemonnier was president of Notre Dame when he died on October 31, 1874.
In a letter to the community, Father Sorin writes of Father Lemonnier's last request of him:
. . . But there is one thing in particular which, as a last request, I feel bound to respect; a dying friend's wish presents itself to the living with a special sacredness, claiming, as it were imperiously, an undelayed satisfaction. It was on the eve of his death, as your Reverence is already aware that he entreated me not to refuse the Blessed Virgin the fulfillment of a promise he had made her with your consent and mine, viz., to erect here, if he should be restored, a Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes: "For," said he, "although I am not going to be cured, I owe her more for dying as I do, then even for a longer life."(40)
The first library was named for Father Lemonnier. Timothy Howard speaks of him in glowing terms: "Innocence, gentleness, and purity, had a wonderful attraction for his soul. There was nothing which he touched that he did not beautify. He was 35 years old when he died."(41)
The proposed memorial chapel was described in the Scholastic :
The Lemonnier Memorial Chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes will be 45 feet x 32 feet . . . in keeping with and in the rear of, the new church. It will be decorated with stained glass windows, and ceiling. It is the intention of the projectors to make it the richest and most beautiful part of the Church of Our Lady of Sacred Heart. Work to be commenced this season as soon as the old church can be taken down to make room for it. In all probability, this Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes will be, more than any other, the devotional shrine to which inmates and visitors will hourly repair to pray. There before the altar will be kept a constant supply of the precious water from the miraculous grotto in France while along the walls will be hung the ex votos which many pious souls may send in acknowledgment of favors received or solicited.(42)
Donations to Lemonnier's Our Lady Of Lourdes Chapel were regularly listed in the pages of the Scholastic and the Ave Maria from the time of his death. Other interesting items in the church concerning Father Lemonnier and Lourdes also came to light.