In the Scriptures we can read that Israel, the one who would give his name to the people descended from the Patriarchs and who was first called Jacob, is about to leave his land. His absence will last 20 years.

One night, her sleep became ecstasy:

He sees a ladder connecting heaven and earth, and cries out in astonishment: "How awesome is this place! It is none other than the House of God. It is the gate of heaven ! "

A place where a door opens towards men, pushed by those who already share its eternity, is worth including on our geographical maps.
Thus, with Sacred History, a Holy Land was born. History will be rich with these comings of God, even before his Son chose Bethlehem, Nazareth, climbed Tabor, and pushed open the door in the other direction in Jerusalem, to the tomb, thus changing the vocation and the human condition.
We readily imagine in the memory of the disciples the landscape in the middle of which the visible Jesus was taken from them.
One way or another they must have marked it, especially for later and for others.

The chapter on the Crusades in our history books and the pilgrimages that continue to draw believers to these places demonstrate the importance they have played in transmitting the heritage of faith. To those mentioned in the Bible, we must add those that have witnessed the apparitions of the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of the faithful, such as Lourdes, Fatima, Czestochowa, and others.

More modestly, men and women from our villages have experienced the presence of God or Mary, as was the case in Bellefontaine.
And little by little, as with the sanctuaries of the Holy Land or of greater Christendom, the place of the encounter was marked.
A House of God was built there.
We went to this Gate to listen to God speak with human words, to commune with the Life that had fully embraced, even to the point of totally absorbing, the bread that had ripened on these fields.
But between that first healing, so far removed in time, how much energy was drawn from that fountain by all those who stopped at that chapel on their way home from work, or by those who, on pilgrimage days, went to the ends of the earth to make sure that the promised and awaited Kingdom was already there, open and given.

It is therefore not simply a matter of saving a stone building.
Thanks to the courageous restoration of the chapel, the whole region can remember that it did not live by bread alone, but was shaped by the Gospel.
But the creators of this work are looking primarily towards the future; they share their certainty with those who are looking for guidance and reasons to live.
They offer them a door.
Because without this Gate the world, even if it managed to be very beautiful, would remain nothing more than a cage or a prison.

We wish them success in this project thanks to everyone's understanding and support.

+Leon Hegelé
Auxiliary Bishop of Strasbourg