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| Saint Michael Garicoits, Pray for us! |
⛪ Saint of the Day: May 14
⛪ Born:
• 15 April 1797 in Ibarre, PyrΓ©nΓ©es-Atlantiques, France
⛪ Died:
•14 May 1863 in BΓ©tharram, PyrΓ©nΓ©es-Atlantiques, France
Saint Michael Garicoits was born in 1797 in a small village in the Basque country, Ibarre. From a family of peasants, poor and eagerly Catholic and, by the same token, counter-revolutionary. His parents crossed the Pyrenees to receive in Spain the sacrament of marriage from the hand of a non-juror priest; they hid refractory priests on their farm, risking their lives.
Little Michel has character. In this low mountainous country, the harsh climate, the work on the farm, and the strict education of his parents have made him hard. " Without my good and pious mother," he said, " I feel that I would have become a villain. With that, a fear of hell, an irresistible attraction for Heaven. One day, seeing the blue of the sky touching the top of the hill to which the family house was leaning, he imagined that one could enter there. Always quick to realize the idea that came to him, he climbed up leaving his father's sheep in the dog's care. Disappointment! The sky had receded to the neighboring peak. He ran and from there to the third. The adventure ended in full darkness: without his taking care, the night was already submerging the mountain. The child came down again, disenchanted. But his stinging disappointment engraved more deeply in his soul the desire of Heaven, the truth!
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| Birthplace of St. Michael Garicoits |
In fact, he managed in a very short time to restore to Betharram discipline, piety, and zeal studies, until the day when the bishop of Bayonne decided in 1832 to bring his seminarians near him, in Bayonne, and leave the Father alone. In the meantime, two capital events occur one which touches him intimately and the other which deals with the affairs of France and the Church.
First, what St. Michael called his "conversion". He had been appointed chaplain to the Daughters of the Cross, who had just moved to the convent of Igon, four kilometers from Betharram. It was there that in 1828 he met Jeanne-Γlisabeth Bichier des Ages, their founding saint. At his touch and that of his sisters who practice evangelical poverty with such joy and simplicity, he understands that the Heart of Jesus calls him to the radicalism of the saints. From this day begins his giant run towards holiness.
The second episode: the revolution of 1830, which chases the legitimate king Charles X and puts in place the usurper Louis-Philippe. For the saints, for Heaven itself, as we see in the apparitions to St. Catherine Laboure, it is not a simple political revolution, it is Our Lord in Person, the true King of France, who is dethroned. The Church herself is affected, since a prophet has risen up in her womb, whose name is Lamennais, preaching the reconciliation of the Church with the Revolution in the name of the Gospel with the motto: God and Freedom.
The AbbΓ© de Nantes has denounced in this mad doctrine the great heresy of modern times, a prelude to the apostasy that we live. As early as 1830, it provoked in the clergy, leaving among the faithful themselves, a fever of claim, autonomy, and revolt.
Saint Michael GaricoΓ―ts measures the danger and goes up to the ramparts: the Church suffers from a great evil calling a powerful remedy. " Oh! he said to himself if one could gather a society of priests having as program the very program of the Heart of Jesus, the eternal Priest, the servant of the Heavenly Father: absolute devotion and obedience, perfect simplicity, unalterable gentleness! These priests would be a veritable camp of flying elite soldiers, ready to run, at the first signal of the chiefs, wherever they would be called, even and especially in the most difficult ministries which the others would not want. "
"Despite his profound humility, he will say of his favorite son, Father Etchecopar, himself a saint, he believed in a work of special creation having its purpose, its organization, its spirit, its means to it. He believed that the God of the poor and the poor had chosen him for this purpose [to serve the Church of God so shaken by the revolution of the last century and the ravages of the modern spirit] and that he had told him: " Go and found a new institute in my church. It has its reason to be. Here is your flag and the cry of your rallying: you will walk in front with the flag of the Sacred Heart, uttering the cry Ecce venio of my Son, and you will be the joy and the support of my Church. ""
THE FATHERS OF THE SACRED HEART, MISSIONARIES OF THE IMMACULATE
And he was in truth. A "flying missionary camp" was formed in Betharram in 1834, and from Bigorre in the east to the Basque Country in the west, the faith and morals of this country were preserved thanks to Father Garicoits and his missionaries: by their popular missions, their colleges, and by the extraordinary charisma of soul director of the founder himself. He often said to them: " Forward, always forward, to Heaven! And also: " Jesus Christ does not want idle soldiers, but fighters and winners. "
It may be said that they prepared the ground so that on the day of her apparitions to Lourdes, in 1858, the Immaculate would find a people well disposed, ready to enter into her sights. The Fathers of the Sacred Heart were the heralds, the spokesmen, and the missionaries of this great "orthodromic" design of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
St. Bernadette came on a pilgrimage to Betharram, and bought this two-sou rosary, which she wore during the apparitions. Saint Michael Garicoits, the first perhaps among the clergy of the region, adhered to the apparitions of 1858 and was made the guarantor of the little seer with Bishop Laurence, the bishop of Tarbes. (...)
VIRGIN MARY, MASTER OF THE HOUSE
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| Our Lady of Betharram |
In 1832, as we have said, the seminarians return to Bayonne, and their director, Father Garicoits, finds himself superior to a large empty house. For several years, he has matured his project of foundation. He is going to retreat to Toulouse with a Jesuit saint, Father Leblanc, who says to him: " You will follow your inspiration that I believe come from Heaven, and you will be the father of a family who will be our sister ..."
As if crushed by these words, Michel Garicoits will throw himself, as soon as he returns to Betharram, at the foot of the tabernacle and the Virgin in gilded wood, who holds his Child on one arm, a scepter in the other hand, and gets up comfort. " Then I felt in the depths of my being an extraordinary movement, which confirmed me in my design and encouraged me to execute it. "
From that day, he called the Blessed Virgin the " Mistress of the house " and a thought never left her: just as the Sacred Heart was conceived in the womb of the Virgin in her house in Nazareth, so the little one Society of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is born by her in her house of Betharram.
He restores the chapel, calling on a talented artist, Alexandre Renoir, who carves the Virgin of Beau-Rameau who now sits above the high altar. He introduces the brotherhoods of the Holy Rosary, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the refuge of sinners, and the Saint Scapular. For the coadjutor brothers who help with the material tasks of the sanctuary and the missions, he buys a farm in the neighborhood which he calls Ferme Sainte-Marie. The first school he founded was Γcole Notre-Dame. Faced with the influx of students, it is proposed to build a college in a more airy place, on the other side of the Gave, but it resolutely opposes. Where we see the delicacy of his love for the "Mistress of the house": " The Blessed Virgin has chosen Betharram, we must remain there ... If need be, Our Lady will take the place of everything. "
All the feast days of the Blessed Virgin and every first Saturday of the month are celebrated in Betharram by the singing of Mass and Vespers, with the assistance of the entire community, religious, and students. The rosary is recited daily, in common, and in the evening, the whole religious family gathers at the feet of Our Lady to sing the Ave Maria Stella and the Sub tuum præsidium ...
For his personal account, the saint is not satisfied with these common exercises. He is affiliated with the Perpetual Rosary Association and fulfills his duties from 3 to 4 am. It is with her that he begins his day. It is touching to see that he died on Ascension Day, May 14, 1863, at 3 am, that is to say by the time he got up to recite his Ave.
It is not surprising, then, that he understood at once the importance of the events at Lourdes, and that he gave them, at first in secret, then publicly, his consent.
In July, 1858, Mgr. Laurence, who had in great esteem the superior of Betharram, sent him Bernadette. Of their maintenance, nothing has filtered. The witnesses remember only the radiant face of the saint and the little seer, who will return several times to Betharram to receive the advice of the saint. (...)
" God is good! said St. Michael Garicoits, as he filled our Pyrenees with graces. "(...) He will support his money, and God knows he was not rich! the construction of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Lourdes and, on several occasions, will humbly mingle with the pilgrim crowd.
" His tenderness for the Blessed Virgin was inexpressible, " says his first biographer. Like her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she was nourished by a strong and clear doctrine. He contemplated and meditated endlessly the mystery of the Incarnation and the response of the Blessed Virgin: Ecce ancilla Domini, here the servant of the Lord, delighted him because it corresponded perfectly to the Ecce venio , here I am, of the Son of God.
"From the heart of the Father in the womb of the Virgin," he said, "what a path opens before us! Jesus descended from Mary. Let's raise our head to our doctor. And let's go up by Mary too. "
"ME HERE, WITHOUT DELAY, WITHOUT RESERVE,
WITHOUT RETURN, BY LOVE! "
St. Michael received on this ineffable mystery of the Incarnation particular lights. On the night of Christmas 1830, for example, he was seen transfigured at the time of the Incarnatus is the Creed and at other times he was seen rising from the ground after the consecration. (...)
At the head of his writings, St. Michael writes these three letters: FVD, Fiat voluntas Dei . (...)
Jesus, our unique Model, "entered the career by this great act that he never discontinued. From that moment on, he always remained in the state of a victim, annihilated before God, doing nothing by himself, always acting by the Spirit of God, constantly abandoned to the orders of God to suffer and do whatever he pleased.
Christ at the Column, Sanctuary of Betharram "(...)
However, men are ice for God! And among the priests themselves, there are so few who say, following the example of the Divine Master: "Here we are! ... Ita, Pater! Yes, Father! ""
And how did this great evil come?
"(...) The concern for the self, the self-becoming the end of things, the best things. And then, as everything is lowered, degraded in sensualism! Everything falls and debases, philosophy, theology, characters, and the most elevated ministries. One sees only oneself and, from there, all these terrestrial concerns where the people of the world are lost. What a waste of time, what a monstrosity, and also what a scandal! We put man in the place of God, we materialize, we humanize instead of divinize ourselves, instead of being for each other the images of Our Lord Jesus Christ, bringing everything to his Father, so that, seeing one another, we should see God to glorify him.
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| Saint Michael's Body is on display in the reliquary chapel behind the church of Betharram, an ancient Marian shrine |
To restore the reign of God, "the priests of Betharram felt themselves inclined to devote themselves, to imitate Jesus, annihilated and obedient, and to make every effort to procure for others the same happiness".
"Here I am, to do your will, without delay, without reservation, without return, out of love. "
Until the last day, St. Michael practiced this maxim, heroically. (...)
He died peacefully on May 14, 1863.
Source: Excerpt from He is risen! No. 69, May 2008, p. 15-19 / crc-resurrection.org