A Community of Love, Unity and Service

St. Nicasius

In the fifth century an army of Vandal barbarians from Germany, while ravaging part of Gaul,plundered the city of Rheims. Nicasius, its holy bishop, an emissary of peace, justice and charity,had foretold this calamity to his flock; for the city of Rheims, which for a long time had beendocile to his word, little by little was seen by the afflicted pastor to be sinking into vice andcorruption. He endeavored to waken them to penance: “Weep, lament in sackcloth and ashes,unfortunate flock, for God has numbered your iniquities, and if you do not do penance, dreadfulpunishments are going to come upon you!” But his words were unheeded.

When Saint Nicasius saw the enemy at the gates and in the streets, forgetting himself andsolicitous only for his spiritual children, he went from door to door encouraging everyone topatience and constancy, and awakening in each breast the most heroic sentiments of piety andreligion. By endeavoring to save the lives of his flock, he exposed himself to the sword of theinfidels, who indeed slew him, while he was praying on his knees the words of a Psalm: “Lord,my soul has been as though fastened to the earth; Lord, give me life, according to Your word!” Florens, his deacon, and Jocond, his lector, were massacred by his side. His sister Eutropia, a virtuous and beautiful virgin, fearing she might be reserved for a fate worse than death, boldly criedout to the infidels that it was her unalterable resolution to sacrifice her life rather than her faith orher virtue. In reply, they dispatched her with their cutlasses, and continued their massacre.

Then, suddenly, a strange and terrible noise was heard in the Church of Notre-Dame, and thealarmed barbarians took flight without taking time to pillage the houses or burn the city, or eventake the booty they had already amassed.

When the city’s inhabitants who had fled to the mountains of the region felt it was safe to return,having seen an unexplained flame above the place of the torment and heard what seemed to be anangelic concert in that area, they went with the intention of piously burying the remains of theslain, and they found there Saint Nicasius, their bishop, his assistants, and Saint Eutropia. Manymiracles occurred at their tomb.

Bl. Melanie Calvat

Born on November 7, 1831, in Corps, France, Françoise Melanie Calvat was the fourth of tenchildren born to Pierre Calvat, an honest stonemason and sawyer, and Julie Barnaud, alightheaded woman who disgracefully mistreated Melanie. Put out of the house at the age ofthree, the little girl took refuge in the woods, where a beautiful little Child (the Child Jesus)visited her, calling her the “sister of My Heart.” He consoled and instructed her, and was her onlyfriend throughout her childhood. At the age of three, she was stigmatized and favored with thevision of Our Lady, who promised to watch over her as Mother and Mistress. The occupation ofshepherdess was imposed upon her at the tender age of six, and Melanie suffered much affliction with love and patience. 1846 found her, now fourteen years old, watching her master’s cows inLa Salette, located a few kilometers from Corps. This is where the Mother of God chose toappear to her and to Maximin Giraud to transmit Her Message. After the Apparition, the twochildren were placed as boarders in the Sisters of Providence convent in Corps, where an inquiryconcerning the Apparition took place.

The life of Melanie was not a tranquil one. She entered religion in her native village of Corps atthe age of twenty, but was soon exiled from France by her bishop, who arranged for her to beaccompanied to Darlington, England by an English prelate. There she was sequestered in aCarmel for several years, until released from its vow of cloister by the Holy Father Pius IX, thatshe might be free to accomplish her mission. Melanie was able to publish the Secret, as the Virginhad commanded, only in 1872 and 1873, in Italy, with an Imprimatur of Cardinal Sforza,Archbishop of Naples, and with the approbation of Pope Pius IX. When she completed the Secretby adding an account of the Apparition from beginning to end in 1878, Pope Leon XIII, readingher narration, said, “This document must be published.” Included in it is the urgent appeal of OurLady, summoning the Apostles of the Latter Times, who will have lived in contempt of the worldand themselves, in silence, prayer and mortification, in chastity and union with God, in sufferingand unknown to the world. She calls them to come forth, to combat, in these days of woe. Thebrochure was again printed in 1879, with the Imprimatur of Monsignor Zola, bishop of Lecce nearNaples, who had protected and assisted Melanie in his diocese. Her life was one of constantmiraculous help from Heaven amid unceasing contradictions; her soul, hidden behind a verymodest exterior which only the holy consecrated souls of her time could penetrate, was one ofbeautiful innocence and of a sanctity far from ordinary.

The bishops of France resisted the Secret with, at times, a real fury, because its warnings as to thepolitical ambitions of Napoleon III and the regrettable state of the clergy in general, were not totheir liking. Melanie was called insane, she was calumniated, refused possession of a terrain inFrance willed legally to the Order of the Mother of God which she represented; refused HolyCommunion at times; she was exiled from certain dioceses when she returned from Italy for a fewyears. Eventually, after prolonged efforts to establish the Order of the Mother of God both inItaly and in France, she again went to Italy, where she died in 1904. She had foretold: “The spiritof La Salette can be transported. And when the hour has sounded, the Blessed Virgin will be ableto resurrect La Salette and accomplish Her Work... The Blessed Virgin’s words are not sterilelike those of men... Her Work will be done. Men and devils can do nothing against Her. She willtriumph. Men can resist the call of grace and Her appeal, but She can transport Her great lightand show it to others. Let us await Her help and Her hour.”

Bl. John the Discalced

Blessed John the Discalced was born near Quimper in France. In his youth he was a laborer; hemade and erected crosses, built bridges and arches. Works useful for the glory of God or thewelfare of his neighbor were the ones most agreeable to him. However, God was calling himhigher, and by perseverance he succeeded in studying to receive the priesthood, despite theopposition and mockery of an artisan from whom he had learned his trade, one of his relatives.

From that moment on his life was very austere; he fasted three times a week on bread and water,visited the poor and the sick, and became the object of universal veneration. For thirteen years heserved as a parish priest in his diocese, and never did he take a horse for his parish visits, butwalked barefoot; hence his name, the Discalced or unshod. His very frugal life might havepermitted him to set money aside, but the indigent received all that was not strictly necessary forhim, and sometimes that as well.

The holy priest then entered the Order of Saint Francis. In the monastery at Quimper, BrotherJohn was soon recognized to be the most humble and most mortified of all. The spirit of povertymade him choose the most worn habits, which he repaired himself. Since he had nothing to giveaway, he begged from the wealthy and thus assisted the miserable. He rose every night before theothers, and very often spent entire nights in the charms of mental prayer.

The devil sometimes waged a fierce war on him, but the holy religious, trusting in God,manifested his contempt for the tempter, calling him dog, and driving him away by words ofdistress and supplication from the Psalms. His mortification was extreme; he fasted unceasinglyon bread and water save for forty days during the year, and for sixteen years touched no meat orwine. He had the gift of tears in his ministry of confession, and the spirit of prophecy whichrevealed to him future public chastisements. He foresaw and announced the siege and capture ofQuimper before the intention had been formed in the mind of the assailants. Great crueltiesaccompanied it, and a famine followed.

He also foresaw the pestilence which would afflict it in 1349, and wept. When the other religiousasked him what was wrong, he told them only that the city would be afflicted again with a newcalamity. He devoted himself to serving the plague-stricken, offered his life to God in sacrifice,and died of the terrible scourge in that year, at the age of sixty-nine. The city remains devoted tohis memory, and his statue is in its cathedral.

St. Maximin or Mesmin, abbot

Saint Maximin was a native of Verdun. A priest named Euspicius, uncle of Maximin, broughtabout a reconciliation between the French monarch Clovis and his subjects of that city, after thelatter had engaged in a revolt. Clovis, appreciating the virtues of the good priest, persuadedEuspicius to take up his residence at the court in Orleans; and the servant of God took SaintMaximin, his nephew, with him. Maximin was ordained a deacon by the bishop of Orleans, andthen a priest.

A site about two leagues from the city was given by Clovis to Euspicius for a monastery. He withMaximin and several disciples built there the large monastery, of which he then took charge. Hisyoung assistant knew well how to attract many young men of admirable piety and fervor to thereligious state.

At the death of the Abbot two years later, the young priest was appointed to replace him. Solitaries left their cells to come and place themselves under his direction, and soon the gift ofmiracles was bestowed upon the abbot. He multiplied wine and grain during a famine, to assistthe afflicted people; he delivered a possessed man and cured two blind men, though he knew oneof them had become blind only after he maliciously cut down a tree belonging to the monastery. Through his prayers he brought about so many other prodigies that he was called the thaumaturgeof his century.

His soul was soon ripe for the beatitude he had earned, and after having governed his monasteryfor ten years, he died as he had lived, in the odor of sanctity, and in the arms of his spiritual sons,on the 15^th of December in about the year 520.

St. Eusebius of Vercelli

Saint Eusebius was born of a noble family on the island of Sardinia, where his father is said to have died in prison for the Faith. He was brought up in Rome in the practice of piety, and studiedin Vercelli, a city of Piedmont. Eusebius was ordained a priest there, and served the Church ofVercelli with such zeal that when the episcopal chair became vacant he was unanimously chosen,by both clergy and people, to fill it.

The holy bishop saw that the best and principal means to labor effectually for the edification andsanctification of his people was to have a zealous clergy. Saint Ambrose assures us that he wasthe first bishop who in the West united the monastic life with the clerical, living and having hisclergy live almost like the monks of the East in the deserts. They shared a common life of prayerand penance, in a single residence, that of the bishop, as did the clergy of Saint Augustine in hisAfrican see. Saint Eusebius was very careful to instruct his flock in the maxims of the Gospel. The force of the truth which he preached, together with his example, brought many sinners to achange of life.

When a Council was held in Italy, under the influence of the Emperor Constans and the Arianheretics, with the intention of condemning Saint Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, Saint Eusebiuscourageously resisted the heretics. He attempted to have all present sign the Nicene Creed, butthe paper was torn out of his hands and his pen was broken. With Saint Dionysus of Milan, herefused to sign the condemnation of the bishop of Alexandria. The Emperor therefore had himbanished to Scythopolis in Palestine with Saint Dionysus of Milan, then to Cappadocia, whereSaint Dionysus died; and finally he was taken to the Upper Thebaid in Egypt, where he sufferedgrievously. The Arians of these places loaded him with outrages and treated him cruelly, andSaint Eusebius confounded them wherever they were.

At the death of Constans in 361, he was permitted to return to his diocese, where he continued tocombat Arianism, concertedly with Saint Hilarion of Poitiers. He has been called a martyr in twopanegyrics appended to the works of Saint Ambrose. Two of his letters, written from hisdungeons, are still extant, the only ones of his writings which have survived. One is addressed tohis church, the other to the bishop of Elvira to encourage him to oppose a fallen heretic and notfear the power of princes. He died in about the year 370. His relics are in a shrine in theCathedral of Vercelli.

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