MEMORIAL OF SAINT GERARD OF BROGNE, ABBOT AND SAINT THEODORE (THEODORA) GUERIN, RELIGIOUS: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Gerard of Brogne, Abbot and Saint Theodore (Theodora) Guerin, Religious. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for all marriages, for peace, love, and unity in our marriages, our families, and our world. We pray for the sick and dying, especially those who are mentally and physically ill and those suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for the souls in Purgatory and the repose of the souls of the faithful departed. We pray for all widows and widowers. We pray for the poor, needy, and the most vulnerable. And we continue to pray for our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, the Bishops, the Clergy, for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, for the Church, for persecuted Christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world…. Amen🙏

SAINT GERARD OF BROGNE, ABBOT: Saint GĂ©rard (c. 895 – October 3, 959) was an abbot of Brogne Abbey. A native of Staves (Namur) and nobleman by his birth, which occurred about 895, the son of Stance and and Plectrude. He was a member of the family of dukes of Lower Austrasia. St. Gerard was brought up in a military atmosphere, became a solider and assigned to the household of Berengarius, the ruling Count of Namur, Belgium. However, amid the countless privileges, pleasures, and pursuits of his noble way of life, St. Gerard felt called to the religious life—but not in the lay monasteries of his milieu. While on an important mission on behalf of his sovereign to the court of France in 918 he caught a glimpse of the life led by monks of St. Denis and was greatly attracted to it. After settling all his temporal affairs, he returned to the monastery and became a member with wholehearted joy. In time, St. Gerard was ordained, though only after wrestling with his sense of total inadequacy, and he helped reform the monastery. After eleven years he was sent by his Abbot to found a monastery on his estate at Brogne, so that his countrymen who desired to be monks might have a place to go to. As its Abbot, St. Gerard formed a well-nigh model monastery, and its fame spread far and wide. Duke Gislebert of Lorraine saw his work and commissioned him to reform the Abbey of St. Ghislain near Mons, where the holy monk established the Rule of St. Benedict. He replaced the canons with monks. And herein he discovered his true vocation. He eventually became head of 18 other abbeys in the region of present-day Belgium. When he reformed the Abbey of Saint Bertin in 944, dissident monks fled to King Edmund I of England. 

Over the course of the nest twenty years, St. Gerard labored zealously in this work, restoring Benedictine rule and discipline in some eighteen monasteries, as far as Flanders, Lorraine, and Champagne. Finally, advanced in age and slowed down by his extensive labors for God, he returned to Brogne where he fought the laxity of clerics there and replaced them with monks. He retired to a cell near the monastery for  mortification. He still had courage to take a journey to Rome in order to obtain a Bull confirming the privileges of Brogne Abbey. On his return he paid a final visit to all the communities which he had reorganized, and then awaited death at Brogne. He passed his last few years in solitude and prayer and died on October 3, 959 and his body is still preserved at Brogne, now commonly called St-GĂ©rard. He’s the Patron Saint of  Saint-GĂ©rard, Namur.

PRAYER: Lord, amid the things of this world, let us be wholeheartedly committed to heavenly things in imitation of the example of evangelical perfection that You have given us in St. Gerard the Abbot. Amen 🙏

SAINT THEODORE (THEODORA) GUERIN, RELIGIOUS: Saint Mother ThĂ©odore GuĂ©rin (1798–1856), also known as St. Theodora, is the foundress of The Sisters of Providence of St. Mary of the Woods in Indiana. By doing the ordinary well, she excelled in the harsh frontier conditions, withstood misunderstandings, and prejudices against Catholic women religious. Even with chronic health issues, Mother ThĂ©odore opened schools, orphanages, and cared for the sick. She trusted in God’s will and became a model of virtue. Saint ThĂ©odore GuĂ©rin was born Anne-Therese Guerin at Etables, Brittany in France on October 2, 1798, towards the end of the French Revolution. As she was growing up, the French government was virulently anti-clerical, closing down seminaries and churches and arresting priests and religious.  Her cousin was a seminarian who lived in hiding in her devout parents’ Catholic home. He instructed her thoroughly in the faith and she displayed an advanced knowledge of theology, even at a young age. She was a pious child who loved prayer and who knew her vocation was to be a nun. However, she was delayed in following this path after the murder of her father when she was 15, which, in addition to the previous death of two of her siblings, sent her mother into a deep depression. St. Theodore took on the household tasks and the care of her mother and her remaining sister. Finally, when she was 25, her mother gave her consent, and Anne-ThĂ©rèse (St. Theodore) left home to enter the religious life. She joined the Sisters of Providence who served God by educating children and caring for the poor, the sick, and the dying. She devoted herself to religious education. Her intellectual capacities were formidable, and she was even recognized by the French Academy for her acheivements.

In 1840 Mother ThĂ©odore GuĂ©rin was asked to lead a band of missionary sisters and establish her order in the United States of America, specifically to serve the pioneers in Indiana. Founded a convent of the Sisters of Providence in the diocese of Vincennes. There she pioneered Catholic education, opened the first girls’ boarding school in Indiana, and fought against the anti-Catholicism prevalent in the day. Even though her health was fragile, she crossed the Atlantic and then traveled by steamboat and stagecoach until she reached the wilderness mission of St. Mary of the Woods, which consisted only of a tiny log chapel. She and her five sisters endured the extreme hardships common to life on the frontier. Less than a year after arriving she opened an academy which became the first Catholic women’s Liberal Arts college in the United States, still active today, called St. Mary of the Woods College. St. Theodore also established numerous schools, pharmacies, and orphanages throughout the state of Indiana. She was well known for her heroic witness to faith, her hope, and her love of God. The fledgling years of the convent of Our Lady of the Woods were difficult, with the ever present danger of it being burned down by anti- Catholics. The persecution also came from within the Church, from her own bishop, who, on not being allowed to tamper with the order’s rule, excommunicated her.  The excommunication was eventually lifted by his successor. James Cardinal Gibbons said of her in 1904, that she was “a woman of uncommon valour, one of those religious athletes whose life and teachings effect a spiritual fecundity that secures vast conquests to Christ and His holy Church.” St. Theodore died on May 14, 1856 after a period of sickness. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 25, 1998, and canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic church on October 15, 2006, by Pope Benedict XVI. Saint Theodore (Theodora) Guerin’s is the Patron Saint of the Diocese of Lafayette, IN. Her feast day is October 3rd.

Saint Theodore (Theodora) Guerin, Religious ~ Pray for us 🙏