MEMORIAL OF SAINT JEANNE JUGAN (SISTER MARY OF THE CROSS),  RELIGIOUS; SAINTS FELIX, PRIEST AND ADAUTUS, MARTYRS AND SAINT FIACRE, HERMIT ~ FEAST DAY: AUGUST 30TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Jeanne Jugan (Sister Mary of the Cross), Religious; Saints Felix, Priest and Adauctus, Martyrs and Saints Fiacre, Hermit. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed and we pray for those who mourn. We pray for the elderly and those who have no one to care for them, we pray for the sick and dying, especially those who are suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for gardeners and cabdrivers. We also pray for the poor and needy and for peace, love, and unity in our marriages, our families and our world. And we continue to pray for our Holy Father, 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.🙏

SAINT JEANNE JUGAN (SISTER MARY OF THE CROSS), RELIGIOUS: St. Jeanne Jugan  (1792-1879), also known as Sister Mary of the Cross, L.S.P., was a French woman who became known for the dedication of her life to the neediest of the elderly poor. Her service resulted in the establishment of the Little Sisters of the Poor during the 19th century, who care for the elderly who have no other resources throughout the world with the goal of imitating Christ’s humility through service to elderly people in need. St. Jeanne Jugan was born on Oct. 25, 1792 in a port city of the French region of Brittany, St. Jeanne Jugan grew up during the political and religious upheavals of the French Revolution. Four years after she was born, her father was lost at sea. Her mother struggled to provide for Jeanne and her three siblings, while also providing them secretly with religious instruction amid the anti-Catholic persecutions of the day. St. Jeanne worked as a shepherdess, and later as a domestic servant. At age 18, and again six years later, she declined two marriage proposals from the same man. She told her mother that God had other plans, and was calling her to “a work which is not yet founded.”

At age 25, the young woman joined the Third Order of St. John Eudes, a religious association for laypersons founded during the 17th century. Jeanne worked as a nurse in the town of Saint-Servan for six years, but had to leave her position due to health troubles. Afterward she worked for 12 years as the servant of a fellow member of the third order, until the woman’s death in 1835. During 1839, a year of economic hardship in Saint-Servan, Jeanne was sharing an apartment with an older woman and an orphaned young lady. It was during the winter of this year that St.  Jeanne encountered Anne Chauvin, an elderly woman who was blind, partially paralyzed, and had no one to care for her. St. Jeanne carried Anne home to her apartment and took her in from that day forward, letting the woman have her bed while St. Jeanne slept in the attic. She soon took in two more old women in need of help, and by 1841 she had rented a room to provide housing for a dozen elderly people. The following year, she acquired an unused convent building that could house 40 of them. During the 1840s, many other young women joined St. Jeanne in her mission of service to the elderly poor. By begging in the streets, the foundress was able to establish four more homes for their beneficiaries by the end of the decade. By 1850, over 100 women had joined the congregation that had become known as the Little Sisters of the Poor.

However, St. Jeanne Jugan – known in religious life as Sister Mary of the Cross – had been forced out of her leadership role by Father Auguste Le Pailleur, the priest who had been appointed superior general of the congregation. In an apparent effort to suppress her true role as foundress, the superior general ordered her into retirement and a life of obscurity for 27 years. During these years, she served the order through her prayers and by accepting the trial permitted by God. At the time of her death on Aug. 29, 1879, she was not known to have founded the order, which by then had 2,400 members serving internationally. Fr. Le Pailleur, however, was eventually investigated and disciplined, and St. Jeanne Jugan came to be acknowledged as their foundress. St. Jeanne died at the age of 86 on August 29, 1879. She was beatified on October 3, 1982, Vatican City, by Pope John Paul II and canonized on October 11, 2009, Vatican City, by Pope Benedict XVI. In his homily for her canonization in October 2009, Pope Benedict XVI praised St. Jeanne as “a beacon to guide our societies” toward a renewed love for those in old age. The Pope recalled how she “lived the mystery of love” in a way that remains “ever timely while so many elderly people are suffering from numerous forms of poverty and solitude and are sometimes also abandoned by their families.” St. Jeanne Jugan is the Patron Saint of the destitute elderly.

Saint Jeanne Jugan, Religious ~ Pray for us 🙏

SAINTS FELIX, PRIEST AND ADAUTUS, MARTYRS: Sts. Felix and Adauctus (d. 303 AD) were Christian martyrs who were said to have suffered during the Great Persecution during the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian. St. Felix was a Roman priest was martyred by beheading and St. Adauctus was a Christian layman who insisted on sharing the crown of the martyred priest. Since his name was not known, he was simply called by the Latin equivalent of “added on.” Thus, we refer to him as St. Adauctus rather than the name he was called on earth.  According to tradition, St. Felix was a holy priest in Rome, no less happy in his life and virtue than in his name. Being apprehended in the beginning of Dioclesian’s persecution, he was put to cruel torments, which he suffered with admirable constancy, and was at length condemned to lose his head. As he was going to execution he was met by a stranger, who, being a Christian, was so inflamed at the sight of the martyr, and the lively prospect of the glory to which he was hastening, that he was not able to contain himself, but cried out aloud: “I confess the same law which this man professeth; I confess the same Jesus Christ; and it is also my desire to lay down my life in this cause.” The magistrates hearing this, caused him forthwith to be seized, and the martyrs were both beheaded together about the year 303. The name of this latter not being known, he was called by the Christians Adauctus, because he was joined to Felix in martyrdom.

These holy martyrs are commemorated in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, and many ancient calendars. F. Stilting the Bollandist asserts the authenticity of their acts. Their church in Rome, built over their graves, in the catacomb of Commodilla, on the Via Ostiensis, near the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, and restored by Pope Leo III, was discovered about three hundred years ago and again unearthed in 1905.  Pope Leo IV, about 850, is said to have given their relics to  Irmengard, wife of Lothair I; she placed them in the abbey of canonesses at Eschau in Alsace. They were brought to the church of St. Stephen in  Vienna in 1361. The heads are claimed by Anjou and Cologne. According to the “Chronicle of Andechs” Henry, the last count, received the relics from Pope Honorius III and brought them to the Abbey of Andechs.

Saints Felix, Priest and Adauctus, Martyrs ~ Pray for us 🙏

SAINT FIACRE, HERMIT: St. Fiacre (also known as Fiachra; Fiachrach; Fiacrius; Fiaker and Fevre) was a hermit at Kilfiachra, Ireland. St. Fiacre (d. 670 A.D.) was born in Ireland around the beginning of the 7th century and was raised from childhood in an Irish monastery. There he grew in knowledge as well as holiness, and became a priest. He retired to a hermitage to live in prayer and solitude, but men began to flock to him to imitate his way of life and become his disciples. To escape them, St. Fiacre left  Ireland to establish a new hermitage in France. He went to the bishop and was accorded a kind reception by St. Faro, Bishop of Meaux, France and he asked for land to plant a garden to grow food as well as herbs for medicinal healing, a science which he studied in the monastery. The bishop agreed to give Fiacre as much land as he could entrench. Fiacre picked a plot of land and walked around its perimeter, dragging his shovel behind him. Wherever his spade touched the ground, the land was miraculously cleared and the soil became entrenched. St. Fiacre began to lead the religious life he had led in Ireland, he  lived as a solitary at Breuil, Brie. St. Fiacre lived a life of great mortification in prayer, fasting, vigils, and manual labor in his garden. Soon, the people of the surrounding regions began coming in droves to learn about Christian faith from this man of God. Seeing their plight far from their homes and without shelter, St. Fiacre had compassion on them and determined to help them. With the aid of another grant of land from St. Faro, the saintly hermit himself chopped down trees to build a hospice to shelter them and cleared the soil in order to grow corn and vegetables to feed them. Disciples gathered around him again, and soon formed a monastery. St. Fiacre then built an oratory in honor of the Virgin Mary, a hospice in which he received strangers, travelers and a cell for his own dwelling. He attracted many disciples, was known for his charity and aid to the poor, and was consulted by many for his spiritual wisdom. His fame for performing miracles became widespread, his miracles of healing became legendary and his garden became a place of pilgrimage for centuries for those seeking healing.

St. Fiacre’s dedication and self-sacrifice brought about the conversion of the whole surrounding discrict and he was held in high esteem for his work with the spade. After his holy death about 670, St. Fiacre’s cult grew steadily and reached its height in 17th century, a thousand years later, when his shrine was famous for miraculous cures. The name Fiacre was given to the four-wheeled cab because when it first came into use (in Paris, 1640) its stand was close to the St. Fiacre Hotel so that it might take the pilgrims on the first stage of the journey to St. Fiacre’s shrine. St. Fiacre is best known as the patron of gardeners; florists; cab drivers; herbalist; florists; potters; needlemakers; cab drivers; against hemorrhoids; against syphilis; barrenness; box makers; fistula; hosiers; pewterers; taxi drivers; sterility; tile makers; against venereal disease.

PRAYER: Lord God, You alone are holy and no one is good without You. Through the intercession of St. Fiacre help us to live in such a way that we may not be deprived of a share in Your glory. Amen 🙏