28.05 SAINT GERMAIN Évêque de Paris
(496-576)
Saint Germain de Paris naquit au territoire d'Autun. Tout jeune, il faillit être victime d'une mère dénaturée et d'une grand-mère criminelle; mais Dieu veillait sur cet enfant de bénédiction et le réservait à de grandes choses. Germain se réfugia près d'un ermite, son oncle, dont il partagea la vie austère, et dont il s'étudia chaque jour à imiter la piété et les vertus. L'évêque d'Autun, ayant fait sa connaissance, conçut pour lui une très haute estime, et lui donna, malgré les réclamations de son humilité, l'onction sacerdotale, puis le nomma bientôt abbé du monastère de Saint-Symphorien d'Autun.
Par ces temps de guerre et de dévastation, les pauvres affluent. Germain, toujours ému à la vue d'un homme dans la souffrance, ne renvoie personne sans lui faire l'aumône, au point qu'un jour il donne jusqu'au dernier pain de la communauté. Les moines murmurent d'abord, puis se révoltent ouvertement. Germain, pleurant amèrement sur le défaut de foi de ses disciples, se retire dans sa cellule et prie Dieu de les confondre et de les corriger. Il priait encore, lorsqu'une dame charitable amène au monastère deux chevaux chargés de vivres, et annonce que le lendemain elle enverra un chariot de blé. La leçon profita aux religieux, qui rentrèrent dans le devoir.
Un jour le feu prend au grenier, menaçant de brûler toute la récolte du couvent. Germain, calme et confiant, saisit une marmite d'eau à la cuisine, monte au grenier en chantant Alleluia, fait le signe de la Croix et jette quelques gouttes d'eau sur la brasier, qui s'éteint.
Un jour qu'il était en prière, il voit apparaître un vieillard éblouissant de lumière, qui lui présente les clefs de la ville de Paris: "Que signifie cela? demande l'abbé. -- C'est, répond la vision, que vous serez bientôt le pasteur de cette ville." Quatre ans plus tard, Germain, devenu évêque, resta moine toute sa vie, et il ajouta même de nouvelles austérités à celles qu'il avait pratiquées dans le cloître. Après les fatigues d'une journée tout apostolique, son bonheur, même par les temps rigoureux, était de passer les nuits entières au pied de l'autel.
Germain eut la plus grande et la plus heureuse influence auprès des rois et des reines qui se succédèrent sur le trône de France pendant son épiscopat; on ne saurait dire le nombre de pauvres qu'il secourut, de prisonniers qu'il délivra, avec l'or des largesses royales. Il mourut, plein de mérites, à l'âge de quatre-vingts ans.
Abbé L. Jaud, Vie des Saints pour tous les jours de l'année, Tours, Mame, 1950.
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May 28 SAINT GERMANUS Bishop of Paris
(496-576)
Saint Germanus, the glory of the Church of France in the sixth century, was born in the territory of Autun, a city in south central France, about the year 496. In his youth he was conspicuous for his fervor. After being ordained priest, he was made abbot of Saint Symphorian’s monastery, built near the walls of the city; he was favored at that time with the gifts of miracles and prophecy. It was his custom to pray for the greater part of the night in the church, while his monks slept. He bestowed on the poor of the region all that he could of the monastery’s resources in provisions, and provoked at times the indignation of the religious, who at one time had him arrested and imprisoned by means of their defamation. He had scarcely been placed in a cell, when the doors opened of themselves, and the bishop, being informed of it, recognized his sanctity and treated him with great respect.
One night, in a dream, he thought a venerable old man presented him with the keys of the city of Paris, and said to him that God committed to his care the inhabitants of that city, that he might save them from perishing. Four years after this divine admonition, in 554, happening to be at Paris when that see became vacant by the death of the bishop Eusebius, he was raised to the episcopal chair, though he endeavored by many tears to decline the charge.
His promotion made no alteration in his mode of life. The same simplicity and frugality appeared in his dress, table, and furniture. His house was perpetually crowded with the poor and the afflicted, and he always had many beggars at his own table. He had edifying books read during the meals, that their souls and his own might be nourished. God gave to his sermons a wonderful influence over the minds of all ranks of people; so that the face of the whole city was in a very short time entirely changed.
King Childebert of the Francs, who until then had been an ambitious, worldly prince, was converted by the sweetness and the powerful discourses of the Saint. He founded many religious institutions and sent large sums of money to the good bishop, to be distributed among the indigent. When Saint Germanus learned that some poor folk, inhabitants of a village he was passing through one day, had been imprisoned by their lord for non-payment of debts, he went to pray and shed tears, face to the ground, at the gate of the subterranean jail where the unfortunate victims were lamenting. The overlord refused to open its doors, but an Angel came down and did so, and the entire crowd, scarcely believing in their good fortune, came as one person, to kneel in gratitude before their benefactor. At that point the overlord gave them full amnesty and canceled their debts. Demons fled from the bishop’s presence, as they had before Our Lord, his Master, asking to be allowed to remain in the forest on the mountains.
In his old age Saint Germanus lost nothing of the zeal and activity with which he had filled the great duties of his station in the vigor of his age. Nor did the weakness to which his corporal austerities had reduced him make him alter anything in the mortifications of his penitential life, which redoubled in celestial ardor as he approached more closely the end of his course. By his zeal, the remains of idolatry were extirpated in France. The Saint continued his labors for the conversion of sinners, the deliverance of prisoners, and the relief of the poor, until he was called to receive his reward at the age of eighty, on the 28th of May, 576.
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