From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   September 1st - St. Fiacre   
      
   St. Fiacre was born at the beginning of the 7th century into an illustrious   
   Irish family. The Scots affirm that he was the son of one of their kings who   
   was raised with his brothers by St. Conon, Bishop of Iona.   
      
   As a young man, Fiacre left his parents and family to serve God in solitude.   
   He went to France, seeking St. Faro, Bishop of Meaux, and asked him for a   
   place where he could live a solitary life away from the world. The Bishop   
   was filled with joy upon hearing this request.   
      
   He told Fiacre: "Not far from here is a forest that is my patrimony and that   
   the people call Breuil. It is very quiet and isolated." The two saints   
   traveled there together and chose a place for Fiacre, and the Bishop gave   
   him everything he needed.   
      
   St. Fiacre cleared the woods, built a chapel in honor of the Holy Virgin,   
   and also a house beside it where he lived and received guests. Later he   
   built a small hospital where he would administer to the sick and the poor,   
   and many times he cured them by virtue of his prayers.   
      
   He never allowed women to enter his hermitage. This was an inviolable   
   tradition in the Irish monasteries. He extended the restriction to include   
   the chapel, and applied this rule as long as he lived. Still today, out of   
   respect for his memory, women do not enter either his hermitage or the   
   chapel where he was buried. Even Anne of Austria, the Queen of France, who   
   made a pilgrimage to the shrine in thanksgiving for a favor received,   
   remained outside the door of his chapel.   
      
   The Scots recount that around this time the throne of Scotland became   
   vacant, and deputies of that country traveled to Breuil to ask St. Fiacre to   
   return and be crowned king. He humbly but firmly refused.   
      
   The saint died on August 30, 670, and was buried in the chapel he had built.   
   Countless miracles followed his death and made the name of Fiacre famous. In   
   France gardeners honor him as their patron saint. For, in fact, by praying   
   in his chapel and working in his garden, St. Fiacre earned a throne in   
   Heaven. His feast day is commemorated on September 1st.   
      
      
   Comments of the late Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira: (died 1995)   
      
   I don't know what is more significant, the beauty of the various individual   
   events in the life of St. Fiacre or the ensemble of facts that unite to   
   exude the perfume of legend around him.   
      
   On one hand, from the perspective of the beauty of the individual events,   
   nothing is more beautiful than to imagine a saint who is a son of a king and   
   travels to a far-away country to take up his abode in a forest in order to   
   flee the royal pomp. He seeks another saint, finds him, and then the two   
   travel together to the forest to choose a place for him to live the rest of   
   his life. And then you have this prince who lives as a hermit.   
      
   After living this solitary life for a long time, an occasion presents itself   
   for him to return to his noble life and ascend to the throne. At times he   
   might have felt nostalgia for the life he had left behind. But he refuses   
   this second opportunity and dies as a very humble gardener, as the guardian   
   of the hospital he had built in the forest of Breuil.   
      
   I think that perhaps the second refusal is even more beautiful than the   
   first. Very often, when a young man leaves a certain life he is accustomed   
   to, he doesn't fully realize what he is leaving. He doesn't miss it yet, and   
   he doesn't realize yet the bitterness of the life he will assume. He only   
   sees the new life in a golden light.   
      
   It is easy to see how, for a prince who is accustomed to a royal palace and   
   has become a bit tired of the royal pomp, the idea of living as a hermit in   
   a forest can be very seductive, very attractive. But after living there for   
   a while, after realizing how hard is to not have the comforts of a prince,   
   after a while when the forest has lost its poesy and is showing its prosaic   
   side - the fight against vermin, cold, heat, etc. - then he has the   
   opportunity to evaluate objectively the sacrifice he made. So, to refuse the   
   royal life for the second time, when a concrete occasion presented itself   
   for him to rise to an even higher position than his first one, is nobler   
   than the first refusal.   
      
   An impious Englishman of the 19th century used to tell about a visit he made   
   to a Carthusian monastery in Spain. He was impressed with the marvelous view   
   one could admire from the monastery seat. "What a beautiful place!" he   
   exclaimed. The Carthusian monk who was accompanying him replied: "Beautiful   
   if you are visiting, terrible if you are staying."   
      
   You can see that it is an impious story, with anti-religious hues. But there   
   is something true in it. Many situations that are beautiful upon entering   
   become very difficult to endure after staying a while. Well, here you have   
   St. Fiacre who remained faithful his whole life to the first resolution made   
   in his youth. It is the beauty of fidelity, of continuity, that deserves our   
   admiration.   
      
   On the other hand, from the perspective of his whole life, you can imagine   
   the silence of the forest of Breuil in the Diocese of Meaux. Day after day,   
   night after night, no one passes by, there is only the saint who prays, and   
   works - taming nature. Little by little he conquers the wild terrain of the   
   forest. He is accomplishing in a small proportion what the Church does in   
   great proportion: she civilizes, she brings culture to the places she comes   
   to.   
      
   And so he planted and cultivated the ground around his hermitage, taking   
   care of each one of his plants and flowers and giving glory to God for them.   
   Once in a while, a traveler would come by and ask to spend the night.   
   Perhaps he is troubled, he tells his problems to the saint, receives a good   
   counsel from him, and then goes away. In the next town the traveler reports   
   that he met a saintly hermit.   
      
   Another time it is a sick man who comes to him and is cured. The cured man   
   tells others, the fame of the saint spreads, other sick and poor men begin   
   to find their way to him. And so he builds a small hospital to administer to   
   them. The reports of his sanctity continue to spread, and a fragrance   
   pleasing to God fills the whole area and rises up to Heaven. It is the   
   perfume of Jesus Christ that conquers Breuil and extends through Meaux. This   
   is often the history of the saints in the Middle Ages, and it is the   
   marvelous scenario you find in the life of St. Fiacre.   
      
   Veneration for St. Fiacre spread throughout France. In the 19th century   
   there was a St. Fiacre Hotel in Paris. Near it was the place where the   
   rental carriages of the time, drawn by horses, used to be parked awaiting   
   customers. From this, that kind of vehicle came to be called fiacre. And St.   
      
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