Jacques Olier

At that time, his parents, who wished to place him at court and advance him in ecclesiastical dignities, encouraged him to appear in the world with splendor. He kept a grand household and frequented persons of quality. He even preached at times from the most prominent pulpits of Paris. But God, desiring him entirely for Himself, broke the plans formed by his parents by giving him the thought of going to Italy. The goal of Jacques Olier was not only to make a journey that persons of his age and condition commonly made at that time, but to distance himself from Paris and his acquaintances and to remain for some time in Rome, in order to apply himself more freely to study, and principally to that of the Hebrew language. This project did not succeed for him; for Providence, demanding something greater from him and desiring him in a state of high perfection, permitted him to have such pain in his eyes while he was in Rome that he found himself deprived of the pleasure of study and in danger of losing his sight. In this apprehension, he had recourse to his singular protectress, and he made a vow to go from Rome to Our Lady of Loreto.

He undertook this journey during the greatest heat of the summer, and he made it on foot. The fatigue of the road and the heat of the season gave him a violent fever, of which he felt several bouts. But upon arriving at Loreto, the fever disappeared, and the doctor found his pulse so calm that he could hardly believe he had made this journey on foot. He was also delivered forever from the ailment he had in his eyes. These were not the only favors that God granted him in that place: his soul received there such great lights and such strong impressions of grace that he spent the whole night in prayer and tears; and he was so powerfully drawn to the service of Our Lord in that holy chapel that he always regarded this moment as that of his entire conversion. He left Loreto some time later and returned to Rome on foot, occupying himself on the way with the infinite mercies of God, and meditating on the greatness of his amiable benefactress.

The death of his father, which occurred shortly thereafter, obliged him to return to Paris. He lost nothing of the fervor he had conceived at Loreto. It even increased in such a way that his confessor permitted him to receive communion every day. This permission gave him cause to redouble his care and to bring new preparations to approach this august mystery worthily. Each day he presented himself at the tribunal of penance. He made long prayers and gave great alms. He slept only on a simple straw mattress, and hid this mortification so skillfully that only his valet de chambre noticed it in the end. He added to this penance several other austerities. In a word, there was nothing he believed would please his God that he did not embrace with all the ardor of his heart.

Jacques Olier was thus advancing with joy in the practice of virtues when Our Lord, who had chosen the cross as the principal instrument for the sanctification of his servant, permitted him to be troubled interiorly by scruples and sorrows. These anxieties were of such a nature that the ingenuity of his confessor could not dispel them, whatever submission he found in the spirit of his penitent; it was necessary that the very one who was the cause of his malady should bring the remedy; and this is what He did, by giving him the thought of going to Our Lady of Chartres; for it seems that all the graces that God wished to bestow upon him were to pass through the hands of the most holy Virgin. Jacques Olier therefore made this journey on foot and during the rigors of winter, but with a devotion so ardent and so much fruit for his soul that, upon arriving at this church, he was entirely freed from the scruples that had tormented him.

Finding himself in peace, he used the interior liberty he then began to enjoy only to advance with greater strides in perfection and to unite himself more closely to God. With this design, he went to make a retreat at Saint-Lazare, with the priests of the Mission. It was in this retreat that he prepared himself to receive the subdiaconate, and having learned from these holy missionaries the duties of an ecclesiastic, which were at that time little known even to those who professed virtue, he formed his entire exterior according to the holy canons and the practice of the most virtuous priests of that time. He was associated by Saint Vincent d e Paul, that incompar saint Vincent de Paul Saint contemporary to Olier, founder of the Congregation of the Mission. able man, with that illustrious Company of ecclesiastics who gathered every Tuesday at Saint-Lazare, and he conceived from then on a zeal so ardent for the instruction of the poor and the country folk that he doubted whether he should remain in Paris to attend classes, or whether he should follow the movements of his zeal which urged him to work in the missions and to preach in the villages. He consulted skilled people on this matter who, after having considered the great talents and the frequent movements that God gave him for this employment, believed that he should obey grace, and advised him to prefer the fruit that the people could derive from his instructions and the studies he had already completed to the reputation he could acquire by advancing in degrees.

This resolution being taken, he executed it with such ardor that, before he had reached the age required to receive the priesthood, he had had missions conducted at his own expense in almost all the places where he had property, and also in several other places in the vicinity of Paris. He did not only assist the workers of the mission with his patrimony, but he worked under their guidance, and assiduously conducted catechisms and preachings with a zeal that surpassed his strength. He did not stop there; for he never met a poor person without instructing him, and this practice was not only close to his heart in the first years of his fervor, but he always continued it thereafter, until he became paralyzed, and then he would ask someone from his Company to perform this charity for him. He would even turn aside from his path to catechize laborers, although this practice delayed him greatly in his travels and caused him to suffer considerable inconveniences. He would also stop in the streets of Paris to instruct the poor who then had the freedom to beg. He would take them to his home, give them alms, kiss their feet, and dispose them to make general confessions. He could never be repelled by the indisposition of many of them. He never yielded to the mockery and insults of people of the world. His zeal could not even be slowed by the reproaches of his relatives, who, as virtuous as they were, could nevertheless not appreciate such a humiliating conduct, so far removed from the usage and maxims of the world.

The thirst he had for the salvation of souls, however great it was then, took on new increases as soon as he was raised to the priesthood. His director having determined him to receive the order of the priesthood, notwithstanding the reasons his humility provided him, he celebrated his first Mass on the day of Saint John the Baptist, in the year 1633, with a devotion that corresponded to the holiness of the life he had led until that day. Immediately after, he thought of leaving Paris to go and assist the most abandoned souls. He joined several ecclesiastics of high birth to go with him to Auvergne, where his abbey of Pébrac was located, and to conduct missions in the mountains of that province. He prepared for this journey by a retreat that he made again at Saint-Lazare, in the month of March of the year 1664, in which God made him know, in a very extraordinary way, that for a long time a holy soul had been praying and weeping for him. This very particular testimony of divine goodness was a new spur to his zeal. He left everything to make such a lovable master known. He departed immediately from Paris with his company, in which was one of the ecclesiastics of Vincent de Paul, and his charity pressed him so hard that he did not even want to stop for three more days in that city to attend his sister's wedding. It is difficult to express what the labors of this holy priest were in this mission and the charity he exercised there. He preached every day, spent the rest of the time in the confessional, gathered the poor, gave them food, served them bareheaded, and fed himself on their leftovers. After the meal, he would go into the houses to have these good people repeat what they had learned at church, or to instruct the sick and win over, by the excess of his gentleness and humility, those who despised the mission and were rebellious to the voice of God. He often spent part of the night in prayer, and he afflicted his flesh so harshly with bloody disciplines that there was reason to fear that gangrene might set into the wounds made by his instruments of penance. It was in this mission that he met Mother Agnes of Jesus, a religious of the Order of Saint Dominic at the monastery of Langeac, whose life has been as remarkable in virtues as in wonders and extraordinary graces. It was this holy religious who had b een praying and wee Mère Agnès de Jésus Dominican nun of Langeac who prayed for the conversion of Olier. ping for him for three years, and whose prayers and communications were so useful to our missionary that, at the end of this mission, he had made such progress in all kinds of virtues that he was no longer recognizable. After six months of work in this province, he was obliged, by the pursuits of those who opposed the reform of his abbey of Pébrac, to return to Paris. Having arrived there, he got rid of his carriage and his retinue, which he had been advised to keep; and he would not even have kept a valet without the express order of his director.

During his stay in this city, he was extremely pressed by a bishop of distinguished piety, who was a man of great prayer, to take his place and assume his mitre; this good prelate even employed the solicitations of Saint Vincent de Paul, who had much authority over the mind of Jacques Olier; but it was without success: for our servant of God, who had a great aversion to dignities, and who at that time desired only to go to Canada to preach the faith there, offered so many prayers to the most holy Virgin that, in the end, the matter was broken off, and these personages, for whom he had such deference, ceased their pursuits.

As soon as he had the freedom to return to Auvergne, he prepared himself for a second mission that he wished to conduct there, having been unable to go and preach the Gospel in New France. For this, he performed the ten-day exercises in a country house, around the month of April in the year 1636. During his retreat, he received considerable graces. Our Lord made him understand that He wished to use him in preaching. To this end, He delivered him from a weakness of the chest which, according to the opinion of the doctors, allowed him at most only to give small, familiar exhortations; and he was so perfectly healed of this infirmity that, thereafter, he preached twice a day for two whole months in the largest auditoriums. This favor was accompanied by another gift: for the spirit of God communicated itself to him with such fullness that, from that time on, he needed almost no other preparation for his sermons than prayer. He would spend some time in prayer before the most holy Sacrament, and then he would say things so touching that the listeners would melt into tears, which were followed by the fruits of true penance. After this retreat, he left Paris with several ecclesiastics of quality and great virtue, who, for eighteen months, conducted missions in all the regions of Auvergne and Velay. Jacques Olier contributed no less of his person and his goods than the first time, but with this difference: that he had very heavy crosses to bear throughout the entire time.

Firstly, he was thwarted in all his designs by some usurpers of the property of his abbey, who, unable to suffer his resistance, stirred up an infinity of people against him. Moreover, no one dared to take his side, nor give him counsel, seeing that he was dealing with people whose power was formidable. Secondly, he was troubled by interior pains so great that all the persecutions from without were a small thing in comparison to the anguish of his soul. These pains had already begun regarding an infidelity he believed he had committed by letting slip the opportunity to go and conduct a mission in the Cévennes. This infidelity appeared so significant to him that he did not cease, for the space of three years, to groan before God and to ask Him with tears that He might be pleased to repair, by His infinite power, the harm that these poor souls suffered through his infidelities. But God, to purify him further, did not make it appear that He was granting such an assiduous and fervent prayer; on the contrary, He treated this afflicted soul with extreme rigor. He left His poor servant in such great darkness and aridity that it seemed all was lost for him. Thus, during the time of this mission, Jacques Olier had sensible consolations and graces only very rarely; he served his God only with fear and dryness, and he sustained himself only by the purity of faith. These crosses, borne with perfect resignation, attracted so many blessings upon the labors of our holy missionary that he later confessed he had never seen such in all the other missions where he had been employed. And nevertheless, they were all commonly followed by so many fruits that Saint Vincent de Paul said to him one day: "I do not know how you do it, but the blessing follows you everywhere you go."

He spent eighteen months in these provinces, during which he traveled through all the cantons of the dioceses of Clermont, Saint-Flour, and Le Puy. The clergy and the people took on a completely different face, and one saw canons, priors, and parish priests working, with holy emulation, to instruct the people, to hear the general confessions of the peasants, to give spiritual exercises to the priests, and to visit the hospitals. All took pride in serving God among the people. There was no one who was not delighted to see the modesty and piety with which the divine office was celebrated in the churches since the time of the mission, and so much veneration was conceived in these lands for Jacques Olier that a chapter disputed at court to ask the King that it might please Louis XIII to name him as their bishop. Even those who had persecuted him recognized their fault and came to greet him, bringing their families to receive his blessing.

This mission finished, he was delivered from all his pains; but, because the cross was to be his strength and his support, God immediately sent him a violent illness which he regarded as a precious reward and as an assured testimony that Our Lord had accepted his labors; he was, in three days, reduced to the extremity and in such a state that he did not feel the lancet blows that were driven into his shoulders. The assistants then noticed that, while giving no other sign of feeling or consciousness, he nevertheless responded to the holy names of Jesus and Mary, which clearly showed that these divine words were more penetrating than iron, and that his soul was more sensitive to the arrows of sacred love than to the most acute pains that surgical instruments can cause. His recovery was despaired of, despite the care taken by two skilled doctors who had arrived the day before his illness at the place where he was. Their remedies did not have the success one might have hoped for; they only irritated the malady and caused the patient to fall into apoplexy. Thus, he was indebted for the health he received a few days later only to help from above and to the vow he had made, in the first days of his illness, to visit the tomb of Saint Francis de Sales. Being perfectly healed, he returned to Paris and employed himself as before in conducting missions in the countryside. He gave the time he spent in the city to study, to the relief of the poor, and to the instruction of several young students, always having young men with him to form them early in the service of God.

He then felt strongly pressed to make a journey to Brittany and determined to do so in the absence of his director, fearing to fail the orders of the sovereign Master. The event showed that the Spirit of God was leading him there for the reform of a monastery of nuns, where the spirit of the world had become so established that it had banished all regularity and introduced strange divisions. Such a difficult undertaking could only succeed through extraordinary help from heaven. It was necessary for Jacques Olier to work as was his custom to obtain it through his humility and his sufferings, having found only rejections at first and having seen himself forced to take cover during the night in a very uncomfortable and unhealthy stable. The next day he preached with such force and unction that he brought back to their duty several of these poor girls, and ensured that fourteen nuns, out of the forty that there were, began to practice prayer and to live in community. Their example having then won over the others, good order was entirely re-established in this house and these girls lived thereafter in perfect union, giving much edification to all the people of these regions.

His work was rewarded with another illness that kept him in Brittany until the beginning of the year 1639 and gave him the leisure to strengthen this reform; he then returned to his ordinary exercises and to the missions, during one of which Cardinal de Richelieu wrote to him that the King had named him to the coadjutorship of the bishopric of Châlons-sur-Marne, and sent him the patent at the same time. Jacques Olier received this honor with much gratitude; but he could not persuade himself that God wanted him in this high dignity. Those from whom he took counsel, seeing this opposition, did not believe they should forc e him to act against cardinal de Richelieu Chief minister to Louis XIII who offered a bishopric to Olier. his attraction: thus he wrote to the Cardinal to thank him most humbly for the honor he had done him and to ensure that the King would name another person to fill this place. This refusal astonished everyone and caused extreme pain to his relatives, who could not appreciate such an extraordinary conduct, so opposed to the inclinations of nature; but the spirit of God, who wanted him to be useful to several provinces without being fixed to the service of a diocese, strengthened him against the talk of the world and against the reproaches of his kin, and, to reward the humble refusal he had made of the episcopal dignity, Providence gave him the means to leave several successors of his priesthood. Here is how the thing was accomplished:

The Reverend Father de Cond Père de Condren Superior General of the Oratory and spiritual director of Olier. ren, who was then General of the Congregation of the Oratory and who was no less zealous for the universal good of the Church than for the growth and perfection of his company, had long desired a community whose primary goal would be to form ecclesiastics and help them prepare for Holy Orders and priestly functions. This enlightened man saw that while missions were indeed an admirable means to draw people from ignorance and vice, he also understood that it was absolutely necessary for the good begun by the missions to be subsequently sustained by holy pastors and good priests, so that it would not dissipate, but rather be stable and permanent, following these words of Our Lord to his disciples: *Ponet vos ut eatis, et fructum afferatis, et fructus vester maneat*: "I have appointed you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." He one day communicated his desire and his views to several ecclesiastics of great merit whom he had under his direction, among whom was Olier, and exhorted them to unite together to form a seminary, according to the circumstances that Providence would provide for them; for God had not revealed to Father de Condren the time when this work was to be begun, nor the manner in which it was to be accomplished.

This proposal was well received by all these good priests. They united together for this design, and one of them, who was very capable and very pious, was chosen to be the superior; but divine Providence, whose views are infinitely higher than those of men, had chosen another. It wished to place as the foundation stone of this edifice a person who, besides human wisdom, acquired knowledge, and natural talents, possessed a light of grace, a celestial science, and extraordinary gifts; it was Jacques Olier whom it destined for this great enterprise. But, so that man might have less part in it and the work be attributed to grace alone, it kept him, during the two years that immediately preceded the establishment of the seminary, in a state of suffering and abjection so great that he who was to be the head of the others shortly after, seemed to be, during this time, the refuse of the world.

To make this state even more holy and meritorious, He willed that he should desire it as a grace and inspired him to make two requests, which could only be the effect of heroic virtue and a very pure love: the first, that it might please His divine Majesty to change into interior pains the trials he suffered from those who were bringing lawsuits against him; and the second, that He might take away the reputation he had, and remove from him the applause that accompanied him in all his employments. This very Christian prayer was answered immediately by the One who was its author and who had formed it in the heart of Jacques Olier: for, very shortly after, Our Lord seemed to withdraw His light and His gifts. He took away all those views of the beauty and goodness of God, which had previously made such violent assaults on his heart that he was obliged to relieve himself by crying out: "O love! O love!" all this, we say, eclipsed, and this holy priest had in place of these graces and lights only thick darkness and terrible views of the justice of an angry God. During all this time, he received from his sovereign Master only contempt and rejection. He could consider himself only as a reprobate and as the Judas of the Company with which he worked. He found no consolation among men; and when his director assured him that his fears and anxieties were trials from God and pains that would pass, he could not be persuaded; but he replied while shedding torrents of tears: "Ah! would to God that these were only pains, and that they could last for all eternity! I would not care at all, provided that I were not hated by God." All his labors for his neighbor seemed to him sterile and worthy of curse. Even the use of his natural talents was often taken from him during these two years, and it happened several times that, instead of speaking with the ease and eloquence that were ordinary to him, he found himself as if forbidden in the pulpit and in conversation: everything being taken from his mind and memory.

To these sufferings, men added their persecutions and their contempt. A thousand mockeries were made of him at court regarding the refusal of the coadjutorship of Châlons; persons eminent in dignity condemned his conduct, his friends abandoned him, and the ecclesiastics with whom he worked imagined that he regretted his refusal, and that the dejection of his face came from the regret he had at seeing himself removed from the dignities and pleasures of a comfortable life. As they noticed that he did not always have the same freedom in his functions, they observed him with some sort of distrust and made difficulty in employing him. Their conduct toward him even went so far that one of the most considerable among them told him more than once "that they had no need of him, and that he should only think of hiding himself in a hole." Finally, the demon getting involved, temptations of pride and self-love besieged him in such a way that he believed that these unhappy vices, for which he previously had an extreme aversion, were the principle and as it were the soul of all his actions: which caused him a strange affliction.

Such was the state to which Our Lord reduced His servant during these two years. Here are the dispositions with which he endured such a harsh martyrdom. During all this time, this faithful servant did not abandon prayer, nor the exercises of piety, nor the works of the mission. He was always perfectly exact in the smallest things; he never took offense at the bad treatment he received from his neighbor. He never grew weary of suffering; he never complained of the conduct that God kept toward him. He only said sometimes while sighing: "My God, you are much changed!" He even had the courage to abandon himself to God, to remain all his life in darkness; and the purity of his love was such that he offered himself with a good heart to endure the pains of hell for all eternity, if God were to find His glory in making him suffer them.

So much fidelity, so much courage, and so much love during such a hard trial could only be sources of extraordinary graces. Thus, although before these two years the virtue of Jacques Olier had appeared consumed, it must nevertheless be admitted that it became incomparably purer and more sublime than it had ever been. It was then that, God having raised him to an eminent degree of grace and holiness, Providence gave commencement to the work that it wished to entrust to him. The matter happened as we are about to report: This company of ecclesiastics with whom the Reverend Father de Condren had united Jacques Olier, after having continued the missions for some time, stopped at Chartres. They tried to establish a seminary there; but having stayed there eight months without anyone joining them, nor the enterprise having any success, they believed that the hour for this establishment had not yet come and that God reserved this work for another time; thus they judged that they should recommence the missions.

But at that very time when they were preparing to resume their first employments, and when several of them were in different provinces for various affairs, by a disposition of Providence, one of these good ecclesiastics came to Paris, and, in a conversation he had with a person of piety, he gave her an account of the design they had had and of what they had uselessly begun at Chartres. This person, greatly appreciating this work, was much afflicted that it had not succeeded; and, representing to this good priest that one should not abandon an enterprise that could be so useful to the glory of God and the good of the Church, she added that, by coming to live at Vaugirard, near Paris, they could assist at the offices of this parish, and occupy themselves in the house in instructing the ecclesiastics who addressed themselves to them. She even offered to provide, for some time, what would be necessary for the maintenance of the ecclesiastics, and finally made such great instances for this, that she obliged this good priest to write about it to those of his Company. Several of them did not want to listen to this proposal. Jacques Olier himself opposed it for quite a long time, and one could gain nothing from him, except that he would recommend this affair to Our Lord.

He retired, at the beginning of December of the year 1641, to a country house near Paris, to perform spiritual exercises there and ask for the light of heaven on the proposal that was being made to him. His prayers were effective; for he found himself, at the end of his retreat, so encouraged to work on this work and so assured of the protection and help of God, that he animated several of these good ecclesiastics to undertake the establishment of a seminary. He made, in this same month, a second retreat, where God confirmed him again in this design, filled him with the spirit that he was to inspire in the community that he was going to form, and, as he prayed for all those who had begun the seminary at Chartres, Our Lord made him know that there were some among them who were not called to this employment, and whom His Providence wished to use elsewhere. Those therefore who were not called to this work having withdrawn themselves, and Jacques Olier having been assured by very enlightened persons and by great servants of God that it was His will that he establish a seminary, he came to Vaugirard and rented a house there at the beginning of the year 1642.

God immediately gave such a blessing to this enterprise that, although our holy priest was lodged, with the ecclesiastics who had followed him, in one of the poorest houses of this village, although they inhabited a dwelling so small that it was necessary to make rooms in an old dovecote, although they lacked many conveniences, being reduced to living on what a person of piety gave them as alms, Vaugirard Location of the seminary's first establishment. all their revenues having been consumed by the expenses of the missions of the seminary of Chartres; nevertheless, from the first months, several persons considerable by their birth and by their piety came to range themselves beside them to form themselves in the virtues and ecclesiastical functions.

They were all under the guidance of Jacques Olier, whose instructions they listened to with admirable docility: for then his first lights were restored to him, and God communicated to him purer, more extensive, and more effective ones than He had done before. They therefore received with holy avidity the heavenly food he gave to their souls, and they did not let any of the words of life that came from his mouth be lost; but those who had been in his company the two previous years could only hear him with admiration. They had been witnesses to the state to which he had been reduced when words were taken from him at the time he wanted to exhort the people or converse with his neighbor, and then they heard him speak of God with such strength, explain the mysteries in such a sublime manner, and resolve with such ease the difficulties proposed to him, that they were in continual astonishment at such an extraordinary change. They were forced to admit that God spoke through His servant, and that He who had closed his mouth opened it for him to publish the wonders of His law.

They had not stayed four months at Vaugirard when divine Providence drew them from it to establish them in Paris; and, to show that it was His infinite wisdom that willed this establishment, He chose a means that had never come to the mind of Jacques Olier. M. de Fiesque, then pastor of Saint-Sulpice, being afflicted by the disorders of his parish, and annoyed by the opposition he found in several of the priests who were accustomed to it and resisted all his designs, conceived the thought of leaving his parish. As he had heard of the merit of Jacques Olier and the virtue of his ecclesiastics, he cast his eyes upon them for the execution of his design. He took the occasion of a procession that was being held from Saint-Sulpice to Vaugirard to ask someone from the seminary if there was no one in their company who wanted to take charge of his parish and exchange some benefice for his. This proposal, although it seemed advantageous for the design of Jacques Olier, was not listened to at first: our servant of God shunning enterprises that had brilliance, and each of the ecclesiastics fearing such a heavy burden. However, the pastor of Saint-Sulpice persisted in his thought, he made continual requests, he employed persons of piety, who represented to Jacques Olier that he should not neglect an opportunity that gave him entry into such an abundant harvest; finally, he omitted nothing of what he believed could engage him. Jacques Olier, being thus solicited, believed himself obliged to recommend this matter to Our Lord, to learn what His will was. After many prayers made to this end, he felt himself strengthened by grace; and, considering how much there was to work for in this vast parish for the glory of God, he decided to hear the proposals of M. de Fiesque and to accept this parish.

His resolution was opposed by his parents, who could not suffer that, having refused bishoprics, he should take charge of a parish. Several of his friends, fearing for his health, also wanted to dissuade him, telling him that he would not be able to serve such a large parish; but neither the one nor the other could prevent him from executing what he believed to be the will of God. The zeal he had for the glory of his Master and the perfect confidence he had in His help made him pass over all human considerations. He took possession of the parish of Saint-Sulpice in person in the month of August of the year 1642, and he began to clear this land, the greater part of which bore only brambles and thorns. The Faubourg Saint-Germain was then the sink, not only of all Paris, but of almost all of France; it served as a retreat for libertines, atheists, and all those who lived in disorder.

Jacques Olier, having to remedy so many evils, proposed first to bring his parishioners back to their duty, rather by his examples than by invectives and violent pursuits. He resolved for this to lead the holiest life possible, and he made an express vow to do so in the church of Notre-Dame de Paris, promising God to do, for the rest of his days, what he believed to be the most perfect. Secondly, he asked Our Lord for workers capable of helping him in his harvest. God having sent him a good number, he housed them with some of the priests he had brought from the seminary of Vaugirard; and, desiring to be perfectly united to his dear associates, he lived with them in community. He made himself the least among them and distinguished himself from his inferiors only by the greatness of his zeal and by his profound humility. He omitted nothing of all that could serve to establish them solidly in the practice of apostolic virtues. Among other dispositions, he desired in them a great detachment. He wanted them to demand nothing for the administration of the holy Viaticum, and to refuse absolutely everything that might be offered to them for the sacrament of Penance. He even carried this detachment to the point that he wanted all the contributions that his priests received from the people for the other services they rendered them to be put in common, and that each individual be content, according to the desire of the Apostle, to have his food and clothing: which has always been observed since that time. Thus, by a singular help of Providence, he formed a community that has never lacked subjects or priests, although they are not attracted by any interest, nor retained by any engagement, and has become a source of holiness and science for the diocese where it was established.

This community having grown in a very short time, he worked on the reform of his parish. It is impossible for us to report here all that this holy pastor did and all that he endured for this subject. He worked first on the conversion of the heretics, who were in very great number, having public controversies held, conversing in private with these poor strayed souls, preventing the assemblies of those who were not tolerated in the State, welcoming those who recognized their error, and providing for all their needs with a charity that never tired.

He undertook at the same time the instruction of the Catholics, to most of whom the Gospel had to be announced almost entirely anew. He established several catechisms in his parish church, and the multitude of people of all ages, who came to receive the bread of the word of God, which the ecclesiastics broke for them, filling the banquet hall, this good father of a family sent his ministers into the squares and streets, a small bell in hand, to assemble in the different quarters of the faubourg the children of the faithful, and to instruct them in all that could contribute to their sanctification. These instructions were given every Sunday and feast day of the year, and they were multiplied up to three and four times a week, when it was necessary to prepare the people for confirmation, confession, and communion. He employed many other means to bring into all families the knowledge of the mysteries of our religion and the principles of Christian morality and piety.

He also re-established the majesty of the divine offices and the worship of the most holy Eucharist, sparing neither effort nor expense for this subject; he had the altars of the church redone, the sacristy furnished with ornaments, and provided with sacred vessels, having found there, when he entered, only three silver chalices.

Duels were so frequent in his parish that one counted up to seventeen people who, in the same week, perished in these wretched combats. This holy pastor did his best to remedy this disorder by the strength of his exhortations and by the firmness of his conduct; and finally, he persuaded several lords of great spirit and very generous to make together a solemn protest not to give or accept any challenge, and not to serve any friend who wanted to fight. These lords made it authentically on a day of Pentecost, and observed their resolution so faithfully that their example was followed by many, even before the authority of Louis XIII had stopped the course of this disorder, which was until then so common.

He also abolished several superstitious irregularities that had been introduced into different trade guilds; and, to give them in their place the principles and practices of Christian piety, taking occasion from the assemblies of their confraternities, he deputed one of his ecclesiastics to dispose them to celebrate their feasts devoutly and above all to prepare them to make a good general confession of their whole life.

In the desire he had to banish vice from his parish, he used such vigilance and employed so prudently the authority of the magistrates that he purged, before the troubles of Paris, almost the entire faubourg of the bad places that were found there, and which were only re-established later by the disorder of the wars. One cannot imagine the care he took to withdraw from irregularity the poor creatures who inhabited these infamous places, nor the expenses he incurred to place them in houses of piety, and the patience he had in enduring their relapses.

He also turned his thoughts to helping his parishioners in their bodily needs, and it is in this that he showed the greatness of his charity and his zeal: one cannot report all that he did for the poor, but mainly for the "shamefaced" poor. He took note of their necessities through the general and private visits that he had made to them and that he very often paid them in person; he anticipated their needs, he liberally distributed his income to them, and, to give them even more abundant help, he established in his parish an assembly for the relief of the shamefaced poor. Several considerable persons were present twice a month at these assemblies and then provided, with admirable order, for the needs of the poor families, according to the rules he had prescribed for them. The example of these persons of piety was followed by many others, and similar assemblies were instituted in some parishes of the city. Although all these external cares were great, they were nevertheless little in comparison with the interior application in which he was almost continually, to ask God for the help necessary for those he had under his guidance.

While he was thus occupied in the service of the parish, he did not cease to work for the establishment of his seminary, knowing well that God had not drawn him from the work of the missions, where he was bearing such great fruit, only to apply him to the government of a parish, however large it might be. He always carried in his heart the desire to form priests who, spreading into all the dioceses, would sustain the work of the missions. This is why, as soon as he was provided with the cure and had called to him the ecclesiastics who were at Vaugirard, he applied some to the service of the parish and others to the conduct of this Company. He was not content with giving holy rules and virtuous directors to the persons who retired there; he also wished, however occupied he might be otherwise, to occupy himself with forming them and preparing them to receive the holy Orders worthily.

To make this work stable, he worked to strengthen it through the king's letters patent and the authority of ecclesiastical superiors. But however holy this project was, it did not fail to encounter much opposition. Here is finally how the affair succeeded after an infinity of setbacks. He was notified that Mgr de Corneillan, Bishop of Rodez, wished to resign his bishopric in his favor, and that the Queen Regent approved of this change. This news gave him no less trouble than he had felt when the same honor had been offered to him; but as he doubted whether this was not a means that Providence was offering him for the execution of his enterprise, he resolved to go and find the Abbot of Saint-Germain, upon whom depended the establishment he was pursuing, to assure him that, if his services were agreeable to him, and if he found it good that he should work in the faubourg, he would not think at all of the proposal that was being made to him regarding this bishopric; that if, on the contrary, he did not judge him useful in the parish, he would withdraw, having nothing more at heart than to follow the orders of Providence and to undertake nothing against the will of his superiors. The Abbot, admiring his humility and his zeal, assured him of his protection and promised to support his design in everything that depended on him; which he did effectively. Thus the seminary, the erection of which seemed impossible because of the extreme difficulties that had been formed against it, was solidly established about two years after Jacques Olier had taken possession of the cure of Saint-Sulpice.

Hardly was this affair concluded when new crosses, greater than the preceding ones, befell him. Some persons, some of whom were angry that their disorders were being corrected by their pastor, and others who desired that the cure of Saint-Sulpice should fall into the hands of one of their relatives, ensured that the one who had so pressed Jacques Olier to relieve him of this cure would want to return to it, claiming that the benefice that had been given to him in its place was not of the quality or the income that he had been led to believe. Seditious persons, having spread this rumor among the populace, and having cried out that an injustice was being done to their former pastor, stirred up wretches who, having armed themselves with whatever they found at hand, came in a crowd to the room of the man of God, dragged him out with violence, tore his surplice to pieces, loaded him with blows, and dragged him shamefully into the middle of the street, where they only left him alive to go and profit from the pillage that the other seditious people were committing in his house. Some of his friends, to put him in safety, obliged him to retire to the Palais d'Orléans. However, the affair having been brought to the parliament, he was immediately re-established, by decree, in the enjoyment of his cure. But on the same day of this re-establishment, the seditious, recommencing their violence, endeavored to break down the doors of the presbytery, to scale the walls, and to set fire to it; and their fury was so great that it could only be stopped by the force of some companies of the regiment of guards, which the queen had the kindness to send there. Finally, at the end of forty days, this squall subsided through the readiness of Jacques Olier to give much more than had been asked of him.

Throughout this time of persecution, the peace of his heart was not at all troubled: he showed those who loaded him with blows only extreme gentleness and an example of charity. When he learned that they wanted to punish the seditious and make an exemplary punishment of them, he used all his credit to exempt them, casting the blame on himself; and finally he found himself in such great calm, in the midst of so many storms, that having entered the church of Notre-Dame while going to solicit his judges, he stopped there for two hours and remained all that time as if motionless in prayer.

It is true that this persecution was not unforeseen by him: God had prepared him for this blow long before, having made him know, when he entered the cure, that he would be driven out of it shamefully before three years had passed. An ecclesiastic even of his community had learned of it, six months before it happened, from two persons to whom God had manifested it, and Jacques Olier had told some of his priests that they must prepare themselves for a great cross that Our Lord was to send them. God did not leave the labors and sufferings of his servant without reward; for, for the atrocious insults and calumnies that had been vomited against him, He gave him the esteem and general approval of all his parishioners; because he had not wanted to listen to those who urged him to leave a cure that gave him so much fatigue, He rewarded him with such great strength and such perfect health that he subsequently did more things in one day than he could have done before in several; and because he had not wanted to take vengeance for all the violence that had been done to him, divine justice took charge of it, either by obliging several of his persecutors to publish his virtues, or by punishing the others with terrible chastisements.

When he saw himself delivered from this persecution, he profited from the peace he enjoyed and the confidence that the most considerable persons of his parish had in him, to establish good order there, to lead his dear people to virtue, and to lead to a high and solid perfection chosen souls whom God addressed to him. Indeed, he won over to Our Lord persons of all conditions, magistrates, lords of the court, and ladies of the highest quality, so that one saw them applying themselves every day to mental prayer and spiritual reading, having a set hour to visit the Most Holy Sacrament at his parish each week, taking exact care of their servants for the temporal and the spiritual, regulating their table and their retinue according to the laws of Christian modesty, working to settle the disputes of their neighborhood, and giving themselves to works of charity with such zeal and self-abnegation that, visiting the sick and the poor, they rendered them very abject services and were led by a Christian generosity to actions for which the inclination of nature gave them extreme repugnance.

Having worked so usefully for some years since his re-establishment, the troubles of Paris arose: although the whole city was stirred up, one did not see any barricades in the faubourg Saint-Germain, as there were in several other quarters: the inhabitants of the parish of Saint-Sulpice showing then, by their submission and their fidelity to the service of the king, how much they had profited in solid piety from the instructions of their holy pastor. It was in this time of war and famine that Jacques Olier made his confidence in God, his charity for the poor, his ardent zeal for the good of the State, in a word all his virtues, appear more than ever. After having adored divine justice and submitted to it with perfect resignation, he began to perform extraordinary austerities every day to appease the anger of God; he powerfully exhorted his people to penance, he assembled them every evening before the Most Holy Sacrament to ask for mercy from Our Lord, and he himself often spent the nights in prayer before the tabernacle. Finally, he opened his heart and his hands to all the poor, but with such tenderness and profusion that, if he appeared very liberal at other times, he passed for a prodigal in this one. Although the number of the poor grew every day, he never tired of assisting them. He had bread, soup, wood, coal, linen, clothes, and tools distributed to them; he had them continually visited by a priest of the seminary, who ended his life in this work; he also employed a layman of great piety for these visits, and these two persons went together to provide at the same time for all their needs, both bodily and spiritual. He also had several general visits made of all the poor families, where in each visit nearly two thousand livres were distributed.

His alms and those of his parishioners not being sufficient for so many necessities, he sought new help for his poor sheep outside of Paris. He went to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where the court was, to make a collection there, and even went there on foot, although one could not leave the city without extreme peril, and the roads were so covered with snow that one often sank into it up to the waist. God blessed the zeal that animated him, and, having preserved him from several accidents, He returned him to his parish, to which he brought a considerable alms.

The charity of this good pastor was not limited to the relief of his parishioners; it extended even to all those who came from the countryside to take refuge in the faubourg. Going through the streets one day, he met a young girl who asked him for alms and let him know that she had come to Paris to put her honor and her life in safety; after having given her alms, he reflected on the peril in which she was and in which many others found themselves, and took the resolution, although he was shown the extreme difficulty of this new enterprise, to assemble all the poor girls who came from the countryside, to draw them out of danger. He rented a house for this purpose, where he took in more than two hundred of them; he fed them there as long as the troubles lasted, and, having as much care for their souls as for their bodies, he had them make a mission to instruct them in the principal duties of Christianity and teach them to make good use of their misery. He had the same charity for a large number of nuns of different Orders, whom he had live in community in a house that he had bequeathed to them, and to whom he had them observe a common rule, as much as the diversity of their institutes could permit, to prevent the commerce of the world from making them lose the spirit of their vocation, and he provided them, both for the temporal and for the spiritual, with everything that was necessary to establish good order in the house. He also took care of several English and Irish people who had taken refuge in France, and of whom there were a good number in the faubourg. Finally, nothing escaped his charity, and it never said: It is enough. And to satisfy those who represented to him the inability he was in to provide for so many things, he replied that, in affairs that were of the will of God and that concerned the relief of one's neighbor, one only had to begin and that Providence never failed those who had confidence in its help.

The troubles of 1649 and 1652 having ceased, and after having served his parish for about ten years amidst the hardships and labors that the disorders of the faubourg, the violence of his enemies, the misfortune of wars, and above all the ardor of his zeal caused him to endure, Our Lord wished to relieve him of this burden, according to the assurance He had given him several years earlier, by revealing to him that he would be a parish priest for only ten years. One of his ecclesiastics, who was informed of this revelation, seeing this term almost expired, took the liberty of saying to him: "Monsieur, the ten years are soon passed, and yet there is no appearance that you are to leave your parish so soon." Jacques Olier replied to him: "It is for God to verify His words and for us to abandon ourselves to His guidance without any turning back upon ourselves." A few weeks after this answer, and towards the feast of Saint Barnabas, he was attacked by a continuous fever so violent that his recovery was despaired of, and he was administered the last sacraments. In this final extremity, he resigned his parish into the hands of the Abbot of Saint-Germain, who conferred it upon M. de Bretonvilliers, who took possession of it on June 29 of the year 1652. Our holy priest then predicted to a person who came to see him that he would not die of this illness, and at the same time reproved her for an omission she had made which could not have been known to anyone, as she later declared. His prediction was verified soon after; for the fever left him, and, on August 22 of the same year, he was in a condition to go to the countryside.

This journey, which he undertook only for the restoration of his health, was an occasion for him to do several important things for the glory of God. He had already established seminaries in Paris, Nantes, and Viviers; he then established a fourth at Le Puy-en-Velay, at the request of the bishop and his chapter. His ecclesiastics there gave the example of a marvelous detachment: for the deanery of the cathedral of Le Puy, which was one of the most considerable benefices, having become vacant, and the bishop having offered it to the superior of the seminary, representing to him that this dignity would put him in a position to do greater good in the diocese, this humble superior would never accept it, maintaining on the contrary that he would be much more useful to the clergy if he took no benefices and if he continued to serve the diocese without interest. Another from the same house, to whom the bishop later offered this benefice, gave the same answer; which made it known to what degree of disinterestedness Jacques Olier carried his disciples.

After this establishment, he wished to procure for the Vivarais a general mission, of which this country had an extreme need. For this purpose, he brought in missionaries from various places, whom he sent into all the regions of this province to preach the Gospel there, and, by this means, he re-established in various places, and especially in Privas, the exercise of the Catholic religion, which had been banished from there for more than thirty years. And, in order to give its inhabitants more respect for our mysteries, he obliged one of his ecclesiastics, of high quality and highly regarded in the country, to take charge of the parish, and engaged another to conduct primary schools there for the children, in order to cast into their minds the seeds of religion along with the knowledge of letters. Finally, he omitted nothing to re-establish faith and piety in these places which were entirely abandoned.

Being back in Paris, he worked tirelessly to perfect the souls that God had entrusted to his guidance. But the following year, when he was in the forty-fourth year of his age, and when it was hoped that the Church would still receive great services from his zeal, he fell into apoplexy and became paralyzed on half of his body. God was leading him through this cross to a state of grace and holiness more sublime than all those through which he had passed, and He wanted him to attract through his sufferings abundant blessings upon the works with which he was charged. This illness was accompanied by such strange pains of spirit and such great dryness that it is impossible to express them. In this state, nevertheless, his heart and his spirit always tended toward God. He never sought consolation in creatures, and when one wished to give him some recreation, although very innocent, he deprived himself of it or skillfully diverted it; often he even said with great gentleness to those who brought him to these diversions that "a Christian must be dead to all things of the earth."

Having received, in the spring of the year 1654, some small relief in his ailments, he did not fail to employ, for the service of the Church, this little strength that he had just recovered. It was with this view that he believed he should yield to the insistent prayers that several persons had made to him to bring to light some of the books he had composed. He sent some time later some of his ecclesiastics to Clermont in Auvergne, to establish a seminary there. He gave others to help a colony of French people who were going to Montréal French colony in New France supported by Olier. inhabit the city of Montreal, in New France, and to work at the same time for the conversion of the savages. This establishment has been very useful to the French and to the natives of the country, a considerable number of whom have embraced the faith and have constantly professed it; which gives great reason to hope that these barbarian nations, who appeared for so many years quite incapable of being strengthened in our religion, will finally submit perfectly to the amiable yoke of Jesus Christ, being instructed and guided by the ecclesiastics of Saint-Sulpice, who try to imitate in this the zeal of the Reverend Fathers of the Society of Jesus, who perform in that country, as well as everywhere else, the functions of true apostles.

Since Jacques Olier had been attacked by paralysis, the doctors ordered him to go every year to the waters of Bourbonne; he took the occasion from there to visit several churches, where the most holy Virgin was particularly honored; he also used these journeys to inspire in several ecclesiastics a great zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, and to give still great aid to the poor provinces he passed through. The least of his cares was that of his health, and he would never have sought these reliefs if he had not regarded the order of the doctors as a sign of the will of God; he was so dead to the desire to live that he asked incessantly of Our Lord that it might please Him to withdraw him from this exile. One heard him say very often: "When will the moment come that will consume our sacrifice and that will deal the final blow to the victim?"

The hope of the blessed life made up all his consolation, and he made it well known by his speech and by all his conduct; for it often escaped him to say: "Ah! dear eternity! you are not far." And as one day an ecclesiastic, to give him some recreation, wanted to give him some news, he closed his mouth immediately, telling him that "that did not have the taste of eternity." The spirit of God carried him continually to a universal deprivation of all things; he was so faithful in following its movements that, during these three years of infirmity and languor, he did not even want to have anyone come into his room to keep him company; but he contented himself with receiving those whom Providence sent him, and he declared three days before his death, to a priest whom he cherished extremely in Our Lord and to whom God had closely united him for the accomplishment of the works with which he was charged, that if he had deprived himself for some months of his frequent conversation, it was not that he had received from him any subject of dissatisfaction; but because, hoping to taste divine consolations soon in eternity, he had believed he should renounce all those that men could give him on earth.

After the servant of God had thus spent these last three years in deprivations, illnesses, and interior pains, during which he did not cease to work much for the Church and to practice all sorts of virtues, Our Lord made it known to him that He had heard his prayers and that He would soon withdraw him from this world. He even indicated to him that it would be towards the feast of Easter of the year 1657; which caused that, on the first day of Lent, he said to his successor in the parish of Saint-Sulpice that one must prepare for death, and that at Easter they would see each other no more. The assurance he had of being delivered at this time from the miseries of this life increased much his devotion towards the mystery of the resurrection, and he always had, for the rest of his life, the image of it imprinted in his mind. Towards the end of Lent, he was attacked again by a slight apoplexy: which happened on March 26, to which the feast of the Annunciation had been transferred; but this accident not having taken away his consciousness, he did not cease to serve his neighbor according to his power, speaking to several persons from the outside for the salvation of their souls, and even revealing to them very secret things that they alone could know, as they have since assured. He also entertained for quite a long time an ecclesiastic of the seminary, giving him notable instructions and exhorting him above all never to conduct himself by the maxims of human prudence, but to act in the simplicity of faith; he testified to him that he had confidence that God would sustain the seminary he had begun, because he was leaving it in the hands and under the protection of the most holy Virgin, who had given so many evident marks of the love and care she had for this work. Having spent Holy Week in these occupations, and having been confessed and communicated, he lost his speech on Holy Saturday and was seized by a drowsiness, from which having returned several times and having received the Extreme Unction with perfect consciousness and great devotion, he finally expired on Monday, April 2, 1657, at five o'clock in the evening, aged forty-eight years, six months, and twelve days. His death was followed closely by that of several ecclesiastics of the seminary, just as he had predicted, by saying that he would not go alone, although at that time there was not one sick among all those who died shortly after.

We could make known here a quantity of extraordinary lights and graces that this holy priest received from God during his life, and then show what use he made of his gifts and with what fidelity he responded to his graces; but the brevity of this summary not allowing us to embrace so many things, we will content ourselves with reporting some of the practices of virtue that were ordinary to this great man, which, being surer marks of a solid piety, will also be of greater utility to the readers.

His firmness in faith, which is the foundation of Christian virtues, appeared in the inviolable attachment he always maintained for the doctrine of the Church, and in the distance he kept from new opinions, of which he could not even suffer himself to be suspected in the least: for his zeal for the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline and for the reform of morals having given occasion to some ill-informed persons to publish that he was inspiring his company with an affection for novelties, he immediately wished to justify himself publicly of this calumny. And although he foresaw well that he could not declare himself against the new doctrines without attracting powerful enemies and causing himself very troublesome affairs, he did not fail to explain clearly what his true sentiments were, and to testify on all occasions his perfect submission to the decisions of the Church. His faith was so lively that it was the soul of the rule of all his conduct. In all his actions he had for a motive some view that faith proposed to him and that he drew from the doctrine of Jesus Christ. And, to accustom his disciples to this practice, he often asked them: "By what view of faith do you perform this action?" He looked at God in all things; if he approached the great, he honored in them the greatness of God; if he submitted to superiors, he obeyed God in their persons; if he dealt with his neighbor, he considered God reigning in souls, or who wished to prepare a throne for Himself there. If his inferiors rendered him some service, he looked at God helping him by means of His creatures. In a word, all things were to him veils or copies of the Divinity. He never saw the beauties of the countryside without using them to make himself think of the beauties and perfections of God, and one never spoke to him of great buildings without him reminding them that faith teaches us that they will all be reduced to dust, and that we must seek a permanent dwelling that is not found on earth; but what he had most at heart was to close his eyes to all sensible being, to contemplate invisible things. He said one day to one of his ecclesiastics who, during a trip, wanted to point out a beautiful house to him: "Ah! Monsieur, what are you amusing yourself with? If we had a lively faith, we would not deign to look at all these things." And as a person of quality asked him what he was occupied with while alone and infirm, he replied with these beautiful words of a great martyr: *Nihil de his quæ videntur desiderare*, that is to say, "to desire nothing of what strikes the eyes." He even made a trip of eight hundred leagues without wishing to consider any of the curiosities that ordinarily stop the eyes of travelers. Finally, his faith was so pure that he had no desire for sensible tastes, extraordinary lights, visions, and revelations; he said that to lean on these sorts of favors and lights, rather than on the practice of Christian virtues, was a very perilous illusion; and that to desire them was a great weakness, a blamable curiosity, and a kind of infidelity, since one showed that one was not well persuaded that God had sufficiently provided for His children by giving them faith.

His trust in God was perfect: he relied solely on Him in all his actions. In the easiest affairs, where men could do the most, he did not count on their help. In the most difficult, and where he was abandoned by everyone, he never became discouraged. It is in this trust that he never deviated, in his actions and in his counsels, from what he saw to be most pleasing to Our Lord, although often persons of authority opposed it and used threats to turn him away from it. He said on this subject that being assured that God can dissipate all these clouds in a moment, and make of our greatest persecutors our most faithful friends, one must never hesitate to do His holy will. This same virtue established him in a profound peace in the midst of the most violent persecutions, even when he saw himself deprived of persons who were most necessary to him to support the works he had undertaken. However, this trust did not make him omit anything that depended on his care for the advancement of the works with which Providence charged him, even though he was assured of success. He looked at this trust as the firmest support and the most solid foundation of his Company: "If I could," he said to his ecclesiastics, "leave you this trust and this support in God, what graces and treasures I would leave you! Nothing would be lacking to you either for the interior or for the exterior. We will have everything," he added, "if we have trust in God; but on the contrary, in proportion as we lack trust, God will withdraw His help."

All his discourses and all his actions were proofs of his ardent love for God; for he spoke of Him on every occasion, whether in the visits he paid to the great, or in familiar conversations, and in treating of affairs as well as in recreation; he never failed to mingle something of God in them and which could inspire His love, but in a manner that did not bother anyone and that did not disturb the gaiety of the conversation. Those who approached him noticed in him such a fullness of the divine Spirit that they left all filled with the desire to serve Our Lord. But if his words made his charity toward God appear, it shone forth much more in his actions and in the labors he undertook for His glory, and above all in the interior pains he endured for more than eight years without ever relaxing in the service of God or tiring of being faithful to Him. His love carried him even further: for, not contenting himself with enduring patiently what God sent him, he crucified his flesh by all sorts of mortifications, and he made himself faithful to sacrifice ceaselessly all the desires of the old man by a continual abnegation of himself. Finally, his love wanting no limits, he promised, nearly fifteen years before his death, to always do what he would believe to be the most perfect; and he was so faithful to it that he preferred to expose himself to incurring the disgrace of some very powerful persons, and to deprive the seminary of Saint-Sulpice of the sum of eighty thousand livres that was offered to him, rather than to execute a thing that he could do without sin, but that he knew not to be according to the greatest perfection.

His charity for his neighbor corresponded to the love he had for his God; he cherished tenderly all the servants of Jesus Christ, and did not know what it was to be jealous of the good that others do; he had a great respect and a singular affection for religious; he lived in a perfect union with them, served them with joy, employed them willingly, and helped them with his means as much as it was in his power.

He had particular ties with the Reverend Fathers of the Oratory and with the priests of the Mission; he looked at them as his fathers; he was only a small shoot of these two great trees, and the ecclesiastics of Saint-Sulpice went to glean and gather some ears of corn after these worthy harvesters.

He worked above all to establish a perfect charity in the heart of his disciples; he urged them to live together with much simplicity and with a perfect cordiality, so that they might all have but one heart and one soul, being all consumed in our Savior: *Ut sint consummati in unum*. He taught them this doctrine by his examples as much as by his words; for one has never seen anyone more affable, more open, more ready to serve everyone, nor more tender toward the needs and miseries of his neighbor than he. This is the testimony rendered by those who saw him deal with his neighbor and who accompanied him in the visits he paid to the sick.

His charity extending thus to everyone, it could not fail to make itself felt by the poor; in effect, he cherished them so much that he seemed to have a father's heart for them, and he helped them with such assiduity that one would have said he had solely consecrated himself to their service. For, without speaking of the charity and application with which he instructed them on every occasion, it was ordinary for him to serve them at table and to eat their leftovers, and to kiss their feet. When he could not approach them, he prostrated himself in spirit at their feet, honoring and cherishing them as the members of Jesus Christ. Sometimes, in his travels, he had their burdens put in his carriage; other times he pressed them to mount his horse, and, having met one on a dung heap, all full of vermin, he took charge of him, having himself helped by one of his ecclesiastics to carry him across the city to the hospital. He was more than liberal in helping them, and often people of the world treated his alms as prodigalities. A very virtuous layman, who served him in the visits to the poor, declared that Jacques Olier had never refused him what he had asked for the poor and that he even gave more than one desired and often without one asking him. One day when he was asked to give a pistole to help a family, he said: "It is not enough," and he gave three. Meeting on a trip a man who was being led to prison, he inquired about the subject of his imprisonment, and as he learned that it was because this man found himself indebted for sixty crowns, he had them given on the spot and delivered him. In one of his missions that he did in Auvergne, he spent up to sixteen thousand francs for the maintenance of the missionaries and mainly for the relief of the poor.

His persecutors did not experience the effects of his charity any less than his best friends. Far from having any resentment against them, he showered them with honor and benefits. One of those who had stirred up against him the sedition of which we have spoken, having fallen ill by a visible punishment from the hand of God, he visited him with more assiduity and demonstrations of charity than any other of his parishioners. Another person, who had cruelly slandered him, having a troublesome affair, our servant of God employed intercessors to solicit for her, and as they asked him what they should say to the judges, he replied: "Say, I pray you, that it is a person to whom I have great obligations."

His religion did not yield to his charity; the expenses he made on every occasion and in so many places to inspire respect for holy things; the sentiments he had on the ceremonies of the Church and which are seen in his books, and the sovereign respect with which he studied the holy Scriptures, are testimonies of the greatness of his zeal for divine worship, and show how perfect his religion was.

It is not easy to express what his devotion was toward Our Lord in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist; he was not content with paying Him frequent visits and going to the feet of the altars to receive His blessing there, every time he left the house or returned to it; it did not suffice for him either to do the same thing in all his travels, not stopping at the inn without having been to the church to adore this august sacrament there; he would have still wished to spend all his life before the tabernacles where Jesus Christ resides, and to be consumed there like a living lamp in the presence of his God. In effect, he remained there all the time that was possible for him. Three or four hours could not satisfy his devotion. It was there that he relaxed from his fatigues and that he spent his days of rest. He said that, when apostolic workers were burdened with years and worn out by the work they had undertaken for the salvation of their neighbor, they should rest at the feet of the tabernacles and finish their days near their good Master. He envied the employment of the ecclesiastics destined to ring the little bell when the most holy Sacrament is carried to the sick, and he has a thousand times wished that he were free to attach himself to this function, to be more often in the company of his Savior and to have occasion to prepare the ways for Him and to excite the people to the adoration of a God hidden under the sacramental species. He had no less eagerness to unite himself to this divine Savior by holy communion. He offered the most holy sacrifice every day, but with such devotion that he inspired it in those present. His infirmities could not prevent him from mounting the altar, if they were not very considerable. If the doctors, fearing that the application might be too prejudicial to him, advised him to spend some days without communicating, this deprivation was more sensible to him than all the pains of the illness. This having been recognized by those who were near him, notwithstanding his silence and his submission, they judged it more appropriate to give him this divine food, so as not to diminish his strength and increase his ills, than to refuse it to him. Finally, the great desire of our servant of God was to establish in all places the worship of this adorable sacrament, and when he founded the seminary and took charge of the parish of Saint-Sulpice, he had mainly in view to form priests who could carry everywhere the knowledge and love of this august mystery, for the honor of which he would have wished to give his life and shed his blood.

It would require long discourses if one wished to report all the duties he rendered to the most holy Virgin, to testify to her his respect and his love. One can say that all that a child of good nature can do for a good mother, he did for the Mother of God. There is no considerable place of devotion in France consecrated to the worship of the blessed Virgin that he could visit, where he has not been several times and often enough on foot. All his travels began and ended with the visit of a church of Our Lady, and he never failed to salute this divine Mother when he left the house or when he had returned to it. All the time he gave himself to take a little rest after the labors of the missions was consecrated to the Mother of God, for he employed it in some pilgrimage that he made in her honor. Each day he recited his rosary and he made this prayer with such ardor and recollection that he found in it a great relief in his pains and a fertile source of graces and blessings. But his great devotion was to offer Jesus Christ on the altar in the intentions of his most holy Mother; he never missed it on Saturdays, having, besides that, three masses celebrated each day in her honor. If one asked him for alms in the name of the holy Virgin, he never refused it, and he borrowed rather than not grant what one asked of him. If he had something of value, it was as if impossible for him not to give it for the ornament of one of the chapels where she was honored, and what he received even for his own use, he always offered to this holy Mother, praying her not to suffer that he use it to offend her Son, for he feared nothing so much as to do something or to keep in his heart the least affection that could offend the eyes of Jesus and Mary.

His joy was extreme when he could speak of the greatness of the Queen of heaven, and he did it with so many blessings, whether in public or in private, that his listeners were all penetrated with respect and love for this holy Princess. As he knew that all the greatness of Mary comes from Jesus, and that the Son of God had no more agreeable dwelling on earth than the bosom of his Mother, he occupied himself with a singular consolation with Jesus living and residing in the most holy Virgin; he considered Him there as in his throne, where He makes seen the treasures of His riches, the brilliance of His beauty, and the glory of His divine life. "What is there more sweet," he said, "and more agreeable to Jesus Christ, than to see Himself sought in the place of His delights, on the throne of graces and in the midst of this furnace of holy love?" He had for a maxim that he who wished to ask for graces or render his duties to Jesus Christ could not succeed better than by the intercession of his most holy Mother; that it was through her that one had access to Jesus, and through Jesus to the Father. He tried to communicate these same sentiments to all those who approached him, mainly to the ecclesiastics, for he was persuaded that priests, belonging particularly to Jesus Christ and having the honor of producing Him on the altars, must imitate with more care the virtues of her who gave Him to the world, and be more attached than others to the service of this holy Virgin, who had the happiness of pleasing Him above all creatures. This is why he wished that all the ecclesiastics of his company make a particular profession of honoring the Queen of angels and of men, and that they look at her as the Lady and the singular Protectress of the seminary.

His devotion for the Mother of God gave him a respect and a love all particular for saint Joseph, the spouse of this most holy Virgin, and for saint John the Evangelist, who was given to her in the place of her divine Son. He honored also with a singular affection several other Saints, among others, saint Francis of Paola, whose Third Order he embraced and whom he often went to pray to in his church of Nigeon-lez-Paris, having a profound respect for the humility of this great Saint, who wished to be called the least of all men, and thanking him, with much gratitude, for having made the Mother of God honored in this church, under the name of Our Lady of all graces.

His prayer was continual; he raised himself incessantly to God in all his actions, and he could not suffer the conduct of those who, under the pretext of having been a little recollected in the morning, spend the rest of the day without almost thinking of God. However continual his application to Our Lord was, he did not fail to give it a set time every day. Since he had made a particular profession of serving God, he never omitted to make an hour of prayer, every morning, whatever business he had. Three or four years later, he added a half-hour in the evening; and in the following, he found himself so attached to this holy exercise that, not contenting himself with employing regularly two hours every day in it, he consecrated to it also on the great feasts all the time that his other indispensable obligations left him free. In effect, his love for prayer went to this point, that the days of rest and recreation were for him only days of prayer. One has seen him ordinarily in his pilgrimages, which have been very frequent, spend eight or ten hours of the day on his knees and immobile at the feet of the altars. Finally, the day appearing to him too short for this amiable occupation, he very often gave a great part of the night to it, and even entire nights, which he spent before the most holy Sacrament of the altar. He made the spiritual exercises every year, and he was so careful not to lose anything of these days of salvation, that not having been able to make them during two years, because of the continual labors of the missions, the third year, he made three retreats of ten days in six weeks of time. He used the same for his ordinary prayers; for whatever business he could have, he always found the means to employ in prayer the time that he had prescribed for himself for this exercise.

All the employments he had during his life and all his actions are testimonies of his zeal for the salvation of souls; he counted for nothing his goods, his honor, his rest, his health, and his life itself, when it was a question of helping and consoling them. One day, having learned that a person whose conduct he had had was beginning to relax in the service of God, he prepared himself immediately to make a trip of a hundred leagues to go find her, in order to make her return to her good path, and he would have executed it without a great illness that stopped him. He was near to going to Tong-King, where one spoke of sending ecclesiastics, if some very enlightened persons whom he consulted had not assured him that God asked for him in France. But the strongest movements of his zeal have been for the clergy and for the sanctification of ecclesiastics. He looked at them as the most illustrious portion of the flock of Jesus Christ and as his dear heritage: he believed he was serving the whole Church by serving them; and it is for that that he made no difficulty of leaving the missions, where he found so much taste and so many blessings, to consecrate the rest of his days and his greatest labors to the instruction of priests.

He carried the practice of obedience to this point that, not only did he obey his superiors and his directors with a perfect submission and an entire fidelity, but that he submitted himself also to his inferiors, obliging them often to give him counsel and to determine him on what he had to do; which he did not by ceremony, but by the distrust that he had of his own spirit and by a great desire to renounce his will; for he was accustomed to say that he who only takes advice and obeys to save appearances externally, and not by conviction of the need he has to be led, is not possessed of the spirit of God.

This distrust of his own spirit was rewarded with a heavenly discretion and prudence in the conduct of souls. His light was admirable to discern the designs of God on them, to mark out for them exactly the ways in which they should walk, and to discover to them all that could put an obstacle to their advancement. He took his time so well for the advice he had to give, that his words always carried their blow and were never without effect. Often even, by an extraordinary gift of God, he penetrated the bottom of hearts and declared to persons who consulted him the thoughts they had had, although they were very singular and they had not communicated them to anyone whatsoever.

A young demoiselle, who had resolved by his counsel to enter the Carmelites, having gone to the Course, was extremely shaken in her resolution, the demon having put into her mind that she could well save herself in the world; from the next morning Jacques Olier, to whom God had made known her temptation, said to her, without her speaking to him of anything: "My daughter, it is not a question of if you will save yourself as well in the world as with the Carmelites; it is a question of accomplishing the will of God"; which made such a great impression of grace on this shaken heart that, from the next day, without hesitating anymore, she entered into this religious house.

Humility was his dear virtue, and he possessed it in such a high degree that, looking at himself as the servant of everyone and as the last of men, he did not receive service from anyone except with an extreme confusion, and served on the contrary the others in the lowest offices with an incomparable joy. In a great trip that he made with some of his seminary, he did not wish that one take the valet, because he wished himself to be the valet of the whole company. In effect, he performed the functions of it during all the road, despite the resistance of these honest ecclesiastics. He never spoke of himself, believing himself unworthy to occupy a place in minds, however small it might be. He did not excuse himself either, and one has often made bloody and very ill-founded reproaches to him without him having opened his mouth to justify himself. One has even seen him, on these occasions, throw himself on his knees, and, as if effectively he had been guilty, ask pardon of the persons who had mistreated him, although they were often of very low condition. A man, who was his inferior, took it upon himself one day, to test him, to tell him that he was a glutton and to add to this reproach many other humiliating words; but he was very surprised and altogether edified to see that Jacques Olier answered him only with thanks, and promised him to profit from the advice that charity had given him. If in these encounters our holy priest did not make any emotion appear on the outside, he was no less tranquil in the bottom of his soul, and he declared to his director that, since God had given him the grace to suffer with joy the contempt that he saw that some worldly people had for him in an ecclesiastical ceremony, he had found himself so established in the love of humiliation that he had never lost anything of his interior peace in the midst of affronts and outrages, although he saw himself several times rebuffed by his relatives, mistreated by the great, insulted by valets and insulted by people of the dregs of the people, that the malice of the demon excited against him.

Although he had considerable revenues, he used them for himself only with an extreme reserve. He left, from the year 1634, his retinue and his carriage and did not keep even his horse. He went often in a cart to the place of his missions, and he made no difficulty of passing thus in the places where he was the most known and where there were the most people. For the handling of his goods and the care of his person, he rested on another, and received what one gave him without asking for anything. His spirit of poverty did not extend only to what concerned him in particular, but also to his community. It would have been easy for him to engage the richest of Paris to give considerable sums to his seminary, but he never did it, and he was so far from doing it that a person, who had great goods and who wished to employ them in good works, offering him a part for his community, he advised him to defer and to wait until God manifested more His will on that. He did not tire of saying to his ecclesiastics that often one works too much to enlarge and enrich communities, and too little to sanctify them, and that thus one ruins them by wishing to establish them. "For God permits," he said, "that, since one wants earth and gold, one has it; but He withdraws His spirit, which is the greatest treasure that one can have, and even sometimes He permits that everything perishes, instead that if one thought in the houses to establish Jesus Christ there, Jesus Christ would establish everything else there."

His detachment did not go only to destroying in himself all the desires of the goods of the earth, but also to keeping his heart perfectly separated from the persons even to whom God had united him more closely, and from the works that He had confided to him; in a word, from all that was not God. Although he burned with the desire to give himself entirely to the conduct of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, as soon as he would be discharged from his parish, nevertheless a person having told him, before he fell into apoplexy, that soon he would be in this world as if he were not there, he replied without hesitating: "I am content to be in the state where God will want me, I neither desire nor want anything else."

I would still have many things to say on his mortification, on his sweetness, on his patience, on the love he had for the Cross and on a quantity of other virtues that he practiced in a very eminent degree; but the limits of a summary do not allow saying more; and I believe also that what I have said suffices to make known the extent of his grace and the eminence of his perfection. He who will make reflection on what he will read in this life and who will consider that since Jacques Olier gave himself to the service of Our Lord, he has never ceased to suffer, with an indefatigable patience, a thousand sorts of pains and labors for the glory of God; that he has spent his life in the most rigorous exercises of penance; that he has been in a universal abnegation of himself and in a continual death to all creatures to live only for God; that he has endured with a perfect resignation and a constant fidelity very frequent and very long illnesses, strange persecutions on the part of an infinity of persons, inexplicable pains on the part of God for more than eight years, and that in the midst of so many obstacles he came to the end of reforming the faubourg Saint-Germain, and of making of it, from a sewer of horror, a very regulated parish; of forming in this same time a great community of ecclesiastics; of establishing in France several seminaries and of sending missionaries even into the New World, and that in very few years; he, we say, who will make some attention to these things, will conclude easily that God gave to Jacques Olier extraordinary graces, and that this holy priest possessed the Spirit of Jesus Christ to a very eminent degree.

The beautiful life of this great servant of God has been written in a manner worthy of him, in our century, by M. Faillon, priest of Saint-Sulpice.