Saint Lifard

At the age of forty, he was touched by such a powerful movement of the spirit of God that he resolved to leave behind all the great burden of affairs in which his office engaged him, and to embrace the ecclesiastical state. The Bishop of Orléans, who knew his devotion and fervor, was filled with joy; he made him a cleric, and subsequently raised him, by degrees, to the order of deacon. One cannot imagine with what reverence and piety he performed his duties. He was like an angel around the altars. He brought his body there almost not at all, or, if he did, it was a body so purified by fasting and other mortifications of penance that it seemed already spiritual. He soon retired to the monastery of Micy, under the guidance of Saint Maximin, who was then its abbot. After some time, as the love of austerity and contemplation grew day by day in his heart, he resolved to embrace the solitary life. He withdrew and established himself on the ruins of an old castle destroyed by the Vandals, where the town of Mehun Mehun Site of the hermitage and monastery of Saint Lifard. is today (on the Loire, seventeen km S.-W. of Orléans).

Urbice Urbice Successor of Austremonius to the see of Clermont. , his disciple, accompanied him there, and together they built a cell of tree branches and reeds. The life of our Saint in this hermitage was entirely penitential: for food, he ate a little barley bread, drank only water, and that only every three days. A sackcloth and a hairshirt, which he wore against his bare skin, made up his entire clothing; and if he had a bed, it was so hard that he lay upon it more to torment himself than to find rest. He spent entire days and nights in prayer, and his spirit was so elevated in God that one could say he was only in body upon the earth. In a word, just as in the magistracy he had been the model of good judges, and in the clergy that of holy ecclesiastics; so, in the desert, he was the example of the most perfect religious.

God honored his holiness with several miracles: one of the most significant was the death of a frightful serpent, which cast terror throughout the entire country. He merely commanded his disciple to go and plant a small rod that he gave him, near the place where this monster was. The disciple obeyed, albeit with fear, and drove this rod into the ground in sight of this horrible animal. Scarcely had he withdrawn when he saw it throw itself upon the rod to tear it out, break it, and tear it to pieces; but, whatever violence it could exert, it never succeeded; and in the efforts it made, it burst and died on the spot. Then, the demons that were in its body, and who wished to use it as an instrument to destroy the servant of God, emerged from it with great howls, crying out in the air: "Lifard! Lifard!" The inhabitants of the neighboring villages thus recognized that it was to the prayers and tears of the Saint that they owed their deliverance from this monster, which filled them all with dread and terror.

At that time, Marc, Bishop of Orléa Marc, évêque d'Orléans Bishop of Orléans who ordained Lifard as a priest. ns, who was at Notre-Dame-de-Cléry, having been informed of the way of life and the wonders of the holy hermit, came to find him in his retreat and ordained him priest; he also had a chapel built for him, as well as a hermitage larger than the one where he was, and gave him permission to assemble a community of religious under his guidance. The news having spread, many young men wished to share in this happiness, and received the habit from his hands; Lifard was thus able to demonstrate the singular prudence with which God had endowed him for the government of others. He was very charitable: one day when it was extremely cold, a poor man hid his clothes in a nearby wood, and came almost completely naked to the door of his monastery, asking him for something to cover himself. The Saint knew of his deceit by revelation, and, having had him enter, he gave him good hope of receiving a garment. However, he sent one of his religious to fetch those he had hidden, indicating to him the place where they were, according to what God had made known to him. When they were brought, he returned them to the poor man who was quite confused, and gave him a very severe reprimand for his malice and for the injustice he was committing, in wanting to steal from the true poor the alms of which he had no need: "Was I not present in spirit," he said to him, "when you hid them on the mountain, and when you formed the design to deceive us and to mock us?"

Around this same time, he healed a young paralyzed woman by anointing her with blessed oil.

When Saint Theodomir, Abbot of Micy, was near death, Saint Lifard was warned of it in a dream: having set out to pay him his final respects, he saw, upon approaching his monastery, a troop of blessed spirits who, having come to receive his soul, were carrying it gloriously into heaven, singing this verse from Psalm 64: "Blessed is he whom you have chosen, O Lord, and taken to yourself; he shall dwell eternally in your courts." Having entered the monastery, he found him dead, and performed the ceremonies of his funeral. He then had Saint Maximin or Mesmin the Younger, nephew of the deceased, elected abbot in his place, and returned to his solitude, where he soon fell ill. Being assured of his death, he summoned his disciples and exhorted them, with words full of tenderness and zeal, to abstain from all desires of the flesh and all pleasures of the world, to keep faithfully the precepts and evangelical counsels, to strive to enter by the way and the narrow gate of heaven, to resist the devil and the artifices he uses to destroy souls, and never to yield to temptations; but to always have before their eyes these words of Saint James: "Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been tried, he will receive the crown which God has promised to those who love Him." After this discourse, he designated Saint Urbice as his successor, and rendered his beautiful soul to his Creator. This precio saint Urbice Successor of Austremonius to the see of Clermont. us death occurred towards the middle of the 6th century.

His body was buried in the same place by the Bishop of Orléans. Saint Urbice later had a more beautiful church built there, which subsequently became the collegiate church of Meung, where there were no fewer than eight dignities with twenty canons and several chaplains. There are also, in the diocese of Orléans, other churches built in honor of Saint Lifard: one in the city, the others at Bucy, at Terminier, at Trainon, and Meung Site of the hermitage and monastery of Saint Lifard. at Oynville.

The church of Meung, in the diocese of O rléans, still possesses reliques de saint Lifard Sacred remains preserved in Meung-sur-Loire. the relics of Saint Lifard, patron of the parish.

The attribute of Saint Lifard is a staff planted in the ground and bitten at the top by a serpent: he is invoked against snakes. The life of the Saint provides the understanding of this symbol.

Cf. Acta Sanctorum; Histoire de l'Église du Mans, by Dom Piolin.