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Brother Aidan's Extracts


DUJARIE, FATHER (re: Lithograph)

"Another kind dispensation that gave her great joy was the arrival of the portrait of the first founder, Father Dujarie. Sister St. Eloi, Superior of the house of Montanban, France, announces it:

'I suppose you have now the lithograph of Father Dujarie. You will venerate it all the more when you learn that a person, with whom you are well acquainted, has assured me that she has received extra graces through prayers and novenas in honor of this worthy Father.'

"Are we surprised? Not when we recall that the holy founder had been ordained in a barn during the great French revolution; that he had to say his first Mass in a cellar, and for years passed among his flock in disguise ministering to the needs of the poor, often sleeping in garrets and haymows; fasting whole days at a time; stripping himself of his patrimony and living only on charity; spending his days in labors and perils, his nights in watching and prayer. This is the chivalry of the saints. Can we doubt his intercessory power with God, since he has gone to share the glory of the Master for his life was a holocaust?" LIFE OF MOTHER THEODORE GUERIN, by Sister M. Theodosia, S.P., p. 414

FATHER DUJARIE AND THE BROTHERS OF ST. JOSEPH

"as is well known, the Congregation of Holy Cross, such as it stands, had a two fold origin. It first began with the Brothers at Ruille-sur-Loire, Sarthe. Its first founder was the Rev. Father Dujarie, an eminent and saintly priest, who, after passing through the frightful ordeal of the Revolution without losing anything of his dignity or piety, had returned, during the first days that followed the restoration of order, to place himself at the disposal of his Bishop for the salvation of souls. At the sight of so much ruin, both moral and religious wrought by the French Revolution, which he saw with his own eyes all around him, and almost touched with his finger, his apostolic heart, open to divine illumination and holy sacrifice, was moved even to tears.

"A man of initiative, because he was ever ready to devote himself to such a noble cause, he was not content to bewail these immense evils. He forthwith sought for prompt and efficacious means by which they could be remedied . . .

" . . . . about the middle of the year 1820 he gathered together four young men in his presbytery, with the intention of making them religious teachers for his own congregation and the neighboring parishes. Such was the humble and pious beginning of the Brothers' institute" FATHER FRANCAIS' LETTERS, pp. 130-1

1820: See the "Life of Moreau" by his nephew, Chap. IX, p. 42; Chap. X, p. 47.

On his death:-- 1838 -- See "Life of Moreau" by his nephew, Chapter XVIII, p. 83.


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