உயர்திரு.செயல் அலுவலர் அவர்கள். தேர்வுநிலை பேரூராட்சி,
முக்கூடல்.
பொருள்: புதிதாக குடிநீர் இணைப்பு பெற கோரி
ஐயா / அம்மா,
நான் மேற்படி முகவரியில் வசித்து வருகிறேன். நான் தெருவில் புதிதாக வீடு கட்டி முடித்துள்ளேன். மேற்படி வீட்டின் கதவு எண். XXXX ஆகும். மேற்படி வீட்டிற்கு புதிய குடிநீர் இணைப்பு வழங்க வேண்டுகிறேன்.
Here is a sample letter format for requesting a new water
connection from the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD):
From
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State, ZIP Code]
[Email Address]
[Phone Number]
To,
The Executive Engineer,
TWAD Board,
[City/Town], Tamil Nadu.
Subject:
Application for New Water Connection
Respected Sir/Madam,
I, [Your Name], residing at [Your Address], would like to
request a new water connection for my residence. The details of my property and
requirements are as follows:
Property Details:
- Owner's Name: [Your Name]
- Address: [Your Address]
- Property Type: [Residential/Commercial]
- Property Identification Number (if any): [Property ID]
Connection Requirements:
- Type of Connection Required:
[Domestic/Commercial/Industrial]
- Purpose: [Drinking water, sanitation, etc.]
I kindly request you to process my application at the
earliest and grant the necessary approvals for the installation of a new water
connection. Please let me know if any further information or documentation is
required.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward
to your positive response.
Yours sincerely,
[Your Signature]
[Your Name]
Documents Attached:
1. Proof of Identity (Aadhaar Card, Voter ID, etc.)
2. Proof of Address (Electricity Bill, Property Tax
Receipt, etc.)
4. No Objection Certificate (NOC) from [relevant
authority if applicable]
---
Ensure to fill in the placeholders with your
specific information before sending the letter. Additionally, include any other
documents that may be required as per the TWAD Board's guidelines.
To write a letter to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) for name transfer, you can follow this format. Here is a sample letter in Tamil:
பெயர் மாற்றம் செய்ய கோரி தமிழ்நாடு மின்சார துறைக்கு கடிதம்
---
அனுப்புநர்
பெயர்,
வீட்டு முகவரி,
ஊர், (Pincode)
Mobile number
பெறுநர்
The Assistant Engineer,
தமிழ்நாடு மின்சார வாரியம் (TNEB),
[உங்கள் பகுதி/மின்நிலையம்],
[நகரம்], [அஞ்சல் குறியீடு].
Subject: "மின்சார இணைப்பின் பெயர் மாற்றம் கோரிக்கை
மதிப்பிற்குரிய ஐயா/அம்மா,
எனது [ஊர்/புரத்தின்] மின்சார இணைப்பு [மின்சார இணைப்பின் எண்] தற்போது [முந்தைய உரிமையாளரின் பெயர்] அவர்களின் பெயரில் உள்ளது. தற்போது இந்த மின்சார இணைப்பின் உரிமையை எனது பெயருக்கு மாற்ற வேண்டுகிறேன்.
முன்னாள் உரிமையாளர் மற்றும் எனது தொடர்புடைய அனைத்து ஆவணங்களின் நகல்களையும் இணைத்துள்ளேன்.
தவறானது எதுவுமில்லாமல் உரிமையாளர் பெயரை மாற்ற நடவடிக்கை எடுக்குமாறு தாழ்மையுடன் கேட்டுக்கொள்கிறேன்.
**இணைப்புகள்:**
1. முந்தைய உரிமையாளரின் அனுமதி கடிதம்
2. முந்தைய மின்சார இணைப்பு பில் (அண்மைய மாதம்)
3. என் அடையாள ஆதாரம் (ஆதார் கார்டு)
4. என் முகவரி ஆதாரம் (ரேஷன் கார்டு / வங்கிக் கணக்கு நகல் / ரெண்ட் அக்கமிடேஷன் பில்கள் போன்றவை)
5. வீட்டு வரி ரசீது
நன்றி,
அன்புடன்,
இடம் : தேதி :
[உங்கள் பெயர்]
[தொலைபேசி எண்]
---
**Instructions for filling the template:**
1. Replace `[Your Area/Substation]` with your local TNEB office details.
2. Replace `[City]` and `[Pin Code]` with your city and pin code.
3. Replace `[Date]` with the current date.
4. Replace `[Your Name]` and `[Your Address]` with your name and address.
5. Replace `[மின்சார இணைப்பின் எண்]` with your electricity connection number.
6. Replace `[முந்தைய உரிமையாளரின் பெயர்]` with the previous owner’s name.
Make sure to attach all necessary documents as mentioned in the letter. This format should be submitted to your local TNEB office.
In the Perfume, from Rome, Louis Veuillot devotes a few touching pages to the soul of’Anna-Maria.
The one whose unseemly name is declared to the world twenty-five years after his death, he wrote, was, by his social condition, a little less than’a simple woman. She was an indigent woman, married to a man of pain, at the Chigi Palace. Thirty years ago, she was seen by the streets, old, crippled, going to visit Our Lord or in a church or on a bed of Sufrance. His poorness corrects, a certain burst of majesty, a certain look of the pasants excised the’attention of the foreign’. He meant to say with respect, sometimes with derivation : « C’est la Sainte ! »
Childhood. – Marriage.
This « Sainte » was born in Siena, Tuscany, on May 29, 1769. His parents, having had sudden setbacks, left their homeland, and, on foot like beggars, came to Rome to hide their misery and seek work. They lived near the SAINTE-Marie des Monts church, where they met Saint Benedict-Joseph Labre.
Luigi Gianetti, the father, obtained a place as a domestic in a good maysson. The mother, Maria Masi, was able to have her services accepted here and there, and the’child, then five years old, was freely admitted to the family Maestre pius (Mistresses magpies) of via Graziosa.
Anna-Maria was a charming little girl, of a little ordinary distinction in a child of the people, intelligent, lively, always cheerful and caring. The trampled’ still prevailed in her on the graces of the young age, and she grew in the’innocence.
At thirteen, she was placed in a work-room where she was occupied in deviating silk, and six years later she entered as a maid at the palace Mutti, where his father was. This is where’elle knew Domenico Taigi, a man of pain at the Chigi Palace, of whom she became the’'s wife, after having prayed and taken the’ opinion of her parents and confessor. She was almost twenty-one years old.
The wedding took place in the’ parish church of Saint-Marcel, on January 7, 1790. On that day Anna-Mary made to God the sacrifice of her own volition in favor of him who deverenched the consort of his life.
The couple’ was not of those that’on is convex to’appel assorted.
The characteristics, tastes, and habits of both spouses were quite different; there was almost an abyss between the delight of’Anna-Maria and the harshness of Domenico; and ; she was quick to understand things, her husband was slow to understand them; she was kind and flexible, he was facilely stubborn and violent.
Domenico Taigi was, it is true, erasing these defects by a sinister trampled, a great love of duty and a beautiful blow of heart. Their union was grim, Domenico liked to go in public with his young wife, elegant and well put. Although poor, he had finished him, according to’usage, some more sought-after adornments, and Anna-Maria, to please him, allowed herself for some time to go to slight vanishments. But soon cruel anxieties enveloped his delicate soul.
Anna Maria becomes Tertiary Trinitarian.
One day, pressed by grace, she came to entrust her remorse to a priest of the’church Saint Marcel. There she resolved to live only for God and to become a saint. Returning to her maysson, she flattered her rudely, and, renouncing from that moment on her adornments, she put on, like a woman of the people, a simple and coarse dress.
Anna-Maria felt the need to rap ⁇ procher still davanstage of God; she S’en opened to her confessor, Father. Angelo :
– I feel a very strong desire to me’offer to the Lord, she says, ''I, in such a way as to appear to him without return and to be before him as a victim atoning for so many sins that are being committed in the world.
– C’is bien, then repon ⁇ dits le P. Angelo ; obtain from your husband the permission of Tertiary deverence. Yes, indeed, it’is God who wants you ain ⁇ si, that’is to say, religious in the middle of the century.
Very devout to the Most Holy Trinity, she obtained from her husband the permission to take the’ of the Tertiary of the fallen Trinitarians, and, from that day on, her prayers were longer, her more rigorous penitences, her loyalty to all her duties as a more absolutist Christian woman. From then on, Our-Lord favoured these commutianities that’he was once associated with Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Therese and so many other Saints.
Miraculous sun.
God performed in favor of his faithful servant a miracle unique in its kind and whose effects were handled in an incessant way, leaning forty-seven years, until the death of the Blessed One.
He granted her the pervasive vision of’a luminous globe, in which she read the diverse needs of the souls that’elle would shake, the’s state of sinners, the perils of the’Eglise, she said, in a word, all that for which she demanded to suffer and atone.
It’ was a luminous disc, of the granulosity of the sun natuirel, surrounded by its rays. At the’ end of the upper rays was a large neck of’epines between. From the two extremities of the neck there were two very long spines, like two yards, whose arched points came to believe themselves under the solar disk and came out on both sides of the rays. In the center, a beautiful woman was seated majestically, her eyes raised to the sky and in the’ attitude of ecstatic contemplaition.
Anna Taigi saw for the first time this strange phoenomene shortly after his admission as a Trinitarian Tertiary, as a result of’a sanghlante dis ⁇ pline that’elle had just imposed.
– Mon Dieu ! s’he exclaimed at once, wouldn't this be a deception of the demon ?
Her leaders, to whom she hid nothing, and God himself in her intimate affairs, reassured her.
She noticed that the light, dazzling as’elle was, was tainted by a few shadows; at the same time, an inner voice taught him that the ray of this clarity would augment as’elle purified its heart. By this means she received all her life new impulses towards holiness.
We can say, with Louis Veuillot, that’elle saw all things in it: things accommodated, things anticipated, things to come revealed themselves to his gaze with their most extensive circumstances
All day, she could take a look’ on this sun always present. But it’is especially in the evening, in the long hours of vigil, when the pious woman recited her habitable prayers, that God did not make naturelous or allegogous figures before her. Often God gave the’ explanation to his servant, which sometimes he let her in the’ ignorance, but he did not want it unless’on took note, because’ someday the’ event would make known the meaning.
If Anna-Maria wanted to see in her sun a deterrent object, for example the answer to a question that had been submitted to her, the’ state of a soul for which she wanted to pray, any strange image was disperse and the sought object was immediately pre-disparse.
People of the world and people, religious people, prelates and princes of the’Eglise, political men, came to consult her. A French diplomat to whom she revealed the secrets of European politics, like those of her conscience, said :
– She has the whole world under her eyes, as I’ai my tabaholete in hand.
As soon as the’on knew, in Rome, this gift of God's servant, priests worthy of all trust were placed near’ in qua'lity of confidants. L’un d’ux, Bishop Natali, who knew her for thirty years, had set his mind to collect all the comments he received from God.
Anna-Maria, always obedient, and whatever’il cost her, made known to whom by right, with a scrupucheuse loyalty, the extraordinary favors of which she was the’ object.
His sufferings.
The immediate result of his visions was to give an aliment to the thirst for’expiation of the servant of God. As soon as’elle had seen a soul in sufrance, a peril for the’Church, a good to be obtained, she began to pray, offering to God her almost contiguous fast, his disciplines and the suffrances which Providence never spared him.
She had long intervals of distressing spiritual dryness: she endured contradictions, calumnies, insults. Her body was tried in all its senses. She suffered continuously from heads which became more painful on Friday afternoons. Her eyes were as if pierced with sharp points which were a continuous torment to her. One of her hands received the power to heal the sick, but, by a sort of compensation, this same hand consistently made her experience acute suffering. Finally, various illnesses came to visit her and made her poor body a ruin long nailed to a pallet.
In her pain, Anna-Maria remained calm, sustained by this thought: "It is for God that I suffice; it is for such and such a soul that I atone." Sometimes, she was heard to cry out suddenly:
– Ab! let us thank the Lord and his most holy Mother! At this moment, the sick person is confessing, he is a soul won over to God.
The wife. – The daughter. – The mother.
From the first day, Anna-Maria studied to render to her husband the most complete obedience, as to a representative of God, His wishes and even his whims seemed sacred to her. Understanding where her duty lay, she even knew how to renounce her devotion to please him.
At the beginning of their marriage, the Taigis lived in a small apartment on the ground floor of Palazzo Chigi. But a few years later, because of their many children, they moved to a poor house located in Via dei Santi Apostoli, not far from the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata.
Every day, the servant of the princes Chigi returned from work very late, sometimes at 2 a.m. When he returned, he always found his wife praying or working while waiting for him.
Sometimes, when I came in, he said, to change my clothes, I found the house full of people. Immediately my wife would leave all these people there, lords and prelates, who came to consult her, and would hasten to run to dry me and serve me with affability and contentment.
The gentleness and virtue of his companion soon took such an influence over Domenico that he did nothing without her consent.
However, there was no lack of discord in the Taigi household. With her husband's consent, Anna-Maria give her mother mercy, and her father also often came to visit her. The somewhat odd character of the in-laws and the proud temper of the son-in-law were bound to cause inevitable conflicts in the household, which she always managed to resolve amicably.
In his old age, Anna Maria's father, embraced and burdened with disabilities, had become unbearably ill-tempered to anyone but his holy daughter. She did her utmost to please him, cared for him as if he were a young child, and still found in her heart a kind word to comfort him.
She prepared him to receive the last sacraments, and when he had broken his last, she wanted to procure many prayers for his soul. She did the same for her mother.
Seven children were born of our marriage, Domenico says in one of his depositions, four boys and three girls. All these children were breastfed by the servant of God. She took care to have them baptized as soon as they were born and confirmed in due time; she took every means to properly instruct her sounds and daughters for the first confession and the first Communion. Thanks to her vigilance, all our children have had a regular and Christian conduct.
She carried caution very far in all that concerned modesty. Not only did she make the boys sleep in a room separate from that of her daughters, but she surrounded each bed with curtains. Morning and evening she went around the little alcohols to teach her children to get up and go to bed under the gauze of God. This was the moment she thing, preferably in the evening, to make, if necessary, to one or the other, some reproach for the shortcomings of the day; then she signed their foreheads with holy water, recommending them to God and to the Virgin Mary, and she kissed them tenderly.
Work.
His house was quite like a small monastery where everything, prayer, work, meals, recreation, took place at fixed times.
In the morning, before daybreak, she went to church. After receiving her God and hearing Holy Mass, she came to wake up her children, made them recite prayers, prepared their lunch, took the little ones to school, arranged work for the older girls to whom she herself gave religious education and the first notions of manual work. Then she put her whole house in order. "She worked, washed and cleaned with an activity that could have fired four women" says Domenico. The rest of the time, she was almost always found sitting at her little work table on which was a work basket, a Crucifix and a rosary. She was never seen.
She was also skilled in all sorts of work. At the time of the French invasion in 1798, food became excessively extensive and Domenico Taigi saw part of his emoluments cut. To provide for her family, the Blessed One fashioned corsets, petticoats, boots, slippers and other objects that she managed to sell at a fair good price. In this way, the Taigis got through this hour of crisis without too much anxiety.
During the meal, the active mother almost never sat at the common table. Always on her feet, she busied herself with serving her mother, her husband and her children. She gave the others healthy and abundant food; for her part, she ate little and was content with coarse foods, sometimes even with spoiled scraps.
After the meal, during the hours of the siesta so dear to every Italian, she opened a book of piety and entered into prayer.
His selflessness.
As assured resources, the Blessed had most often only the six crowns that Domenico earned per month and the product of her own work. She often found herself in difficulty in paying her rent and meeting the most urgent needs. In this case, she would go to pray fervently in a church, and say to the Lord with complete abandonment: "Your unworthy serving awaits from you, O my God, this day's bread." Her trust was never disappointed. Providence feels her what was necessary, sometimes in a wonderful way.
Many times this poor household had the opportunity to enrich itself: it would have been enough for the Blessed One to open her hand. The Queen of Etruria, cured by her of a cruel illness, said to her one day, while opening a drawer full of gold:
Take, take, Anna mia.
"How simple you are, Madam!" replied Anna Taigi. "I serve a Master who is much richer than you. I trust in him, and he provides for my daily needs."
She then offered him a good position with a higher salary for Domenico. Anna-Maria thanks him politically in these terms:
– No, no. I pray Your Majesty to leave us in our media. The Lord wants us in the state we are in; I have complete confidence in his help.
She would not even receive money to distribute to the poor, so as, she said, “not to strain from the royal path of poverty.”
Anna-Maria rejects the gold offered to her by the Queen of Etruria.
It was not that she was not interested in the fate of the poor; despite her family responsibilities, she helped them in every way. Learning one day that her mother had refused alms to a beggar, she was saddened:
– In the name of heaven, my good mother, she said, do not send away a poor man without giving him charity. If nothing else, you will always find bread in this cupboard.
Even more often, she paid in person; she was often called to the sick. She went there immediately, whatever the weather.
When her daughter Sofia became a widow, Anna Maria suddenly welcomed the poor mother with her six children, and even a maid who Sofia had had had to procure, into her house. Sofia hesitated to impose such a burden on her mother:
“What are you thinking about, my daughter?” she replied; “that you have little confidence in God! You know very well that he never abandons anyone. God will think about it; you will have everything you need.”
Other heavenly favors. – His death.
This is how Anna Maria Taigi appeared in the interior of the domestic hearth. Of her ecstasies, her raptures, her supernatural gifts, Domenico had hardly any suspicion.
However, these phenomena were not rare. Wherever she was, she would suddenly find herself motionless, deprived of her senses, her eyes fixed on an invisible object. Domenico would then call her, and, receiving no answer, would shake her violently. Sometimes, convinced that she was unwell, he urged her to take sedatives. Finally, seeing that this was usual, he attributed these accidents to simple drowsiness; and when his wife, having come to herself, suddenly summarized her gaiety and smile, he would say to her:
– How can you sleep at the table? You see to be completely sleep!
Anna-Maria's youngest daughter, refrigerated, cried out one day when she saw that her mother had no more signs of life:
– Mom is dead!… Mom is dead!…
– No, Sofia told him, more perceptive, Mom is praying.
The Blessed One tried to let nothing of these supernatural favors show, but she did not always succeed. She hid with more success her mortifications, the hair shirts adorned with sharp points, the iron chains with which she girded herself, the bloody disciplines she infected on herself, the Crown of Thorns that she wore under her headdress.
On May 10, 1836, while she was praying at St. Paul Outside the Walls, before a Crucifix that she particularly venerated, Anna Maria heard an interior voice say to her: “My daughter, soon you will be with me in my kingdom.”
Having fallen ill on the following October 26, she took to her bed and remained so for many months, tortured by cruel suffering. Every day, Bishop Natali celebrated Mass in his modest oratory and give her Holy Communion. After receiving Extreme Unction, she died on Friday, June 9, 1837. She was sixty eight years old.
Her funeral took place at Santa Maria via Lata, her parish, and her body was taken to the cemetery of Campo Verano, where her tomb soon became a place of pilgrimage, and then, in 1855, to the church of Santa Maria della Paz. The cause of the Servant of God was introduced on January 8, 1863, and the Superior General of the Trinitarians was appointed postulator. Two years later, on July 10, 1865, the remains of Anna Maria Taigi were taken to the church of San Chrysogono in Trastevere, served by the Trinitarians. This is where they rest definitively. Anna Maria Taigi was beatified by Benedict XV on May 3, 1920 , 9, and her feast day is set for June for the Roman Clergy.
Domenico on ⁇ cut a dozen of’years to his wife. He could only talk about it’in pouring tears of’ tenderening, and then tarnished invaririally his conversions by this sentence :
– Yes, verified, it’was a good woman.
AE A.
Sources consulted. – P. Callixte de La Providence, Trinitaire, Vie de la venerable Anna-Maria Taigi (Paris, 1878). – Louis Veuillot, Le Parfum de Rome (t. II). – P. Gabriel Bouffier, SJ, La, venerable servant of God Anna-Maria Taigi (Paris, 1901). – C sse de Courson, Anna- Maria Taigi (in Contemporary, n° 980). – (VSBP, n bones 1203 And 1204.)
Among the many Saints that the Society of Jesus has donated to the’Church, John Francis Regis is one of the most illustrious. His way was quite different from that of the religious of his Order; certain traits of’ of his career, which are also told of’other Saints, might shock us, but, in the circumstances of time and places where God placed him, he had a misdiction to please; he had to acquit himself with admirable zeal, perfect abnegation and unlimited obedience.
Jean-Francois Regis was born on January 31, 1597 in Fontcouverte, the current diocese of Carcassonne. His parents were people of small nobility, having an easy situation, and enjoying the consideration. His family declared themselves by their loyalty to the Catholic faith in this country turned upside down by the struggles against the Huguesnots, and himself lost a brother to the diocese of Villemur, at the current diocese of Toulouse.
First years.
From his early childhood he knew the sweetness of piety and the love of God. At the age of five he was so deep struck by the thought of the loaves of hell that he expressed to his mother with terror the thought of damnation. He had no taste for the amusements of children his age, preferring serious things and occupying himself only with exercises of piety. Often he would shut himself up in a chapel, and there, giving himself over to the sweetness of contemplation, he would forget himself in the presence of Our Lord.
His parents had given him a tutor with a brusque and gloomy temper; the timid and modest child suffered much from this direction, but the day the master knew how to find the way to the child's heart, he made rapid progress.
Soon, the Jesuits having opened classes in Beziers, he was embedded to them around 1611, and his piety only developed more and more. He had a tender devotion to the Holy Virgin and was promptly received into one of those pious associations erected in religious colleges, and intended to honor the Mother of the Savior. He had great confidence in his guardian angel, to whom he always believed himself unharmed for having escaped from a great peril.
The vocation.
His vocation was revealed early in the gentleman and salvation influence he was able to take over his fellow students, who were scattered in small groups, according to custom, in private houses where they boarded. At first, some mockers ridiculed his religious practices; soon, they recognized the power of his virtue, and far from distancing themselves from their pious companion, they drew so close to them that Jean-Francois won their souls. For the five or six schoolchildren with whom he lived, he composed a written rule, in which the hours of study were fixed, useless conversations forbidden; a book of piety was read during meals, an examination of conscience was made in the evening, and on Sunday all received Holy Communion.
The pious young man was at this time, it seems, tested by a serious illness. Having recovered his health, he thought of giving himself to God in a more complete way and made a retreat to know his vocation. He felt urged to enter the Society of Jesus. His confessor having urged him to follow his inspiration, Jean-Francois entered the novitiate of Toulouse on December 8, 1616.
The novitiate.
From the first days he was admired by the most fervent people. Nothing could disturb his desire for constant union with Our Lord, and he never abandoned the thought of His presence. He applied himself particularly to practising humility, self-hatred, contempl for the world, and the pleasure of procuring the glory of God, a very great charity towards his neighbour.
The lowest jobs were those he cherished most; nothing seemed more pleasing to him than sweating the house and serving at table. His favorite occupation was definitely serving the sick.
He loved to go to hospitals and minister to the sick and the poor, choosing the most attractive ones, because he could see Jesus Christ himself in the person of those who were suffering. He treated his body very harshly, while showing kindness and gentleness to others; so his companions said that he was his own persecutor.
After two years of novitiate, Jean-Francois was sent to Cahors, where he pronounced his first vows, then to Billom, where he was a grammar teacher, and from there to Tournon to study philosophy. The taste for studies in no way weakened his piety and his taste for prayer.
First apostolate.
During his stay in Tournon, he began to evangelize the poor and the servants of the city. This preaching to the little ones and the weak followed his humble and devoted nature. On Sundays, he accompanied a religious priest from the college and trained through the surrounding villages and towns; he had a bell ring before him; he gave the children, give them catechism and teach them to love the Savior Jesus. Then, having similarly prepared the more or less neglected Christians, he brought them to the Father who heard their confession.
His taste for the apostolate finally displayed itself in a definitive way in the sanctification of the town of Andance, where his memory has remained very much alive. There, he worked wonders; drunkenness, wearing, impiety reigned supreme there; instead, Brother Regis established the practice of the sacraments, the frequent reception and worship of the Eucharist, he had the glory and happiness of instituting a brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament there, as other Jesuits before him had done in the region; he was then only twenty-two years old.
However, the time for major works had not yet come, and his superiors thought it appropriate, in 1625, to send him to the town of Le Puy to teach literature.
Teaching.
In Le Puy, as previously in Cahors, Jean-Francois Regis thought not only of instructing his students, but also of directing them in good. He prepared his classes with the greatest care and found no surer way of teaching fruitfully than to go and pray before class time in front of the Blessed Sacrament; it was noted that, despite the great cold, in a spirit of mortification, he did not even hide his hands in his sleeves. He healed one of his sick students by making the sign of the cross over him and recommending that he hesforth be more fervent in the service of God. On feast days, he ran to exercise his apostolic zeal among the people of the countryside.
A professor in Auch in 1627, Father Regis was sent the following year to Toulouse to study theology. At night he would get up to go to the chapel; the superior was informed and, as if inspired, he replied:
– Do not disturb the conversations of this angel with his God; I am very much mistaken if his feast is not celebrated some day in the Church.
Ordination.
At the beginning of 1630, Jean-Francois received the order to prepare for the priesthood; a struggle then arose in his heart; and; zeal for the glory of God and the desire to win souls made him desire this honor, while his humility filled him with a holy fear. His hesitations fell away and he even asked, contrary to custom, that his ordination be brought forward by a year, which would forever remove from him the right to be, strictly speaking, a professed religious, without, however, ceasing to belong to the Society of Jesus; this sacrifice was accepted, and Father Jean-Francois Regis was ordered priest at the Trinity of 1631. He prepared for his first mass by fasting, prayers and mortifications.
Apostolate of the Poor.
A few months later, the young priest had to make a trip to Fontcouverte, his birthplace. He went there on family business, but the things of God occupied him much more than the interests of this world.
This is how he spent his time: in the morning he learned catechism to the children, then he preached, then he heard confessions, and towards night he gave a new instruction. In the middle of the day he visited the poor, begged for them at the homes of the rich, and then took his alms to the old and the sick.
He would continue this program in many places where his missionary career would take him.
One day, as he was crossing the streets, carrying a straw mattress on his shoulders, he was jeered by soldiers. Father Regis was filled with joy at seeing himself assimilated to his divine Master, and like him insulted. His brothers believed they should make observations to him on his conduct so far removed from the maxims of the world, and which could only be admitted by those who understand the folly of the cross:
– Exercise, they said to him, the works of mercy, but do it without covering us with shame and ridiculous.
– It is not by humbling themselves, replied Jean-Francois, that the ministers of the Gospel lose their character; and provided that God is not offended, what do the judgments of men matter!
Indeed, this boundless charity acknowledged hearts to him, and he had the consolation of bringing many souls back to God, leaving in the country, wrote his provincial, a great odor of holiness.
These consoling successes convinced his superiors to enter him exclusively with the mission of the apostolate. He began in May 1632, in the city of Montpellier, very tried by the civil wars of religion during the reign of Louis XIII, and he made many conversions there, not by brilliant sermons, but by his example and the explanation of the catechism.
He had a real preference for the poor; he often remained in his confessional until evening, without taking food, in order to hear the confessions of the unfortunate, saying: "People of quality will not lack confessors; the poor, this most abandoned portion of the flock of Jesus Christ, such must be my portion." He was not content to give them kind words, he helped them, as we have already seen him do elsewhere, with the alms he collected.
In this city, too, he worked to convert the Magdalenes, who, following the example of their holy patron, wanted to water the feet of the Savior with their tears and renounce their sins. He excelled in this task, not shrinking from any danger, not even that of covering himself with ridiculous or shame.
Missions in the South of France among the Protestants.
In 1633, Bishop de la Baume de La Suze, Bishop of Viviers, who had asked for a Jesuit missionary to accompany him through his diocese, was given Father Regis; the country had suffered greatly from religious struggles, and the memory of the two Jesuits martyred in 1593, the wounded Jacques Sales and Guillaume Saultemouche, was not about to disappear. It is true that religious from various Orders had already worked effectively for the religious recovery of the region. Alas! much remained to be done, and it was not too much of the apostolic activity and humility of Father Regis to prepare the passage of the bishop by multiplied preachings, countless confessions, which represented very many returns to God and to the Christian life. At Uzer, an excellent Catholic, Jean de Chalendar de La Motte,arranged an interview between the missionary and a noble lady, an obstinate Protestant, of pure morals and very influential; the abjuration of this person was a success for the Catholic cause.
In 1634, Father Regis asked his Superior General for the favor of leaving as a missionary for Canada; but obedience kept him at his post. The region of Routiers where he was soon sent with a companion, Father Broquin, was the corner of Vivarais that most needed the presence of an apostle; crimes of all kinds were frequent there; the life of a man was held for little. Now, the missions that the two religious give there, fighting against the wind, the snow, the ice, in some heroic conditions, accomplished wonders: after three centuries. Le Cheylard, in particular, has remained one of the most fervent points in France.
The Catechisms of Le Puy.
Several years of Father Regis' life would then pass in Le Puy, where rich and poor alike, suffering from religious ignorance, had forgotten the right path. What this population needed, as the bishop, Just de Cerres, had understood very well, was the teaching of the catechism. Now, who better than Father Regis could take on the task? Every Sunday, 4 to 5,000 people came to hear his instructions, simple, figurative, lively, presented with much of the southern eloquence; no resort to mythology or antiquity, but a popular eloquence that penetrated all minds and all hearts.
These successes of the preacher annoyed a renowned orator, who believed he should deny him to the provincial superior; the later, passing through Le Puy, insisted on seeing for himself; and; twice he went to hear Father Regis' religion class and could not help crying: the ordinary thus turned to the advantage of this marvellous catechist.
Moreover, let no one imagine this apostle passing through the streets with his eyes and ears closed; having heard a masked man blasphemy in the street, he went to slap him; he put mud in the mouth of a woman who had committed the same sin; the first immediately knelt down under the wounding of the Father; the second went away with her head bowed: for such was the prestige of his business.
But also, what mortifications he imposed on his body to keep his soul closer to God and to buy conversions! His discipline was an instrument of "carnage", and despite his harsh life and his southern origin, he never drank wine, offering to God this heroic sacrifice, given the circumstances, in order to obtain perfect chastity, without any trouble. This grace was granted to him, as it was to Saint Thomas Aquinas and to Saint Therese.
The struggles against libertinism earned him mockery, insults, death threats; he never packed down. More than one young girl owed him the preservation of her virtue; he made many a fallen woman a penitent, thanks to a house of refuge that he had founded.
Men thought in their impure passions planned to kill him: he went to meet them and encouraged them themselves to renounce their secret design and to change their life. Indeed, he sometimes read in the consciences, announced the future; it is thus that he predicted to the lace-makers of Puy, who were later to take him as Patron, that their industry, threatened by ordinances, would develop on the contrary with the royal protection: it was soon so.
A libertine draws his sword to strike the Saint.
Last illness and death.
The last part of his life was spent in winter missions; only readers who know the harshness of mountain winters can understand the difficulties and sufferings that the missionary endured. He was to die on the field of honor, during a mission he gave at La Louvesc, at Christmas time 1640. Before going there, having a presentiment of his approaching end, he went to Le Puy, put his affairs of conscience in order, settled some debts contracted for the poor and reached his work station. On the way, in terrible weather, he got lost during the night, and, despite pneumonia that had broken out, had the courage to go to La Louvesc, to preach five or six times and to hear confessions for three whole days. On the evening of the day after Christmas, he died, was taken to the rectory where he heard confessions again.But the doctors judged his condition to be hopeless.
The missionary received the Viaticum and the last sacraments with great fervor; he found relief from his sufferings only in the sight of the Crucifix. On December 31, he said to his companion: "Ah! my Brother, I see Our Lord and Our Lady opening paradise to me!" Then he shouted out: " In manus tuas... Lord, I commend my soul into your hands." These were his last words.
He was proclaimed a saint with one voice; the earth of his tomb was removed several times as a precious relic. The people of La Louvesc, having learned that the body of the Father would be transported to Tournon or Le Puy, buried it in the earth and placed crossed iron bars above it. Thirty-six years after his death, official steps were taken for his beatification, which took place under the pontificate of Clement XI, on May 8, 1716; finally, he was canonized under that of Clement XII, on May 8, 1737.
Quite frequently we hear that at the time of his death, Saint John Francis Regis no longer belonged to the Society of Jesus, or that he was on the point of being expelled; this is a malicious statement launched, around 1716, by the Jansenist reviews and which history denies, with supporting evidence.
His wright.
During the Revolution, the relics of the Saint were put in a safe place, replaced in the church by a box of bones. They returned to their place in 1802. A magnificent basilica, built in La Louvesc by the architect Bossan, from 1865 to 1871, sees thousands of pilgrims flock there every year.
A pious association, intended to regulate illegitimate unions, was placed under the invocation of Saint John Francis Regis. This great Saint, who restored health to a pious magistrate, Mr. Gossin, vice-president of the court of the Seine, inspired him with this good thought and thus perpetuated, beyond the tomb, the good that he never ceased to do during his pilgrimage on earth.
Again under the auspices of the Zealous missionary, the double Institute of the Sisters of Saint Regis and the Ladies of the Cenacle, and that of the Sisters of the Presentation of Bourg-Saint-Andeol were born; Ven. Mother Duchesne, who propagated the Institute of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart in America, possessed her vocation to him, and it was to him that the future Saint John the Baptist Vianney had recourse, unable to advance in his studies, and who was to later, while adapting his life to the circumstances and necessities of his ministry, take him as a model.
A. D.
– Les Petits Bollandistes. – Joseph Vianet, Saint Francois Regis (Collection Les Saints). – R. P. Daubenton, S. J., Vie de saint Jean-Francis Regis (1855). – R. P. Frederic de Curley, S. J., Saint John Francis Regis (1893). – Abbot Blancard, parish priest of Fontcouverte, Saint Francis Regis, his life, his miracles (1916). – (V. S. B. P., nbones 227 And 644.)
