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Saint
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 - PROFILE
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- GENESIS
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- SAINT
FOR THE MONTH
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  -
- Germaine
Cousin
is the Cinderella of the Saints. She suffered horrible
abuse, deprivation, humiliation, and fear, yet always brought
her troubles before God. She was born with a deformed hand and
scrofula (a kind of tuberculosis that causes the neck glands to
swell up), a weak and pitiable creature, whose stepmother had
later told her that it was better had she died at birth.
-
- Her
poor mother, Marie Laroche, had passed away while she was just a
baby, Doubtless thankful to have missed the wretched torment her
child had come to endure! And yet, without a true mother,
Germaine grew in filial love for our Lord through the Sacraments
and Sacramentals that were employed in Pibrac, France at that
time. Germaine would drop to her knees at the first sound of
the Angelus, causing more snide comments and taunting. She was
known for a period as "the little bigot."
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- Her
father, Laurent Cousin, soon married a woman named Hortense.
Hortense was provoked to unfounded acts of cruelty and shame
upon her stepdaughter. She reportedly left little Germaine in a
drain for three days to care for the chickens, and roiled with
laughter when Germaine tried to eat from the dog's bowl to
sate her constant hunger.
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- With
the children to come later, Germaine would suffer more indignant
humiliation. Ashes in her meager rations made Germaine the butt
of every practical joke. Finally, Germaine was moved to the barn
- that she should not infect the other children with scrofula.
However, that she was made to sleep with the field beasts,
acquiring food was still a problem.
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- Instead
of going to school, she was put out to be a shepherdess, her
only comfort a rosary, augmented by simple prayers: "Dear
God, please don't let me be too hungry or too thirsty. Help me
to please my mother. And help me to please You." Legend
holds that she would go to Mass, and not one sheep would wander
from her staff that she put in the ground during her absence.
Her sheep were always safe from the wolves of nearby Boucone
forest, and allegedly though she had often to cross the swollen
Courbet River to get to Church, she would arrive miraculously
dry.
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- One
winter day, Germaine was accused of stealing of loaf of bread.
Hortense began to chase her, and perhaps little Germaine
did have a crust or a crumb in her apron. As Hortense
raised a stick to begin Germaine's unholy flagellation,
Germaine opened her apron, from which fell the most beautiful
summer flowers! Germaine offered on to her mother, saying,
"Please accept this flower, Mother. God sends it to you in
sign of His forgiveness."
-
- Events
like these led more and more people to believe in Germaine's
true piety, and finally Hortense relented and asked Germaine to
once again sleep in the house. But one morning in 1601,
her father found her sweetly in her final repose upon a hard
pallet in the barn.
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- Her
body was buried in the Church of Pibrac opposite the pulpit.
Even in death, Germaine's body found no rest. After having
been accidentally exhumed in 1644 during a church renovation,
her incorrupt body was identified by its withered hand. After
being exposed for one year for veneration, her relics were
transferred to a leaden coffin (donated by the wife of François
de Beauregard, who had been cured of an incurable ulcer in
the breast, and her infant son whose life was despaired of was
restored to health on her seeking the intercession of Germaine).
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- The
process of canonization, begun in 1700, was delayed for Germaine
because of the French Revolution. It was then a man named Touzla,
a tinsmith, who removed the body to desecrate it by re-burying the
body under the sacristy and throwing lime on her. After this was
found out, an enraged and despairing community restored
Germaine's body (what was not destroyed by the time; it
remained incorrupt) and invoked her intercession on almost every
illness and calamity, such as: blindness, congenital and
resulting from disease, hip and spinal disease. And yet, in her
intercessory position, Germaine forgave again when Bourges
suffered a famine in 1845.
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- The
cause of beatification resumed again in1850. More than 400
miracles or extraordinary graces, and thirty postulatory letters
from archbishops and bishops in France besought the
beatification from the Holy See. On May 7, 1854, Pius IX
proclaimed her beatification (also owing to his answered prayer
to her in 1849), and on June 29, 1867, placed her on the canon
of virgin saints.
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