Today is the Feast Day of St. Geneviève of Paris, a saint to whom I’ve become close since learning about her in our Paris stay. That’s a photo of my son Matthew and me with the Antiochian Orthodox Bishop Basil Essey of Wichita, who we ran into on our way to pray at the saint’s reliquary in the church behind us. Bp Basil was passing through Paris, and came to pray at the saint’s tomb, in part because his mother’s name is Geneviève. Because Geneviève lived before the Great Schism, she is seen as a saint by the Orthodox too. Here’s some biographical info about her:

When, in 445, the most saintly Bishop Germanus was again going to Britain and passed through Paris, the Saint’s

enemies criticized her to him. The God-bearing Hierarch took no account of the slander, but prayed with her and showed the Parisians the tears that the Saint had copiously shed as an indication of the gift she had received from the Lord.

From then on the inhabitants of the region began to respect her and to seek her enlightened advice and her wonderworking prayers.

One of the Saint’s prophecies, which was fulfilled, contributed much to establishing firmly in everyone’s conscience that she truly was a Saint. When Attila and his barbarian hordes drew near to Paris, the inhabitants were seized with panic and prepared to abandon the city. The Saint told them that the Lord would free them from danger, that they should not panic, but pray and fast. Not accepting her advice, the Parisians rose up against her and were ready to stone her. In the end, the Lord preserved her from the fury of the crowd, and the barbarian Huns suddenly and without apparent reason changed direction, and shortly afterwards were defeated by the relatively feeble Roman army under General Aetios, two hundred kilometers from Paris on the Champs Catalaniques.

The anonymous biographer of the Saint relates multitudes of miracles in her Life, which was written just eighteen years after her holy repose: she expelled demons, healed paralytics, and gave light to the blind.

For centuries, Geneviève was revered as the patron saint of Paris. During the Revolution, atheists broke into her tomb, gathered her body, burned it in a public square, and cast the ashes into the Seine. Only a few relics survived; they are interred in this tomb, in the l’Eglise du St-Etienne-du-Mont:

I’m not quite sure why I grew so close to her in Paris, but I prayed as often as I could at her tomb. Last autumn, when my priest here prescribed a long prayer rule for me, I began also to ask the saint’s intercession for my healing. And do you know, one of you readers, a Methodist believer, is in Paris this week, and promised to visit her tomb and pray for my healing — today, if he can manage it. Thank you, Reader! I will be praying to her especially this evening. God blesses His people in his saints.

By the way, another reader e-mailed yesterday to say that she and her family are in Paris now, and are going to Huitrerie Régis tonight for the oysters, and will be thinking of me. Thank you! A day in which my proxies are in my favorite city, praying in front of St. Geneviève’s tomb and eating raw oysters at Régis on my behalf is a day of blessing indeed!