2012-06-14 11:56:47

St. Miguel Cordero


Welcome to INSPIRING LIVES, a series on lives of Saints in the catholic church from around the world. In this series we bring you those saints who are canonized by Pope John Paul II. Saints are holy people who lived ordinary lives in extraordinary ways. Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts. These saints are examples of great holiness and virtue, and they invite us to follow their paths to holiness. Their unique stories inspire us to be rooted in our faith. God calls each one of us to be a saint.
Today we listen to the heroic life of St. Miguel Cordero (1854-1910). He was the first Ecuadorian saint. He was born with club feet and could not stand or walk until the age of five. But few Ecuadorian educators had gone so far as this crippled man’s educational successes. He was canonized on 21 October 1984 in Vatican Basilica.
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Son of Don Francisco Febres Cordero Montoya and Doña Ana Muñoz Cárdenas, Francisco was born on 7th November 1854, in a colonial house in the Calle Real, in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador. But Lady Ana’s child was a born cripple with club feet. This created a tremor of the sort in that influential Ecuadorian family. He was baptized on 15 November 1854.
Five years later a miracle happened which changed the course of his life. One day while watching a rose bloom in the garden of his home, little Francisco shouted, "Look how beautiful is the lady who is on the roses." Hearing this his relatives came running, but did not see anything, yet the child kept saying, "Look how beautiful it is. She has a white dress and a blue mantle and she calls me." And then to the amazement of everyone, the child got up and started walking. He was completely cured at that moment.
It was the time when the great President of Ecuador and exemplary Catholic martyr, Gabriel Garcia Moreno, invited to his country the Christian Brothers, formidable teachers of the time. Accepting his invitation, they came and established a school in Cuenca. It was here Francesco Febres Cordero enrolled as one of the first students. Francesco stood out among the students for his great intelligence and his immense desire to learn. What impressed him most in the school was the catechism lessons and the example of his teachers. When other students went home for holidays, he stayed in school reviewing lessons and helping the religious in their housework. It was here his religious vocation dawned.xxxImpressed by the exemplary examples of his teachers, Francesco wanted to join the religious institute of Christian Brothers, but his family opposed him because they were rich and influential; for them, religious life meant living very poorly at that time in Ecuador. Hence, instead of allowing him to respond to God’s call, they tried to change his mind. To this end he was sent to another school where he fell sick and had to return home. At last, his mother gave in and on 24 March 1868, signed the authorization for his entry into the novitiate of Christian Brothers. And on the eve of the feast of the Annunciation he received his religious habit taking the name of Miguel. Since then he was known as Brother Miguel Febres Cordero Francisco. He was the first Ecuadorian to be received into the Institute of Christian Brothers. But it did not end his struggle for fidelity to the vocation. His father did not write a line to his son for five years.
As a Christian Brother, he decided to pursue teaching as his career and began his ministry in Lasallian schools in Quito. Esteemed teacher of Spanish language and literature, he soon discovered that the textbooks were not updated. So he started composing grammar books. When he was not quite twenty years old, he published the first of his many books, a Spanish grammar that soon became a standard text in all schools in Ecuador.
Interestingly, Brother Miguel, without having any special training, published more than one hundred books in a small country like Ecuador. Many of his books were adaptations of works that had enjoyed in other countries. The style that brother Miguel used to teach was very pleasant and that was the same style he used in the books he published. His didactic works were written under the pseudonym of GM Bruno.
He research and published works on literature and linguistics put him in touch with scholars all over the world, and earned him membership in the Ecuadorian Academy of Letters in 1892, followed by the Academies of Spain, France, and Venezuela.xxxBrother Miguel worked tirelessly since his entry into the Institute of Christian Brothers until his death. He dedicated totally at the service of others - he spent long hours lecturing, teaching catechism, attending the sick, studying languages and writing books.
He devoted himself to teaching and cultivation of letters, and became one of the most notable writers of Ecuador. He was a member of the Academies in Ecuador, Spain, France, and Venezuela. But above these honorable worldly titles, what he valued ​​high was the ‘Preparation of children for First Communion." He spent 26 consecutive years preparing them for First Communion and he asked for that delicate task which was reserved for him from 1880 until his departure for Europe in 1907. He also composed catechism for children, the ministry to which he devoted himself with great enthusiasm.
Miguel was convinced of the enormous influence that good reading exercise on humans. He said to himself that there are people to whom the Lord God wanted to speak through a good book, and there in the pages of a book awaited God's grace to transform them.
Miguel’s constant contact with the little children would leave an indelible mark on his spirituality - the simplicity of the Gospel. Along with that simplicity shone in him the virtues of his religious life, namely, poverty, purity, obedience, and also his Eucharistic piety and tender devotion to Mary. xxx Following laws hostile to religious congregations, many Christian Brothers left France in 1904. Spain and Latin America welcomed them, but their lack of knowledge of the Spanish language created a big problem. Hence in 1907, Brother Miguel was sent to Europe to translate texts into Spanish, which were to be used by the Christian Brothers who were exiled from France.
After a few months in Paris, he was transferred to the General House in Lembecq-lez-Hal in Belgium. In 1909, he was transferred to the junior novitiate at Premia del Mar, near Barcelona, ​​where he established an international training center. But Premia de Mar experienced wind of revolution in July the same year. Because of frequent anticlerical violence, brothers and young people in education were moved to Barcelona, which was overseen by Brother Miguel. However quenched revolution made them to return to Premia da Mar. But the Lord wanted Miguel with him for his faithful service. In the last days of January 1910 he was suffering from pneumonia. After three days of agony, on 9 February Brother Miguel, received the sacraments and went to his heavenly abode, leaving behind a remarkable reputation as scholar, teacher, and saint.When his Brothers said great things about his activity, Brother Miguel used to repeat the advice of Jesus: "when you have done all that is commanded you, say, `We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty."
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On 30th October 1977, he was beatified by Pope Paul VI and on 21st October 1984 Pope John Paul II canonized him.
Miguel’s canonization gave the whole Church a model of simple cleric and a humble educator who had helped many young to find meaning in their lives and to live their faith as a commitment and as a gift. Let us remember the advice of St. Alfonse de Liguori - Instead of doing penance wearing hair shirts or taking lashes, a good sacrifice for immense good to the soul is this: do not leave a day without reading a page of a spiritual book. This does advance the soul and leads to holiness. " P.J. Joseph SJ








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