Marcellin Champagnat was born near Lyons, France, on May 20, 1789; he was the second youngest of ten children. During the French Revolution his father held public office in the Canton of Marlhes. Marcellin was born into a family where Christian values were put into daily practice. His aunt Louise, a Sister of St. Joseph, contributed deeply to his spiritual formation and may have had a profound influence on his vocation to the priesthood and later education.
As a young boy, Marcellin had a very bad experience with a teach who was unprofessional. From that point on, Marcellin, decided that he would work on the farm rather than go to school. Marcellin was a hard worker, and manual labor came easy to him. Marcellin’s life was quite normal. Among his peers he did not stand out as an exceptionally religious person.
It came as a great surprise to his parents and siblings when, at the age of fifteen, and hardly able to read, he decided to enter the priesthood. Marcellin had his troubles with school. Not having had any formal education, he was required to finish his primary schooling at home. The initial years in the seminary were difficult ones for him but he was determined to succeed. "I know that God wants me to be a priest," he said. "Therefore I shall succeed." It was this conviction that carried Marcellin through the hard times.
By late 1813, Marcellin had transferred to the Major Seminary at Lyons. There, his vocation to the priesthood grew on solid ground. He recognized the importance of fostering his vocation, of serving God, of giving good example and of teaching about the Kingdom.
With a group of seminarians, Marcellin planned the organization of a Society devoted to parish mission work and to the Christian education of youth. They placed this society under the special protection of the Mother of God and gave it the name of the Society of Mary, now popularly known as the Marist Fathers. Marcellin’s dream was to organize a group of Brothers, whose main work would be the Christian education of youth. He himself declared several times that it was his own lack of a good education that caused him to conceive the project of preparing religious teachers for country children. These men were to become the Marist Brothers of the Schools. Together with fifty-one young men, Marcellin was ordained a priest on July 22, 1816. On the very next day, he and twelve of his classmates went up to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fourviere and formally pledged themselves to the foundation of the Society of Mary.
His studies now behind him, Marcellin, at the age of 27, arrived as a parish priest to serve the people of LaValla, a small parish consisting of a series of scattered hamlets in the foot hills of Mount Pilat. His whole apostolic life was to be spent in this region of mountains and valleys. He would spend eight years as a curate and the next sixteen, two miles further down the Gier Valley. Marcellin would work with his hands to build the Hermitage and educate young men to become Marist Brothers.
Marcellin was only fifty-one when he died, and had been a priest for less than twenty-four years. Yet in that time he had personally founded forty-five schools and staffed them with trained religious teachers, having over 200 Little Brothers of Mary.
Marcellin Champagnat’s dream can be seen today in the lives of his Brothers: a way of life founded on simplicity, and a deep concern for others through love and action. His Brothers live a life centered on Christ, with Mary as their "Ordinary Resource." God prepared Champagnat and, through him, his followers, to be evangelizers of youth, bringing young people to "Jesus through Mary", that all may come "to know and love Jesus".
CHARACTER
It is not a soft or weak-willed character that we meet in Champagnat. He was a tall man for his time, and very strong physically, a person who thought nothing of going out in the hardest weather, over mountains and valleys, to serve his parishioners and brothers in the most remote parts of the region. Marcellin was leader in every sense of the word. There was no task too small nor too great for him to tackle. He was as hard on himself as he was on the Brothers and local authorities. If the authorities kept failing to meet his school’s requirements, he would withdraw the Brothers. Br. Francois, our first Superior General, writing the Brothers after Champagnat’s death, sums up this man as follows: "He was firm;. . . . But he was above all good; he was compassionate; he was a father. In founding his Congregation, he had in mind to create a family. Therefore, let us be his family, his children."
In his life of action and love, it was faith which sustained Marcellin Champagnat, a simple faith that gave him strength and courage and an absolute trust in the Lord. Champagnat wanted the spirituality of his Brothers to be likewise focused on three essential themes: (1) the presence of God in every action of their daily lives (2) the confidence in Mary as their "ordinary resource" for help in their apostolic endeavors and (3) the dedication of all their works to Jesus through Mary.
Champagnat’s confidence in God, his simple but active faith, and his constant devotion to Mary permeated his writings, his advice to the Brothers, his thoughts, his hopes and dreams, his congregation.
He was a man of his own times whose vision and zeal can be an inspiration in our times.
To learn more about the life, mission and spirituality of St. Marcellin Champagnat and the Marist Brothers, you might like to read A Heart That Knew No Bounds: The Life and Mission of St. Marcellin Champagnat by Bro. Sean Sammon, FMS published by Alba House.
Blessed by Pope Pius XII
On the 25th of May, 1955
and was
Canonized by Pope John Paul II On the 18th of April, 1999