Celebrating Saint Gens: Patron of Rain, Resilience, and Forgiveness
Saint Gens and the Boys with His Traveling Statue!
The First of Our European Newsletters, Celebrating Saint Gens
of Le Beaucet, France.
Saint Gens is the Patron Saint of Rain, Resilience, and Forgiveness.
His Mass, held in Monteux, was unique with the Priest, from nearby Carpentras, asking the Parish to pray for the youth of today. Young men and women were in abundance, revering Saint Gens for his Feast Day.
Saint Gens and the Boys with His Traveling Statue!
We arrived in Venasque and then quickly got ready to join in the celebration of Saint Gens in Monteux, France. The residents of Monteux were out in full force, adorned with bandanas, armbands, horses with wagons, and signs. Celebrating Saint Gens is an Annual Provencal Ritual.
Saint Gens is a favored Saint in France, especially the Provencal Vaucluse region. Gens was born in Monteux in the 1100’s, much like Saint Francis of Assisi, Italy.
The Monteux Mass displays a longstanding Golden Statue of Saint Gens venerated yearly. Several young men are carefully harnessed to carry Gens' Statue on foot. They run and walk from Monteux through Saint Didier, another nearby town, and then onward to Beaucet.
Beaucet is where Saint Gens still lies. Literally! His body lies incorrupt in a tiny church on the outskirts of town. He died in 1127.
Saint Gens is best known as the patron saint invoked for rain, though we’ve studied and add that he is a rightful patron of resilience and forgiveness too.
Gens asked his parents for a quiet life indulging in solitude and reflection, praying for all sinners, and his parents gave him land and livestock in Beaucet. He worked the farmland for subsistence with his two cows. Things went well for Saint Gens and he ably lived off the land he owned.
Adversity struck when a wild wolf came by one day and devoured one of Gens’ two cows. Gens forgave and then approached the wolf, tamed it, and decided to assign the wolf the duties of the cow it killed. Curiously, Saint Francis of Assisi was taming a wolf in Italy, at around the same time in the 1100s.
The tamed and remorseful wolf humbly abided with Gens’ instructions and helped till the land. Many images show Saint Gens with the wolf and cow, side by side. The renderings are depicted in various forms, including handmade flags, throughout Vaucluse.
Many miracles have been attributed to Saint Gens. Before he died at the age of 23, his mother let him know she was thirsty during a drought and her finger miraculously became a font of fresh water. The people in Monteux asked for his help during the drought and upon Gens’ arrival in town, the rains came.
The Celebration of Saint Gens with the young men running with his statue from Le Beaucet to his hometown of Monteux and then back to Beaudet has occurred for over 75 years. It concludes with fantastic fireworks displays in Monteux on its final evening.
We found a few small saint Gens medals in Beaucet and they are already on their way to New Orleans for painting. Saint Gens will be available upon our return in September or maybe beforehand.
