29 August 2018: Pilgrimage to Ibarre
Nearly 600 pilgrims came to venerate St Michael Garicoïts. The Eucharistic celebration was presided over by Mgr Michel Cartatéguy, Bishop emeritus of Niamey, Niger and son of this land (he was born in Hasparren). Fr. Gustavo Agin SCJ, Superior General, and twenty priests concelebrated with him.
Echoing the exhortation of Pope Francis on holiness and contemplating the life of Saint Michael, Bishop Cartatéguy invited the pilgrims to recall three necessary attitudes on the path of holiness: perseverance, patience, meekness.
In the afternoon, after the rosary and the Vespers, Fr Laurent Bacho SCJ, Regional Vicar in France, led the procession to the birth place of Saint Michael. The pilgrims prayed to the shepherd of Ibarre with fervor, faith and joy.
About twenty kilometers from Ibarre, in the municipality of Oneix, pilgrims can now officially take the "Route Saint-Michel-Garicoïts".
Those who had the opportunity to visit the Anguélia farm house are familiar with this route that Michael Garicoïts, as a young farm boy in this family of Basque farmers, traveled to reach the church of Garris, where he made his first communion on 9 June 1811. At Oneix he felt this strong emotion - a rapture, an enlightenment - attested by multiple depositions in the process of beatification and, indirectly, by a confidence made at the end of his life. An intense experience that will create a new center of gravity in Michael’s life: the revelation of God-Love. (See The Heart of Jesus in Saint Michael Garicoïts, Jean-Luc Morin SCJ).
We can rejoice that by inaugurating these few hundred meters of "Saint-Michael-Garicoïts Street", the municipality of Amendeuix-Oneix has kindly paid a tribute to the saint of Betharram and to his spiritual experience
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