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by William Doyle Sj (Translator), Brother Hermenegild Tosf (Editor), Arthur Calvat Sj (Author)
Master of Novices, and Superior of the Tertian Fathers, in the novitiates of the Society of Jesus for forty years, Father Ginhac had few opportunities of attracting the attention of a world which is quickly won by the charm of holiness. He died as he lived, generously fighting the hard battle of self-conquest to the end, but practically unknown even in his native land of France, except to the numerous communities of priests and nuns whom the silent preaching of his example had urged along the path of perfection more powerfully than his burning words. Death, however, seemed to lift the veil which had so long concealed this hidden saint, and God glorified His Servant. An immediate demand was made for the publication of his Life, which in a few years has already run through five French editions, amounting to ten thousand copies. Translations have also been issued in German, Italian. Spanish, Flemish, Du tell and Chinese. Numerous and striking miraculous favours have been obtained through his intercession, or by the application of his relics; written testimonies of over six hundred such favours, attributed to his power with Almighty God, are in the hands of the Vice-Postulator of his Cause. Saints, like poets, are supposed to be born, not made, but Father Paul Ginhac was a striking exception to this rule. The following pages will show that his sanctity was no gratuitous gift from God, but laboriously hewn out of the rough, coarse block of our corrupt human nature. From the day when the great crucifix of the Cathedral of Mende gave him the "look" which changed his heart, Paul Ginhac, the young, dashing, pleasure-loving man of the world, put before him as his one ideal "to know Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," his sole ambition to reach the heights of sanctity. It was a long, desperate struggle for fifty-three years. What it cost him the Heavenly Master only knows; but when at last, on January 10, 1895, the wearied soldier laid down his arms at the feet of his Divine King, one who knew him well could write: "I can say with truth that I have met one saint at least in my life, a living saint, whose sanctity made the holiness of everyone else seem nothing; a man with only the appearance of humanity, who in every respect fulfilled all that I had ever read about the greatest saints placed by the Church on our altars." The editor is deeply indebted to a religious of the Good Shepherd Community at Cork for much valuable assistance in the translation of this Life.
