61. SAINT HELIER, MONK-MARTYR OF JERSEY
The holy Martyr Helier (Helibert, Helyi) lived in the sixth century. He was born to a noble Frankish couple called Sigebert and Leufgard, from the city of Tongres in France. The couple, though pagan, had appealed to the holy monk Cunibert that they should have a child, and through his prayers they received their request. But Cunibert had agreed to pray on condition that if a child was born he should be offered to God – a condition which the parents failed to fulfil, because his father wanted him to be a warrior.
Cunibert went away saddened, and for seven years Helier was brought up as a pagan child.
One day, however, Helier fell ill; his strength forsook him, and he became pale and weak. Lying in pain on his mother's lap, he said: «Oh, give me back to the holy man by whose prayers I was born, and to whom you promised me.» His parents sent him to Cunibert, who knelt beside the sick child and healed him by his prayers.
Then Helier shared with Cunibert his harsh monastic life – but remained a catechumen, without being baptized. In spite of that, the boy acquired a reputation for sanctity and the local people brought their sick to him to be healed. Thus he cured blindness, and removed a snake from the mouth of a man who had had the misfortune of having it slither in there while he was asleep. On hearing this, some Franks went to Sigebert and said: «Let us kill this wizard Cunibert, and get your child back.» Sigebert agreed.
The plan was revealed to Cunibert, and after Mattins the next day he told Helier that he would be killed, and counselled the boy to run away. The boy wept, and asked: «And will you not baptize me, O my father?» Cunibert replied: «God wills that another hand should do that, O my son.» Having spent the whole day in church, they went to their cells. Then, as Cunibert was reciting the 101st psalm, the wicked men entered his cell and killed him. Helier, hearing a noise, rushed into the cell of his master and found him dead in a pool of blood, but with his finger pointing at the verse he had been reciting. Helier wept over the body of his master, then hastily buried it and ran away.
For six days he wandered through pathless forests until he came to the city of Therouanne. Almost dead from fatigue, he asked a poor widow for help. She took him into her house and took care of him for two weeks. Then he asked her to show him a lonely spot where he could serve God in quiet. She led him to St. Mary's church, outside the town. For five years he lived in the porch of the church, exposed to the elements. His shoes soon wore out, and his feet were stained with blood. However, when he wanted, he could go back to the widow's house, where he could sleep on a wooden pallet. Soon, as at Tongres, the sick came to him for healing.
Once the wife of a nobleman of the town called Rotald accidentally caused the death of her own child. Rotald rushed to the Bishop of Therouanne and asked him to go to Helier and order him to pray for the resurrection of the child. Helier obeyed, went to the church where the body of the child was lying on a bier, and prayed for his resurrection. The child began to move, and to cry for his mother...
That night Christ appeared to Helier and told him to go to Nanteuil, where a man called Marculf would baptize him and teach him what would be his way of life. He set out immediately the next day. On the way, near the little river Canche, the devil appeared to him in bodily form and tempted him to return to the wealthy environment in which he was born. But Helier rejected him, and the devil vanished.
Arriving at Vallesdune in Normandy, he found Marculf, who baptized him on Christmas Day. Marculf was building a monastery on some land given to him by King Childebert on the seashore at Nanteuil. Sometimes he would retire to a small island that still bears his name.
Three months after his baptism, Helier asked his spiritual father to find a lonely place where he could devote himself to prayer and fasting. He sent him with a priest called Romard to the island of Agnus, now called Jersey, which was inhabited by pagan Celts. The saint took up his abode on a rock in St. Aubins» bay which is connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway that is covered by the sea at high tide. Soon the sick were again coming to Helier for healing. A cripple and a paralytic were healed by him.
Three years later, Marculf arrived with a priest to visit his disciple. One day, Romard saw a fleet of Saxons approaching the island. He rushed to the cell of Helier, and then both went to Marculf. The three cast themselves on their knees on the top of the bare crag and prayed for deliverance.
The terrified islanders, who were about thirty in number, also asked Marculf to pray for them. «My children,» he said, «Be courageous, take up your arms, God is powerful enough to make you triumph, He will fight for you. Remember how he made the armies of Pharaoh perish. I promise you victory. Go.»
They believed him, armed and marched against the enemy. All those who stepped foot on the island were killed without the islanders losing a single man. Meanwhile, those who remained in their boats were overwhelmed by a storm. Nobody survived to tell their story to their countrymen.
On seeing what had happened, the chief of the islanders gave thanks to God and gave St. Marcul half of the island. There he build a monastery in which he placed a few monks. Then he left, taking Romard with him but leaving one of his disciples to be the young Helier's guide.
For twelve years Helier continued to struggle on his rock. Then, one night, as he was resting on his stone couch, the Lord appeared to him and, smiling, said: «Come to Me, My beloved. In three days you will leave this world adorned in your own blood.» In the morning his spiritual guide came to him, as he always did, when the rock was joined to the mainland, and Helier told him about the vision.
On the third day St. Helier arose and looked towards the sea. A strong southwesterly wind was blowing, and the sea was covered with a fleet of Saxon ships. Knowing that he would suffer at their hands, he went back to his cell that he might die, as he had lived, in prayer. After some time, the pagans saw the cell overhanging the tossing waves. They climbed up the cliff, entered the cell and beheaded the holy martyr.
The Saxons became terrified at this awful murder, and although the weather was stormy, they immediately put to sea. But when nearing Noirmont their ship struck a rock and they all perished.
The next day, the saint's spiritual father (whose name we do not know) found his body on the beach opposite the rock. The head was resting tranquilly on his breast between his hands, with a gentle smile on his face. The body might have been brought there by the tide. But how did the head come to be resting between the two hands? He took the body and laid it on the deck of a little vessel that was lying near. Exhausted with grief and anxiety, he fell asleep. When he awoke, he found himself on a coast that he had never seen. The vessel was swiftly gliding into a harbour, and men and women were standing on the shore, their eyes fixed on the strange sight of a boat being propelled with no helmsman. It stopped in the harbour. The bishop of the place came down to the harbour in his vestments, and the body was borne in procession to the church with incense and chanting. We do not know what this harbour was, but we know that the monastery of Beaubec in Normandy possessed some relics of St. Helier. Eventually, the holy relics were housed in the Abbey of Lehon.
The very spot where Saint Helier lived and died, with the Oratory built over the cell in the 12th century, may be seen to this day.
St. Helier is commemorated on July 16.
Holy Monk-Martyr Helier, pray to God for us!
(Sources: John Henry Newman, Lives of the English Saints, London: Freemantle, 1901, vol. 3, pp. 13–43; The Life of St. Marculf (c. 640AD);
http://user.itl.net/ geraint/helier.html; Donald Attwater, The Penguin Dictionary of Saints, London: Penguin, 1965, p. 166)