451 A.D.:) Genevieve and Paris Send Up Desperate Prayers for Help from God!
Today the city of Nanterre, France is just outside the city limits of Paris and home to a bit over 90,000 people. But it was very much smaller of course, only a village, many centuries ago in about the year 420 A.D., when a special girl child was born there. Her parents were Severus who was a French Roman, and Geroncia who was a Greek woman. She sometimes tended her father's herd animals as a young girl. Her name was Genevieve, and she would grow to become a great inspiration to Christendom - even later to Chlotilde, the wife of King Clovis - and by her life's end she was known as a mighty woman of God of the sort not too often encountered in history.
It is known that the young girl was very pious even at an early age, and this spirit did not depart from her as she reached womanhood. When she was 15, she was able to meet a notedly gifted man, a Bishop of God named Germanicus who was traveling through her region on his way to a posting in Britain. Genevieve let him know of her desire to devote her life entirely to God and he is said to have encouraged her, and so this is the direction she chose for those and no doubt many other reasons. She kept her virginity and became a nun.
She was fervent even among nuns. She prayed much and fasted so determinedly that she is recorded to have made it her habit to eat only twice a week, fasting during the remaining days. In her later years as a nun she was even ordered by her superiors to lighten up her regimen for the sake of her health. It is common when reading about people who have been mighty in the kingdom of God to find that they thought fasting of great importance for forging a close relationship with Jesus. And the scripture does indeed emphasize the effectiveness of fasting for weakening the spirit-dampening power of our flesh. Scripture says that the flesh and the spirit are always at war with each other. Make the flesh weaker, and the spirit shines brighter, I believe it is saying.
It was during Genevieve's lifetime that the Huns under Attila went on a seemingly unstoppable rampage through Europe. Mounted cavalry soldiers with deadly bows and excellent discipline, they advanced fast and were extremely skilled in how to use their mobility to their advantage. No one seemed to be able to stop their advance, and they left great destruction and desolation in their wake, though in some cases they accepted bribes to spare an area or a town. But it was the unfortunate destiny of Paris to eventually become a target in the path of this terrible army's campaign of terror. And there was thought to be little hope of facing them in battle with success. Paris trembled.
And so, Genevieve and other Christian leaders of Paris and her surrounding towns prayed to God for rescue. But it is Genevieve who is remembered as the one who began the great prayer campaign, counseling all of her countrymen to remember the power of God to save and rallying as close to all citizens as possible to engage in the prayer effort. It was a 'do or die' situation for vulnerable Paris, and prayers rose from almost everyone apparently imploring God to spare their city and their lives. And this intense praying went on steadily for an extended time.
To the great relief of Paris, Attila unexpectedly turned his army in another direction away from the rich prize of Paris towards another town, and not only that, but his army was met by an alliance of the Romans and Theodoric I, a Visigoth (means 'Western Goth') who against all expectations obtained what is still heralded as a watershed and mighty victory for the European continent and western civilization. They turned Attila's forces, but the clash cost Theodoric's life. It was nearly the only defeat that Attila ever experienced.
And it was the opinion of the people of Paris, France, that this holy woman, more than any other, and her prayer campaign to Almighty God had saved their imperiled city. And she went on to do other very great things on behalf of her city. At another time in her life when Paris was under assault by an army led by pagan Childeric, a Salien Frank and the father of King Clovis, she went out of the city boldly with a group and spoke to Childeric and his council persuasively about the starving poor inside of the city. Despite the fact that starvation is one of the points of besieging a city, she was allowed to go out, obtain some grain, and return into the city with it. She also pleaded for good treatment of the prisoners of war that Childeric had taken and was apparently successful on that matter as well. That is hard to picture but gives us some idea of how impacting this woman's holiness was upon others around her.
She is said to have had frequent visions and communications with heavenly beings, so much so that she made her peers extremely jealous at certain points in her life, to the point that they nearly executed her. But heaven's favor for her was too evident, and her holiness was eventually acknowledged by even her enemies.
An anecdotal account survives of how she and other nuns were traveling in the dark to a Saturday night service at the church in foul weather, and the wind blew out their lantern. They could not see at all, but she prayed for a solution, and the lantern relit itself so that they could continue on.
A grateful people held her in high regard for the rest of her life, which ended in around the year 508 A.D. when she was a pretty old woman for that time. And even her relics were known to have power in later centuries. It is reported as a historical occurrence that a plague of what is now called ergot poisoning was halted over 600 years later, in 1129 A.D., with extreme suddenness when her relics were removed and carried around and through the city as her 'intercession' was asked for. Investigation into this alleged miracle is said to have left no doubt in the minds of the investigators that it was her relics being carried throughout the city that caused this abrupt extinguishment of the plague.
She is to this day considered a very important historical holy woman to the Christians of France. And why not? Did God find her so pleasing that he heeded her prayers and re-routed one of the most devastating armies in human history away from her dread filled neighbors? That is indeed an amazing show of favor by an all-powerful God!
So let us, in our supposedly new and modern age, not forget that nations are saved, maintained, or crushed in keeping with the will of God, and that the prayers of a faithful and devoted daughter of God can trump the power of armies if God so wills it to be.