A FREE MAN

Blessed Louis-Edouard Cestac, a free man... 

Does a free man exist today when we are aware of the multiple interdependencies that bind us (energy, food, social networks, etc.)?

But who is a free person? Does he or she have freedom from within or outside?

Blessed L.E. CESTAC was not familiar with the technological advances of the present time in the field of agriculture. But he who wanted to make the land produce enough to feed the many children and young people in his care, was not content to reproduce the habits of the peasants of his time; he became an agricultural expert (cf. Schneider Joseph, Bibliographie de M. L’abbé Cestac).

He who wanted to bring to the little girls of the countryside a basic education (many little girls attended school for only one or two years...), developed learning methods which allowed them to acquire these fundamental notions in a few months (cf. Y. Chiron, Louis-Édouard Cestac: L'apostolat par l'école ).

These two examples of the life of Blessed L.E. CESTAC are not exhaustive: the backwardness, the freedom to innovate in several fields, in spite of the oppositions and sharp criticisms of which he was the object, became in him the freedom to love: it is because he burned with inner fire for Christ and the Virgin Mary, that he spent himself without counting the cost in order to make them known and loved.

The freedom of a person (the ability to think and act according to one's values, to make choices, to exercise one's will) comes from within. Blessed L.E. CESTAC had an inner guide, his attachment to the Virgin Mary, which led him to gather his large family around her Son Jesus. When he died on March 27, 1868, he could repeat the poem:

"I finished my day

I have sown the wheat

And I reaped it.

And in this bread I made

All my children received communion."

(Cf. F. Gabaix-Hialé - F. Marticorena: Un Vicaire descend dans la rue)