Saint Mutien-Marie Wiaux

Mutien-Marie Wiaux (also known as Mutien-Marie of Malonne; 20 March 1841 – 30 January 1917) was a Belgian member of the Brothers of Christian Schools, who spent his life as a teacher and is honored as a saint by the Catholic Church. He was born Louis-Joseph Wiaux in the small village of Mellet, now part of the town of Les Bons Villers, in French-speaking Belgium, to a devoutly Catholic family. The third of six children, his father was a blacksmith, while his mother ran a café out of their house. After the joviality of evening, where customers would enjoy the beer and card games, the family would end their day by praying the rosary together. Wiaux was a gentle, obedient boy who was marked by his piety, leading his classmates to pray at their local church at the end of the school day. After he finished elementary school, he worked as an apprentice in his father's shop, where he found that he was both physically and temperamentally unfit for this career. The call to join a religious order, meanwhile, had begun to take root in his heart, and he considered following his brother into the Society of Jesus. The pastor of the town, the Abbé Sallié, however, spoke to the boy about the Brothers of the Christian Schools (commonly called the Christian Brothers), who were about to open a school in the nearby town of Gosselies. He went to meet them and was convinced that it was the way of life he wanted. He traveled to the city of Namur, where he entered the Brothers' novitiate on 7 April 1856, and received the habit that following July. At that time he was also given the religious name of Mutien-Marie ("Mutien" after the ancient Roman martyr Mucian). Mutien gained the reputation of strictly living according to the Rule of the Institute. Nonetheless, his fellow novices enjoyed his company due to his reliable sense of humor.