Saint Nicholas of Flüe

Saint Nicholas of Flüe, known as Brother Klaus, was a Swiss farmer, husband, and father of ten children who became a hermit at the age of fifty. People came to him for counsel from all over the country, and the Swiss venerate him as their patron saint. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on March 21, the day of his death.

He was born in 1417 into a farming family in the hamlet of Flüeli near Sachseln, in the canton of Obwalden. He never learned to read or write. In his youth he served in the army of the Confederation, first as a soldier and then as an officer. He married Dorothea Wyss, and they had five sons and five daughters. He farmed his own land and served his native canton as a councilor and judge.

For years, however, he had felt that God was calling him to something more. After a long inner struggle, and with the consent of his wife and his eldest sons, he took leave of his family on October 16, 1467, and set out as a pilgrim. The youngest child was an infant. He got only as far as the area of Liestal near Basel, turned back, and settled in the Ranft, a ravine not far from his own home. Toward the end of his life he thanked God that his family had agreed to his leaving and that he had never been tempted to return to them. John Paul II, who celebrated Holy Mass in front of his house in Flüeli in 1984, also paid tribute to Dorothea, who in a painful decision let her husband go.

He spent twenty years in the Ranft in prayer and penance. The local people built him a cell and a chapel, which was consecrated in 1469. According to the testimony of his contemporaries, during that time he took no food other than the Eucharist. The matter was examined by the authorities of the canton and by an envoy of the bishop of Constance, and no deception was found. From near and far, ordinary people and envoys of the powerful came to him for advice, and although he valued solitude, he received them all.

In 1481 a dispute between the urban and the rural cantons threatened to break up the Confederation and, as tradition has it, even to end in civil war. When the talks at Stans reached a deadlock, the parish priest of the place hurried to the hermit by night and came back with his counsel. On December 22, 1481, the cantons reached an agreement and concluded an alliance with Fribourg and Solothurn. The Swiss call Brother Klaus the father of their country. In a letter dictated for the council of Bern he affirmed that peace is always in God, for God is peace.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes his prayer: “My Lord and my God, take from me everything that distances me from you. My Lord and my God, give me everything that brings me closer to you. My Lord and my God, detach me from myself to give my all to you.”

He died in his cell on March 21, 1487, by tradition on his seventieth birthday. He was buried in the parish church of Sachseln, where pilgrims still come. Pope Clement IX beatified him in 1669, and Pius XII canonized him on May 15, 1947. In Switzerland his feast is celebrated on September 25.