IN THE END, THOUGH WITH SADNESS, I GO MY WAY, PLACING MY TRUST IN GOD ALONE

Struggling to regain his health, Eugene gives his friend, Forbin Janson, an idea of how many demands are made on him. We glimpse his tiredness and his need for intimacy as he experienced a sense of feeling alone in the midst of much activity. He recognizes that the only way to survive is to place his trust in God alone, and to attempt to love God always more.  He keeps returning to the solid foundation of his Good Friday conversion experience.

This morning again, immediately before going up to the altar, I had to hear confessions. I had scarcely laid aside the priestly vestments when I had to hear them again. Yesterday, it was one o’clock and I had still not said Prime, as I stayed on until then in the confession box. In the morning, I hardly said my thanksgiving, as I had to be with a crowd of young people who had spent a good 2 and three quarter hours in pious exercises.
It cannot continue; always everything for others, nothing for oneself. In the midst of all this turmoil, I am alone. You are my only friend I mean in the fullest sense of the word – for I am not lacking in those friends who are indeed kind and virtuous but who are lacking in many other respects. But what use are they? Can they soften a grief? Can one discourse with them on the good even that one would like to do? For what! All one would get of it would be compliments or discouragement.
In the end, though with sadness, I go my way, placing my trust in God alone. Let us love him always more.

Letter to Father Forbin Janson, 12 September 1814, O.W. XV n. 128.

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