Having taken a long digression to explore what was behind Eugene’s choice of the name of Oblate s of Mary Immaculate, it is time to return to the narration of the events as they unfolded in Rome. Eugene had left Marseille on October 26 and arrived in Rome on November 26. On December 9 he wrote to Tempier, expressing his longing to be back with his Oblate family in France:
Were I to listen to my feelings, I now have had my fill of Rome; I cannot accustom myself to live in separation from those I love, I have no pleasure away from them. Oh! how happy we will be in heaven when we are all there together! Then there will be no more journeys, no more separation and although absorbed in God we will love our friends more than ever.
Eugene then touches on a point that was essential for his life and welfare – the need to express affection. His personality was such that he need to be surrounded by affection. He needed people around him that he could love, and he needed to experience the warmth of their friendship in his regard. Often when he expresses this sentiment of his affectivity he points to the affectivity of Jesus, which some ascetics and mystics tried to ignore. For him, Jesus was the model for our affective life.
His intuitive vision of God did not prevent Jesus Christ from loving people, and amongst them, some more than others. That is how it is, however it pleases refined mystics to wish to give us, for the sake of perfection, another nature which assuredly would not be worth that which we have from God. So much so that there is no happiness for me, separated from those who are mine!
He was lonely and also frustrated with the slow pace of the Roman church officials – hence his longing to be back in the loving environment of his religious family.
Judge from that how saddened I must be at seeing how matters proceed here. It is a world in which there are nine months of vacation in the year. Business in consequence is done very slowly.
Letter to Henri Tempier, 9 December 1825, EO VI n 211
“Words were never invented to fully explain the peaceful aura that surrounds us when we are in communion with minds of the same thoughts.” Eddie Myers
This is a small joy to read this morning, simply because of the truth of it. It is always so good to find in another your own self. To hear Eugene speak of there being 9 months out of 12 where they seem to be on vacation – it seems that it is not only the wheels of justice that grind slowly. I suspect that in certain ways it is the same with the Church today, and with many of her members. I know that for myself waiting and patience are not my strongest qualities and I find myself sharing with Eugene impatience – while he waited for the process to become an acknowledged and recognized congregation, while I wait for the process to become a recognized and committed Oblate Associate. Eugene stayed and did what he had to do, and I guess so shall we.
I look at what I first wanted to call Eugene’s capacity to love and to be loved, but realise it was more than that. He modeled himself on another, on Jesus who also had that same capactity and who lived it out, absolutely and most perfectly. I would hazard a guess that we are all born with that capacity to love, but it is in the loving, in the living it out that we discover the greatness of it. I am always struck by how Eugene’s ‘all for God’ is lived out most fully with his family and then those around him. And he had the humility, the honesty to admit to and state that very love; ” …there is no happiness for me, separated from those who are mine!” Wow – that is an awesome love that makes me want to say – oh yeh, I want to be a part of that, have a part of that. I want to be like that. I started for a minute to chide myself for not ‘modelling’ myself on Jesus. Wording! I realise that I have been asking Jesus to give me his very heart, that I my love as does He. To fill me with the selflessness of Eugene and to be as open as was he. My own way of modelling myself on others perhaps.
O God continue to grow my heart. Grant to me the grace to live out this awesome love with which you fill my heart, that way making space for you to fill me even more.