IT IS YOU WHO SINCE THE MOST FRAGILE DAYS OF MY INFANCY HAVE LED ME AS IF BY THE HAND

Eugene’s retreat led him to look at his impending episcopacy with discomfort but with gentle trust in God.

And even so it is in this state of affairs I am called suddenly to receive the plenitude of the priesthood, elevated to the sublime episcopal dignity. My good God! If you had not accustomed me to the qualities of your infinite mercy, if already you had not inspired in my heart a gentle trust, there would be every reason to draw back with horror.

In moving sentiments, he recalls God’s gracious care for him throughout his life and entrusts himself to doing God’s will.

But no, you are my Father, it is you who since the most fragile days of my infancy have led me as if by the hand. Everything you have done for me in the course of my life is too present to my memory, I feel again still today too vividly the effects not to count on your infinite goodness, not to throw myself with total abandon into your paternal bosom, fully resolved to do this time and always everything you demand of me, were it to cost me my life.
Too happy to devote the few days left me to spend on earth to do your holy Will in bad times as in good, with the world’s approval or condemnation, amidst consolations or overwhelmed with griefs. For I do not know what is awaiting me in the new ministry I am about to begin.
As always, nothing happens to me that you have not willed, and my happiness and my joy will be always to do your Will.

Retreat journal before being consecrated bishop, 7-14 October 1832, EO XV n 166

With boundless confidence in the God who has never abandoned him, he will continue to find his happiness and his joy in always doing the will of God for him.

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1 Response to IT IS YOU WHO SINCE THE MOST FRAGILE DAYS OF MY INFANCY HAVE LED ME AS IF BY THE HAND

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    “…to do your holy Will in bad times as in good, with the world’s approval or condemnation, amidst consolations or overwhelmed with griefs.” To do your holy Will ? What does that look like? If I truly believe – like Eugene did that God has loved, supported and carried me since my life on earth began – how do I do God’s will, how do I live that?

    I look at Jesus – Son of God and what he endured and how he died and was resurrected – always he spoke of his Father’s will – not with anger or blame but with confident and absolute love. I look at St. Paul and I look at what Eugene himself endured and then what he was later to experience. Always with absolute love.

    Perhaps it is in how I carry it all – my ‘attitudes’ and I think of the “Be-attitudes” for a moment. To do your holy will O Lord – just as did St. Paul and St. Eugene – what did that take. It seems it was all in how they took it – how they looked at it.

    “With boundless confidence in the God who has never abandoned him, he will continue to find his happiness and his joy in always doing the will of God for him.” It’s all in how I look at it. If I in my times of struggle and darkness, great or small, if I look to God with gratitude for all that I have received, for all the love and the many graces that have been given to me; if I look ‘what I have’ rather than what I don’t have… If I walk in the light rather than giving into the darkness – perhaps that is what we speak of as the “will of God”. It is not so much in the “doing” as it is in the “being”. And then how we share that, how we serve and love with that.

    “I am a part of all that I have met…” I begin my day and my week with that for I have been given so much. The what I “be” will determine the what and how I ‘do’. And as he does most days, Eugene again shines his light on me. What a gift to receive on this Monday morning.

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