EUGENE, VICAR GENERAL OF MARSEILLE
© Laurent Girard / Studio Mazenod (2011) – Tableau du Jean-Jacques Martin
1823 : nomination as principal Vicar General of his uncle, Bishop Fortuné de Mazenod. It was a difficult work of restoration and rebuilding a diocese that had not had a resident bishop for 21 years. For Eugene, who was a dynamic preacher and loved being in the field of evangelization, having to be an administrator in an office (and often a disciplinarian to correct abuses) entailed great personal suffering and sacrifice for him. He did it for love of the Church.
I must resume my post. This will be, I hope, again to do my duty there, to try by my every zealous effort to bring a little bit of life back into a dead diocese whatever appearance of health it may have; there will no doubt be new crises, there was never a reform without hurting, wounding plenty of people! No matter; have God alone before us, the honour of his Church, the salvation of the souls entrusted to us; consult only the divine Wisdom, trample on human wisdom, and God will be our help. But one must have much virtue to sacrifice one’s peace for one’s duty, to face the hatred and persecution of men precisely so as to do good for men. This virtue is acquired and conserved only by union with God, prayer and meditation, etc., walking always before God and keeping one’s eyes on heaven alone and its rewards which are none other than God himself. Lord! Grant me the grace of being ever more deeply imbued with these thoughts!
Retreat notes, May 1824, O.W. XV n.156
LJC et MI
How often we have felt that way. In an office doing paper work and crunching numbers. And yet if we could do what Eugene did and see it for the great good of the community, church, world family then it can make sense and empower us.
And yet, life is not only about the office and the hours there, but of the times of prayer/oraison, meal conversations and moments in garden surrounded by beauty.
This is one of those mornings that I find the scriptures of the day leading the way for what Eugene is expressing in his Retreat notes. “Righteous Father… I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25-26)
Only two years before Eugene will travel to Rome and present his Rule of Life for approval, he the Founder is also being asked to be an “administrator” in his position as Vicar General in the Diocese of Marseilles: “This virtue is acquired and conserved only by union with God, prayer and meditation, etc., walking always before God and keeping one’s eyes on heaven alone and its rewards which are none other than God himself. All this because of his love for the Church which he serves.”
I appreciate how he was being asked to evangelize in a different manner, to serve as Paul served as a Pharisee himself, evangelizing them to a new way of seeing and believing. (Acts 23:6-9)
How am I being asked to “enlarge the space of my heart” as Isaiah spoke of and as our Church is asking of us today? “…I use that good health that the Lord grants me to fulfil as best as I can the responsibilities laid upon me, acknowledging all the while that I am powerless to be adequate” (1855 letter to Fr. Jeanmaire noted in my small Daily Inspirations calendar)
“Lord! Grant me the grace of being ever more deeply imbued with these thoughts!”