… It is unbelievable how the morale influences my unhappy person physically. My heart is heavy, it beats with difficulty and too fast.
Letter to Henri Tempier, 24 December 1830, EO VII n 375
The anti-religious climate was taking its toll on Eugene. He was concerned for the Oblates: the chaplaincy of the College of Aix had been taken from the Oblates, their mission house of Nimes closed, and Fr. Capmas had fallen gravely ill. Then, Bishop Fortuné had fallen sick as a result of the tensions in the diocese, and the future was uncertain. Eugene was also stuck in Nice waiting for a reply from the King of Sardinia to his request to send missionaries to his Kingdom.
Did Eugene feel that in that time of great worry and struggle, in that time when life seemed to be repeating itself and external forces seemed to come together against him; that he was ‘body and soul’ somehow under siege? He was powerless in many ways to “do” anything as he had to sit and wait for an answer.
From time-to-time in my own life I have had ‘glimpses’ as I ‘come out of’ a very hard time of struggle and darkness which has engaged both my body and soul that I turn almost instinctively to ‘loving’. It is like coming through a doorway into the light and all that I see before me is the brokenness and pain of another(s) and it is almost instinctual to love and be compassionate with that other.
This time for Eugene was physical, emotional and spiritual and he was using his physical self to describe his inner self, each a joined to the other. His heart was growing.