Easter Sunday 1839. Eugene was suffering as a result of serious opposition he was experiencing in the diocese. This leads him to reexamine the vocation that had led him here: ” to devote myself to the service and to the happiness of my neighbor whom I loved with the love of Jesus Christ for all people.” Once he was ordained a priest and finished his seminary commitments, he ha returned to Aix en Provence to begin his ministry.
It was this same sentiment that determined my choice when, on returning to Aix the Bishop of Metz, who was the administrator of the diocese at the time, asked me what I wanted to do. There was not a hair on my head that wished to take advantage of my social position to give in to the pretensions that everyone at the time would have found reasonable.
Eugene had been a member of the nobility before the French Revolution and was the son of the former President of the Court of Accounts. In the eyes of certain people of Aix he had a status and pedigree that would have entitled him to an eminent position in the Archdiocese of Aix. In his own heart Eugene had rejected all this, as was shown in a drawing he had made at the seminary and the motto he had chosen for himself.
Elegi abjectus esse in domo Dei mei .
It is an extract of verse 10 of Psalm 84 (83): ” For a day in your courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
It is written on a small drawing that I had made while I was at the seminary that perfectly expresses the secret of my heart. My coat of arms placed on my father’s president’s cloak detached and negligently thrown on a stone bench, with the cap and the crown reversed; a wooden cross and a crown of thorns are above this coat of arms in place of the ornaments which I was showing that I had renounced by throwing them in this way at the feet. There you have the true expression of the secret of my vocation.
Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 31 March 1839, EO XX
“There you have the true expression of the secret of my vocation” – the Cross and the crown of thorns. The heart and life of Eugene had been transformed by the sight of the Cross one Good Friday thirty two years earlier – and the transformation continued!
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:1-16
We do not all come from ‘noble’ backgrounds or receive God’s call in the manner which Paul writes about and yet I dare say that each of us has our own story to look back on and share with others; to allow the secret of our hearts to give witness to that which is written and drawn there.
I reflect for a moment on the span of both Eugene’s and Paul individual journeys through healing love; and on that of my own. My journey started 70 years ago, but my transformation began almost 40 years ago when I heard Jesus say my name. Just looking back I want to exclaim “such a life the Lord has given to me!”
Like Eugene and Paul my most secret desire was not to become a celebrity, or to dwell in a position of wealth and power; rather my prayer was to ask the Lord to make me a light to my neighbour’s feet. There is a certain amount of joy just in being able to bring those words into light – perhaps because I begin to acknowledge how the Spirit of God has lived within me.
During a retreat many years ago we were asked to go and draw a symbol that best described us and we were to use our ‘non-dominant’ hand to do it. I drew a heart and arising from the centre of the heart at the top was a large cross and there were points of light coming out from every part of that heart and which encased the cross. And I drew small dark holes throughout the heart and these were my wounds, my brokenness and still the light shone through them. Sometimes when I picture that drawing there is a small circle of thorns, but this does not always appear.
It is only as I write this I realize the import of what I have written and I thank God for giving me such a beautiful image; perhaps that is the light that I share with my neighbours.
Since then I have spent much of my life asking Jesus to help me to empty my heart so that he might fill it with his own. God has and continues to respond – through others.
I dare to quote Eugene: “There you have the true expression of the secret of my vocation.”