SAINT EUGENE, TRANSFORMED BY HIS ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS CHRIST – IN HIS OWN WORDS

Around the age of 24 Eugene entered a period of self-searching, a journey that reached a high-point one Good Friday:

So I had looked for happiness outside of God, and outside him I found but affliction and chagrin. Blessed, a thousand times blessed, that he, this good Father, notwithstanding my unworthiness, lavished on me all the richness of his mercy.

Let me at least make up for lost time by redoubling my love for him. May all my actions, thoughts, etc., be directed to that end.

What more glorious occupation than to act in everything and for everything only for God, to love him above all else, to love him all the more as one who has loved him too late.

Retreat Journal, December 1814, E.O. XV n.130

For further details, see Alfred Hubenig and René Motte: “Living in the Spirit’s Fire” pages 30 – 35 in https://www.omiworld.org/wp-content/uploads/Living-in-the-Spirits-Fire.pdf

 

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2 Responses to SAINT EUGENE, TRANSFORMED BY HIS ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS CHRIST – IN HIS OWN WORDS

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    I think of how we all grow into, how our hearts grow in to be a part of the Other who before our creation placed Himself within us.

    My love of God, planted by the Father, nourished by Jesus and tended by the Spirit. God is everything, God is all. I stop for a moment to breathe, almost embarrassed by my passionate response to this morning’s sharing, and to what Hubenig wrote in his book. A small fear that it could not be real for the likes of myself; but I push it away so as to stay in the light. It will probably take all of eternity to come to the goodness and full realization of God’s immense and total love.

    Eugene’s words of transformation: “What more glorious occupation than to act in everything and for everything only for God, to love him above all else, to love him all the more as one who has loved him too late.” Surely the words of a saint which I took to mean that he was above and beyond the likes of me. Yet the words were his before he was recognized by the Church – before he became a priest and Founder, before he spent the rest of his life living out of that transformation – which seemed only to grow and deepen, to become fuller and shed a light…

    “Eleanor, I love you. I have called you by name and you are mine.” Words that are indelibly engraved within my being. And since then every experience of God which has taken root within my being. The Cross, my love of the cross would only come later and as I look back all was set in place for when I did meet Eugene.

    I think of how Hubenig likened Eugene to Augustine and to Paul – I fondly remember upon meeting Eugene how he and St. Paul must have become great friends for they were so similar in heart.

    Like Eugene my immediate response to meeting Jesus was to somehow know within the deepest part of my reality that the only way that I would be able to love anyone in the way that I wanted to would be to give all of myself, all that I am, all that love shared by Jesus – to direct all of it through Jesus, to give it all back to Jesus and only in that way would I be able to love everyone. Through Him, with Him and in Him. A moment to ponder for at that time I did not know the words said during Mass; just as I did not know that the words uttered on the breath of Jesus were those he put into the mouth of Isaiah.

    I dare to repeat the words of Eugene as he prepared for his ordination: “I created you so that you love and serve me.” Lord, you have created me for yourself. All I want is to be yours – to work and to die for you.”

  2. Kirk says:

    This is one of my favourite texts of Eugene De Mazenod. Thanks Frank for sharing it.

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