I HAVE PLACED THE MATTER IN GOD’S HANDS, WISHING ONLY TO DO HIS HOLY WILL. I AM PERFECTLY AT REST

Posted on July 25, 2023 by franksantucci

Eugene’s closeness to God was such that he placed his major administrative decisions into God’s guiding hands. This is clearly shown when he writes to Fr Guigues about his episcopal appointment to Bytown:

I have placed the matter in God’s hands, wishing only to do his holy will. I am perfectly at rest. I have done my duty throughout in this affair. God knows it and the whole Congregation will attain this conviction when she will see the results.

When the time comes you will have to prove that our Fathers were mistaken in their anxieties concerning your episcopate, worries inspired by their attachment to the Congregation and to you.

I will only have one regret, that of not being able to impose my hands upon you myself, but 1500 leagues are an insurmountable obstacle.

Letter to Fr. Bruno Guigues in Canada, 24 January 1847, EO I n 80

REFLECTION

St Vincent de Paul was another influential saint for Eugene. He too was convinced of the power of entrusting ourselves and our decisions to God’s providential care.

“Divine Providence is never wanting in things undertaken at Its command. Even though the whole world should rise up and destroy us, nothing could happen but what is pleasing to God. The less there is of a person in affairs, the more there is of God.” (St Vincent de Paul)

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One Response to I HAVE PLACED THE MATTER IN GOD’S HANDS, WISHING ONLY TO DO HIS HOLY WILL. I AM PERFECTLY AT REST

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Lay Oblate says:
    July 25, 2023 at 13:02

    Reading this I think of what it might be like for Fr. Guigues to receive this letter as Eugene’s parting words remind him and each of us of his loves and caring for the congregation as a whole and at the same time loving his sons wherever they are at. His words: “I will have one regret, that of not being able to impose my hands upon you myself…” There it is in his writing, his blessing to Fr. Bruno Guigues: a blessing that is coloured and stated out of deep love for his son, his friend…

    When we enter into community with others some of us learn not only to love the other, but also how to allow others to love us. It can over time become more of a flow rather than a series of jerky steps. It can be hard to let go of our own wills, likes and desires, but if we manage that, then in time we will always be able to love and truly rejoice in and with the others even as they move on to where God is calling them to be. There is the rising above our fears of losing the one(s) we love so dearly: a love that trusts totally in God’s love and will for each of us.

    This is what happens when God sends us a new pastor, who we are free to reject or to accept. No, they are not the same person that we came to know and love some years earlier. We love and miss the person who left or whose job was changed – they become a part of our hearts, still leaving space for the “new man” to come in, with his own personality and ways of doing things.

    Fullness, wholeness – in God and with the rest of the world…

    Reply

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