WE ARE ALL, AS LONG AS PEOPLE DWELL ON EARTH, CHILDREN OF OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN AND NEIGHBOURS TO EACH OTHER

Having shared with the people of Marseilles some examples of the pitiful plight of the Catholics in Ireland, Bishop Eugene calls on them to help alleviate the effects of the potato famine in Ireland – especially because it is affecting a people with a long and heroic history of faith.

Are they to be abandoned today? Can their cries of distress, resounding in our continent from across the sea, find us insensitive?

… we who have been preserved, at Marseilles especially, from the afflictions sent this year to other countries, let us try to merit the continuation of the prosperity of our city by lending a helpful hand to a people whose woes, in their immensity, almost surpass the resources of a great state.

Let us try to prevent, as far as we can, a numerous people, a people of confessors and martyrs, from being exterminated by famine.

Then to counteract the excuse that because there was plenty of poverty to be alleviated in Marseilles, why be concerned about poverty in another country:

Let it not be said they belong to an empire other than ours. That would be completely unworthy of Christian charity for we are all, as long as people dwell on earth, children of our Father in heaven and neighbours to each other…

Bishop Eugene’s Circular Letter to the people of Marseilles, 24 February 1847, EO III Circular n 2

REFLECTION

It was said of St Eugene that he had a heart as large as the world. Here we see one example of his concern for the poor and most abandoned in every part of the world, and his desire that his Oblate Family and the members of his diocese in Marseilles have a similar expansive view of Christian charity.

“It is at times such as this that we show our true spirit of giving and of brotherhood of revealing the good Samaritan in all of us.”  (Jo Bonner)