WE ARE ASLEEP ON A VOLCANO. DO YOU NOT FEEL THE EARTH TREMBLE ANEW?

February 25:  News about the revolution in Paris.  I travelled across the entire city in order to go to visit my sick people and to administer the sacrament of Confirmation to a lady in danger. Everything was perfectly tranquil; people were disinterestedly reading the proclamations posted on the walls.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 25 February 1848, EO XXI

Hubenig gives us the background to this statement:

“At the beginning of 1848, in the Chamber of Deputies, the liberal French thinker and social philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, declared prophetically, “We are asleep on a volcano. Do you not feel the earth tremble anew?  A revolutionary wind is blowing and already on the horizon one can see the oncoming storm.”  When the volcano erupted at the start of 1848, it shook all of Europe and set it aflame. Within a short time, fierce riots broke…

On February 22 there were riots to protest the forced cancellation of one of several political gatherings in Paris, sponsored by the radical left to promote changes in the electoral laws. The protesting crowd, shouting “Vive la République!” and singing the “Marseillaise”, converged on the Place de la Madeleine.

The following day, the army moved in, shooting indiscriminately; barricades went up, and fierce fighting then raged for three days throughout the city. Louis-Philippe abdicated, stating “I will not be party to the shedding of more French blood.”  France had a new revolution… His regime, led by an authoritarian conservative prime minister, Guizot, seemed to have grown more unpopular by the day. Moreover, the country was in the worst economic crisis of the century. It began with an extreme drought in 1846 that completely destroyed the country’s crops.

With the King’s abdication, the provisional government of the Second Republic immediately attacked the country’s most serious problem – the plight of the worker. They shortened the workday in Paris to ten hours (to eleven hours in the provinces), abolished debtors’ prisons, and did away with such degrading physical punishments as the pillory. They also granted universal male suffrage for the first time in France and abolished slavery in the colonies.”

(Living in the Spirit’s Fire excerpts from pages 161 – 169).

https://www.omiworld.org/wp-content/uploads/Living-in-the-Spirits-Fire.pdf

REFLECTION

Eugene’s reflection on these events:

In her zeal for those she gave birth to or could give birth to in grace, there was no environment she feared, no form of government she rejected; Mother of Christians, she was always ready to press them all to her bosom, to nourish them with her doctrine, to serve them in every situation with unfailing love; and if she sometimes had preferences, it was for the little ones, for the poor, for the unfortunate, whose sufferings were her own.

Bishop Eugene’s Pastoral Letter to the people of Marseilles, 2 March 1848