Eugene returns from celebrating Mass in a nearby parish church and notes the reflection he made to the people. His own conversion experience, around nine years earlier, was precisely his realization of how much God loved him. He now invites others to share his same experience of meeting God through becoming aware of God’s loving actions in their lives.
I am just back from Mazargues where I gave the sermon. I told those good people something I apply to myself, namely, that one must go to God through reflecting on his loving actions.
We are, in truth, really ungrateful people if all the things God in his goodness has done for us make no impression on us.
Retreat Notes, July-August 1816, O.W. XV n 139
“…one must go to God through reflecting on his loving actions through reflecting on his loving actions.”
God the initiator. We recognize and come to know God through God’s actions. It is not our own greatness or goodness but rather standing as a reflection of God’s goodness.
Every morning I rise and look out my windows which face the west and so do not actually see the sun rising for it is behind me, but it’s detailed brilliance is mirrored and reflected in the many apartment and office building window before me. Each window in detail is a quiet brilliance of a diamond and the color of fire, which becomes like a flow of molten lava. And my being responds in wonder and gratitude – a response to the wonder and beauty that is God.
Each morning I come to this space to meet with Eugene and his sons and daughters to reflect on how Eugene lived out and gave witness to our crucified Saviour. This morning, Eugene’s words remind me of Frank’s piece on “A Tale of Two Icons” in which he shared his response of sitting and praying with two icons written by Lauretta Agolli, a daughter of Eugene in this Mazenodian Oblate Family. Frank shares his experience of daily praying with this image that depicts St. Eugene at the age of 79 writing: that we “see a man who has embraced the cross, and has been transformed into the co-operator of the Saviour by allowing Him to live in him and to shine through him.”
A reflected image of God and Eugene embracing each other in life. It, like today’s invitation from both Eugene and Frank give me pause to reflect on my life and way of being. Am I somehow a model of the delight of life in God? Do my actions somehow give a reflection of the light Eugene has shared with me – another daughter of Eugene de Mazenod? I dare not measure for I would surely come up far short of others. But I can testify that I try to share “all the things God in God’s goodness has done” for me, for us…