My blood is so excited that I feel doubly brusque, which often makes me fail in charity, etc.
I do not possess my soul in peace. The least obstacle, the least opposition provokes me. I repulse, in all too human a manner, opposition that I should overcome and conquer by patience alone.
Retreat Notes, July-August 1816, O.W. XV n 139
The community of missionaries must have suffered from his outbursts, because in his letter to them from the place where he is resting he wrote:
Since you so wish, I will replenish my health. I would also wish to store up virtue so as no longer to be a subject of scandal in your midst; but the second undertaking is not as easy as the first. I have no great hope of succeeding therein; pray then to the good God to give you grace to enable you to endure me.
Letter addressed to “our dear brothers, the missionaries at Aix”,
July 1816, O.W. VI n 12
This prayer for others to be able to put up with his roughness must have been repeated very often during his long life when tiredness and worry made him short-tempered! It was his struggle right up to the end of his life.
This is the reason, perhaps, as well as because of my natural brusqueness, for those interior movements of impatience that are often evident externally and scandalize those who witness them.
So I will work as well on this lovely virtue of meekness. I will encourage myself with the thought that I did make some progress in it; but as occasions became more frequent and more difficult, I have reverted practically to my natural state. Let’s hope that with the help of grace I will be more fortunate in the future.
Retreat Notes, July-August 1816, O.W. XV n 139
I am able to find myself in Eugene – in his weakness and humanness. Every time I have caught glimpses of his suffering as he is here I have been able to relate. How many times have I turned to God asking for mercy after being ‘mean’ towards another… God has never demanded that perfection that must be attained before being loved.
“When his eyes met mine…” Hearing those 5 words has never failed to pass through my defences and enter straight into my own wounded heart. When his eyes met mine – seeing through the eyes of our crucified Saviour who is full and perfect love – the experience of being totally loved for no special reason other than ‘we are…’
“We must strive to be saints” is what Eugene would say. No matter how much God fills me with love – I do share it but imperfectly with thoughts of anger and impatience and yet that is the secret dream that I have carried since I was a very little girl.
Imagine how we stand before our God who created us with our imperfections and weaknesses just so as to be able to love us into full being…