Eugene de Mazenod speaks to us

The 28 year-old Jean Joseph-Marie Lagier had been a diocesan priest for 5 years and, meeting the Oblates at Notre Dame de l’Osier, discerned an Oblate vocation. At the end of his novitiate year he was preparing himself to make his life-time oblation. Eugene wrote about his with joy.

Speaking of Father Lagier, I can tell you that I have never seen anyone prepare himself for a holy event of oblation as he did. And in consequence what fruits won’t he derive from it? Father Lagier can’t contain himself for jubilation. He told us, he who has always been so fervent both at the seminary and in the parish, that he has never known such peace and happiness, that he was overflowing with gladness and along with these outpourings from his noble soul he brings a firm resolution to do all for the glory of God, the service of the Church and of the Society, in whatever work obedience assigns him.

He is on fire to work for the salvation of souls, but he waits without anxiety for his superiors to choose the ministry in which they wish to employ him. To sum it all up in a few words, a more perfect subject couldn’t be found.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 16 August 1835, EO VIII n 533

Jean Lagier was to continue living in this spirit for the rest of his life, and sharing it with others mostly as a formator, professor and seminary rector. (See https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/lagier-jean-joseph-marie/ )

I am not happy with my position. Need I say it?

Exiled from Marseilles diocese, having been deprived of his French citizenship, constantly maligned in the anti-religious newspapers and political circles, and now far away from the people he loved who were being threatened by the cholera epidemic, to say that he was not happy with his position is rather an understatement!

The few lines that follow in this letter are a powerful insight into the person of Eugene. At this moment of difficulty he confides in Henri Tempier, from whom he is geographically separated. “Separated from you, I am missing something that is essential to my existence. I am only half-alive.”

Let us recall that Henri Tempier had been the first companion of Eugene at the foundation of the Missionaries in 1816. He was the one who had immediately understood God’s plan in the charism given to Eugene, and together they worked at bringing the Oblates to the same understanding. On Holy Thursday 1816 they had made a vow of obedience to God and to one another to discern and do the will of God. They were each other’s spiritual directors and confessors. They were indeed “two souls united” in God, in the Oblate vocation and mission, and in the administration of the Diocese of Marseilles.

Personality-wise, they were very different. Eugene was the impulsive charismatic visionary with a heart as large as the world. Henri was quiet, reserved, practical, and always deferential to Eugene’s position as Superior General. These two opposites needed each other, and Eugene could never have achieved what he did without the constant support and advice of Henri.

Although you are often quite moody, and one can’t ever share with you the pleasure of throwing reserve to the winds, of those uninhibited exchanges that are true joy for two souls as united as we are, and although without it being really your fault, I know, but due to your personality, you are always deferring to me, even so I am unable to live without you.

When I’m – I won’t say separated from you, this often happens we are under the same roof – far from you, I am missing something that is essential to my existence. I am only half-alive and very sad.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 1 August 1835, EO VIII n 530

This rare insight into Eugene’s heart makes us understand why he was always inspired by the relationship between Jesus and his friend Lazarus, and held Jesus and his beloved disciples as the model for Oblate life.

In the midst of the published criticisms against him Eugene shares with Henri Tempier:

I don’t get too upset at everything the culprits are staging against me; I would sometimes be tempted to shield myself even from the tiresomeness of having to know what they are plotting against me, taking no more part in human affairs.

For himself, Eugene did not care about these attacks on his person, but they were linked with his office as a bishop and with the whole diocesan administration, and so he felt that a response had to be made.

However, I realize that it isn’t the moment to deliver the sanctity of my episcopal character and the honour of my ministry to the calumny of men who are out to condemn in my person the whole of the administration and the diocesan bishop himself.

It seems to me that my uncle ought to make a public protest … But as always I leave my opinion to another’s judgment and remain passive, with no anxiety and with no great effort. So you can go ahead freely; whether a strong stand is taken or nothing at all is done is a matter of indifference to me, for I don’t care in the slightest for people’s opinion.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 13&14 July 1835, EO VIII n 522

Having officially left the diocese, the decision as to whether to respond or not was left to others – and Eugene was at peace with this, yet humanly it did weigh on him as he confided to his long-time friend, Forbin Janson.

As for myself, I am so weary of my fellow men that all my efforts go to arranging a place of solitary retirement, there to devote all my time to the business of my own salvation in the peace of a regular life divided between prayer and things I choose to do, no longer at the beck and call of all the people whose superior one is and who in actual fact are in a very real sense our masters.

Letter to Charles de Forbin Janson, 16 July 1835 EO XV n 178

In the ongoing smear-campaign against Eugene an article of Martin-Lazare had been published on July 10 in the anti-religious Sémaphore newspaper. It claimed that Cardinal Pacca, who was the Pope’s Secretary of State, had written to the Bishop of Icosia to reprimand him for how terrible his administration of the diocese of Marseilles had been.

Eugene writes to Henri Tempier, who was Vicar General of the diocese:

However absurd the article you have forwarded to me may be, I wouldn’t have thought it wise to leave it unanswered. You had the evidence that the writer was a police connection, since you had in truth received a letter addressed to me from Cardinal Pacca and only the police could have given him this information.

The author of the article had been informed of a letter arriving from the Cardinal and used the opportunity to invent a malicious story about its contents. Eugene proposed:

But by letting it be known that the content of the letter was full of kindness, as are all His Eminence’s letters, you would be laying a charge of flagrant calumny against the article’s worthless author, and so that everyone might have the opportunity of learning the truth, after having read it to the Gazette, you would deposit the original at the secretariat in the Bishop’s Palace with instructions to show it to all who want to see it.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 13&14 July 1835, EO VIII n 522

Eugene’s life and actions had always been a witness to the words of Jesus: “The truth will set you free” – John 8:31.

As a result of the government’s pressure, Eugene had resigned all his responsibilities in Marseilles and had left the city to live in the Oblate community of l’Osier.

… My wish would be to be forgotten by the world as I have for my part forgotten it. But it seems that the spirit of hell doesn’t consent to give me relief. Absent though I am, it is pursuing me with its calumnies and continues to persecute me with all the fury of its sworn hatred

Beaudoin explains this: “A group of ill-disposed priests at odds with their Bishop, amongst them Jonjon, Bicheron and Martin-Lazare, were contributing articles to the revolutionary press against Bishop Fortuné and especially against the Bishop of Icosia. They alleged that the Pope had forbidden the latter to exercise any episcopal function in the diocese.”

It could really go to my head. The culprits it seems are in great dread of me, completely inoffensive though I am. But no, it isn’t pride I feel, but a real embarrassment at not having carried out my duty in full, putting up for too long with men who are so ungrateful today, through my misplaced trust in their false promises to turn over a new leaf.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 13&14 July 1835, EO VIII n 522

Reading this experience of Eugene, one cannot help but recall situations that we have experienced where we have been negatively judged for having done the correct thing.

Eugene shares the suffering he is experiencing publicly from a handful of the priests of the Marseilles diocese.

My dear Child, far from hoping for some rest, each day I see fresh difficulties come up that put my patience and dedication to tests. I make bold to say, that are more than flesh and blood can bear. Bad priests think to wear my courage down after taking advantage of my goodwill. They would succeed in their objective if I didn’t constantly tell myself that men, with perhaps one slight exception, aren’t worth the trouble one takes to help them.

Letter to Casimir Aubert, 23 May 1835, EO VIII n 515

One of these diocesan priests, in particular, a Father Martin had been problematic. Three years earlier he had published some vicious anonymous attacks on Bishop Eugene in the Semaphore newspaper. It soon became clear who the author really was, and in a moment of repentance he wrote to Eugene to apologize. Here is Eugene’s reply to him, which is worth reflecting on.

My first impulse after reading your (letter) was to hasten to your home to reassure and console you and to give you a more heartfelt and more sincere embrace of peace than that which, alas! I received from you such a short time ago. I decided to write to you instead, fearing that my appearance at your home might subject you to suspicion.

You have done a serious wrong, my dear friend; I do not want you to look upon it lightly . . . But I told myself to pay heed only to your repentance because I am confident that it will gain you favor in God’s eyes and with that I shall be satisfied; undoubtedly our holy bishop will be also…

Only when you have expressly permitted me to reveal your name to him, shall I do so. I have also observed this same caution with my colleagues. Personally, I would like to have even the memory of such a serious wrong blotted out, and to keep the name of the guilty party from ever being known.

However, in the inevitable commotion caused by the scandal of this unfortunate article, several people have suggested your name. So as not to add to your remorse I, perhaps, should not tell you that each time this supposition was made, I, who was personally vilified, strongly protested that this supposition was too insulting and too outrageous a charge against a man to whom I have so often given the name friend and sometimes even son. I mention it not to reproach you but only to show you how favorably my heart is disposed toward you; for I repeat, you will never receive any reproaches from me.

May the Good God forgive you! That would satisfy me a thousand times more than any reparation you might wish to make to me. All that I ask is that you choose a good spiritual director, a deeply holy man who will enable you to appreciate the gravity of the wrong you have committed and who will give you wise advice regarding atonement for it. God be with you, my friend. I am sorry that, due to several unforeseen delays, my letter did not reach you as soon as I would have wished. I embrace you. Yes! I mean that with all my heart, and as proof that my charity is sincere, I shall offer the Holy Sacrifice for you tomorrow.

Letter to Father Martin, 27 September 1832, quoted in Leflon II p 530 – 531

Sadly, Martin’s repentance was short-lived and before long he continued to multiply his public attacks.

In the coming entries we focus again on the long-standing difficulties that Eugene had been living through, not only with the government but also with some clergy in the diocese. We have noted that in Marseilles, as the Vicar General of Bishop Fortuné, he had had to be the disciplinarian to rectify many situations which were not correct on the part of some priests. Some were very vociferous in their condemnations of Bishops Fortuné and Eugene, and used the anti-religious newspaper the “Sémaphore” as the vehicle to make their grievances and calumnies public.

Eugene confides to Father Courtès:

Goodbye, my dear son, you see that I’m always the same. Abuses shock me, afflict me wherever I come across them, but that doesn’t result in their abolition and when that holy man M. Duclaux said one day before the whole seminary that God had raised me up to put the Church’s drooping discipline on its feet again, he might have added that in the little world I move in it would be the death of me and I would be a martyr to it. Goodbye.

Letter to Hippolyte Courtès. 4 June 1835, EO VIII n 517

(NB Please note that the word “abuse’ as used by Eugene in the 19th century referred to priests who were not living up to the rules and regulations of their priestly commitment or the rules and practices of the Diocese of Marseilles. Eugene’s use of this word does NOT have the tragic connotations that it has in today’s usage)

Sending the newly-ordained priest Calixte Kotterer, who seemed to have a reputation for being difficult, Eugene gives the community superior an indication of his strengths and weakness.

What strikes me is the spirit of fraternal warmth and friendship that Eugene desired for every community and his desire to bring out best in each member.

Dear Father Guigues. This letter will be brought to you by our Father Kotterer who is going to put himself under obedience to you. I assure you he didn’t have to make a big effort to submit himself to that destination, so much was it to his taste. He is leaving in an excellent spirit. I have every reason to believe that it is genuine. Father Kotterer is full of esteem and affection for you, he esteems his confreres highly and it is my hope that he will behave in such a way as to attract your friendship and that of the other Fathers of the house.

I persist in the view that he is the man best suited to your house. I’m relying on you to look after him well. While he has some negative traits, he does respond to kindness. He is of good heart, and open to reason. In my opinion he has matured.

Letter to Bruno Guigues, 9 June 1835, EO VIII n 518

Eugene had hoped to reinforce the small community at the newly-established sanctuary of l’Osier with two more Oblates, but events had forced him to alter this

Along with Kotterer I had earmarked Bernard for you, the wonder-worker of Switzerland, but an over-riding necessity forced me to change my mind. I’m sorry to say.

Eugene invites the community to try to see God’s hand in events – even if difficult to understand

Let us learn more and more to quiet our desires and let our will follow where Providence indicates through the events that it permits or originates.

Letter to Bruno Guigues, 27 May 1835, EO VIII n 516

A reminder to us to see events the Mazenodian way: through the eyes of our crucified Savior.

Initially the Missionaries had been founded as a society of priests to evangelize though preaching and sacraments. Two years later, when we became religious with vows, the element of religious life became an essential component of our vocation. This opened the door to men who wanted Oblate religious life without being priests. It was a problem for some of the priests whose focus was on clerical ministry which the brothers were unable to do. So why have them? Other Oblate priests were tempted to regard the brothers as domestic servants.

At one time didn’t you mention a candidate for the brothers? I passed on the news to the novitiate. I have sent Brother Ferrand to Corsica. That leaves us only Brother Roux. They are a rare breed but vital, and when they come to us it is important to give them a good formation.

Letter to Bruno Guigues, 3 May 1835, EO VIII n 514

So far I have only been able to send to Ajaccio Guibert, Telmon and Brother Ferrand, without whom Guibert tells me he wouldn’t have been able to open his seminary, so useful is he to them. Let’s have no more debate about the good brothers after that! So I’m going to admit Brother Roux to his final oblation. It’s up to the rest of you to come up with some more.

Letter to Bruno Guigues, 27 May 1835, EO VIII n 516

I refer you to “Our Founding Vision Today: All are Brothers, some are Priests” https://www.eugenedemazenod.net/?p=3155