Eugene de Mazenod speaks to us

Words of encouragement that God is close to us whenever we strive to discern God’s will:

If you have rooted yourself in the profound conviction that while we are nothing, we can achieve a lot with God’s help.

We do this when, placing ourselves in a state of complete detachment, we turn for guidance to obedience as making known to us the will of the Master we serve

and who has pledged himself to give us his powerful help by means of his grace in the various ministries that he assigns to us.

Letter to Jean Baptiste Mille, 25 September 1831, EO VIII n 404

Eugene had spent the summer months in Switzerland with the students preparing themselves to be Missionaries. He was always sad when he had to leave this community and return to Marseilles and the burdens of being Vicar General in difficult times for the Church.

My dear children. I am never going to become such a stoic as not to feel it when taking my leave of a community like yours. It is just as well I don’t experience the need to acquire that pagan brand of virtue, sign as it is of a total lack of charity and complete heartlessness…

Uniting himself with them in the practice of oraison, he expressed his fatherly love for them:

How much I love you! I feel it when I am with you. I feel it when I am far from you, you are always present to my thoughts and you live in my heart.

Yesterday and today I was with you in the spirit at your prayer times. This morning I was at Our Lord’s feet in the church at Geneva at the self-same moment as you were surrounding the divine Master in the course of midday prayer and examen. I saw you in Him, and thus, although already far away, we were very close to one another.

Letter to Father Mille and the novices and scholastics of Billens, 17 September 1831, EO VIII n 403

Through oraison he was able to be in communion with the Oblates through the uniting presence of Jesus the Savior.

Yvon Beaudoin gives the background to yet another anti-religious incident: “The mayor had requested the suppression of the procession on the feast of the Assumption. Bishop Fortuné went ahead with it all the same. A group of men attacked the young girls who led the procession and momentarily seized possession of the Cross, which was courageously defended by the Catholics who followed the procession.”

… What splendid people we have at Marseilles! You will have to go a long way to find their equals! Yes, that dastardly outrage. Well deserved the punishment meted out to the people responsible, and if they come back another time it will serve them right if you hit them even harder, for it is really too bad when a bunch of hooligans can brag of their immunity and insult religion and all that is dear to the 140,000 who make up the majority of the people here.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 24 August 1831, EO VIII n 402

Not exactly a profound spiritual thought, but just a glimpse into Eugene’s chatty narrative to his friend, Henri Tempier, about everyday life in the seminary in Billens.

Everyone is very well. And in fact the only thing lacking here is wine, a lack shared by everyone in these parts. They drink it occasionally with visitors. For the rest, it does not enter their heads. The daily fare is very good. Every day they have soup, two helpings, a good piece of beef, a course of cabbage and newly-salted pork, very fine and tasty and very often too some local sausage. That makes three courses, not counting the sausages. At other times they have a plate of creamed turnips and cheese for dessert. At evening they often have veal. The morning and evening soups are made from stock and bread is freely available. You see there is no cause for complaint

With this they do good work, teachers and students, each does his duty. Classes of dogmatic and moral theology, philosophy, sacred elocution, mathematics, literature, history, geography, not to mention singing and liturgy. For the moment German cannot be fitted in, there are not sufficient hours in the day or even in the week. All these different occupations are well distributed, in such a way that not a moment of the day is lost.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 22 August 1831, EO VIII n 401

Writing to Tempier from Billens and the farm that the Oblates now owned as a seminary, Eugene had some frustrated feelings about the Oblates’ lack of success with farming!

I don’t understand a thing of the mess they have got into over their cows: they sold the ones that were giving milk to buy some younger ones that give practically none. I haven’t yet plumbed the depths of this mystery but I suspect that Mille has been duped by the tenant-farmer who has only his own interest in view, and it doesn’t always coincide with ours.

Meanwhile, all the purchases of animals, which belong jointly to the landlord and tenant-farmer and which ought also to have been bought at joint expense, have come out of our bottomless pocket, thus adding to what the tenant farmer owes without in any way augmenting his capacity to pay it off.

However, there is no choice but to buy cows to eat up the hay, practically the only thing produced in these parts, but at the end I would like to see some butter and cheeses for sale and I am shown nothing but cow-pats. In short, I am very dissatisfied without knowing who precisely to blame for the situation.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 22 August 1831, EO VIII n 401

In August Eugene traveled to the scholasticate in Billens to check on the progress of the community and its studies.

We were all so happy to see each other again, after a year’s absence, and a conversation (not foreseen by the Rule) got started, almost in spite of myself, by a kind of bewitchment, and went on until after 11 o’clock ….

Still concerned about the future of the Oblates in the hostile climate of France, he was hoping to establish a missionary community in Switzerland.

On the journey I made the acquaintance of a fine fellow from le Valais who might be useful to me if I decide when I am there to do something in his country.

Please ask the holy Capuchin sisters to pray that I for my part may place no obstacle to the accomplishment of God’s will, and that no-one may put obstacles in the path of goodness if that is the direction it is to take, but I always anticipate a lot of problems when a new enterprise in a foreign country is on the agenda.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 19 August 1831, EO VIII n 400

The Capitular Vicar of Aix had ordered the priests to celebrate a solemn Mass of Thanksgiving on the anniversary of the July Revolution of July 1830 (“the three glorious days”). Having suffered the persecution of the Church by the government brought in by that revolution, Eugene was outraged! He congratulated Father Courtès for having refused to celebrate.

I approve your attitude of reserve. It is a difficult situation; but with coolness and calculation you will win through in spite of everything, but you must be careful never to sacrifice principles.

Thus it would have been necessary to run the risk of seeing the church closed rather than sing a High Mass in thanksgiving for one of the greatest crimes committed since the world began, whose immediate consequences have been to throw Europe and the entire world into commotion

It would have been an evil act, a sin, a huge scandal, a sacrilege, a profanation, a monstrosity. So I am not surprised that the clergy of Aix did not heed this unjust command, as you are not bound to obey when superiors command a sin.

Letter to Hippolyte Courtès, 27 July 1831, EO VIII n 398

In writing to the superior of the scholasticate about his new Oblates in formation, Eugene makes a statement that equally applies all those entrusted to our care in ministry.

I must not conceal from you that our new students expect to receive from you solid instruction, wise direction and noble example. I hope that they will not be deceived in their expectations

Letter to Jean Baptiste Mille, 24 July 1831, EO VIII n 397

Father Mille was young and inexperienced to be the superior and formator of the Oblate scholastics, in training to be Missionaries in Switzerland. Because of the political circumstances in France, Eugene had had no choice but to appoint a young superior. For ths reason he wrote often to him to guide him. Six new students had just arrived to join the others.

You have six new students. It is absolutely essential that you do for them what was done for you – and more besides; the way the future turns out hangs on that, otherwise you will form good priests but you will never have real students…

Let us learn from experience. It will not be hard for you to see that nobody but yourself can be responsible for this important duty. It’s all very well that Ricard helps out as your assistant but the chief responsibility must rest on you, as a result you will have to ease up in other areas as you cannot do everything.

Mille had been ordained to be a Missionary and he was finding every possible opportunity to do missionary work – and getting out of the formation house far too often.

First of all you must cut back on the outings to Fribourg and on many others too which are probably more justifiable. Stay as much as possible with your community, keep for yourself the over-all direction only of temporal affairs, relying on someone else for the small details. If you can pass on to somebody else the responsibility for the theology class, you would have all the more time to give to your own task.

Letter to Jean Baptiste Mille, 24 July 1831, EO VIII n 397

Few of us are involved with the formation of new Oblates. Each of us, however, as a member of the Mazenodian Family, has the treasure of an experience of God and of being missionares in everyday life in actions and words. May we be as generous in sharing our spiritual treasure as others were in sharing theirs with us. What we have received from St Eugene and so many people, may we imitate and do for others.

I enjoy Eugene’s exaggerations when he tries to emphasize his point. He had heard that one of his Oblates was ill, and his genuine concern was such that he “could hear the cough” 20 miles away! He demands immediate attention from Doctor d’Astros who looked after the Oblates

My dear friend, if it is true that Father Bernard is as ill as I am told he is, he must be freed immediately from all work, d’Astros must be consulted and his directions followed to the letter. If the doctor thinks a rest in the country can help his recovery and that the house of Saint-Just, in the Marseilles area and away from the sea, is suitable for the patient, send him to me without delay. There is no time for hesitation when one is faced with such symptoms: an excessive thinness on top of his cough – and such a cough! I can hear it from here. If the service of the Church must suffer in consequence it is a misfortune, but the greatest tragedy of all is to see a man wear himself out and fall victim to a fatal consumption. Spare no effort in this regard.

Letter to Hippolyte Courtès, 21 July 1831, EO VIII n 396

Tragically it turns out that the illness was more than a cough and Marius Bernard was eventually forced to leave the Oblates. Eugene noted: “Dispensed for reasons of over-excitability approaching madness. In this state he was putting the reputation and honour of the Congregation in jeopardy.”