After visiting the first community to be established outside of Aix, the Marian shrine of Notre Dame du Laus, Eugene wrote this description of the place and of the evangelization that the Missionaries would undertake from there:
We have formed an establishment at Notre Dame du Laus thus bringing ourselves into direct relations with the dioceses of Gap, Digne, Embrun and Sisteron.
We have become the guardians of one of the most celebrated shrines of the Blessed Virgin where the good God is pleased to manifest the power that he has granted to this dear Mother of the Mission.
At this moment the Missionaries did not have a specifically Marian identity, but working at Laus this started to be expressed as they came to understand that Marian shrines did form a part of their missionary outreach. Until now the Missionaries had gone out to preach missions, but here the pilgrims came to them and so the sanctuary became a place of permanent mission with the people coming to them.
More than 20 000 souls flock there every year to renew themselves in spiritual fervour in the shelter of this truly impressive shrine and which inspires one with something indefinable but which marvellously draws one up to God.
Letter to Fr. Pierre Mie, October 1818, EO VI n.31
The aim of the sanctuary was the same as that of the parish missions: to bring the most abandoned to conversion and to a life of fullness in God.
Apart from the pilgrims, the sanctuary church acted also as the local parish for the hamlet of Laus. It is important to note that Eugene did not want his Missionaries in France to be pastors of parishes as such. They accepted this charge if it was primarily a part of a missionary center of pilgrimage and doubled as the local parish.
For a population used to hard physical work, it was essential that the mission provide more than only sermons to listen to – the people had to be involved with their senses and their actions. One of the ways of doing this was through processions. Accompanied by an explanatory sermon, these actions became moments of learning and consolidation. As they walked in procession with other like-minded people, they experienced solidarity in the journey of their lives. The hymns they sang, the prayers they recited and the visual image that led the procession became teaching moments and opportunities for reflection. One of the processions was always focused on Mary. Eugene wrote,
The consecration to the Blessed Virgin is made when the procession held in honour of the Mother of God comes back; it is obligatory. It is made from the pulpit, before the Blessed Virgin’s statue, placed on a throne, as beautiful as the locality can provide.
Letter to Fr. Bruno Guigues, 5 November 1837, EO. IX n. 652
The procession was meant to lead the people to make a personal and community act of commitment to following Mary’s Gospel example of discipleship as Christians, and of having Mary as intercessor and guide.
Sevrin describes the solemnity of the occasion:,
It was one of the most beautiful days. Well before the hour, an enormous crowd flocked to the church, and almost all were carrying candles. The high altar had become a gigantic altar of repose of the Virgin, flooded with light, decorated with greenery and flowers. After a song and a sermon, the girls dressed in white, crowned with flowers, lined up around the sanctuary and dedicated the parish to Mary. They then came two-by-two to leave their crowns at her feet. In some places they imitated the question-and-answer style of the renewal of vows; in others the faithful repeated the formula of this consecration after the missionary, and at the given signal raised their candles in the air. Around six thousand persons, in Arles, took part in the ceremony, almost all with a torch. There were often two different consecrations, the one for the adults and the other one for the children.
(Les missions I, p.230-231)
The recitation of the rosary and the teaching and spread of its use as a Gospel meditation prayer also formed part of the program of the missions.
The last step before his ordination to the priesthood was ordination as a deacon. In his time of prayer before receiving diaconate, mindful of his unworthiness, he invited Mary to accompany him and intercede for him.
As far as possible, I will not let a single day go by without reminding myself that with every day I am getting nearer to the priesthood; and, recognizing that I am totally unready to receive this sublime order worthily, I will humble myself profoundly before God, confessing my guilt for not having responded to the advances that his infinite goodness had in all truth desired in my regard, and begging him who has always covered me with his shadow, in his great mercy to forget my infidelities, to strengthen and confirm my resolutions, and to pour out anew on me in even more abundance, if it be possible, his grace and blessings, and not to let me misuse them as in the past.
Lastly, I will beg the Blessed Virgin Mary to take me under her protection and to intercede on my behalf.
Retreat in preparation for his ordination to the diaconate, May 1811. EO XIV n 85
REFLECTION
“This was also the experience of the Virgin Mary. At the message of the angel, she does not hide her surprise. It is the astonishment of realising that God, to become man, had chosen her, a simple maid of Nazareth: not someone who lived in a palace amid power and riches, or who had done extraordinary things, but simply someone who was open to God and put her trust in him, even without understanding everything: … God always surprises us, he overturns our categories, he wreaks havoc with our plans. And he tells us: Trust me, do not be afraid, let yourself be surprised, leave yourself behind and follow me!” Pope Francis
On 23 December 1809 Eugene made a definitive commitment towards the priesthood by being being ordained to the sub-diaconate. In a conference on that day he linked the commitment to give himself totally to the service of the People of God with Mary’s giving of the Savior in the Incarnation.
These are the feelings which the grace of ordination has given birth to in our hearts. Let us go, my brothers, and place them at the foot of the crib of Jesus who will soon make his appearance. Let us be the first thing that catches his attention at the moment of his birth, and at the very instant that Mary presents the world with its Savior.
Let us swear to him with one voice that we will be eternally faithful to the oath we have just taken to give our lives a thousand times over in defense of the inviolability of his Church.
Conference for subdiaconate ordination day, 23 December 1809, EO XIV n 65.
REFLECTION
“To become the Mother of the Savior, Mary, was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role. The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as ‘full of grace.’ In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 490)
After a year as seminarian in St Sulpice in Paris, Eugene reflects in his journal on the place of Mary in his spirituality:
But devotion to the Blessed Virgin must excel all others; for the glorious Mother of God is called by the Church: our life and our hope. It is morally impossible for a soul to make any progress in the ways of perfection if it lacks this tender and sincere devotion to the most holy Mother of God.
General counsels for achieving perfection, notes taken in 1809, EO XIV n.39.
REFLECTION
“Mary’s gaze is not directed towards us alone. At the foot of the Cross, when Jesus entrusted to her the Apostle John, and with him all of us, in the words: ‘Woman, here is your son’, the gaze of Mary was fixed on Jesus. Mary says to us what she said at the wedding feast of Cana: ‘Do whatever he tells you’. Mary points to Jesus, she asks us to bear witness to Jesus, she constantly guides us to her Son Jesus, because in Him alone do we find salvation. He alone can change the water of our loneliness, difficulties and sin into the wine of encounter, joy and forgiveness. He alone.” Pope Francis
After his conversion journey and discernment that God was calling him to become a priest, the 26 year-old Eugene went to the Seminary of Saint Sulpice in Paris.
On the first page of his study notes at the seminary, he wrote this dedication:
To the greater glory of God and of the Immaculate Virgin. Under the patronage of this Virgin, conceived without sin… so that for these and before them the Immaculate Mother may help me in this difficult course of studies
Traité de la pénitence, Ms. Oblate General Archives, DM-III 8a
As Mary reflected on and learnt from the presence of Jesus in her life, so too did Eugene want to have this same attitude in his seminary studies.
After a year as seminarian in St Sulpice in Paris, Eugene reveals in his journal on the place of Mary in his spirituality:
But devotion to the Blessed Virgin must excel all others; for the glorious Mother of God is called by the Church: our life and our hope. It is morally impossible for a soul to make any progress in the ways of perfection if it lacks this tender and sincere devotion to the most holy Mother of God.
General counsels for achieving perfection, notes taken in 1809, EO XIV n.39
Within days of arriving at the seminary to begin his studies for the priesthood, Eugene wrote to his grandmother:
Up to now I can only speak of the life we are leading during the retreat, which is now unfortunately coming to an end. We are finishing tomorrow with a feast which fills the seminary with its fragrance and is proper to it. It is the feast of the Interior Life of the Holy Virgin, that is to say of all the virtues and the greatest marvels of the Almighty. What a lovely feast! And how fully I am going to celebrate with the most holy Virgin all the great things God did in her!
Oh, what an advocate at God’s side! Let us be dedicated to her; she is the glory of women.
Letter to his grandmother, 18 October 1810, EO XIV n 29
REFLECTION
His devotion to Mary was never divorced from Jesus. She was the marvelous instrument who testified to the wonders God worked in her and in humankind through the incarnation. With her example and intercession, she constantly focused him on Jesus.
“Woman, behold your son.”(John 19,25-27) “The words uttered by Jesus signify that the motherhood of her who bore Christ finds a ‘new’ continuation in the Church and through the Church, symbolized and represented by John. ” Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 24
On Eugene’s spiritual formation, Lubowicki writes:
Jean-Jacques Olier, the founder of the seminary, developed a spirituality in which he stressed the fact that the priest is an alter Christus [ed. “another Christ”), and therefore someone who follows Christ in everything, including his relation to Mary. One of the main driving forces that led Fr. Olier to a Marian devotion was “the desire of adopting the same sentiments as our Lord with regard to his Blessed Mother”.That is why the Sulpicians were vigilant to see that every priest whom they trained could say: “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Mary was given to them as a model of this attitude since Christ lived in her in the fullest sense of the word. As a result, in the seminary spirituality, “to honor Mary” meant to contemplate in her the life of Jesus and to see to it that Jesus lived in us like he lived in Mary. The best expression of this Christocentric Marian spirituality seems to be the prayer O Jesu vivens in Maria [ed. O Jesus, living in Mary] which was recited after meditation. We can say that the ideas which it contains constitute the essence of Sulpician Marian spirituality and this was the spirituality in which Eugene was formed. (Casimir Lubowicki, “Mary” in the Dictionary of Oblate Values, mary )
Eugene wanted this prayer to be prayed each day by the Oblates, and it has become a part of our spiritual tradition:
O Jesus, living in Mary,
come and live in your servants,
in the spirit of your holiness,
in the fullness of your power,
in the perfection of your ways,
in the truth of your virtues,
in the communion of your mysteries.
Overcome every hostile power in your Spirit,
for the glory of the Father. Amen
Academic demands and Congregational commitments since the passing of Fr David Muñoz have multiplied and I am finding it difficult to keep up with new entries of St Eugene Speaks. To give me some catch-up time of a few weeks, and instead of taking a break, I would like to republish some previous entries on Mary. We prepare for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the season of Advent is the season of Mary, so I hope that these reflections will be beneficial for you on your spiritual journey.
Saint Eugene’s life journey was always accompanied by Mary, whom he loved as mother. Looking back on his life he wrote in his will:
To this end, I invoke the intercession of the Most Holy and Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, daring to remind her in all humility, but with consolation, of the filial devotion of my whole life, and of the desire I have always had to make her known and loved, and to spread her devotion everywhere through the ministry of those whom the Church has given to me as children, who have had the same desire as myself…
Eugene de Mazenod’s will, 1 August 1854, E.O. XV n. 191
REFLECTION
Pope Francis said this to the Mazenodian Family at the recent General Chapter:
“Mary the pilgrim, Mary journeying, Mary who arose in haste to go and serve. After saying her “yes” to God through the archangel Gabriel, she departed in haste to go to her cousin Elizabeth, to share the gift and to place herself at her service. In this too, may Mary be an example to you, for your life and for your mission”
Writing to Bishop Guigues, Eugene shared his optimism about the Oblate presence in England, and its chances of expansion.
We are making giant strides. Apart from the novitiate which we are soon to have in England, as well as a house of studies, we are being offered at London an establishment which is under discussion with Mgr Wiseman and another magnificent establishment at Dublin.
All our members in England have an excellent attitude, are extremely attached to their vocation and filled with love and devotion for the Congregation. Moreover there is nothing easier than governing them. This is truly a blessing from God in that conversions are continually happening. An English bishop said to me recently while passing through Marseilles that the Oblates of Mary have made the Congregation the most esteemed in England, so impressive is the fine spirit and edifying example shown by all of them.
Letter to Bp Bruno Guigues, 4 March 1849, EO I n. 112
In the footnote, Yvon Beaudoin quotes from the General Council minutes of July 8, 1849 about the establishment of a house of studies and its importance:
“In order to attain this high purpose, the Most Reverend Father General has made known to the Council that he would choose the most capable Fathers to whom to confide this important mission prepared with intelligence and perseverance on the part of Rev. Fr. Casimir Aubert. Moreover, the Most Reverend Father General announced that it was his intention to send a certain number of Scholastic Oblates during the vacation to form the initial group of this house of advanced study. Several Fathers and Brothers were accordingly designated during the same session to become part of the numerous contingent destined to go and support as best they can the religious movement in England and to evangelize the poor souls still dwelling beneath the cloud of error and heresy in the vast English possessions spread over the ancient as well as the new world”.
