Download oblates martyr of the philippinnes and more Lecture notes Religious Studies in PDF only on Docsity!
EARLY PASTORAL WORK
Priesthood Eugene’s decision to become a priest was not immediate after the Good Friday experience. There were a lot of hesitations, especially that her mother opposed his plan to become a priest. He prayed and meditated about it. He also asked advised from the priests he knew. One of them could say to him with assurance: “Your vocation is as brilliant as the radiant sun at midday on the most beautiful of days” (Aubin, 1997, p. 16). Eventually, Eugene decided to enter the seminary. On October 12, 1808 he was received in the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. One of the motivations for Eugene’s decision was his love for the Church. During his time, the Church was persecuted by the secularism of the age. Priests and bishops were dismissed from their posts and replaced with the clergy chosen by the revolutionary government. Even the education of the youth that used to be handled by religious congregations were now undertaken by government-appointed priest-educators. Those clergy that did not profess allegiance to the new French government either had to be banished or executed. Eugene wrote to his mother: [T]he Church is abandoned by everyone. Every day there are fewer and fewer shepherds. Soon there will be none left to care for the sheep. Who could remain unmoved seeing this good Mother in such desperate straits (Aubin, 1997, p. 19). Eugene’s mother did not take his decision to enter the seminary well. She made all sorts of reasons just to dissuade him from his plan. She agreed to have Eugene remain in the seminary only because she expected that he would change his mind. He didn’t. We can find Eugene’s resoluteness to his vocation in the many letters that he wrote to his mother. Aubin (1997, pp. 17-19) quotes them: Mama, I have been thinking about this for three years. I know what I am doing. Why would you want me to still wait to commit myself to the service of the Church, the Spouse of Jesus Christ, to delay any longer to devote every moment of my life which I have only received to use for the greater glory of God. It is God who is calling him. He repeated this with insistence. The initiative was not coming from him. He was not acting according to human judgement : Above all it is necessary to obey God’s call. In fact, it is an immense favor which God is doing him: The greatest grace which God could possibly give me. To his mother: I am deeply grieved knowing that you have so much difficulty accepting that I will become a priest. You are seeing it as a disaster when it should be the cause of joy for you. Let me repeat, we can become saints only in that place where God wants us to be. Dear God! If it were not the Lord who inspires this decision, do you think that I would do even the least thing to cause you the smallest tear? Can you answer me that, you who know my heart. Therefore, my dear Mama, do not trouble yourself any more on this matter. You will see that we will all be
happy. Start to be so today. Farewell my excellent Mother! Take care of yourself so that I will have the happiness of finding you handsome and in good health when I return to Provence. Still to his mother: You persist in considering the greatest grace which God could give me as a misfortune. And when I realize that His choice of me is one of pure mercy and a remarkable predilection, I can only deplore that my whole family, beginning with my darling little Mama, cannot join me in thanking the good Lord with transports of thanksgiving and true joy. The seminarian is happy with his decision: Ah! if the world knew how sweet is the service of God, there would be no apprehension for those who commit their lives to His service. Pray then, my dear Mama, that 1 may serve Him worthily, this good Master so rich in mercy, so able to reward. His mother continued to worry about her son and his health: What do I have to do to convince you that I am in marvelous health? Neither my nerves, nor my chest, nor my head, nor my feet are hurting. I wish that I could be as certain that my soul is as beautiful as my body is sound. I am working on that. Let’s hope that with the grace of God I will succeed. (January 6, 1810) Eugene finally persuaded his mother to concede to his decision. He was ordained as a priest on December 21, 1811 in the Cathedral of Amiens. His ordination to priesthood brought him immense joy: I am a priest of Jesus Christ! I am a priest! You have to be one to understand what it is. I think I am dreaming when I realize what I am. If I think of what a sinner I am, my love becomes even greater. There is only love in my heart. His perseverance to his vocation convinced his mother that it is not just he but God who was behind it all. She wrote to Eugene’s father in 1812: “The decision he has taken caused me many tears. All of my objections have had no effect. His vocation is surely from God without any human motive” (Aubin, 1997, p. 19). Father Eugene de Mazenod returned to Aix a year after his ordination. He would live with his mother in the Joannis mansion but he strictly forbade her to respect his choice to live a simple life: no frivolous visiting, no pampering, no lavish meals. He also forbade her not to interfere (^) Eugene de Mazenod as a young priest.
teaching bore the mark of error, for truth must be known by everyone, since all have an equal right to possess it. We shall speak in such a way that everyone, even the most unlettered, may comprehend. Like the father of a family, we shall gather together our children and reveal a treasure to them. But courage and perseverance are needed to acquire it... Come therefore, whoever you may be, come diligently to the instructions that seek to deliver you from so many fatal errors and enlighten you on your own true interests. Come, especially you, the poor of Jesus Christ! Please God I could make my voice heard to the four corners of the world to awaken all the many people lulled by fatal sloth that leads them to perdition. We shall begin by teaching you who you are, what your noble origins are, the rights you derive therefrom, and the obligations they entail. So, let us put the world to the test. It will react in accord with the laws of prejudiced men, in accord with the foolish code that is the rule of their life and the yardstick by which they judge others. Artisans, who are you in the eyes of the world? A class of people destined to toil laboriously all your lives in some obscure occupation that makes you dependent and subjected to the whims of those from whom you must beg employment. Servants, what are you in the eyes of the world? A class of slaves to those who pay you; exposed to the contempt, injustice and often even to the abusive treatment of demanding and even barbarous masters - masters who believe that they have bought the right to treat you unjustly for the pittance they pay you. And what about you, farmers and peasants, what are you in the eyes of the world? However useful your labours, you are judged only by the strength of your arms, and if, indeed, with distaste they take your sweat into account, it is only appreciated in so far as it makes the earth bountiful by watering it. What about you, the poor and the needy, who are obliged by man’s injustice or the harshness of fate to beg for your pitiful subsistence, to make a nuisance of yourself pleading for the bread you need to stay alive? The world considers you the scum of society. It cannot bear to look at you, so it turns its back, lest it be moved to pity by our condition which it has no intention of changing. That is what the world thinks. That is what you are in its eyes. But that is the chosen master to whom you have hitherto paid your homage. And what can you expect from such a master? Insults and contempt - that is the reward the world gives you. And it will never give you anything better... Come now, and learn from us what you are in the eyes of faith.
You, the poor of Jesus Christ, the afflicted and the wretched, the sick and suffering, those covered with sores - all of you whom misery overwhelms, my brethren, my dear brethren, my respectable brethren, listen to me. You are the children of God, the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, the co-heirs of his eternal Kingdom, the cherished portion of his inheritance; you are, in the words of Saint Peter, the holy nation, you are kings, you are priests, you are, yes, in a certain way, gods... So, lift up your heads! Let your dejected spirit rise! Stop groveling on the ground and raise yourselves toward heaven where you were meant to attain what should be your most normal relationship... For once, let your eyes look inward and see through the rags you wear. There, within you, is an immortal soul created to the image of God whom it is destined one day to possess - a soul redeemed at the cost of the blood of Jesus Christ, more precious before God than all the riches of the world, than all the kingdoms of the earth, a soul about which God is more concerned than about all the governments of the entire world... Therefore, o Christians, recognize your dignity... The people of his social class may not have appreciated this type of preaching, but the poor were delighted. On the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Eugene felt obligated to thank his “reverend brothers, the poor” who had flocked to the church in such great numbers to hear him: We placed the success of this Lenten Course in the hands of God and our hopes were not deceived, since we have seen with our own eyes that the sacred message which was brought to you through our ministry has been received with enthusiasm. God be praised for it, my brothers! I feel so overjoyed that I cannot refrain from mentioning it. Feeling as I do, that I have been called to be the servant and priest of the poor, and hoping to devote my life to their service, I cannot help but be touched by their eagerness to hear my voice. Young People Another group that Eugene considered abandoned was the youth of the nation… Education was strictly controlled by the state: priests were allowed to teach only catechism, and even there, all subject matter had to be approved by the government. Nor was it permitted to organize youth movements of any kind. Such groups, the emperor [Napoleon Bonaparte] suspected, might support resistance sympathetic to Rome at a moment when his relations with the pope were extremely thorny. The result was that young people were left abandoned. Conscious of the void that the situation was creating the Abbe de Mazenod wrote: It is not difficult to see that the plan of the impious Bonaparte and of his irreverent government is to wipe out the Catholic religion in the entire country he usurped. Since the oppressed people’s attachment to the faith of their fathers prevents him
was characterized by strong Marian devotion, with each member offering himself to Christ through the Virgin Mary. At the end of each celebration, once the group had permanently moved into the old Carmelite chapel on the Cours Mirabeau, they heartily sang in Provencal: Que Jesus-Christ siegue laoza eternelament, et que Mario tougeou immaculado, eme suon divin fiou siegue tanben laouzado. At first the group got together in the Pavilion d ’Enfant, a hunting lodge outside the city. But it soon proved to be too far from the centre, so Eugene began to look for other places. For a long time they used the Enclos, a property of the Joannis family. After October 1815, when Napoleon had been defeated, the sodality began to use the chapel on the Cours Mirabeau. It was with their help that this desecrated Carmelite church was restored, even before the Oblate Congregation, as such, got its start. What strikes one at first glance is the incredible number of regulations governing the sodality and the lives of its members - over 500! However, all of this must be understood in the context of the times. One thing is certain: such an apparent surfeit of rules did not hamper the joie de vivre of the boys, nor the popularity of the director in their eyes. As soon as he appeared they all rushed upon him; one would take hold of his neck, the other his cincture; this one would kiss his hand, and that one his cassock. As for the Abbe himself, he showed them the love and affection of a real father... He treated a cobbler’s son as cordially and affectionately as he did the son of a high court official. That last sentence is important because it shows he considered all youth to be among the most abandoned, whether rich or poor. In the sodality there were a number of members who could never have been called economically poor, but they were as welcome as the others. Criminals and Prisoners of War We have already seen that after his return from exile Eugene joined a charitable association working to alleviate the plight of prisoners, so he obviously had some firsthand experience of prison conditions and knew something of life there. He also knew that the prisoners were bereft of any religious aid. In a word, they were abandoned. Thus, when he returned to Aix as a priest he volunteered his services as a prison chaplain. Eugene visited the prisoners almost every day, striving to instruct, encourage and convert them. What is remarkable is that his actions ran completely counter to the severe Jansenist mentality so prevalent among the clergy of Aix. For example, the rule in France at the time, and very much so in Aix, was to refuse the Eucharist to prisoners condemned to death because they were judged unworthy. The young Abbe de Mazenod turned that way of thinking on its head. Not only did he give Communion to the condemned prisoner, he celebrated the Mass especially for the person, right in the prison cell. And after giving Holy Communion he accompanied the prisoner all the way to the scaffold, staying alongside right through the final moments. We have eyewitness
testimony of this in the case of La Germaine, a notorious Aixoise who “had drawn the horror and indignation of the people upon herself because of the enormity of her crimes.” It appears that from the scaffold, before she was executed, she spoke of her conversion and gave a talk on Jesus Christ. Father Joseph-Alphonse Martin, in his memoirs, relates: So moved was she by the Abbe de Mazenod’s exhortations that she made a complete conversion and showed such an excellent disposition that, contrary to what was usually done at that time, the Abbe de Mazenod permitted her to receive Communion. The people’s attitude toward her changed when they saw her advance toward the scaffold giving the most touching proofs of her repentance. The exhortations which her deeply moved confessor addressed to her as he walked by her side, sustained her courage, and more than one voice in the crowd was heard blessing the charitable apostle who had been such an efficacious instrument in this miracle of grace. The Oblates remained as prison chaplains in Aix, faithful to Eugene’s practices, until the expulsion of all religious from France in 1903. Napoleon’s far-ranging wars brought captured soldiers to France from all parts of Europe. Aix, for example, received about 2,000 Austrian prisoners of war who were confined in a camp near the beginning of the present-day rue Gambetta. Shortly after their arrival a typhus epidemic ran through the overcrowded camp. Many died, among them the chaplain, and Eugene volunteered to take his place. Again, he saw those prisoners as the most abandoned. It was not long, however, before he himself contracted typhus and for a long time hovered near death. On March 14, 1814, he received Viaticum while the members of the youth sodality organized a chain of prayer at the foot of the statue of Notre-Dame de la Grace in the Church of the Madeleine. Thanks to their prayers, his health was restored, and on May 3, almost two months after he had received Viaticum, he and the sodality celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving in the Madeleine. The interval between those dates gives us an idea of how prolonged was his illness. Eugene’s typhus had a salutary effect: It showed him that if he intended to carry out an effective apostolate he could not work alone. Listening to God through concrete events showed him that to serve the most abandoned, he needed a group of companions - a community of like- minded priests. That would be the second stage in following God ’s invitation to dedicate himself to the most abandoned. Guide Questions:
- How would you describe Eugene’s perseverance to become a priest amidst the opposition of his mother? What do you think was his inspiration to overcome all odds in pursuit of his vocation?
- What was Eugene’s message to the poor and the most abandoned? Who are they in the eyes of faith? How does this message contrast with how the world look at them?
