Ending the first week of the 1814 retreat, Eugene moves into the next phase: that of meditating on the life of Jesus so as to model his own on it. He begins this series of meditations with the classic “Call of the King.”
After learning in the first week what our last end is, and seeing and deploring our trespasses, we ought to have conceived a great desire to enter into the way of salvation. But for that we need a guide. And it is this guide that St. Ignatius gives us in the second week where he proposes the virtues of the life of J.C. for our imitation, and especially in this first meditation on the kingdom of J.C. where he proposes it to us under the image of a king who urges his subjects to follow him to battle.
Retreat Journal, December 1814, O.W. XV n.130
The idea of meditating on the “virtues and examples” of the life of Jesus formed a vital part of Eugene’s spirituality. Each morning throughout his life his morning meditation was a Gospel contemplation. As a seminarian he had written a text which showed his method of contemplation:
To make myself like Jesus Crucified
It is like the painter who copies a model.
He places the model in the best light,
studies him carefully,
concentrates on him,
tries to engrave his image in his spirit,then he traces some lines on the paper, which he compares with the original ,
then he makes corrections until he is satisfied that it conforms with the original, then he continues…
Unpublished exercise book, in the Archives of the OMI General House, Rome