What I love about Eugene is that in this saint we find a fully human person with likable and unlikable qualities. Yet, this very imperfect man was able to find God and relate deeply and generously to God in all things. Today’s text is from his private journal, while in Rome, and in it he pours out his strong Provencal emotions and lets off steam! He had been to the annual Mass (which the royalists like himself) celebrated to recall the guillotining of King Louis XVI in 1793. He was not impressed by the liturgy and was in a grumpy mood at the end of it.
I went to the French church of Saint Louis to take part in the service for Louis XVI… That ceremony could not have been more insignificant; there was no sermon, no testament reading, nor music. As compensation for us, the dear Superior very solemnly sang the Preface for the Dead in the Easter and Christmas tone.
Then he went to the Church of Saint Agnes, on Piazza Navona, that marked the spot of her martyrdom in a brothel.
Nor was I any more happy with my visit to the church of Saint Agnes.
It was too late so I was not able to admire the beauty in the building, but I was able to clearly see, with the help of lighted candles, the crypt to which we descended after we had adored God in the upper church. Never have I seen a devotion more disgusting or worthy of censure. Tradition holds that these underground caves are the brothel were Saint Agnes was handed over.
First of all, I believe nothing of the sort, since this place is frightful and resembles rather a dungeon than a place of that kind. In spite of that, they want at all costs to convince you that it is so and so you do not forget it, the first thing you notice as you go down the steps is that beautiful inscription which was supposed to have given us so much edification as we recited the Office: “Ingressa Agnes turpitudinis locum” [ed. entry of Agnes into the place of indecency] So great did the idea of entering a “turpitudinis locum” horrify me that I was tempted to turn around and leave.
But no, you had to be edified to the very end. In a first chapel on the left as you enter this infamous place, there is an altar, in place of a painting a bas-relief which at first glance seemed to me very well done. I say at first glance, since I immediately turned away from that horror. The bas-relief shows the saint completely naked, with only her hair for clothing, between two soldiers who were leading her to what place and for what purpose? History, or rather tradition says enough about it.
I still can not contain my anger and the two Lazarists, who this evening wanted to take the side of that outrage, will long remember what feelings can move me and how energetically I know how to refute the poor arguments they had the courage to bring up in such a scandalous cause.
The Benedictine noviciate had come to be edified in this holy place before I went in and I do not know which clerical college went in after me. The Novice Master and Rector of the college deserve both to be whipped, and then interdicted so as to give them time to learn their duty.
Roman Diary, 21 January 1826, EO XVII
“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” Ambrose Bierce
The first time I read this entry in Eugene’s diary I found myself amused at Eugene’s reaction to what he had seen in the cave below the church and it was again no different today. I have spent much time this morning in ‘keeping my mouth shut’ – that is in not giving in to the temptation to write about how it must have been for Agnes and why Eugene should not have reacted as he did. I wanted desperately to write to what it would be like to be a young woman given such a sentence and treated thus. It has taken me a long time to come around to looking at love.
My reflection today has been about love, about being loved and about loving. It has been about my own humanness – for ‘knowing’ that I am so loved by God, and that I am able to love, sometimes greatly and deeply with that God-like love that still I judge and wonder about being loved by others, in spite of, with my imperfections. It is sober and humbling. This weakness and need to try to ‘do in order to earn’.
Loving and being loved. I find myself feeling very small as I leave this place to start another day. It will be important that I not react and try to ‘do’ to fill the smallness and make it big, make it good.