New year greetings to Fr. Courtès became the occasion for Eugene to lament about the situation in which he found himself. His passion for preaching and evangelization ran deep in his veins – and his example had brought many to imitate his zeal as Oblates. Yet, here he found himself imprisoned in an office as Vicar General of Marseille without the possibility of doing what he loved so much: evangelize the most abandoned.
He admits, however, that he was the one who landed himself in this situation. Firstly in 1817 when he pushed the nomination of his uncle Fortune’ as Bishop of Marseille, and again in 1823 when Fortune’ was eventually appointed and ordained Bishop of Marseille, Eugene had devoted himself to this cause for the sake fo the survival of the Oblates and for the good of the people of Marseille, who had experienced religious abandonment as a result of the Revolution.
Letter to Hippolyte Courtès, 2 January 1828, EO VII n 289
“In this life, we have to make many choices. Some are very important choices. Some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine to a large extent our happiness or our unhappiness, because we have to live with the consequences of our choices.” James E. Faust
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Eugene said “…but I did not think enough of my own interest, of my (need for) rest, of the sacrifice of my entire existence with the additional unpleasantness of being bound down so that, as I am in an essentially dependent position, I cannot do half the good I would wish to do and even what I am happy to do cannot be done as I feel it ought to be done.” Eugene, ever on fire, ever wanting to change the world (which he did/does) at a point in his life when he is tired and perhaps thinking of all that he gave up. I find my mind drifting from Eugene and thinking of Jesus, and the times when he grew weary and when people simply ‘didn’t get it’ – the message he was trying to bring. I think of him on the road to Calvary, unable to even carry the cross on his own, his body betraying him even as his followers and those he loved so dearly abandoned and hid from him. Jesus lived with the consequences such that he died – not a nice ‘holy’ death, but one filled with every type of pain possible, no privacy even in that it was public. Jesus let go of everything that he had, could have had, maybe even wanted to have.
My heart seems to crack open a little wider with these thoughts and I find myself sitting with tears welling up and spilling out. Something being released from deep within.
Eugene’s whole life was about preaching the good news, bringing others to that which he experienced personally before the Cross on Good Friday. Even his sharing of his low points and struggles, his inability to do what his heart cried out for has had a profound effect. The ‘yes’ of Jesus, echoed in Eugene’s giving his all to God, repeated quietly by each of us in turn with how we live.
The thought comes to me and I ask myself – Do others when meeting us back away or do they move forward saying ‘yes I want that’?