Starting off with some observations on how the future” Father de Mazenod will dress,” Eugene touches on two themes that will be important for him in the future. The first is his criticism of priests who do not live by the standards of their calling – to which he gives fuller expression in the Nota Bene of 1818. The second is his conviction of the need for a small apostolic group to respond to the needs of the suffering Church. Both ideas are foundational in the Rule that he gave to the Oblates.
Please don’t forget to have sent on the Hebrew books I asked you for in one of my letters; I need them more than I need shirts. My underclothes are in fairly good condition. This doesn’t surprise me so much as my soutane, for although I only have the one for winter and the one for summer, they still don’t have any holes in them, although they are a little threadbare. It is true I chose a good, really heavy cloth. Thanks be to God, I don’t think I can be accused of luxury or being over-particular about myself, and I hope no one will ever be able to find fault with me on that account, as I am firmly resolved never to change. An ordinary soutane, woollen cincture, hair uncurled, this is and always will be the way Father de Mazenod will dress.
I really don’t know what people think they are achieving when they are forever adorning and pampering this wretched carcass that is destined to be food for the worms and is never less manageable than when it is treated gently. But what is pitiable in the case of people in general is shocking in a minister of the Cross. A sensual priest is in my eyes a deformed monstrosity, to be pointed out in the street, but it is all too true that you would often need more than ten fingers to do it.
So let’s pray to the Lord to grant his Church, not so much a larger number of priests, as a small but well chosen number. Twelve Apostles were enough to convert the world …
Letter to Madame de Mazenod, 6 January 1810, O.W. XIV n. 66
“A sensual priest is in my eyes a deformed monstrosity…” God forbid that you do not speak your mind! I want to say that you are or were just a little bit over the top, but quickly stop myself, am I any different in some ways? After pondering and rereading I have come back to that word sensual and am only now seeing it differently. The thought has come to me that you are so very much like St. Paul in some ways, and most certainly a man of your times. Will that be said of me as time passes? I really don’t think so, but you never know. There are subtle ways that I have changed over the years and hopefully that will continue. I understand where you are coming from, but really – a deformed monstrosity?
I wonder if we don’t all some ways of trying to call attention to ourselves, to get others to notice us, I know that I have many, and as soon as I realise one then I quickly move to another, all the while congratulating myself on coming to my senses. In doing that I somehow lift myself up and subtly put down another. There is a bit of the ‘seeing the splinter in another’s eye through and around the log in mine’. I must be on guard always against this. Even as I write this I must take measures that I am not pointing the finger at you and away from myself.
Awaking this morning I found myself in a place of wonder. For I saw myself in the midst of what was like a huge water spout moving from the earth into the heavens. And the water spout was taller and wider and deeper than the universe itself, It held all peoples, every living thing, but most specially all peoples, myself included. And I thought that his is God, this is life in God. I am not running on that ground chasing after God, but am a part of – with and in and totally surrounded by, not separate from but a part of. The very air that I breathe is God and it is in Him that I live. God is, I am, and we are. And in that glimpse of life as it is was a profound realisation of the truth. It has been said to me often enough I suppose, but not until receiving that image, that small experience did I ever realise it so intensely and truly. And after all of this here I sit looking to find ways of being better and holier and at least just as good as you and others. I am not lost exactly, but in truth I am not too sure exactly where I am, for yet another wall has been torn down.
So Eugene, pray for me that I will be the best that I can be, simply by standing in the midst of God, my humanness well intact, but growing and loving, deepening and widening. That quality not quantity that you spoke of.