RESTING IN THE LORD
Celebrating the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and rejoicing in his presence, Eugene sends Christmas greetings:
This is all I can say to you on this holy day spent entirely in church. I officiated yesterday at First Vespers, then during the night, and today both in the morning and in the evening. Thanks be to God, this is never too long for me. That is the only place we can abstract from the world and be occupied solely with Heaven. That is my time of rest.
Goodbye. dear son. I wish you a good remainder of the feast and a Happy New Year.
Letter to Fr Hippolyte Courtès in Aix, 25 December 1848, EO X n 993.
Writing about this in his personal diary:
Pontifical office yesterday at Vespers on account of Sunday, the night and all day of Christmas. I still do not at all feel the weight of the years so as to deprive myself of this great consolation. I have rest only therein; also, the time that I pass in the church these days of the great solemnity always seems short to me.
Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 25 December 1848, EO XXI
REFLECTION
As a young man in his twenties, Eugene had experienced the saving love of God as Savior and had committed himself to “act in everything and for everything only for God, to love him above all else”. A few years later he resolved: ” I wish to live only for you, I wish to love you alone and all else in you and through you… My God, my love and my all.”
Forty years later, at the age of 66, we can see that he continued to live by those resolutions and to find his happiness and his rest in the presence of God. What an example for us to learn to follow!
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Sitting with Eugene’s beautiful prayer, I smile at his commitment and depth of living out such a profoundly intimate love – not separated from God, but becoming one with the Beloved with every breath that he took.
To be such a model of Christ’s love for him and for all of us who walk in his footsteps, while at the same time recognizing his humanness, his quiet joys when he eked out time to write to his sons, just as he does each day with all of us who make up his sons and daughters.
This morning is invitation to look at our own lives, recognizing how we find “happiness and rest” in the presence of God. And then like Eugene has shared and taught us we too turn and share the joyous love with those we meet.
It is in this way that we become men and women for all seasons…