In these words, written a few hours before his priestly ordination, Eugene expresses what will be the central infallible foundation of his life and ministry as a priest. It is this ideal that led him to found a missionary congregation and to embrace religious life and the evangelical counsels a few years later. It is because of the heroic way in which he lived these words that the Church recognised in him a model of Gospel life and sanctity for us, and that led Pope Paul VI to define him as a person “passionate for Jesus Christ.” It was because of these words that Eugene became a missionary: to lead others to discover his same experience of the joy of living “only for God.”
You, you alone will be the sole object to which will tend all my affections and my every action. To please you, act for your glory, will be my daily task, the task of every moment of my life. I wish to live only for you, I wish to love you alone and all else in you and through you. I despise riches, I trample honours under foot; you are my all, replacing all else. My God, my love and my all: Deus meus et omnia.
Notes made during the retreat in preparation for priestly ordination
December 1-21, O.W. XIV n.95
Father Jetté captures the heart of this relationship thus:
“Adherence to Jesus Christ was a distinguishing feature of Eugene’s whole life. It was an experiential encounter with a person, the person of Jesus Christ, and the living relationship established between the two expressed in an ongoing fashion. This friendship showed itself through the events and grew through the pains and joys of life.”
Passionate for Jesus Christ indeed! To fall so wildly and totally in love with Jesus that from that point on all of one’s life revolves around that love, utterly and completely. As anyone who has ever fallen in love and then had that love grow into a fire that would rage and consume them will attest to this being a love that does not burnout, does not consume the life but rather gives new life that grows and is ever reaching. Unimaginable and yet there it is.
“You, you alone will be the sole object to which will tend all my affections and my every action. To please you, act for your glory, will be my daily task, the task of every moment of my life. I wish to live only for you, I wish to love you alone and all else in you and through you.” This is the experience of passion and of being consumed. These are words of a lover approaching the marriage table, committing one’s self to a spouse for all time. As if ordained from the beginning of time [which it I believe it is]. Two becoming one and new life springing from that joining.
“…you are my all, replacing all else. My God, my love and my all: Deus meus et omnia.” This is the image of oblation, born out of love, lived out of love, being out of love. Could there ever be anything sweeter, more joyous, more life-giving. There are not enough words to adequately give form to such a life.
On this second Sunday in Advent, I find the yearning and longing growing in equal measure to the anticipating and hoping. For sure it is a part of Christmas coming, but I think much, much more than that. In the midst of that I repeat Eugene’s prayer “Deus meus et omnia – my God, my love and my all.”