BUT WHAT IT HAS COST ME TO MAKE THIS SACRIFICE!

27 year-old Fr. Jean François Mounier had got typhoid fever and had died. He was a much-appreciated spiritual director, firstly as a deacon at the novitiate, and then as a newly-ordained priest at the seminary in Marseilles. Eugene loved and appreciated this young man and the quality of his life as is clear in his diary:

This has been a great loss for the Congregation. Independently of his religious virtues which he possessed to a very high degree, he had acquired experience in the direction of Oblates who visibly profited from his wise counsel and his example. If, at the age of twenty-seven he had won the esteem and trust of our young people what a future we might have hoped for him?

The good God planned otherwise; we must always bless his holy Name, all the more so since we had done all that we could not to release to him this dear father who was useful to us on this earth. I said numerous Masses for this intention and all our very fervent religious communities prayed fervently to God for this intention. When the Lord resists prayer in this way, we must acknowledge that his will has been proclaimed and that it is always for the good of his elect.

But what it has cost me to make this sacrifice!

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, October 1849, EO XXII

REFLECTION

How much the death of a young person hits us – especially if that person’s achievements were talented and promised much for the future in doing God’s work. With St. Eugene and with faith we have to have the courage to acknowledge that God’s ways are not our ways: ” The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).