Daily Reflections

Hebrews 10:37; Micah 7:19

He who is to come will come;
He will not delay.
There will be no more fear in our land,
– for He is our Saviour.

He will wash away our guilt
and cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
– For He is our Saviour.

Saturday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Saturday of the Blessed Virgin Mary 

Saint John Eudes, Confessor, Founder

SAINT JOHN EUDES, CONFESSOR, FOUNDER

John was born in Ri, France, November 14,  1601. His parents, who had been praying for an end to their infertility, offered him to God through Mary before he was born. John became a priest of the Oratory and preached numerous missions in country parishes. In 1641, founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Refuge [Good Shepherd Nuns]. In 1643 he founded the Society of Jesus and Mary (the Eudists) to provide much-needed seminary education and for missionary work. John promoted the tender love of Jesus and His Mother in response to the severe judgements of 17th-century Jansenism. Pope Leo XIII declared him the “father, doctor, and apostle of the liturgical cult of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary”. Hewrote a number of ascetical books; died at Cren, August 19, 1680.

He was noted as a preacher, and for his great love of God. He made a special vow always to do what was most pleasing to God. In the confessional all the fire of his pulpit oratory disappeared and he was as gentle as a lamb.

From a treatise on the admirable Heart of Jesus by Saint John Eudes, Priest
(Lib 1, 5: Opera omnia 6, 107, 113-115)

The Source of Salvation and True Life

I ask you to consider that Our LORD Jesus Christ is your True Head and that you are a member of His Body. He belongs to you as the head belongs to the body. All that is His is yours; breath, heart, body, soul and all His qualities. All of these you must use as if they belonged to you, so that in serving Him you may give Him praise, love and glory. You belong to Him as a member belongs to the head. This is why He earnestly desires you serve and glorify the Father by using all our faculties as if they were His.

He belongs to you, but more than that, He longs to be in you, living and ruling in you, as the head lives and rules in the body. He desires that whatever is in Him may live and rule in you: His Breath in your breath, His Heart in your heart, all the faculties of His soul in the faculties of your soul, so that these words may be fulfilled in you: Glorify God and bear Him in your body, so that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in you.

You belong to the Son of God but more than that you ought to be in Him as members are in the head. All that is in you must be incorporated into Him. You must receive life from Him and be ruled by Him. There will be no true life for you except in Him, for He is the one Source of True Life. Apart from Him you will find only death and destruction. Let Him be the only Source of your movements, of the actions and the strength of your life.

He must be both the Source and the Purpose of your life, so that you may fulfill these words: None of us lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master. While we live, we are responsible to the LORD, and when we die we die as His servants. Both in life and death we are the LORD‘s. That is why Christ died and came to life again, so that He may be LORD of both the dead and the living.

Finally you are one with Jesus as the body is one with the head. You must then have one breath with Him, one soul, one life, one will, one mind, one heart, And He must be your breath, heart, love, life, your all. These great gifts in the follower of Christ originate from Baptism. They are increased and strengthened through Confirmation and making good use of other graces that are given by God. Through the Holy Eucharist they are brought to perfection.

DAILY MEDITATION 

You should prepare yourself to communicate – if not sacramentally, at least spiritually. For you should consider that Our LORD Jesus Christ, Who loves you with an Infinite love, does not become present in this sacrifice only in order to be with you, to converse familiarly with you, and to confer on you His gifts and graces; but – What is much better – He desires to come into you; He has a great longing to make His dwelling in your heart, and to give Himself to you by a Communion, sacramental, or spiritual. This is why you should prepare to receive Him at all events, spiritually, and, to this end, enter into the same dispositions which you should have in communicating sacramentally i.e., dispositions and sentiments of humility and love. Humble yourself, therefore, before Him, deeming yourself most unworthy to receive Him. But, nevertheless, as He desires it so much, desire also, on your side, to receive Him; and invite Him, by many acts of love, to come into your heart, and to live and reign in it perfectly. 

Lastly, after having thanked Our LORD for the grace He has conferred on you in the Mass, withdraw with the firm resolution of employing the day in His service, and with the thought that you should henceforth be a host, at once dead and living; dead to all which is not God; living in God and for God, wholly consecrated and sacrificed to the glory and the love of God. Protest to Our LORD that you desire that it should be thus, and offer yourself to Him to do and suffer all He pleases. Pray Him, in His mercy, to accomplish His Will in you; to give you grace to raise your heart often to Him during the day; to do nothing that is not for His glory; ask Him to let you die rather than offend Him, and to give you His most holy benediction. This is the use you should make of an action so holy and so divine as is the most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

St. John Eudes [+1680] – famous French, missionary priest, founder of the Eudists and composer of the Rennes Office of the Sacred Heart.

Turning to Jesus as His Children

I adore You, O Jesus, I bless You and love you. I adore You in your public life and active ministry, which lasted from Your thirtieth year to the day of Your death. I adore and give You glory for everything in this period of Your life, inward and outward, that is, all the actions, words, teachings, miracles, journeys, labours, and weariness, and for all Your thoughts, feelings, intentions, affections, and inner dispositions. I bless You for all the glory You did render to the Eternal Father. I offer You all the love and honour accorded during the time of Your active life by all the holy souls who came in contact with You. I also offer You all my own associations and contacts, whether past or future, in homage to Your own, and I implore You to cause all my actions relating to my neighbour to be consecrated to the glory of Your public life.

O Jesus, I adore the thoroughly holy and divine dispositions which characterised Your activity among men. With what dignity, charity, meekness, patience, modesty, detachment from creatures, and attention to God did You move and act in the world of men! O my Saviour, I desire that such dispositions may henceforth characterise all my relations with my neighbour. Alas! How far I am from such perfection and how many faults I have committed in the days gone by! For all these I beg Your forgiveness, imploring You to implant in me all the dispositions I have requested….

O LORD, you were not satisfied to live and associate with mankind during Your mortal life. When You were on the point of returning to Heaven, Your most insatiable love and exceeding great desire to prove the tremendous Truth that your delight is to be with the children of men inspired You to devise a most admirable institution that would keep You ever with us, and give Yourself to us with all the essence of Your riches and wonders. All this was accomplished by means of the Holy Eucharist, which is a compendium of all Your wonders and the greatest of all the effects produced by Your love for us. O love! O goodness! How is it that I am not utterly transformed into love and praise for You? O Jesus, forgive me my past abuse of so great a grace; grant that in the future I may make better use of this divine Sacrament and that, as You find your delight in being with me, I may also find all my delight in Your company, in thinking of you, in loving and glorifying You.

Saint John Eudes

Saint John Eudes († 1680) was largely responsible for initiating and popularising devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. [From Meditations on Various Subjects, Rev. Charles Lebrun, c.j.m., Tr.

Romans 14:9, 8, 7

Christ Died and Rose to life,
that He might be the LORD of the living and the dead.
– Whether we live or die, we belong to the LORD.

None of us lives just for himself,
and none of us dies for himself alone.
– Whether we live or die, we belong to the LORD

“The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.” – Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen