Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod lived in times as stormy as the present, and set an example of survival that we can find helpful today. Born at Aix-en-Provence, in southern France, he was the son of a nobleman father and an uncultured but wealthy mother. During the French Revolution his family, being aristocrats, fled into Italian exile. The marriage of his parents then shattered, ending in divorce. Eugene thus became the child of a broken family, which caused him great pain. When he was able to return to France, now in his late teens, his primary impulse was to marry a rich wife, so as to restore his family fortunes. But the first girl he chose died of consumption before they could wed, and the next candidate that appealed to him proved to be impoverished. This turn of events prompted the young man to rethink his direction in life. Always basically devout, in 1808 he decided to enter the priesthood. Three years spent at the Seminary of St. Sulpice converted him into a zealous churchman, devoted to the pope and to the care of the poor and youth.
After his ordination in 1811, Abbe Mazenod gradually worked into a fruitful career of preaching parish missions. To assist him, he established a community of priests that later became the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. In 1823, his priest-uncle Fortune de Mazenod was installed as bishop of Marseilles. The new bishop appointed Eugene as his vicar general. Having been promoted to auxiliary bishop in 1837, the nephew was named to succeed the uncle on the decease of the latter in 1837. Bishop Eugene de Mazenod’s career as bishop of Marseilles, which continued until his death on May 21, 1861, was that of a wonderfully active apostolic leader. He continued to direct the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, even after the 1840s, when they expanded into the Americas, Africa and Asia. He also accepted the headship of the Holy Family Sisters of Bordeaux. These responsibilities brought him into contact with the British Isles, with the Oxford Movement, and early ecumenical trends.
But it was in his own diocese that Bishop Eugene became a most influential figure. Marseilles was stricken with many spiritual and material ailments as the result of the French Revolution and later political turmoil. Mazenod reorganized the diocese well, giving it permanent stability. Sensitive to the needs of the poor, he established various religious and social organizations planned to help them help themselves. He remained to the end an excellent and influential preacher, and he preached standards of behavior that were common sense rather than rigoristic. Although a nobleman in status (named in 1856 a senator in France’s Second Empire), this lively (and sometimes stormy) prelate felt most at home when joshing with the admiring fishwives in their own Provencal dialect. Even in imperial France he remained a democratic figure.
Pope John Paul II canonized this shrewd apostolic man on December 3, 1995. He was the first French bishop to be declared a saint since 1588. The Holy Father must have seen in him the sort of bishop needed by the Church as it enters the third millennium. --Father Robert F. McNamara
Scripture.Phil 3: 7-9a
Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ.
Writings
(Year C). If men but knew how weak I am, how imperfect, the depth of corruption and sin inside me, could they expose me to so much danger, lay on me any other duties than to work at my own sanctification? I need solitude, I need regularity, I need good example. Without these I become lukewarm and my insipid spirit is no longer good for anything unto life eternal. May God grant even so that the state in which I am cast by this whirlwind of business matters which preoccupy, agitate, absorb me, be not that state I have always dreaded and from which in all likelihood I have been unable to preserve myself in these latter times. God grant, God grant that I may not be worse still and that the Lord is not just starting to vomit me from his mouth, but that he may not have implacably banished me from before his face. Sweet hope, you have ever brought me happiness, and been dear to me for bringing me to see in God a ravishing perfection which made me love him with a delicious abandon, so often have I preached you to my brothers to encourage them to serve God, stiffen them to love, more than fear, him, sweet hope have you abandoned me? What will become of me if you do not sustain my faith, and temper what it teaches me of the rigours of my God’s Justice. Come back to me, come back, and be forever my faithful companion in the exacting scrutiny I am going to carry out of my numberless infidelities, in the reflections to which I am going to give myself during this retreat on the sacred duties of my state, the awesome functions entrusted to me, the terrible account the Sovereign Judge will call for of my stewardship. Lord, make to shine on me a ray of your celestial light so that I may know myself as I am in your sight; inspire my soul with the feelings it should be imbued with at the sight of its sins; grant me, I beg you, through the infinite merits of your Passion, through your precious Blood poured out for me, through the intercession of your most holy Mother, grant me the spirit of compunction to convert and change me; may your grace revivify in me the gifts — I do not say virtues — you allotted me and I have not made good use of like a faithful servant, may I leave this retreat filled with a new vigour, firmly resolved not merely to do good, but all the good it is permitted me to do. My God, remember your mercies, for you are my God, Deus meus es tu and I am your poor servant quia ego servus tuus (Ps. 115:16). (Spiritual Writings)
Musical Selection
Mary immaculate, star of the morning,
chosen before the creation began,
chosen to bring, for your bridal adorning,
woe to the serpent and rescue to man.
Here, in an orbit of shadow and sadness
veiling your splendour, your course you have run;
now you are throned in all glory and gladness,
crowned by the hand of your saviour and Son.
Hear in your Mercy, the voice of our crying;
bend to this earth where your footsteps have trod;
stretch out your arms to the living and dying,
Mary immaculate, mother of God.
Collect
O God, in your mercy, you blessed your Bishop Saint Eugene
de Mazenod with the zeal of an apostle to preach the Good
News to the nations. Grant that by his intercession we may be
filled with the same spirit and dedicate ourselves
wholeheartedly to the service of the Church and the salvation of
all. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ your Son who
lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one
