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 A). I looked for happiness outside of God and for too long with resulting unhappiness. How often in my past life had my wounded, tormented heart taken wings for God from whom it had turned away! Can I forget the bitter tears that the sight of the cross brought streaming from my eyes one Good Friday? Indeed they welled up from the heart, there was no checking them, they were too abundant for me to be able to hide them from those who like myself were assisting at that moving ceremony. I was in a state of mortal sin and it was precisely this that made me grieve. I could then, and also on some other instance, perceive the difference. Never was my soul more satisfied, never did it feel such happiness; for in the midst of this flood of tears, despite my grief, or rather through my grief, my soul took wings for its last end, towards God its only good whose loss it felt so keenly. Why say more? Could I ever express what I experienced then? Just the memory of it fills my heart with a sweet satisfaction. So I had looked for happiness outside of God, and outside him I found but affliction and chagrin. Blessed, a thousand times blessed, that he, this good Father, notwithstanding my unworthiness, lavished on me all the richness of his mercy. Let me at least make up for lost time by redoubling my love for him. May all my actions, thoughts, etc., be directed to that end. What more glorious occupation than to act in everything and for everything only for God, to love him above all else, to love him all the more as one who has loved him too late. Ah! this is to begin already here below the blessed life of heaven. That is the true way to glorify him as he wants. Woe to those who would sooner glorify His Justice by giving him reason to exercise it on them. Fools that they are, they refuse to glorify his mercy to their great advantage, and God who has no need of them, after exhausting all the resources of his charity, hands them over to his Justice. Come now! what is man that he dare take it on himself to withdraw from the power of the Eternal? No, no, he will be our Judge or our Father. The choice is ours! (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
