DAY 1: In preparation for the Feast of St. Eugene

Eugene expressed the goal of his life’s pilgrimage, and the signpost for each day, in this way:

“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.”

Notes made during the retreat in preparation for priestly ordination, December 1-21, E.O. XIV n.95

Twenty years later, he shows that God’s love continues to be the pointer as he quotes freely from the first Letter of John in this reflection:

Let us love God because of his infinite perfections, let us love him also because he first loved us, ” since he himself first loved us” but “dearest, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another,” and take note: “Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth” like all those who love with the head, “but in works and truth”. Oh! no! He who does not love does not know God, since God is love. [ed. 1 John 3, 18; 4, 8. 10-11. 19]

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 4 September 1837

PRAYER

God our Father,
by the grace of the Holy Spirit,
you enabled St. Eugene de Mazenod
to express his love for you in these words:
“My God, double, triple, increase my strength a hundredfold that I may love you, not merely as much as I can, that is nothing, but that I love you as much as did the saints, as much as your holy Mother loved and loves you.”
May we ourselves be able to love you as Eugene did,
and receive through his intercession
the particular graces we ask for as pilgrims of hope.

by Fr. Frank Santucci, OMI