Father Eymard's Way of Praying
A day of recollection talk to the Blessed Sacrament Community of Cleveland by Fr. Hervé Thibault, S.S.S., in September 1990.
1. Prayer as a Homage
Fr. Eymard usually called our mental prayer adoration. "Adoration should be the form of meditation of an adorer. . . . Every religious Order has its own form of mental prayer. Ours is adoration, Eucharistic as its object. . . . Remember that we must have our own form of meditation. We cannot use the method of other religious bodies. We have adopted the church's method of praying in the holy sacrifice. It should serve our purpose. Other methods are not for us; they are not suited to our needs."
In the setting of solemn exposition in which Fr. Eymard found himself, the main reason for choosing the four ends of worship as our method of prayer was that adoring is a homage, not just "interiorizing the Gospel" or "praying before the Blessed Sacrament," but paying homage. Unless the practice of mental prayer brings one into personal relationship with God and with our Lord Jesus Christ, it falls short of its goal. In what is called the 'long' or 'great' retreat of Rome (1865), Fr. Eymard often regretted that his meditation had been too cerebral, too occupied with considerations and reflections, and not enough with sentiments and affection:The principal grace of my meditation was to see the excellence of our vocation. Unfortunately, my mind was filled with too many thoughts, my soul rambled too much, admiring the beauty and the greatness of God's love instead of resting in his goodness to me. (February 26)
I finished this morning's meditation by making it more Eucharistic; however, I allowed myself to be carried away by the canvas-brushing and the sermonizing about the truth of my topic so that the end of the meditation came and I was still lost in considerations and not in affections. Poor meditation, beautiful and facile, but sterile for the heart. (March 3)
True, I glow at the beauty of the truth and the splendor of God's attributes, the blessings of his love, the glory of his service; but all that can be merely natural and quite imperfect; at any rate, it is not the marrow of the love of a soul that surrenders itself. (March 8)
This meditation (on union with Christ) so rich and nourishing, refreshes me, although I dwelt too much on its truth and excellence and not enough on its practice, that is, on acts of the heart. (March 27)One would welcome that kind of distraction at prayer; but, for Fr. Eymard, it was not adoring. It did not surrender him personally to God and to our Lord Jesus Christ. For Fr. Eymard, adoration should lead one to give himself to our Lord as our Lord gives himself to us in the Eucharist. That exchange is the homage of adoration. A few texts from the long retreat of Rome give a hint of how Fr. Eymard understood adoration:
I meditated on adoration. . . . I must adore our Lord by my whole self: that is the essential point: It is not your gifts that I want, but you (Imitation of Christ, IV, 8:4).
I must adore our Lord, his love in the Blessed Sacrament, his sacrifices, his state, his goodness, in a word, the motive for the institution, the perpetuation, the diffusion of the Eucharist. I must place myself under the influence of the constitutive and nourishing grace of this divine sacrament, unite myself to our Lord by this grace, glorify him in his sacramental state and thereby my soul will live. (February 26)
On adoration. In itself, adoration is the worship of latria offered to our Lord Jesus Christ — a worship of respect, of honor, of dependence, and of homage:
a. Exterior worship. What makes (the homage of the body) honorable is that it is the worship, the ceremonial of the church, her ritual which we carry out, and consequently an excellent form of worship offered him by his spouse and inspired by the Holy Spirit. . . .
b. Interior worship. It is a worship of love, of homage to the love of our Lord; a worship of the outpouring of his boundless love in the sacrament; then a worship of praise and blessing at the sight of so many sacrifices in his sacramental state; lastly, a worship of thanksgiving to his infinite goodness for having so loved us. . . .
Why have I loved our Lord so little and so poorly? Because I have not known how, or bothered, to make a true adoration of love. My prayer has been too cerebral. I have meditated too much and not loved enough — loved in our Lord and by my whole self. (February 27)
Another thought struck me forcefully — a thought I perhaps never had before, or at least never felt deeply nor understood — it is the thought of the soul's interior life in our Lord or in God, all occupied with praising him, blessing him, loving him for himself, with practicing the virtues on God in the exercise of contemplation, like the angels and the saints in heaven who are not wrapped up in their own bliss, but in admiration of the glory, the perfection, the blessedness of God himself. So, my soul, unless you live in our Lord, you will not be able to live that life of praise and contemplation which attaches the soul to God far more than exterior or interior virtue in and for oneself. That is what I must aspire to, it is true life in Jesus. (March 11)
We pray to the saints, to the Blessed Virgin, we recite vocal prayers easily; but how rare it is to interrogate the love of Jesus-Hostia, to adore with one's heart. (March 27)That method of interrogating our Lord, his love, his intentions, his desires was a personal way of Fr. Eymard to penetrate the secrets of the Eucharist. It underlies his advice to re-quicken in our adorations the mysteries of our Lord's earthly life as also his views of the Eucharistic virtues of our Lord. It may have led him, at times, to exaggeration, but is was one of his approaches to prayer. For instance, in the evening meditation of the sixth day of the First Retreat of Rome, Fr. Eymard began: "You are there, I am here...Why?"
Fr. Eymard often used expressions like: our Lord showed me . . . our Lord reproached me . . . our Lord changed the topic of my meditation. We usually dismiss such expressions as a way of speaking; but Fr. Eymard was aware that grace was operating within him, that grace was leading him to sense a defect to be corrected, an obstacle to be removed, a hindrance to be overcome. He felt grace working in him. He often added further on: "It is surely a great grace. . . . It is a grace that I did not deserve. . . ."
In his retreat meditations, Fr. Eymard was preoccupied with self-correction. Even when he started his meditation with our Lord, he soon turned to his own shortcomings; but his ordinary adorations were more concerned with knowing our Lord and praising him than with examining himself. His usual advice to pious souls was to concentrate on God, his wisdom, his mercy, his love, his compassion, rather than on their misery. In The Eucharistic Handbook, he wrote:Eucharistic contemplation is more active than passive: the soul gives itself to God at the sight of his ever new and delightful bounties, under the increasing action of the fire of its love which purifies, detaches, and unites the soul more intimately to its Savior. As contemplation is the fruit of love of our Lord, the greater the love, the higher will the contemplation be. The result aimed at in contemplation is to establish the soul in God, in our Savior Jesus Christ, at the sight either of his goodness or of his works of love. When the soul is thus lost in Jesus, nourished by his teachings and his mercies, prolonged mental prayer comes with little or no effort. Contemplation gives the soul a greater power of understanding, more penetration: truth endures while sentiment passes. God comes to us first of all by his light, for God well known is bound to be loved. Souls that love God little, know him only imperfectly. That is the secret of mental prayer and the delight of adoration: contemplation by recollection, silence, and union.
Praise and homage are very biblical and liturgical, e.g., the canticles hymns, psalms of Scripture, the Gloria of the Mass, the Sanctus, and all doxologies. We do not need to invent: praise is wrested from the heart at the contemplation of the wonders of God's dealings with us. One line of thought that runs through the long retreat of Rome is the need to interiorize our service of adoration, to make it personal, to be ourselves at adoration.
With the change of focus in Eucharistic piety called for by the restoration of the liturgy, we can make our meditation in the form of adoration by praying "through Christ, with Christ, in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit," and thus join our adoration with the worship of the church and the homage which our Lord pays the Father.
An important point of praying in that way is that it binds us, our whole selves, in adoration: our intentions, our desires, our imperfections, our hopes. "It is you, Lord, that I have always wanted to love; in spite of failure, I have always wanted you to be first in my heart. . . ."
2. Praying With One's Heart
In his instruction on "The Household of the Blessed Sacrament" in the retreat to the religious of Paris in 1867, Fr. Eymard speaks of the closeness to our Lord, the intimacy and the familiarity with our Lord that adoration should produce:If we were sufficiently men of adoration, we would probe with the finger the heart of Jesus... living with someone ends by piercing all secrets. . . . If we were more attentive to adoration, we would become confidants of our Lord.
The talk reveals the intimacy of Fr. Eymard's approach to adoration: a lover's tryst, a meeting of hearts where love, admiration, affection, gratitude occupy the time. We have already mentioned Fr. Eymard's problem with the over activity of his mind at prayer. His attention kept trailing a train of thought that prevented affective prayer. Throughout his retreat notes, Fr. Eymard complained about the unruliness of his mind at prayer, but it was in the long retreat especially that he wrestled with the problem.
Toward the end of my meditation, our Lord seemed to tell me: "Make acts of love of my goodness, my mercy; you do not need intelligence for that and, besides, acts of the heart come more naturally and spontaneously. Seek my views in matters, adore my will in itself, offer yourself through your heart to my love. No intelligence is needed for that. My grace will replace your mind; faith, your reason. (February 17)
I must live with our Lord, abide in him through an awareness, a sentiment of the heart, a devotion of love for him and for his glory. Everything must increase that loving attention and, in turn, it must pervade all else like a savor — or a ruling passion. (March 17)
How I would need to place myself at the feet of our Lord and learn from him the science of the heart which penetrates more deeply than any study. (March 26)
Our Lord has devoted workers, a few devout adorers by profession, but very few spouses or friends who visit him out of affection, who converse heart to heart with him, who are devoted to him purely for his sake. (March 28)The same teaching is found in Fr. Eymard's instructions to the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament (Fr. Eymard's religious Order for Women), who were contemplatives in his days.
To love God truly, one must love him from within. The love of God is by nature silent and contemplative: it is all attention, all receptive. It is like, for instance, Mary at the feet of our Lord or the infant resting in its mother's arms, or the angel in the presence of God, we must be under the charm of his goodness. Love is the response to beholding what God wants. The soul contemplates God's goodness in silence; a babbling soul has not really reached God. The soul's love for God is silent, it scrutinizes, it is swayed by God's bounty. . . . Love enfolds itself around its great benefactor. Love that is only in a secondary way: like a flame it tends to expand, but before you have the flame, you need a fire, the flame is the effect, not the cause, of the fire.
Again, in letters of spiritual direction, Fr. Eymard encouraged interior souls to pray with their heart more than from books.
In a letter of a Mrs. Jordan, on August 27, 1867, he says: "Aspire at prayer to nourish your soul on God rather than to purify yourself, to humiliate yourself. To do that nourish your soul on truth in person in God's bounty towards you. That is the secret of real prayer: to see the intention and purpose of God in his goodness to you. . . ." "The thought of God must not be theoretical. Let the heart lead you. Live in praise and gratefulness. Love to repeat: how good God is.
To Edmée Brenier de Montmorand, on May 19, 1868, he says: "Get to know our Lord, dear child, try to discover his secrets, the prompting of his heart, and you will live in amazement."
And to Mme. d'Andigne, on May 15, 1868, he says: "Let me tell you a great secret of the interior life: occupy yourself in praising our Lord and in pleasing his heart by rejoicing in the attractiveness of his graces and the gems of his merits."
For Fr. Eymard, adoration was not only an interior homage, but a personal surrender of ourselves to our Lord. Fr. Eymard was disturbed by the same kind of tug that infected St. John of the Cross: "to love as much as one is loved," to return as much as one has received, to give back to God all that one holds from him. That was the meaning, the challenge, and the fulfillment of life.
We need, today, to draw from our prayer a "mystique of the celebration" related to daily living, as rich and as helpful as Fr. Eymard's mystique of the real presence was. The doxology that closes the canon of the Mass is the greatest act of adoration and thanksgiving that can be offered to the Father. The celebration of the Eucharist, offertory, consecration, Communion, leads naturally to the gift of self: offering our life, becoming more Christ-like, living in union with our Lord. The celebration is the memorial of the paschal mystery, the redeeming act of Jesus.
As the notes of the long retreat of Rome show, Fr. Eymard could not be satisfied with achievement because it is outside us. The gift of self is more than availability to others; it is the means to union. Fr. Eymard did not spare himself in working, but, as his notes show, all that zeal did not bring him closer to God.
Today, we seek our identity in our ministry, but whatever new occupation we find, whatever new ministries we devise, whatever new services we develop, unless we bring to our work the spirit of Fr. Eymard, we will find ourselves where he was at the beginning of the long retreat of Rome. Our vocation, our grace, is a grace of interiority.