The Life and Letters of
Saint Peter Julian Eymard
Translated and
arranged
chronologically
by
Sr. Catherine Marie Caron, S.S.S.
General Introduction
to Saint Peter Julian Eymard ―
His Life and Spirit
Peter Julian Eymard was born in the French Alps on February 4, 1811. He lived very close to the church, and his mother would take him there every day for visits to the Blessed Sacrament.
Even at an early age, he was sensitive to spiritual things. However, it was to be a long, long journey before Peter Julian could finally realize his vocation to spread a love for the Holy Eucharist in the church of France and found two religious congregations and an association for the laity.Although he always wanted to become a priest, the way was not easy. His own father bitterly opposed his vocation and Peter Julian began studying Latin in secret. After the death of his father, he was free to follow his vocation. He entered the seminary for Diocesan priests at Grenoble, and at the age of 24 he was ordained a priest on July 29, 1834.
He was sent to the town of Chatte as Assistant Priest, and three years later became the Pastor at Monteynard, where he was greatly loved by the people. After two years among them, every parishioner received Communion at Easter time.
During the time he had assistant at Chatte, an event had occurred which marked his spiritual life very profoundly. While he was spending an afternoon of prayer, he was overwhelmed by a sense of the goodness of God. He referred to this event until the end of his life. Meanwhile, his desire for the religious life kept haunting him. He was attracted to the newly-founded Marist Society and sought permission from his bishop to join it.
He held many positions in the Marist Society. While he was serving as Provincial, he was asked to carry the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of the city of Lyons on the feast of Corpus Christi. During this two-hour procession, he confided all the needs of the church, of France, and of the world to Christ the Lord. This was another important moment in his life. He wrote in his private notes: "Since the beginning of this month, I feel a very strong attraction towards the Eucharist. It was never so strong before. This attraction impels me to bring everyone to love our Lord, and to preach only Christ and Christ in the Eucharist."
One day, as Father Eymard was praying in the chapel at the shrine of Notre Dame de Fourvière, he was strongly moved by the spiritual needs of priests and religious. He was also struck by the fact that all the mysteries of our Lord's life had religious orders to honor them. The Holy Eucharist alone, the greatest of mysteries, was without its own religious group to honor and glorify it. There should be one. From then on, he was haunted by the call to work for the Eucharist.
Little by little, he came to consider the foundation of two congregations, one for men and the other for women — the Congregations of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers and Brothers, and the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament — destined to make the Eucharist the center of their life and spirituality, to adore the Blessed Sacrament perpetually exposed and spread the fire of Eucharistic love to all. He wanted this grace to extend to the laity as well and inaugurated an association for them.
Having consulted the Holy Father to know whether such a work would receive his blessing, he also consulted three bishops in Paris to know whether the idea came from God. He received a favorable answer from both quarters and he left the Marists to begin this Eucharistic work.
With only on companion, he began exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in Paris in 1856. Many of those who had promised to come did not do so. Two years later, he invited Marguerite Guillot and a few other women to join them to begin the women's branch. Marguerite Guillot, his principal collaborator, had been guided by him for many years in the Third Order of Mary, while he was with the Marists.
Fr. Eymard began his two Congregations in the midst of great difficulties of poverty, loss of credibility, rash judgments, and misunderstandings. Nevertheless, when he died, the Blessed Sacrament Fathers and Brothers were located in Paris, Angers, Marseilles, and Saint Maurice in France, and Brussels in Belgium. The sisters numbered 60 and were located only in Angers, after failing in their efforts to establish a new foundation, which had caused Fr. Eymard many heartaches.
Fr. Eymard was a friend of the poor and the lower classes of French society. During the French revolution, he visited the jails and the workers in their factories. They made it a point to protect him from danger, recognizing him as a friend. In Paris, he began an apostolate among young uneducated workers, providing them with opportunities to learn catechism and make their First Communion.
He died August 1, 1868. On July 12, 1925, Peter Julian Eymard was beatified by Pope Pius XI, and on December 9, 1962, at the close of the first session of Vatican II, he was declared a saint by Pope John XXIII. The pope spoke the following words on that occasion: "Follow his example, place at the center of your thoughts, your affections, your zeal, this incomparable source of all graces, the mystery of faith which hides under its veils the very author of graces — Jesus the incarnate Word."
SPIRIT
The spirit that Saint Peter Julian spread around him was a spirit of love, a great love for the Holy Eucharist, a love which is transforming and flowers into generous self-giving and service. His goal was to allow Christ to live in him and become the new self within. "I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me."
He focused especially on the love in the heart of Christ at the moment of the institution of the Eucharist, a love that reaches down the centuries to each one of us. Saint Peter Julian felt that the spiritual life is summarized in love which imitates Christ's self-giving.
For him, the Eucharist was the "now" mystery of Jesus, the mystery that sums up all the others. Theology expresses that understanding in the words "covenant" and "memorial." "Having loved his own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." These words from the Gospel of John were a constant inspiration to Saint Peter Julian. This love for the risen Christ giving himself continually as food, as body broken, as blood poured out for the life of others, was the unending subject of his contemplation. He taught a method of prayer that flows from the Eucharist, that is, adoration. thanksgiving, reparation, and petition. His prayer was an extension of the Mass. He was truly a man ahead of his time.
Emphasizing the loving goodness of God, he encouraged frequent Communion as remedy to our spiritual poverty. He prepared the way for the decree of Saint Pius X allowing more frequent Communion. Placing the Eucharist at the center of the Christian life, he paved the way of a spiritual renewal centered on Eucharist which came to flower in Vatican II. Our understanding of the Eucharistic presence of Christ is enriched with a deeper sense of community, as a sacrament of liberation from sin, as a call to personal transformation and communion among believers.
Saint Peter Julian Eymard, the priest of the Eucharist, a man on fire with love for our Lord, stands before us as a contemplative and an apostle of the Eucharist and opens our understanding to a warm, Christ-centered spirituality that is fed at the banquet of the Lord.
THE HISTORICAL SCENE
The following is an excerpt from Vita Eucaristica e Vita Religiosa (Eucharistic and Religious Life) by Manuel Barbiero, S.S.S., Verona 1991, an excellent summary of the social and historical events of this period.
"During the lifetime of Saint Peter Julian Eymard (1811-1868), political, social, cultural, and religious events in France intertwined themselves with a steady and pressing rhythm."
"The following events occurred on the political level: from the fall of the Napoleonic Empire (1814) to the Bourbonic Restoration with Louis XVIII and Charles X (1815-1830); from the revolution (1830) with constitutional monarchy or bourgeoisie of Louis Philippe (1830-1848) to the Paris revolution (February 22-24, 1884); from the Second Republic (1848-1851) to the coup d'etat of Louis Bonaparte (December 2, 1851) with the birth of the Second Empire under the same Louis Bonaparte who became Napoleon II (1851-1870)."
"The transformation of France was also taking place on a social level, from a 'rural country' — the farmers represented about 90 percent of the population at the beginning of the nineteenth century — to a country which set out to fulfill, so to speak, the 'industrial revolution.' Under the push of industrial growth, a huge displacement of people took place from the interior of the land, from the countryside to the cities with the consequent birth of a new social reality; the working class, the proletariat, the suburb; the 'social problem' was born tied to the poor conditions of workers; including the sad situation of child labor."
"On the cultural level, a struggle also rose up against illiteracy, creating clear divisions between those outside the cities and among the social classes. The state's responsibility for schools and the various laws underline how slow progress was on this point. In addition to the difficulty in creating public institutions, there was also that of printing and the progress of communications."
"On the religious level, the situation was still more complex. After the unexpected disaster of the revolution, the church made an effort to restructure and recuperate lost land, to reorganize Dioceses, rebuild the clergy, strengthen itself in education and restore religion."
"The signs of the revolution remained, however. They accentuated a process of de-Christianization that was already in course in numerous regions. It left the clergy divided, undermined the Gallican church, and contributed to the new climate."
"These surprising events cost the religious institutes dearly: the religious life was destroyed by the revolution, because it was thought to be in contradiction with its own spirit. It was seen as opposed to Napoleon, who thought it useless; and yet, in an uncertainty due to a lack of legal security, the religious life developed and multiplied with the same spontaneity as in the 1200s and 1500s."
"During the nineteenth century, France was a nation in which the Catholic religion was a religion of the state: it had become a nation in which the greater part of the French were Catholic. At the end of the century, it declared itself to be a nation of separation between church and state."
It is in this social and cultural upheaval that our saint found his way of spirituality. His own faith was unwavering, and he became a firm anchor for many in a stormy sea.