Booklet
Collection of Classic Texts of
Saint Peter Julian Eymard - Apostle of
the Eucharist
(from: The Great Retreat of
Selected quotations for daily meditation seem to have current appeal as we can see from recent publications. The writings of St. Peter Julian Eymard contain gems of spirituality to be mined by the patient explorer. The casual reader may not have time for this luxury and so this booklet contains an initial selection of texts.
“St. Peter Julian Eymard was born in the
town of La Mure
May these texts be a helpful source either for prayer or for individual and group study.
S. Catherine Marie Caron, SSS
Saint Peter Julian Eymard,
Born
on
Blessed Sacrament Fathers & Brothers
St. Vincent de Paul Parish
1. The Eucharistic Center
The human heart needs a center of
affection, of expansiveness. God said on looking at the first man: “It is not
good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18).
“Without some friend, how is it possible for you to live a good life?” “Where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt.
Our Lord wants to be the center of the love of His disciples, the center of my love. “As the Father ahs loved Me, so have I loved you; abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (John 15:9-10).
What
does “abiding in the love” of Jesus Christ mean? That we make His love the center of our
lives. This center must be the Eucharist; for Jesus is in the Eucharist, our one center of consolation in the
hour of trial, “Come to Me, all who…(Matt. 11:28), our one center in the hour of sorrow and disappointment, for that
is when the heart surrenders with the greatest abandon; our one center in time of happiness, for it is then that true love
finds its joy in the Beloved and not in self, “yet will I rejoice in the
Lord…in my saving God”; our one center in
our desire to see and please Him, to surprise Him with a gift, to do only what
pleases Him or may be agreeable to Him; our
one center of life, in which as in our center of love we think and decide
and act in order to please Him. That is what these words of Jesus mean:
“Whoever eats Me will live because of Me” (John
Is Jesus the center of my heart? Yes, in time of extraordinary difficulties; yes, in the first moment of gratitude, in exceptional circumstances, but not in everyday life. I do not think, decide, desire, or act in Jesus as my center. That is a fact; all too certain, all too sad a fact.
Why is not our Lord my center? Because He is not yet the self of my self, because I do not love Him enough out of affection. My heart is all taken up with the glory of His service, not with what pleases His heart.
How can I make that center a reality? By entering into it and abiding in it; by acting in, and for, this divine center.
My abiding in this center is made easy for
me since I live with the Eucharist,
And the Eucharist is the occupation and even the exterior law of my life. It will be easier for me than in any other state since it is my grace.
How should I go about it? By action, that is, not by trying to feel the peace and sweetness of this center, but by honoring it, by frequently reverting to it. A center is the focal point of a circumference, a place of command.
Come, my soul, leave yourself, forget yourself;
go to the God of the Eucharist; He has a home, and He wants you to dwell there;
He wants to live with you, to give Himself to you, to live in you. Be to Jesus what His human nature was to
His divine Person in the Incarnation.
2.
How good the good God is! He has lifted up my spirit; my soul felt rather low and might have easily become lazy.
According to my state in life and my vocation, the Holy Eucharist is my natural, supernatural and ultimate center. The thought of it should then come easily.
By my state in life, I live with our Lord, near His altar, near His throne. To live with someone is to be with him altogether; to live with such a great King is to have a very honorable dwelling; to live with our Lord Jesus Christ is to live with goodness itself.
One must then be very stupid, wicked or ungrateful not to dwell there.
The Holy Eucharist is the object of my work. My place in life is its direct service, that is, its worship, its adoration, its personal service, which calls for the full application of my thought, the full power of my intelligence, the full energy of my will, the full homage of my body. Everything in me should therefore be preparation for, as well as an application to, the service of the divine Eucharist.
The Holy Eucharist is the purpose of my life, the absolute goal that includes all the other goals, since our Lord is the Alpha and Omega (the beginning and the end) of all things. To please Him, to love Him and to serve Him, such for me is the meaning of time and eternity. I follow and must follow my Master everywhere.
Living with our Lord, I am always with Him, I work always with him and on Him as long as I am within the law and grace of my service, since it is I who must transmit His orders, organize and maintain His Service.
But the Eucharistic God must be the dominant natural and supernatural object of my thoughts, the focal point and law of my life; otherwise I might behave like a child with his toys, a drunkard under temptation, a slave of those I must lead to my Master.
This is the principal grace of my meditation, which I have well understood: I must abide with our Lord, work on Him and for Him, but not with my mind, for my mind must attend to what it is doing; my mind is a custodian, a watchman, a laborer, but not the master. How must I abide with our Lord? Not by practicing a special virtue while serving Him: that would make me a specialized worker, indulging his one talent. Moreover, to abide in a special virtue is to abide too much in self, to seek one’s gain.
So then, I must live with our Lord (John 5:4); abide with Him through a thought, a sentiment of affection, devoted love for Him and His glory. Everything must foster this loving thought; and this thought in turn must nourish and perfect everything else, must be like the fragrance of the master-thought. Up to now, I have been occupied with the intellectual aspect of the Eucharist, with the study of the Eucharist, with the exterior means of success, but I have not yet penetrated to the marrow, to the heart of the heart of that divine love. That is why I have been so restless. I worked much intellectually, physically, exteriorly, but not with my heart, not with my affections. And so my center was in the intellect, in the knowledge of the Eucharist, in the externals of the Society rather than in its center of life; a center which ought to be so easy for me since I have the concept and knowledge of it; a center which should form and foster the Christian and evangelical virtues without my having to seek elsewhere; a center which gives me ready nourishment, since it is an atmosphere of light, of sweetness, of peace; indeed, it is our Lord.
But, O my soul, you must leave yourself behind, draw life within your heart from the goodness of Jesus Eucharist. Yours must be a nobly passionate love which takes hold of everything in one sweep, which surrenders everything in one act of giving. “He will live for Me because he abides in me”.
But, O my God, why do You love us to the point of doing everything for us in this world? Of enlisting angels and saints at our service? O placing even Yourself at my disposal? Of forgetting Your majesty, Your dignity, Your rights, in order to beg me to love You, beg me to requite Your love with mine, to prefer You to Your enemy, who is also mine, the devil, and to attach myself to none other than You, at long last?
Do You forget that I am nothing, that all I have is the longing of my heart? It almost seems as if You cannot be happy without me? That You stand in need of me? And in spite of that, I still do not love You with my whole heart! I want to be coaxed, sought after! I am stingy with Your! How foolish of me!
- Abide in Me
“In Him we live and move and have our
being” (Acts
I was telling myself: Have I then lost much time? No, because first I had to inject new life into feelings that were numbed and paralyzed; I had to make my house fit to dwell in. so I followed the right way. I am standing at the threshold I must enter in, give myself and abide in Jesus.
- Thanksgiving –
Perpetual Vow of Personality[1]
Towards the end of my thanksgiving (after Communion), I made the perpetual vow of my personality to our Lord Jesus Christ in the hands of the Most Blessed Virgin and of St. Joseph, under the patronage of St. Benedict (his feast): nothing for me personally I prayed for the grace that is essential to this gift: nothing by me. The model of this gift: the Incarnation of the Word.
Just as in the mystery of the Incarnation,
the humanity of our Lord was such that it no longer sought itself, no longer
had separate interests, no longer acted for its own sake because another person
was substituted to its own, that is, the Person of the Son of God, who sought
only His Father’s interest and had His eyes fixed on Him always and in all
things; so must I be without any self-seeking desires and interests, having
none but those of Jesus Christ, who abides in me to live in me for His Father
and gives Himself in Communion for that very purpose. As the living Father sent
Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me will love because of
Me” (John
It is as if my Savior was saying: In
sending Me through the Incarnation, the Father has destroyed in Me every root
of self-love, in not giving me the human person but uniting Me to the divine
Person in order to make Me live for Him; so through Communion, you will live
for Me, for I shall be living in you. I will fill your soul with My desires and
My life, which will consume and uproot everything that is personal to you; so
much so that it will be I instead of you that shall live and desire everything
in you. Thus will you be entirely clothed with Me (Eph.
I shall be the person of your personality,
and your personality will be the life of My person in you. “It is no longer I
who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal.
- Our Lord’s
Union With Us
“I meditated on the union of our Lord with us, a union that ought to be the life of the vow of my personality; absque sui proprio” (perfect self-abnegation).
Why does our Lord desire that union so much? Why does He ask for it? Indeed, is such a union possible, fitting and beneficial to our Lord?
Our Lord desires to live again in us and continue to glorify His Father through us as His members so that the Heavenly Father may look favorably on all we do; that seeing and receiving our actions as coming from His divine son our Savior, He may be pleased with them; that He may live and reign in all people as in so many members of Jesus Christ and, by this life and reign, paralyze and destroy the kingdom of His enemy Satan; that He may receive from all creatures and all creation the honor and glory due Him.
Our Lord then desires union with us for
the love and glory of His Father. That is why
Our Lord desires that union because of His love for us to ennoble us in Himself. The members of a family share the honor of the head of the family, of the one who rules the family. Our Lord desires that union in order one day to be able to communicate to us His heavenly glory and its consequences; power, beauty, and perfect happiness.
Our Lord has a great desire for our holiness in order to unite us to Himself and make us live His life.
By
that union our actions become His own actions and take on His merit in keeping
with our degree of union with Him; proportionate to the life, virtues and
spirit of Jesus in us. Thence the beautiful saying of St. Gregory, “The
Christian is another Christ”; and of
Prayer: “O my God, my everlasting love, my all-embracing good, my bliss without end…I offer You my heart’s whole love…Whatever a devout soul can imagine or desire, that do I offer You, that do I make You a gift of, with the deepest reverence, the love of my inmost being. Nothing do I choose to keep back for myself, but freely and with all my heart I make an offering to You of myself and all that is mine” (from the Imitation of Christ, Book IV, Chap. 17).
- My
1. The union of Jesus Christ with me will depend on my union with Him: “Abide in Me, and I in you” (John 15:3), “He who abides in Me, and I in Him” (John 15:5).
I am therefore certain that Jesus will abide in me if I want to abide in Him. Just as the air, according to the law of elasticity, rushes into a vacuum, and water, following the law of gravity, rushes into the lowlands, so the Spirit of our Lord fills the vacuum which the soul makes in herself…
By union with our Lord, I become not a part of divinity, not something divine and worthy of adoration, but something sacred and holy-like the dignity accruing to a king’s relatives according to the greater or lesser degree of their relationship to him.
With our Lord, I become not a part of divinity, not something divine and worthy of adoration, but something sacred and holy-like the dignity accruing to a king’s relatives according to the greater or lesser degree of their relationship to him.
2. From this union comes power “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me…Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). That is quite clear: “Nothing”. If therefore the fruitfulness of the branch comes from its union with the trunk, my spiritual fruitfulness then comes from my union with Jesus Christ: “I am the way” (John 14:6); from the union of my thoughts with His thoughts, of my words with His words, of my desires with His desires, of my actions with His actions.
The members of my body receive life from the blood of my heart, and the blood
receives it
from food; “I am the bread of life…He who eats Me has eternal life (John
Such therefore is the source and center of my power for holiness and wisdom; union with our Lord. Barrenness of soul comes from the lack of that union; the branch has dried up, has been cut off.
From the union comes merit, a merit based on partnership. Our Lord takes my actions and makes them His own, renders them deserving of eternal life, of an eternal reward because of the new dignity conferred on them limited only by its natural imperfection. Everything then becomes deserving of heavenly merit due to this divine partnership; and the closer is this union with Jesus Christ, the greater also shall be the glory of sanctity.
Oh! How can I have so long neglected this divine union! So many merits lost! So many actions barren! So many graces without fruit! And me especially, with so many means, with such great and easy profits at hand! Oh!
Worthless tree! How merciful of God not to have already cut it down!
7.
Storms
When I am suffering from external causes I feel such a need within to hide in the divine Heart of Jesus to be sheltered from these man-made winds and storms! My God, how pitiful human nature can be! If Your glory and Your will were not involved, I would go into solitude to be alone at Your feet. But You want me to suffer all these human trials, to live surround by them, with them and almost because of them (“On them”. Perhaps Fr. Eymard means that he should let suffering be a source of benefit). So be it! Amen!
At least I shall be able to glorify You better by patience, meekness and humility, by losing my independence and by continual self-denial. Favor me with the serenity of Your countenance, in the midst of it all, with interior peace in You and with love for my neighbor. Then I will serve God my Savior with greater self denial, devotion and strength-God be praised for I shall be like an orderly of the great King, an orderly without a name of his own, personal authority or glory, like a “minister of Christ” (Rom. 15:16).
8.
Humility of
Spirit
For a long time our Lord has been drawing me to this life of union with Him, by showing me the emptiness and danger that comes from what is not Him and from my own weakness, etc.
He wants to be my whole life.
1. The object of my studies, of my ministry. It is therefore at His feet that I must educate myself. What good have I done when I relied solely on my work, on my studies, on my scant experience, and even on the experience of others? Nothing, less than nothing; I spoiled everything and had to start all over from scratch. The whole thing was worthless, because the initial inspiration did not come from our Lord, from divine truth.
2. The love of my heart, the power of that heart, its peace, its joy and, to that end, its
Center. My heart is so unhappy when it is alone, when it senses that the Heart of Jesus is unresponsive, is grieved or offended by me. What a torment! This divine Heart ought to be my natural habitat as water is to fish, as air to one who breathes. I die, or at least agonize, away from this divine Heart.
- The strength of my will. By nature I lack strength of body and of will. I am ailing.
I am totally exhausted, and I could soon become helpless. My mind is so frivolous. My health is shattered. My health, like my mind, is sustained only by our Lord and in our Lord. A grace of strength can be found in a well-kept schedule, in intellectual pursuits.
It is the grace of my calling. I would be much stronger if I followed the first inspiration with greater docility, if I restrained the mind more, my mind, the subtlety of my intellect, the curiosity of my reason, or, to put it better; if I were “humble of spirit”.
So, I must therefore be united to our
Lord Jesus Christ as His human nature was to the authority of His divine
Person, as Jesus belonged totally to His Father. This requires a vital union,
received from Him and communicated by Him. The branch must first be warmed by
the sun in order to receive the flowing life-sap. The seasoning sun which calls
forth this divine sap is recollection, holy desires, prayer, the gift of
self-in a word, love. “Come, Lord Jesus” (Apoc.
“My son, you must not let yourself be
impressed by the fine and clever things you hear people say; power is what
builds up the
Pay heed to My words, which bring fire to the heart and light to the mind, piercing the heart with sorrow for sin and filling it with comfort in many ways.
Never read just to appear better educated or wiser than your fellows.
I am the One who teaches people whatever
they know. To those of child-like simplicity I give a clearer understanding
than can be learned through studies. (Imitation of Christ, Book
When will I ever surrender totally to this good Master! Study for its own sake has caused me to lose so much time, so many graces, and so much devotion.
- Means to Grow
in Christ
An act of union with four Lord is easy, but a life of habitual union is more difficult for a soul as weak and flighty as mine, because of my enslavement to its intellectual pursuits, and the lure of external activity. My soul is like gas in a bell jar under water which the least bit of air releases. I am so easily influenced by everything that happens, so lazy when everything is calm.
My God, how can I live a life of union?
A grace of enlightenment made me understand that the best an only means is to nurture and fortify the interior self within me that is Jesus Christ, to conceive Him, to bring Him forth and make Him grow by all my actions, readings, prayers and adorations, and in all the relationships of my life. In order to do that, I must always renounce the personality of Adam and live a life of dependence on Jesus in me; the frequency of short spontaneous prayers with that idea in mind will end by making these thoughts and feelings come naturally.
- The Interior
Cenacle
Where does union with Jesus Christ take place? Within me. That union is effected in Jesus Christ: “Abide in Me” (John 15:3). Whether as a practice or as a virtue, this union takes place in Jesus Christ within me.
That is most certain! “If a man loves Me,
he will keep my word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and
make our home with him” (John
But why has our Lord chosen the interior self as the center of that union? In order to force us to re-enter into ourselves.
We flee our inner self as one flees a criminal; we are afraid of ourselves as one is afraid of a prison. We are all that. We are ashamed of ourselves that is why we try to escape and cling to anything outside ourselves. As a result of our desertion of self, God is also abandoned by the one who was to be his temple and the throne of His love.
God then cannot work in us or with us. So
to force us to re-enter into ourselves, into our souls, God comes into us. It
is within us that God wants to converse with us: “Let me hear what God the Lord
will speak” (Ps. 85:8). It is in our hearts that He wanted to dwell: “Recall it
to mind” (Is. 46:8); “My child, give Me your heart” (Prov.
Our Lord comes into us sacramentally in order to live in us spiritually. The Sacrament is like a casing which encloses Him and is broken open by our heart’s love…
Our Lord wants to make our inner self His real temple – “the soul of the just one is the throne of God” say St. Gregory – so that we may go to our Lord Jesus and easily find Him always at our disposal as our Master, our model and grace: we need only recollect ourselves within ourselves in Jesus. So at any moment we can offer our Lord the tribute of our actions, the love of our hearts, and fix our eyes on Him with a glance that says and surrenders everything.
As the Imitation beautifully has it: “Where He finds the soul whose thoughts go deep, he is a frequent visitor, such pleasant dialogue, such welcome words of comfort, such deep repose, such intimate friendship, are certainly beyond belief” (Book II, Chap. I).
This truth astonishes me more than it elates me. Is it possible for God so to pursue a soul, to place Himself at its disposal to dwell in the body of such a weak, ungrateful soul! (As mine).
And yet, it is divinely true! I believe it, I thank You for it, O my God. I adore You in Yourself.
- Jesus Christ,
Our Guest
Our Lord is therefore the guest of my soul and of my body since He is in me; that self of mine is composed of both body and soul.
He must therefore rule over both since, by my vow, He is that self, is what a pilot is on his ship, a master in his house, a father in his family, a soul in the body it animates-God being the life of both.
We owe guest three things: respect due to his rank; the companionship of a friend; and the compliment of a splendid banquet. That is how we celebrate friendship.
Such are the three duties I owe to our Lord in me.
Respect, in my body, watchfulness over temptations and the unruly passions of my soul in order to honor and not offend Him.
Companionship, since He is the first and real Master, the kind Friend, the divine Confidant of my joys and sorrows, the center of all my affections, the treasure of my heart.
Banquet. That is, the offering of my joys,
the glory of my actions, the love that inspires my sacrifices; these are a
feast for our Savior, the living waters of faith and charity He thirsts for.
“Give Me to drink” (John 4:7); “I thirst” (John
Honey is sweet, light spreads joy, and fire brings warmth to those who are cold. Mutual friendship is all that in our society: why isn’t our Lord all that to me?
- Mary First
Adorer of the Incarnate Word
Here, is my model, Mary my Mother, the first adorer of the Word Incarnate. How perfect must have been this first adoration of the Virgin Mother, how pleasing to God and rich in graces! How perfect must have been Mary’s adoration at the first instant of the Incarnation: an adoration of humility before the sovereign majesty of the Word, because of his choice of his poor servant, because of the magnitude of so much goodness and love fore her and for everyone.
The second act of adoration of the Blessed Virgin must have been an act of joyful thanksgiving to God for his infinite and ineffable goodness to us in giving us a Savior; of humble thanksgiving for favoring her, although unworthy, with such great grace and mercy in choosing her as his blessed servant. The gratitude of the Most Blessed Virgin must have quite naturally expressed itself as an act of love at the sight of so much goodness, an act of joy, praise, and blessing. Thanksgiving is all that; it is the outpouring of self to a generous and loving benefactor. Gratitude is the very heart of love.
The third act of adoration of the Most Blessed Virgin must have been an act of dedication. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord” – the offering and gift of herself, of her whole life to his service; happy to serve him, but regretting that she was so small, that she had so little to offer, that she could do so little to serve him as worthily as he deserved; wanting to serve him as he wished, and at the cost of any sacrifice he might want, all too happy to be able to please him and so to reciprocate his love for us in the Incarnation.
The fourth act of adoration of the Most Blessed Virgin must have been an act of compassion for poor sinners, those for whom the Word of God was becoming incarnate in order to save. She must have also pleaded with his infinite mercy on their behalf and offered herself to atone for them, in order to obtain their forgiveness, and their return to God; so that they might have the happiness of knowing their Creator and Savior, of loving and serving him, and so of rendering to the Most Holy Trinity the honor and glory it deserves from everyone, but especially from us who have received the mercy and love of such a great and kind God. Oh! How I to wish I could adore our Lord as this good Mother adored Him!
- Prayer
Be
my wisdom; give me the gift of fortitude. I ask you only for that grace, for
that gift; that is all I need to battle for your love. I do not want to be wise
for myself, nor virtuous for my own sake or for others, nor learned, nor
eloquent. I want one thing only, the power of your love, the power of your
truth, the power of your service. “I can do all things in him who strengthens
me” (Phil. 413).
Table of Contents
Presentation
1. The Eucharistic Center ….1(GRR)
March 4, 1st Meditation
2.
March 5th 2nd Meditation
3. Abide in Me….3-4 (GRR)
March 11th 2nd Meditation
4. Thanksgiving – Perpetual Vow of Personality….5 (GRR)
March 21st 1st Meditation
5.
Our Lord’s
March 22nd 1st Meditation
6.
My
March 22nd 1st Meditation
7. Storms….8 (GRR)
March 22nd 3rd Meditation
8. Humility of Spirit…8-9 (GRR)
March 23rd 3rd Meditation
9. Means to Grow in Christ…10 (GRR)
March 23rd 2nd Meditation
10. The
March 23rd 3rd Meditation
11. Jesus Christ, Our Guest….11-12
March 24th 1st Meditation
12. Mary First Adorer of the Incarnate Word…12-13 (GRR)
March 26th 1st Meditation
13. Prayer…13
GRR=Great Retreat of
