Gift of Self
Vita Eucaristica e Vita Religiosa
in Saint Pierre-Julien Eymardby Fr. Manuel Barbiero, S.S.S.
Chapter Ten: Gift of Self
Translated from the original Italian, French, and Latin by Fr. Mario Marzocchi, S.S.S., Fr. Thomas E. Waldie, S.S.S., Fr. Frederick Roberge, S.S.S. Revised edition, 1999.
I
We have concluded in the preceding chapter with underlining terms, which, according to us, result in being the expression of Fr. Eymard's spirituality. These terms find their greatest realization in the gift of self. We have already, in the fifth chapter, presented the most significant experience regarding the gift of self, or as Fr. Eymard has called it the vow of personality (in the course of this chapter we will use indistinctly the expressions "gift of self," "gift of personality," and "vow of personality," as indicating the same reality) taken during the Retreat of Rome of 1865. Now we propose to go through briefly, the itinerary that has led him to formulate this vow, in order then to present the spiritual principles and lines that flow from it, and to see further how the gift of self can be defined as the foundation, the unifying point, of the Eucharistic-religious life.
I. THE KEY OF LIFE AT TIMES FORESEEN
The gift of self is not a reality that appears unforeseen, it has its genesis, a long incubation. We hold that the time spent in the castle of Saint-Bonnet in October of 1863 for the definitive composition of the Rule of Life and the long period of the Retreat of Rome, would have been the providential occasions for the maturation of this thought. We follow step by step, the various phases.
1. Before the foundation
Fr. Eymard had searched in his life as a Marist for a place of recollection (concentration of mind, meditation, gathering), of solitude, of retreat with God alone; but the search had not been satisfied due to so many efforts and too many preoccupations, that constantly seemed to take him outside his center, away from his goal. Fr. Colin had counseled him not to analyze too much, but to go to God and give himself as he was; because the whole of life consisted in reinvesting oneself with Jesus Christ, fulfilling every action for him, so that Fr. Eymard himself could be the body of the body of Christ, the soul of his soul; the secret, therefore, consisted in a habitual union with Jesus Christ, in the vivit vero in me Christus (Christ truly lives in me) (Gal 2:20).
In the counsels of Fr. Colin, we already discern some important elements. First of all, they were offered to help Fr. Eymard remain in his vocation. Secondly, we find the words "giving of self" made explicit; and finally, the invitation to be the body of Christ, the soul of his soul, in a manner of living a continuous union, corresponds to as much as he will formulate in the Retreat of Rome.
In a reflection on the Eucharist, held in 1847 at the Third Order of Mary, we can find other elements as well. Fr. Eymard affirms that the miracle of transubstantiation can repeat itself spiritually in every person, that is, persons can be transformed into "another Christ," Through the Eucharist, one's thoughts, judgments, desires become those of Christ, love transforms itself into his love, the body participates in his life, in a word, Christ lives in the person who receives and becomes one with him.
We find here the binding with the Eucharist, that will become the model and the way for the realization of the transformation and of the union with Christ.
In 1850, Fr. Eymard reads the book La Douleur by his friend Blanc de Saint-Bonnet. Some passages can style themselves in relation with the gift of self. In fact, the author writes that holiness consists in the gift of personality, that in the life of man there is a need for the infinite, and that, without it there would be confusion between the two.
These are a few hints, but can have constituted a first preparation. In the imminence of the foundation and following, annotations become more frequent; a text (for a Rule of Life) in 1855 and one, among those presented to Msgr. Sibour for the first approbation of the Congregation, make a link between the first period and the successive ones.
In 1855, in the chapter regarding the Eucharistic life, Fr. Eymard writes that, through the Eucharist, Jesus Christ sanctifies souls, communicates to them the graces of his passion, the gift of himself in nourishment in order to unite himself to us, we are incorporated into his substance and transformed into his divine life in order to glorify the Father in him.
In the text of May 4, 1856, we read that the religious of the Blessed Sacrament, beyond honoring Christ in the Eucharist with the perpetual cult of adoration, have as their end:
. . . to live of the Eucharistic life of Jesus and in order to do that to strip oneself of all the glory, of all human affection, and were it possible, of one's substance and one's personality; to become like the Eucharistic appearance of Jesus, and be able to say with Saint Paul: "It is no longer I that live, but Jesus Christ who lives in me."
It seems that Fr. Eymard foresees the "necessary being" of the Congregation's reality, the founding reality, beyond some acts, some choices of cult and apostolate; but that which he himself envisions remains for now only on a level of intuition.
2. From the foundation to the approbation of 1863
In the first text of the Rule of Life for the religious (men), the one called "Leudeville," there is an indication of a way for living the life of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the spirit of humility is proposed.
In analyzing this point, the definitive text and the preparatory drafts contain the elements that will constitute the "vow of the personality." In fact, the spirit of humility consists in imitating Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, by love — for the Eucharist attains the ultimate level of humility, of annihilation, taking the form of bread. The religious therefore, as the bread of sacrifice, shall be changed into Jesus Christ, becoming like the Eucharistic bread one sole thing with Jesus Christ. For whom:
A religious must joyfully strip himself of his own glory, of his name, his own life, and immolate at every moment his human personality to the love of Jesus Christ so that he lives interiorly of his divine life.
Underlining the motivations of the expressions that we have reported: to live the life of Jesus Christ, to be like another Eucharist, to form a life uniquely with Jesus Christ, so that he himself may be the principle and the end of every action. Because of this realization, it is necessary for a religious to work at a stripping of self — "to immolate the human personality" — similar to that lived experience of Jesus Christ.
Two letters of this period confirm all that is written in these Rule(s) of Life; that they are not a product of casual thought.
I need to be like the grain of wheat. Jesus must make me die in order to give me his life, the grace of my mission.
Now you will pray that I respond to so great a vocation; that like the sacrificial bread, I lose my life, my substance, my personality, in order to be changed into the spirit and the life of Jesus, preserving only a human appearance; the humiliation and the poverty, so that the virtue of Jesus lives in my infirmities."
In the retreat of 1856, to the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament (Fr. Eymard's religious Congregation of women), we find the same elements: a religious must consume oneself with love, as a spouse, in the effusion of divine charity and in the sacrifice of one's whole being for the glory and the reign of Jesus Christ; the perfection of one's life shall be founded on the Eucharistic humility of Jesus, a humility that one is called to continue and to complete.
The love of a Eucharistic religious has no nourishment purer, stronger, more perfect than her love for Jesus Eucharistic, than humility with everything that constitutes its nature; humility is the prayer of love, its thanksgiving, its adoration, its offering, in a word, its dowry and its service at the feet of Jesus.
The Eucharistic humility assumes here a unifying aspect for the Eucharistic life.
In the retreat to the religious of Marseilles of 1859, we find three aspects united: the Eucharist as the perfection of the "exinanivit" of Saint Paul, the Eucharist as the gift that Jesus makes of his whole person, the Eucharist as a place where man's transformation and union happens in Jesus Christ. The bond of these three aspects is love. Love, in fact, consists in the gift of that which itself has, of that which is itself, in the immolation of self for the person loved; it is the love of Christ for us and our love for him, that works the transformation of our life, into that of Jesus Christ.
Constant in this retreat we have a comparison between the union that has taken place in the incarnation of the divine nature with the human nature in the Word, and the sacramental union, that takes place in the Eucharist, of Jesus Christ with us. In Communion, writes Eymard:
He leaves us our personality in order that we may have the merit of offering it, of making it dependent on Jesus Christ, to give and consecrate it to him so that Jesus Christ lives and reigns in us by the free and voluntary gift of all of ourselves.
We can observe how they are taking body, progressively, the various elements and realities around the expressions: "gift of self," "personality," "union," "life of Christ in us"; expressions correlated among themselves by the Eucharist.
That this way of conceiving the life should be the way to realize the Eucharistic-religious vocation is confirmed by all that Eymard writes in November of 1859 to the Servants. We limit ourselves to relating only a few extracts, for us most significant, from this letter:
Give yourselves well and entirely to Jesus, my dear sisters, and you will be true Servants of the Blessed Sacrament. The gift of oneself is the one proof of true love; it is everything that God wants.
Child, give me your heart, he says ( . . . ) and what will he do with your nature, if sanctify it and make it divine in Jesus. I know very well that if it is easy to give oneself in a general way all to Jesus. . . . Oh! If we were totally given to Jesus. He would be a fixed idea for our heart, the unique rule of our life. . . . To immolate oneself every day to his glory, and to die at every instant to his will, because of our love; and because it costs, we become true adorers ( . . . ) Consider yourselves as ignorant, as strangers, as wretched persons, as long as Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is not your only good, your only pleasure, your only joy, because you are not totally his. He does not reign as sovereign beautiful, quiet and strong. It would be the life of Jesus.
Everything written in this letter becomes an argument for the retreat of July of 1860 to the Servants; Fr. Eymard, in fact, invites them to give themselves totally to God. The gift of self is born from an act of free and voluntary love; it has as fruit the presence of the kingdom of God in the soul, because "God is love, and anyone who live in love lives in God, and God lives in him" (1 Jn 4:16); it consists: in the gift of one's spirit, that is to think as God, to judge with the judgment of God, to have nothing other than the same spirit with God; in the gift of one's heart, to love sovereignly and as finality God; in the gift of one's will, in order to wish what God wishes, as he wishes it, as though he wishes, it is the obedience of love; in the gift of one's body, state, qualities and burdens; in the gift of one's exterior life.
A draft of the Rule of Life of 1860 breaks the silence of this type of writing on the gift of self. In this draft, other than defining the Eucharistic state of Jesus Christ, who annihilates himself under the sacramental species, for the greater glory of God and the salvation of men, as the true virtue — mother and grace of others, Eymard writes:
Therefore, let our religious live of their love without anything for selves (absque sui proprio) but reserve all that they have to the Eucharistic glory of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ, that like John the Baptist they rejoice with joy. That Jesus, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament grow, while they themselves diminish and like a step for his feet, that he be raised and grow in hearts and in the world.
We find the expression "absque sui proprio," that, in the 1864 defines the "gift of self" in the Rule of Life: "gift" tied to Christ annihilated in the Eucharistic state for the glory of the Father and for love of mankind; "gift" that, in renouncing oneself out of love, becomes the "way" because Christ Eucharistic increases and reigns in hearts, the "way" for the glorification of the Eucharist.
The retreat of 1861 to the Servants enriches us with further elements. The death to self is the condition for having the risen life of Jesus Christ; the life of a religious, Fr. Eymard says, consists in truly having the risen life of Jesus within oneself. Moreover, this life is not pure personal conquest, rather it is the fruit of the presence of the Holy Spirit, the sanctifying spirit:
Finally, of the body, in order to make its members, members of Jesus Christ, the temple of Jesus Christ; of the soul, in order to educate it in Jesus Christ; make Jesus Christ live in her.
All the writings of the successive years show nothing other than an understanding of the elements that we have come to underline; the perfection of the life that Fr. Eymard proposes consists in continuing the divine and natural life of Jesus Christ, this occurs with the union, in a particular way in Communion; the way to have the life of Christ is in the gift of self out of love for Him; the gift which one has in Christ, who annihilates himself in the Eucharist, is one's own model and one's own virtue, for whom he becomes the gift of human personality too.
In the retreat of Marseilles of 1862, Fr. Eymard takes up again the relationship between the life of the religious and that which comes about in the Eucharist: as with transubstantiation the bread loses its substance in order to become the substance of Jesus Christ, and there remains nothing of it except the appearance, thus the religious himself is transformed in Jesus Christ, dying to self respect (pride) in order to live the life of Jesus Christ.
The retreat that Fr. Eymard lives personally in Rome of 1863, while he awaits the approbation of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, seems to constitute a point of arrival after a long journey, which he will resume consequently with more strength and profundity.
Fr. Eymard analyzes himself, his life; he becomes aware of not being recollected, of not seeing things at first in God and of not consulting foremost Jesus Christ; a remedy that he finds to live with Jesus Christ in his heart. Continuing his reflection, he summarizes his intentions in three points: mortification as the food for the life of Jesus Christ in himself; interior concentration on Jesus Christ, so that he may be guided by his life; the Eucharistic reign and glory of Jesus Christ, as food for his love. It seems to Fr. Eymard that his "great" error may have been that of living outside of Jesus Christ; in conclusion of the retreat, the day of Pentecost, he asks the Holy Spirit and affirms:
Finally I understood that God loves an act of my heart, the gift of my person, more than everything I could do outside — that an interior act is more glorious and more loving than all the apostolate in the world.
Fr. Eymard seems to have fully understood that which God was asking of him, what follows will be marked by this comprehension. Therefore, we pass to analyzing the various spiritual aspects and components of the "gift of self."
II. THE GIFT OF SELF OR GIFT OF THE PERSONALITY
Already along the road traveled there has arisen various characteristics of the gift of self. Now, regarding everything that Fr. Eymard has written from the years 1863-1864 — when his thought concentrated on these points begins to take a major consistency, until his death. We will seek to point out the spiritual foundation of this gift, which he also calls a vow: the greatest vow, holiest of all others, a new vow, the work of works.
The key passage of the gift of personality is what Fr. Eymard writes in the Retreat of Rome of 1865, on February 21. He is asking Jesus how he might wish him to serve him. Fr. Eymard intuits this response:
Be to me in my sacrament, as I was to my Father in my incarnation and in my mortal life.
This thought affects him strongly, he gives thanks to Jesus Christ for it saying:
I gave myself to him again in order to be all his, as he was to his Father, but how is Jesus to his Father — in his divine life as the Word — how was he to his Father in his mortal life, how is he to his Father in his sacramental life. This is what I must examine, and repeat in my life. Oh! What a beautiful thought. I must be to Jesus as to what Jesus is to his Father. I in them and you in me. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Remain in my love. This is the truly living "vivit vero in me Christus" of Saint Paul.
When a month later, on March 21, Fr. Eymard takes the perpetual vow of his personality, he declares having for model the incarnation of the Word and as the "way" — Eucharistic communion; Jesus Christ shall be the person of his personality and the personality of Fr. Eymard shall be the life of that of Christ in him, conforming to the Pauline saying: "Vivo ego jam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus" — Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20).
We have in these two passages the fundamental elements of the gift of self: it is a matter, for Fr. Eymard, of living in comparisons of the Eucharistic Christ the same relations existent between Jesus and the Father; the relationship lived in the moment of the incarnation and during Jesus' earthly life, the relationship that Christ actually now lives in the Eucharist. The gift of personality becomes the personal conscious participation in establishing oneself in this relationship within the depth of one's existence and one's being.
As we set forward some fundamentals of the gift of self, the biblical passages that Fr. Eymard relates will be of valid help to us. They are: John 17:23; 15:9; and Galatians 2, 20; Fr. Eymard's choices are not a result of being casual. In order to give us an example: Galatians 2:20, in the seven times that it appears in the Retreat of Rome of 1865, only one time is it not in relation to the gift of self.
1. Jesus Christ, the model of the gift of self
Fr. Eymard places an analogy between his own relationship with the Eucharist, and the relationship of Jesus Christ with the Father in the incarnation, during his earthly life and in the Eucharist. There are three lines which constitute the starting point, the model in order to grasp the meaning of the gift of personality.
a. The incarnation of the Word
The union of the two natures in Jesus Christ is the offering that Christ makes of himself to the Father, entering into the world (Hb 10, 6:7) constitutes the principal point establishing the gift of self. Either in the Retreat of Rome of 1865, or in the retreat to the Servants (women) of 1866 and to the religious (men) in 1867, where the gift of self occupies a preeminent place, the incarnation is the model.
The union that must verify itself between Jesus Christ and ourselves is the union "de societe" (of the society), that is, the very union:
. . . that comes closest to the hypostatic union of the human nature with the divine nature in the person of the Word, in which the human nature has lost its own personality, not being its own but belonging to the divine person of the Word.
The language that Fr. Eymard uses when he speaks of the relation of the two natures in Jesus Christ can leave one perplexed; it seems that the human nature fades away from all. In fact, referring to the human nature of Christ itself, he defines it divested of personality, annihilated in his own person. We must not forget, however, how much we have said when presenting the gift of self as Fr. Eymard's personal experience and on his relation with the French school of spirituality, with its limitations of language in expressing this great mystery.
What we hold important for Fr. Eymard is the comparison that — one must establish between Jesus Christ and ourselves, an analogous relationship between the two natures in him. Speaking to the Servants, Fr. Eymard affirms the need (his wish) to propose a continuation of that which Christ has done in his incarnation:
This is what the eternal Word has done in hypostatically uniting himself to the human nature, in such wise that God enters a human body without ceasing to be God in such wise that the arm is God's arm, the eyes are God's eyes.
The moment of the incarnation marks the whole of Jesus Christ; in fact, it will be the continuous offering of himself to the Father, a perpetual relationship with the Father, a union of will and of action with the Father.
b. The earthly life of Jesus
Looking at the earthly life of Jesus Christ, Fr. Eymard sees it totally informed by the will of the Father, he sees it as a human and divine manifestation of the thought, of the word and action of the Father.
The passage of John 14:10: "Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The word that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works" expresses in a greater way the existent relationship between the Father and the Son; a relation characterized by contemplation and adoration, John 5L19 , "Jesus answered and said to them, 'Amen, amen, I say to you, a son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees his father doing; for what he does, his son will do also" — by availability and service Luke 22:27, "For who is greater: the one who is seated at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one seated at the table? I am among as the one who serves" — by love and desire for the glory of the Father John 17:4, "I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began"; these are the "sentiments," so to speak, of Christ Jesus that it is necessary for the religious to have, Phil 2:7, "Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance. . . ."
The passion and death of Jesus Christ has not been the "fulfillment" of his life lived as an offering, gift to the Father, of his life lived for the Father. The Eucharist constitutes the sacramental permanence of Jesus Christ in his relations with the Father, it constitutes the continuation of the "exinanivit" — Phil 2:7 " . . . he emptied himself . . . " that had characterized his earthly life.
c. The Eucharist becomes, then, the permanent model to which one must always make reference
Before passing on to a second aspect of the gift of self, it is important to underline that love is the founding reality of the relations between the Father and the Son; it is this reciprocal love that acts on behalf of all mankind.
2. I live now not with my own life
For Fr. Eymard, the extract of Galatians 2:20 is in a strict connection with the the gift of self. We want to analyze, starting from this passage, two other aspects of the gift: the negative and the positive aspects, which can define themselves as two sides of the same reality. For now we pause over the first: abnegations, in order to make Christ live again in us, in order to be like him, another Christ.
Fr. Eymard synthesizes the gift of self with the formula "absque sui proprio" ("without concern for self"), which he translates into French as "sans propre personnel" (literal sense: "with no self seeking" . . . "without one's own benefit"). Reading the pages regarding the gift of self "absque sui proprio," what is noticeable is the denial of the human person, the negation that resumes all we have seen in the previous section and which comes to reduce, at times, the human person to an appearance. Fr. Eymard affirms:
Through the gift, the sacrifice of no personal concern, one gives what one has, what one does, what one is, one gives "self." In short, (one gives) regard, affection, and all pleasure. As one's personality no longer exists for oneself, there is no longer for that person the means or the reason to receive. No more am I in self or for self, or (tending) towards self. No home is mine, nor self interest, nor any social name.
In another place he says:
One should have to say "donne" (given) to our Lord; the "me" is no more. I exist no more. . . . In God's sight, you are no longer a person (a somebody); you have given Him your personality.
(Fr. Eymard was speaking to the sisters, the Servants, so he is using the feminine "donnee" for the adjective.)
The affirmation of letting go is clear therefore, of dying to self, that has its source in the evangelical invitation of denying oneself. We ask, what does Eymard mean by "giving one's personality," what significance do these expressions have which speak of our human nature as a reality? For example, in regard to the vow of the personality, Fr. Eymard writes:
This vow must be the greatest, the holiest of all the others, since it is the vow of oneself, of the self free to always re-give oneself.
Therefore, the person must conserve his liberty in order to give himself. Moreover, we find going through the writings of Fr. Eymard, appreciation of the reality of the human person; in fact, he requires respect for, and to make use of the gifts that each person possesses; he asks to follow, on the way to God, one's personal reality, one's personal characteristics; underlining the importance of the human body as well.
These brief notes bring us to seek on another level the "I" that must disappear, the "I" that must be annihilated.
It is a matter of the "old man" of the "I" rooted in the depth of the person but which is directed to the exterior to be seen, full of vanity, of pride and self respect; of the egoist "I" which wants to be center and end, catalyst of affections and of interests, turned in on self, which lives for itself, in order to be dedicated to that which it desires, loves, and hopes. It is the possessive "I" that always says "moi," always ready to take something for itself; it is the "I," understood as heart, spirit, intelligence, thought, judgment, which becomes the principle for doing, for wanting and for judging; it is the personality of Adam in search for one's independence and greatness while excluding God.
To lose this "I," to let go of self, as a new Abraham, asking for a change of direction in the human person, of the directive principle that is placed in another reality; asking for a decentralization, an interior revolution, a working on oneself, shall be a matter for living in Jesus Christ (Jn 15:4-5: "Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me." Jesus Christ who will live in us is the reason for our living in Him; this indwelling realizes itself through the renewal of the gift.
3. I live . . . but Christ lives in me
How must one work the revolution, the decentralization that Fr. Eymard describes? The way is that of living the life of Jesus Christ within oneself:
. . . to form him in me, to have him be born and grow . . . form Jesus in me, live in Jesus in me, all for Jesus. . . . Nourish and strengthen in me the interior man who is Jesus in me — to conceive him, have him be born and grow by every action, reading, meditation, adoration, and in all life's relations.
It is through the presence of Jesus Christ in himself that one shall go forth to battle the "old man"; to the measure in which the interior presence of Christ increases will the person feel stronger. This interior presence is the union with Jesus Christ, it is the reign of God in oneself that becomes the life of the gift of the personality.
Union of life with Jesus Christ, the reign of God in the heart of the human person are the complementary aspects of the gift of self, the positive side of this reality.
What do I wish you this year? You know well what it is: the Eucharistic reign of our Lord in you . . . that is the gift of all of yourself to this God and Master in order to be his; his thing, his field, his heart, his life, and even his death — that is the point that must be reached.
From all that we have seen, one can intuit that renunciation, abnegation, and union with Christ are not two subsequent steps, but that they are simultaneous. One realizes the union through the union itself, placing oneself in Jesus Christ: "Make your home in me. . . . Whoever remains with me (Jn 15: 4-5.). It is a matter of putting oneself decisively with Christ, in desiring and willing it; it is a matter of dwelling in Christ.
The union of life does not consist only in the union existent through grace and through the fidelity to grace, but is a union through adhesion to the words of Christ and the union with Jesus Christ that becomes only one life (Jn 17:22-23: "And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one"; union of faith, of love of "societé"; a union that has its center in the human person, in the "I" (Jn 14:23: "Jesus answered and said to him, "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him" ; Jn 17:23: "I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me."; 1 Cor 6:19: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?; Jn 14:16: "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always . . . "; Lk 17:21: " . . . and no one will announce, 'Look, here it is,' or , 'There it is.' For behold, the kingdom of God is among you"; Lk 11:2: "He said to them, 'When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come'"; Mt 6:10: " . . . your kingdom come, you will be done on earth as in heaven . . . "; Gal 2:20: " . . . yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me."
What is the place where this union happens? It is I. It is Jesus who makes himself. The union "manete in me" — remain in me. It is in Jesus Christ in me, that this exercise and the virtue of this union takes place.
It is the union in which Christ becomes counselor, strength, consolation, center of love; he becomes the first and unique law; master, model, God of the heart; Christ can be compared to the navigator, to the owner of the house, to the father of the family, to the soul in the body.
Allowing, then, that Christ might be the vital principle, one recreates, analogously, the same relationship of life and union between Christ and the Father. Fr. Eymard arrives at affirming:
I will be he, a repetition of him — the body of his soul, the freedom of his desire — the human execution which he will make divine by the union (between us) — Christ living in me; he, not I, will do the work.
And he personalizes the passage of John 14:10, writing: "Christus in me manens ipse facit opera" (Christ himself is doing his work in me).
Why, then, not do what he does, and the way he does it and why he does it, I, his apprentice, and if I act like this, I would have his liberty, his peace, the union with God — my center would not be what I am doing but Jesus Christ "in me manet" (living in me).
It is a matter then of consulting Jesus Christ in everything, acting under the direction of his spirit, placing oneself again and again in his will; it is the giving of self, the abiding in Jesus Christ, because the union of Jesus Christ with us will depend on our union with him (Jn 15:4, 5).
Living in this manner, Fr. Eymard feels that his life has come to be revalued; it becomes fullness of life and his person has also refound its unity. The grace, the peace, the liberty, the life are in this dimension; he feels that within himself he is under the guidance of Jesus Christ, who becomes the beauty for the spirit, the infinite goodness of the heart, the holiness for the will, the honor and strength for the body; he acquires a new dignity, he becomes something of the sacred and holy.
The union with Christ has a gradualness too, a diverse potentiality for the ways and types of union.
And when this union is at the same time Christian, priestly, and religious, it has the three dignities in our Lord Jesus Christ, and the three powers — she is thrice sacred and consecrated — she has these sources of grace and glory.
Fr. Eymard seems perhaps to indicate a certain preference for the religious priest, yet remaining clear that the union and its greater or lesser fullness is gift, grace of Jesus Christ.
The gift of self, therefore, does not limit or destroy the human person but divinizes it, giving it a new dimension. We can say that it realizes the paschal mystery of death and resurrection.
4. "Whoever eats me will draw life from me"
The Eucharist is not only the model for the gift of personality, but it is also the means for it; it, in fact, communicates the life that the Son has from the Father. Jesus gives himself in communion in order to recreate in the person who receives him the same relations that the has with the Father: the communicant shall draw life from Jesus Christ (Jn 6:57), who shall be alive in him.
This is what these words of Jesus mean. He who eats me, will live because of me: . . . he will be principle, law, inspiration for me, doing all that is agreeable to me, preferring me to all else.
The Eucharist is also rapport of interior presence. In it, there is the whole Christ, who comes sacramentally, in person, in order to live there spiritually (Jn 6:56), so as to make of the interior of the human person his true temple. Jesus Christ is the host of body and soul when he comes to us.
Finally, the Eucharist realizes the substantial union (Jn 17:22-23). Jesus Christ has instituted it in order to favor the union; in fact, the Eucharist is substantial communion with his body, soul and divinity.
It will be useful to keep this reason in mind, inasmuch as we have written in the sixth chapter: Eucharist — union.
5. The union — fruit of love
Fr. Eymard writes that the union is the fruit of the love of Jesus Christ. The gift of personality remains incomprehensible or difficult to accept if it is not placed on the level of love. Love that has a double aspect: it is the love of God, of Jesus Christ, and it is man's response of love.
I propose that you do for love of our Lord what he has done for love of you: to place yourself in the same state as our Lord; for love of his Father, and to honor this annihilation of his human person, because he has annihilated it, immolated it, so to speak, because of his love.
The gift of self has its true origin in Christ. Fr. Eymard, referring himself to the experience of Saint Paul, makes his own the words: who loved me and who sacrificed himself for my sake (Gal 2:20). This total love of Christ, this total gift, has its own actual and concrete witness in the Eucharist. The love that comes from Jesus Christ gives the strength and makes the gift of self possible; it is Jesus Christ, chosen and loved sovereignly, universally, totally, that places one in the possibility of living for him, because he has become center, law, end, and model of life.
Gift calls to gift; love requires likeness, becomes imitator, makes identity of life, goes as far as exchange, to the total gift of one's being. Love gives strength, becomes pure as the love of Christ in the incarnation.
Egredere, Veni — go out, come — I will lead my beloved into solitude and there I will talk to her heart; because it is one's preferential love and the gift of self, the work of union.
The reality of love brings us to fulfill a further step in the presentation of the spiritual foundations of the gift of the personality. The love of Christ is the love present in us. We ourselves are called to it by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
6. The Spirit forms us in this new life
The gift of self is not a personal conquest, it is a grace given by Jesus Christ, it is the gift of the Holy Spirit who allows the soul to elevate itself to union with Jesus Christ. In fact, it is the Spirit who at Pentecost has changed the apostles in depth, has drawn them out of themselves, from every natural sentiment to the person of Jesus Christ. It is this spirit, it is this change that one must ask for when placing oneself in Jesus Christ.
Asking himself how to arrive at the gift of self, to the death of the "old man," so as to imitate Jesus Christ in the fulfillment of the Father's will; how to attain union with Christ, so that the may be the working principle of his life, Fr. Eymard refers to himself in the words the angel spoke to Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you" (Lk 1:35).
The Holy Spirit, who has worked the incarnation of Jesus Christ in Mary, and, who renders present Christ on the altar through the priest, will exercise his presence, vivifying Christ in us, revealing and giving us his spirit in order to be in him (Rom 8:9). It is this mission, for this end, that the grace is given.
Saint Paul calls our body the temple of the Holy Spirit. He dwells in us. Jesus Christ has given him to us that the Holy Spirit remain with us forever. The reign of God is within you. All the glory of the daughter of the King is within you.
It is a matter of letting oneself be led, interiorly, by the Holy Spirit, praying to him, consulting him, gathering oneself for the agenda according to the spirit of Christ and for his grace.
The gift of self works, indeed, by the action of the Spirit, admitting one into the dynamism of the Trinity, God associates us to his divine love and to his power; he draws us into his own life that is a continuous giving:
God has loved man and has given him all that he has and is. The Father has given the Son, the Son has given himself. The Holy Spirit has become our habitual sanctified.
Not only is one associated to the Trinitarian life of God, but one becomes the place of hospitality for the Trinity; one can speak of an interior presence of the Trinity in the person:
From God the Father, who gives you his Son, from God the Son, Jesus Christ, who gives himself and who lives in you, from God the Holy Spirit, who will sanctify you and bring to perfection in you the spirit and the life of Jesus.
We find with this point the heart of Christian mystical language: the Holy Spirit puts the believer in relationship with Christ, in an analogical situation with the mystery of the incarnation and with the Trinitarian mystery. The same passage Galatians 2:20 — "Christ in me" — enters again into this interpretation. The change that the gift of the personality manifests is the movement from a spirituality founded on an ascetical principle, to a spirituality founded on a mystical principle.
7. With Mary, at Nazareth and in the cenacle
As a final aspect of the gift of self, we think it opportune to look to Mary; the gift of the personality finds in her one who realized it and therefore Mary a model. Fr. Eymard himself indicates that Mary was a perfect model of unselfish love of Jesus and for Jesus, of God and for God, of the Trinity and for the Trinity; there is no one who can imitate her inasmuch as she has done for Jesus Christ and for his glory.
Jesus wants to have me share Mary's grace in the incarnation — and come and live in me in order that I live in him and for him — so that he may be my counsel, my operations' center, my joy, my paradise of graces.
The spirituality of Fr. Eymard, marked from its beginnings — from the experience of "Nazareth" to the experience of the "cenacle" — had gone the way of centralizing itself on the Eucharist. Therefore, the way of seeing Mary had also assumed the face of the cenacle; it is Mary the adorer in the cenacle that he indicates as mother and model for adorers.
Now, in the gift of personality whoever has for his model the Jesus of the incarnation and the Jesus of the Eucharist, Nazareth and the cenacle go together too, in the proposal of Mary as model. The cenacle, where Mary honors the Eucharistic life of Jesus, is the summed up experience of her life in its beginnings at Nazareth.
We see that these are elements that Fr. Eymard gathers from the life of Mary and that become indicative for his spirituality.
Mary Immaculate has the true reign of holiness and of love of God within herself; in the mystery of her presentation at the Temple, Mary offers herself without conditions to the service of God and dedicates herself as a host of pureness and honor for his greater glory.
In the incarnation, Mary lives in joy, in union with the Word incarnate; she is totally concentrated on her son, principle, center, and end of her life; every interior act is lived in admiration of the abasement of the Son, in praise of his goodness, in adoring him, in loving and serving him.
This is the life our Lord wants of me, the joy of my vocation . . . to form Jesus in me, to live in Jesus and for Jesus, who is then my counsel, my strength, my consolation, my center of love. I must arrive there.
We find again, in these expressions, the terminology of the gift of self and of the Eucharistic life. Mary is the model for her exclusive relationship with Jesus Christ, for her harmony of life and love of the Son, for her union of life with him.
She thought Jesus' thought, she lived in a union of virtue, of activity. She was not concerned with herself but with Jesus, for Jesus, in Jesus, and then she was so meek, so humble, so much the servant for everyone. . . . Her love was her divine Son's love.
In the life of the Family at Nazareth, there are important elements to underline, Jesus is the center of the love of Mary and Joseph. Jesus is the center of the family; Bethlehem, Nazareth, Egypt, are secondary elements:
To have Jesus, this was love's dwelling. In this way, my dwelling, my family, my center is the Jesus of the house of the society in which I live.
Jesus is the end of the life of Mary and Joseph: they live and work solely for him.
Likewise, Jesus Eucharistic, must be the end of my life. . . . He must be the law of my life, the joy, and the contentment of my life, and what life is more beautiful than the life of the Blessed Sacrament.
Jesus is the constant food for the life of union and love of Mary and Joseph. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph form a unique life and pursue a unique reality: to glorify the heavenly Father.
This is what I ought to do. In order to do so, I must enter into union with Mary and Joseph. I must share their life — that family life — that intimate life of which God alone holds the secret.
This life of profound unity, of total giving lived at Nazareth, finds in the cenacle its perfection. Mary, as happy and faithful servant of the God of the Eucharist, now contemplates the Eucharistic life of Jesus, sharing in his immolation, all enflamed with the desire of his glory and love on earth. She lives for the Eucharist and of the Eucharist, lives the Eucharist; her thoughts, words, actions, are all born from the Eucharist, as rays from the sun; her whole life is referred to the Eucharist which is for her word and grace, it is Jesus! Mary's great aspiration is that of being able to be changed, transformed spiritually into Jesus Christ, as the bread is changed into him.
Uniting oneself to the life of Mary, one can arrive at serving Jesus Christ with a spirit of love, pure, devout, unselfish, living for him only, Mary becomes the way for the formation of Jesus in us; if Fr. Eymard had indicated a summit in the union with Jesus Christ, for whoever is priest-religious, the model of Mary opens to all the possibility of the realization of life with Christ described in the gift of personality.
III. "FOUNDATION" and "KEY" OF SPIRITUALITY
Fr. Eymard proposes to his Congregations the "gift of self" as its proper reality, constitutive and distinctive; the gift of living in "practice," where Jesus Eucharistic becomes the guide, the principle of life, not in some act or in some moment, but, for always and for everything.
There is your grace and your virtue. It is for you and for those souls in the world who are attracted to the Blessed Sacrament. Study it and if you understand it well, you will open a new way, not in itself, but in practice; it is the grace of sanctity through the Eucharist.
The gift of self becomes the "new way" not so much as a personal virtue of a single religious, though indispensable, but inasmuch as the "dominant virtue," "general law," "starting point," and foundation" of the religious life, the "key itself of Eucharistic perfection" for the entire Congregation; the reality therefore that must become a way of life for the whole Congregation, a way of community living.
All the saints, affirms Fr. Eymard, have practiced the gift of self, but this becomes a new reality,
. . . in that we propose it as the dominant virtue of an entire society. Practiced by those who had an attraction for it; it was never proposed as a general and universal law that would serve as a starting- point and a foundation for the religious perfection of an entire body. . . . This is the reason we propose it as the elementary means of holiness for all, like the very key to Eucharistic perfection for which all the ensuing work will be to make this gift more complete and more pure.
The gift of the personality becomes that which constitutes and grounds the Eucharistic-religious life; it can then, with reason, be defined the grace, the gift of the Spirit made to the church through Fr. Eymard.
1. "The grace of our vocation"
With the gift of the personality, the being "uniquely called by the Eucharist" finds its true and profound significance, it finds its very identification.
Fr. Eymard had asked himself how would Jesus Christ like him to serve him. The response had been to have in relation to the Eucharist the analogous relationships that Jesus had had and actually continues to have, with the Father. The gift of personality becomes the means to attain this: we are no longer ourselves (the "I" principle and center); we must not determine how to work "for" or "with" the Eucharist, but it is the Eucharist, Jesus Christ, principle and center, who determines our service in comparisons with himself.
Put like this, we see what the consequences are on a practical and operative level; Fr. Eymard writes:
He wants to be all of my life, the science of my mind, of my ministry at his feet. I must receive his instruction.
The capacity to know how to live and work is not found within ourselves but in Jesus Christ Eucharistic. He is the one who becomes the "form and perfection of the service," "constitutive and nourishing," "central point and law of life," primary light and divine science." All the acts of life need to become the extension of the spirit of the gift of self, of the Spirit of Jesus Christ:
One must study the Spirit of Jesus Christ in order to serve him according to his "tastes"; therefore, one must always be at his disposition, disposed equally and lovingly toward all, to accomplish that which pleases him, following him everywhere.
It is a matter of allowing oneself to listen to God. The charity, virtues, works, study, the experiences and the prayer, too, risk not serving if they do not have their beginning in Jesus Christ, if they are not in relation with the "constitutive and nourishing"; all realities are so many branches for one whose life is all in union of soul with God.
The true Eucharistic reign shall be the reign of Christ in man. Not devotions, nor piety, nor love, but the gift of self, in being a unique life with Jesus Christ, for being the true cenacle, the interior castle, ciborium, new bread.
Living with Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ, one will achieve to be him in "repetition."
The Eucharist becomes in this way the absolute end, containing all the other ends, that is the "ends" which Fr. Eymard calls primary and secondary for his Congregation: adoration and apostolate; the Eucharist becomes the "alpha" and the "omega" of one's whole life.
Two concrete examples are taken from the life of Fr. Eymard, examples of the "new" style of religious life; one for the reason of choice of a field of apostolate, and the other in regard to the relationships with persons.
It was the desire of Fr. Eymard to acquire the cenacle of Jerusalem, in order to elevate a throne of adoration and glory for Jesus Christ. He was convinced that this might be the better way to serve the Eucharist; but, thanks to the inspirations received during the Retreat of Rome, he abandons himself to the will of God, because it becomes more important to do everything solely for Jesus Christ — in listening to his word. When Fr. Eymard receives the negative answer to acquiring the cenacle, he writes:
I offered myself to our Lord, to his holy and always adorable will, that does everything for our greater good. I thanked him for everything. . . . I begged for the grace, the gift, the virtue of fortitude — fortitude in meekness and patience, fortitude in sustained regularity and discipline. Fortitude in practice of the vows — but fortitude that comes from love: strong as death is love, but that pure love, the love of the incarnation by the sacrifice of the human in our Lord.
The God of the Eucharist calls Fr. Eymard to render him glory with another kind of cenacle, that of the interior life; he calls him to pure love, to union and transformation.
Analyzing his relationships with people and events, Fr. Eymard sees that his discernments were given for the success of the Congregation, or for the reference to authority, to the external virtues of obedience, humility, and discipline. Now, his standards must change; he needs to make judgments beginning with Jesus, inspired with his holiness and his mercy, soliciting from the mission the greater glory of God. In the Eucharist, Fr. Eymard finds a perennial source of goodness, of affability, of gentleness and patience.
In order to be meek, I will look at the Eucharist; I will eat this divine manna in order to have an abundance of suavity — of meekness, in order to have my portion for the day; I need it so much!
In facing difficult events, the style becomes that of silence, of patience, of gentleness, of charity, and of prayer, in order not to make too much show that might be personal and in order not to value too much his position as Superior.
Beyond a new style of life, the gift of the personality translates itself into a precise definition, into the characteristic virtue of his two Congregations dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament: the humility of love. This reality was already evident on the journey that led Fr. Eymard to the formulation of the gift of the personality.
2. Humility of love: the "positive" characteristic virtue
To speak of humility as the characteristic virtue, after what has been said on the centrality of love in the spirituality of Fr. Eymard, on love as an educative method, on love as the spirit which animates the whole of life, can seem a contradiction. It will be our task to show the main thread and continuity between all that has been put forth and the reality of this new insight in Fr. Eymard's life.
Humility is seen by Fr. Eymard as strictly tied to the gift of the personality; in fact, it is a way for the renouncement of self — the "negative" side of the gift of self — and a way for union — the "positive" side of the gift of self. It is in direct relation with the exinanivit (emptying of oneself) of Jesus Christ, that has in the Eucharist its highest expression. It is indeed, in relation with the example of Jesus himself, that humility binds itself to love and acquires a positive tonality. It is "the humility of positive spirit" found in Jesus Christ; it is his "humility of heart," totally founded on love, that Fr. Eymard wills to relive.
This "positive spirit" of humility of Jesus Christ, is his life of obedience to the Father, in the fulfillment of his word (Jn 14:10), as servant (Phil 2:7), for the glory of the Father. Fr. Eymard can live this humility of spirit, being humble of heart, loving the humility of Jesus Christ, loving Jesus, who is humble of heart (Mt 11:29) and seeking to be like Him. In fact, humility of heart itself attains:
By the spirit of Jesus in me . . . to be in the spirit of Jesus; see him, consult him, act under his divine influence in society, in union with him.
The way to arrive at humility is Jesus Christ, is to love him; love will make one live in him and love that which he loves. In its turn, the lived experience of humility makes one enter into the love of Jesus, and through it transformation takes place in Jesus because he reveals himself and communicates himself only through the way of humility.
Humility, in Fr. Eymard, can be defined Christologically: Jesus Christ in abasement and annihilation; is the love that leads to humility: the more one loves the more one becomes humble.
It is humility that has allowed the incarnation and has placed Jesus at the right hand of the Father; in humility God has descended to man and man has been elevated to God; thus, in humility the two extremes unite themselves: the grandeur of God and the lowliness of man. Therefore, true humility, that which Jesus taught, does not stop at abasement, but ascends to God.
Humility becomes, according to Fr. Eymard, "the link of the divine covenant," "the measure of our union with God"; humility puts all of life in connection and rapport with God:
Humility consists in being nothing without God, to refer all things to him, everything toward the principle, and the more perfect one is the more humble, because we have more to give.
Through humility, Jesus Christ heals us, sanctifies us, and glorifies us.
For Fr. Eymard, Jesus is the model of humility to love and imitate, Jesus is, in a particular way, the Jesus who for the glorification of the Father, and for love of us, exinanivit semetipsum formam panis accipens (emptied himself taking the form of bread). Humility takes the name of Eucharistic humility; humility of love of which Jesus Christ is the present, perpetual and universal model, actual grace and end. Through this humility the adorer becomes the body of Christ, he becomes a specie sacramentale — that is to say, another Eucharist.
The humility of love is the virtue of the Eucharist. If this were lacking in a religious, he would lack everything; without humility the religious profession, adoration, the cult, the liturgy, the piety, the apostolate, would pass for nothing, because one needs to honor and glorify Jesus Christ as he wishes to be honored, one needs to imitate him as he himself is present.
Ask our Lord for the spirit of Eucharistic humility. Always have it before your eyes. You have the grace for it; love it.
Having humility of love, reliving the state of Christ Eucharistic, the religious glorifies him in himself, becoming, so to speak, his throne, and glorifies his Father.
The gift of the personality, with the "new" style of life and with humility of love, gives an imprint also to the vision of the religious life and of Eucharistic life.
3. Giving oneself to God for God
Speaking to the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament (women religious) in 1866, Fr. Eymard declares:
The religious life has something even more perfect: it is to give oneself to God for God and not to give oneself to God for oneself."
We have already presented, in the seventh chapter, the ideas of Fr. Eymard on the religious life and on religious perfection, on the consecrated life and vows; these ideas find assurance and depth in the gift of self.
The gift of the personality takes away the possible illusions that because religious may be perfect there is no need for conversion, in religious the "old man" of laziness and of pride remains as well. Moreover, the gift of self removes the spiritual pride which seeks to gratify oneself in any way; for the graces one receives and the good one does, the gift of self takes away the judgmental attitude toward others. And again, it takes away "egoism" — the egoism, which leads to love God not for Himself, but for oneself.
The "I" is present everywhere in me; and this exists more easily in community than outside. . . . Love of self is in our hearts; we contemplate ourselves continually and your rule says that we must love God by the sacrifice of our individual personality, which always tends to become the center and the end, to be something apart from God.
To give to God one's personality means to love God for himself, to love God for God and not for oneself; to belong totally to him because he is God of one's life. This attitude, through the giving of one's personality to God, does not limit itself to an act, or to a practice more or less frequent, but becomes a state; to make the gift of self means, in fact, to take Jesus Christ as "sovereign" of ourselves always and in everything, to give him the right to direct and lead us.
The religious vows attain their perfection, with the gift of self. They purify us from the possible attachments that remain even after consecrating oneself to God. Or from wrong reasons; moreover, they reach the summit because there is no limit to giving that which belongs to us — goods, heart, body, will — but one gives also one's personality. In order to understand these intentions of Fr. Eymard, we relate some of his examples. With the choice of the religious life, one leaves one's own family, but finds another. One leaves everything, but once again finds what is necessary.
With the gift of personality, the religious life attains its essence: the entire and permanent gift of one's whole self to God; a gift irrevocable of all that one has, of all that one possesses, of all that one would be able to possess; gift of self, of all that which one is: body, heart, spirit and will; gift of one's person; finally, gift of that which one shall be.
The religious life attains its essence because through the total gift of self, the religious come to be transformed into another Jesus Christ.
If you do this you leave your personality, you take on the adorable Person of Jesus Christ and then you can say like Saint Paul: "It is no longer I who live, it is Jesus Christ, Who lives in me." It is he who commands in me. He is the King, the Master, the friend, the spouse, the God of my heart. . . . I no longer do anything for myself because I am no longer my end.
Fr. Eymard had much at heart that the religious might not seek perfection for themselves. Love of God for himself alone, leads to accepting those realities He gives and prevents us from not living well. Rather, we must leave all to him, and not to "dwell" on the work of perfection or virtue as such, realities, which risk becoming more and more personal; no, we are to dwell in Jesus Christ alone.
Give your personality to our Lord, then you will be quite perfect . . . then you will be very happy, very rich; your heart will be joyful...You will have the power of our Lord.
With this line of thought, the gift of personality becomes the standard for vocation. The Eucharistic-religious vocation is a vocation of marriage, of joy; sadness is contrary to this vocation because it is a sign of a person who is still tied to what is "personal," who does not make the gift of self. So, too, another characteristic as simplicity has its foundation in the gift of self. In fact, where there is personality, pride, there is duplicity, a simple person on the other hand, has made the gift of self.
4. The key to Eucharistic perfection
The gift of one's personality, is the proper and distinctive grace of the vocation, and is therefore proposed as the "key" to Eucharistic perfection.
Fr. Eymard proposes it as the better way to participate in the "state of adoration" of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, in order to love truly, in order to serve and glorify God, thus, as he wills it! In fact, we have seen presenting Jesus as model of the gift of self, how Fr. Eymard sees the earthly life of Jesus countersigned by adoration, by love, by service and by glory.
We have already examined, in the preceding chapter, the Eucharistic vocation beginning with an analysis of the terms: adoration, love, service and glory, and they were noted as those "expressions" which might attain their greatest realization in the gift of self. Now we can confirm that if these four terms constitute the four faces of the Eucharist; that, these terms, united together, express the Eucharistic vocation; the gift of self, therefore, reunites them in a unique action and brings them to perfection. The gift of self becomes the founding reality and the summit reality of the Eucharistic vocation.
Adoration. Fr. Eymard invites the sisters (Servants of the Blessed Sacrament) to give the gift of their personality, in order to be true adorers of the Eucharist. Three months before he dies, he notes in a personal retreat: "The heart of my adoration, the gift of what is mine."
Adoration, with the gift of self, receives profundity, and becomes true adoration in spirit and truth, in which there one's very being is given exclusively to God, one possesses the spirit of Jesus Christ, adores with all one's very self and through one's very self. One lives in union of life with Christ, living next to him and in him, in order to be like him with the Father. In this way, adorations are always new realities, becoming contemplation of love in which the person renews his-/herself.
Eucharistic love, with the gift of self, reaches its perfection, its purity; the gift of self is the true and only love. Love is the profound soul of this gift. In fact, it is love that allows the realization of the union of life of two beings in the same person.
Love aspires to, works under the inspiration to, tends always to union by the denial of self. One must go out of oneself and live in Jesus and of Jesus.
Each one is called to love according to his condition and grace, however with a love that, nourishes itself in contemplation on the love of Jesus Christ Eucharistic, where continually growing, until it becomes a love that knows no obstacles in its generosity.
Eucharistic service. In its deepest expression is interior service, receiving its foundation in the gift of self. Fr. Eymard asked himself how Jesus might wish him to be at his service, and the response was: to serve in the way in which Jesus himself lived his relationship with the Father, and the way He himself lived his life as gift, as an offering of love. The consequence of this is realized in the following:
To serve him by my being the gift, the holocaust; it is not your things I want; it is you. . . . A servant who lives with his master, always at his disposal, always ready for anything and everything, equally, affectionately, more affectionately and joyously in what pleases Him most, rather than what one would desire. . . . I have given myself entirely to our Lord, as my Master, in order to serve him in all things and no longer belong to myself.
Service is the reality that in the Rule of Life is tied also to the gift of self. Fr. Eymard requires his religious to consecrate their whole life — gifts, virtues, studies, works — absque sui proprio (nothing for oneself).
Glory. "Glory" finds itself in the gift of self with a very particular accentuation, perhaps, together with love, as the one reality that is most affirmed. The gift of the personality, that has as its positive side the union with Christ which makes Him incarnate and come to life again, so to speak, through the fruitfulness of His interior reign within the soul, becomes the 'way' for the glorification of Jesus Christ and of the Father.
Christ is glorified through the gift of self, through the person who makes the gift to him.
I have never before understood as I do now what the gift of the spirit to Jesus is. How necessary it is in order to live the life of Jesus and thereby continually procure His glory in us.
Christ lives again with all his power as Savior in the person who accepts giving himself to him. "it is the reign of God within self," which becomes glorification of the Father.
One wishes to always glorify God by exterior means, through one's own faculties, but really not through one's true self, the interior, through which sovereign glory can be given. this is what our Lord seeks from everyone, especially from an adorer.
The interior presence of Christ, through the gift of self, constitutes the "interior cenacle," — it is the true glory that the Father desires. Therefore, the gift of personality is the best means for seeking only the glory of Jesus and of the Father; it becomes the reality that unifies in itself the various elements of the Eucharistic vocation, and moreover, being the foundation, it becomes the perfection of life.
A letter written in May of 1868 reveals a summary statement of Fr. Eymard's thought:
When a soul gives itself to God, as you have done, then God's service becomes a set state; it is the virginal love of God, it becomes the heart's sovereign law for all one's actions for God's glory. Once our gift has been made our state of life is under vow and our rule of life is so determined that all external graces must adjust to this state, as means towards it. Then external works have value only if they foster this state and must be set aside if they prove a hindrance.
God cannot contradict himself. No one expects a tree to give fruit other than its kind. . . . Nourish yourself on our Lord, on his spirit, his virtues, his evangelical truth and on the contemplation of his mysteries. Do not leave him. Draw from all that you do the bread of life of Jesus, and nothing will there be to weaken you.
Conclusion
The gift of self constitutes the point of arrival in a long process of maturation and it becomes the focal point of the Eucharistic-religious vocation. The elements that compose it determine a change of perspective. The elements (adoration, love, service, glory) are decentralized in order to centralize themselves in the Eucharist.
Fr. Eymard reads the relation of the God-Man, the incarnate Word, into the Trinitarian relationships, contemplated in the Eucharist. This "statute," so to speak, is the very essence of what must regulate the life of individuals — and especially of his two Congregations — with the Eucharist.
This is understood in particular by the biblical passages selected: Gal 2:20; Jn 6:56-57; 14:10; 15:4-10; 17:23; Phil 2:7; and from the thematics which establish the gift of self: Jesus Christ the model and the way, the Holy Spirit the formator of this way, the union of the interior life, the virtue of humility as the fundamental virtue, and Mary as the model adorer.
The grace of the interior life that emerges from Fr. Eymard's Eucharistic spirituality grounds itself on the principle that we are able to define as "mystical"; in fact, it comes to establish itself on the "I-Thou" of the mutual immanence between God the Father and God the Son, which opens, expands and draws all into Itself. Jesus gives to the religious Congregation the "law" of his "being Son"; Jesus gives his unity with the Father in reference to the Eucharist, because through the Eucharistic life, religious are empowered to conform themselves to his life in union with the Father.
This principle consists in placing oneself, personally and collectively (community life), before the Eucharist; and not at first to determine how the religious Congregation(s) should render cult or develop for themselves an apostolate; but rather, that the religious allow themselves to determine what are the most 'advantageous means' to style themselves on the relations of Christ with the Father, thereby, "to be" truly Eucharistic religious.
The religious living the gift of self will always remain in his or her essential grace: Jesus Christ — the Eucharistic principle, means and end. The religious places him-/herself at the disposition of the Eucharistic mystery with an openness that is total and joyous, an act of love in their regard.
If the work of the Father which Jesus has come to fulfill on earth (Jn 14:10) does not limit itself to the works and signs, but is the state of one's existence as a religious, in as much as it is permanently directed to the Father, the relationship continues being lived with him and the religious' living with the Son among others. From this, it comes about for the Eucharistic religious, that the two components "contemplative" and "active" life become in a sense, "secondary" in relation to the importance of the essential reality of "union with Christ." Of establishing His constant presence in one's own interior life. The components "contemplative-active" present themselves as "means" which draw their value from this "union with Christ"; and, in however they allow it to transpire.
It is in this context as well that the religious life receives further soundings. Religious life is placed in a state of continuous conversion for being always a most radical choice for God. The religious does not search for perfection in itself, does not concentrate on self, but offers the "self" totally to God, in order to be only for God, at God's complete and total disposition. The initiative of life, that Fr. Eymard puts into perspective, passes to being completely and constantly in the hands of God.
In the gift of self, the Eucharistic life and the religious life "become one" in a unique dimension. Not in just a simple coming together or juxtaposition, but rather where a profound interpenetration takes place. The depth of this interpenetration is expressed in an affirmation of the gift of self by Fr. Eymard, in the following words: "I shall be Jesus Christ in repetition." The consecration to Christ leads to assimilation; and the assimilation always deeper in Christ, leads to the fulfillment of the consecration.
Capacities for discernment, for renewal, for total availability, are the implications which drive from the gift of self. One can understand, in the light of what has been exposed, the fact that Fr. Eymard denounces the lack of "Eucharistic souls," the lack of "true religious adorers," as was made clear at the end of the first part of this study.
In fact, the not wanting Jesus Christ for Jesus Christ; the not giving of self exclusively and absolutely to God; the giving of self halfway, placing conditions: the search for self; having fear of adoration; having an exaggerated piety and imagination; to be toward the personal and individualistic, that is, little inclined to renounce one's self, one's ideas and little privileges, all this constitutes a withdrawal from the journey of one's true vocation. It is a turning in on self, and therefore, one becomes a contrary element to the Eucharistic-religious vocation.
Perhaps, the reality of the "gift of self" required a re-formulation of Fr. Eymard's Rule of Life, in order to give more to the inspirational-spiritual principles, in comparison with the multiple prescriptions, since these principles were at risk of being lost to the essential vision — in order to draw an adequate concretization of the "union with Christ"; and further, of finding harmony among the various components of religious life as well. That did not happen because of the lack of time. In fact, the most extensive treatments on this "gift" after the personal reflection of Fr. Eymard in the Retreat of Rome, arise during the years 1866-1867, a little before his death, of which we spoke. These reflections establish an indication that Fr. Eymard's thought was evolving in this direction.
We hold that there is an indication which is most evident in an entire chapter that Fr. Eymard introduced into his Rule of Life of 1864, with the title: de nostrorum vivendi forma (concerning our way of life). In this, we find the constituent elements of the "gift of self" :
the belonging to Christ, in order to live in the Institute, according to his lifestyle, as good and faithful servants;
the simplicity, in imitation of Christ meek and humble of heart, in order to live abandoning oneself to the will of the Father, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in availability with superiors and in fraternal love;
the absque sui proprio (emptying of oneself), in order to refer all life to the honor and glory of Jesus Christ, so that his may be the proper end, and in order to be in the world as Christ is in the Eucharist;
of consequence, in every action, the religious must be faithful witnesses and unanimous disciples of the truth, that is of Christ; moreover, respectful of the rules, they shall observe them in truth.
We seem to find in this chapter some strong inspirational principles.
In order to live Jesus' "way," we begin with an understanding of "belonging to Christ", what we can call the "consecration." This life style concretizes itself in simplicity and humility, in the absque sui proprio, in the truth and in the observance of the rules. It translates into one's personal and communal life, the "choices" of Christ, his living obedience to the Father's will for his glory.
The will of God, that is, the interior listening to the Spirit; the relationship with one's superiors and brothers; the observance of the Rule of Life; these are the ways and channels by which we find we have at the center of our lives, the true life of Christ. It is a matter of being in the world with the same spirit with which Christ is present in the Eucharist. If the religious adhere to this way of being faithful witnesses and unanimous disciples of Christ, we then have a complete picture of the fundamental indications being expressed by Fr. Eymard toward the end of his life. The Eucharist requires fidelity and unanimity, it is the sacrament of the faithful love of Christ, and of his call to personal and communal union.
Throughout Fr. Eymard's life, he was being lead to that which was calling him to "Eucharistic perfection." Fr. Eymard comes to the point of totally belonging to Christ, the consecrated life and integrating it with the Eucharistic mission with its specific charism. Both receive new depth. In this sense, we can read some passages of the Retreat of Rome in regard to the "Eucharistic militia", an expression that points to his religious Congregations.
The Eucharistic Militia
The Eucharistic militia is one that is attached to the service of his adorable person. It is his guard, his court, his family, in short, his household. This militia is the most honored and loved. A comparison can be made with 144,000 virgins who follow the Lamb at all places, to Mount Sion (to the cenacle) chanting all the while the mysterious canticle of love.
They are those virgins, spouses of the Lamb, they have no proper names as he is their leader and they follow the Lamb and he rules them. We are this Eucharistic militia; what an honor! What happiness! Him we honor, adore, glorify always as in the heavenly court. We are his guard at his throne, his guard of honor. What a glory! We are the guard of his Eucharistic royalty and we as his (heralds) when he sends us with his grace to brighten a new earth, to raise up a throne, to conquer for him a new kingdom. What a sublime mission is ours!
We have today the two grandiose missions of the militia: to serve and to combat, and for this we need the military virtues, keeping ourselves free from everything so that we be entirely at the Master's service. Our one law: his service. Our one purpose, his glory. Our one happiness, to make him known, loved and adored. Our one striving, to make the immolation of our very lives for the greater glory of the Eucharist. . . . (Our aim) that our Lord have his say in all social rapport, in all exterior act...In consequence, an apostolic adorer must always adore and preach Jesus in the sacred host.
In the above reflection, we find united together: the "following of the Lamb wherever he goes" (Rev 14:3-4), (which some consider a fundamental biblical passage for the consecrated life and which recalls the following of Christ essentially and eschatologically), with the Eucharist, as seen through the terms: adoration, love, service and glory. This constitutes the "supreme reason" for Fr. Eymard's religious congregations: to Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist for love of mankind, true donati ("givers" of self) and perpetual adorers will come; they will come as courageous zealots formed for his glory and propagators of his love, so that Jesus Christ may always be adored in the sacrament and glorified socially throughout the world.
We do not know to what exact point Fr. Eymard may have been conscious of the need for a "different basis" to give to religious life; so that religious life might correspond to the level he wanted it to achieve. What his thoughts do, however, is leave open a certain perspective to be followed, a dynamic ideal, for deep and interior "listening" to the exigencies of the God of the Eucharist.
Barbiero, Chapter 8: The Fire and The Flame
Barbiero, Chapter 9: Uniquely Called by the Eucharist