Uniquely Called by the Eucharist
Vita Eucaristica e Vita Religiosa
in Saint Pierre-Julien Eymard
by Fr. Manuel
Barbiero, S.S.S.
Chapter Nine: Uniquely Called by the Eucharist
Translated from the original Italian, French, and Latin by Frs. Mario Marzocchi, S.S.S., Thomas E. Waldie, S.S.S., and Frederick Roberge, S.S.S. Revised edition, 1999.
In the Retreat of Rome of 1865, Fr. Eymard writes:
It is through love and love for the Blessed Sacrament that our Lord has attracted me. This is my grace; he has given me a mission of love, of love for the Blessed Sacrament. . . . I have the mission for your admirable and adorable sacrament all over the world.
We now wish to make the Eucharistic mission more precise, that is, the vocation that God entrusted to Fr. Eymard and to his Congregations. The Constitutions of 1864 establish the starting point.
In the first chapter of the Constitutions, concerning the true purpose of the Institute, the vocation is defined in: rendering a perpetual and solemn cult of adoration to Christ present in his sacrament of love, and of promoting the love and glory of the Eucharist; in this aim the religious are sustained by the religious vows and the common life, and they are inspired by the law and spirit of divine love.
In the second chapter, concerning the service of adoration, the themes of the first chapter are taken up again, underlining with force the relationship that one must establish with the Eucharist:
Let all our religious know that they were chosen and made profession for the service of the divine person of our King and God, our Lord Jesus Christ, really, truly, and substantially present in his sacrament of love, and consequently, as good and faithful servants of so great a King, they shall take care, without anything for themselves, to dedicate all their gifts and virtues, all their studies and labors to his greater glory.
The indications on following the way to develop service to Christ Eucharistic, we have already seen in the previous chapter.
Fr. Eymard makes several corrections on chapters one and two in the successive years, adding and correcting; in fact, among the eight examples of these constitutions found corrected by him after his death, only one does not have variants in comparisons of these two chapters. The order in which we are presenting them is taken from the classification of the critical edition of the Constitutions.
In example "A," the first chapter is canceled and the second is simply reported as first.
In example "B," the first chapter is lacking and the second is canceled until the expression "ac proinde, ut"; in their place, we find a new first chapter, "de fine proprio" — with six numbers. The end of the Congregation expresses itself: in carrying out the first commandment of God, socially, with the solemn and perpetual cult of adoration of God and of Christ Eucharistic, and in consecrating itself to priests in order to help them and inflame them in love and zeal, so that the faith and piety of the faithful grows toward the Eucharist.
In example "C," the first chapter is canceled and we find two prologues proposed: the first, after an analysis of the calamities and of the offenses of the times — blasphemies and sacrileges — presents the Congregation as the fruit of God's mercy which has set it up in order to remedy this situation and to witness the infinite love that comes as gift in the Eucharist; the second, places the purpose of the Congregation in the formation of true adorers, full of love, and incendiaries of Eucharistic love.
In example "D," only the number 4 of the first chapter is canceled, on the divine love, and substituted by an alternative text: the divine love must inspire the life of religious, it is the supreme love of Christ that annihilates itself in the sacrament out of love for men for the greater glory of the Father.
In example "E," a preface is added that is similar in content to that of the Constitutions of 1863; the numbers from 1 to 4 of the first chapter are canceled and substituted by a text that underlines how the Congregation may have a unique end: to render to Christ Eucharistic the service of adoration with perpetual and solemn cult, and dedicate itself to the extension of his kingdom of love; in order to attain this end one takes the three vows and lives in community. The second chapter is canceled to "ac proinde ut"; a new one is proposed from it where it says that the religious have made profession before all else for the service of adoration. Immediately after, we find a new first chapter that expresses the aim of the Institute: in consecrating to Christ Eucharistic true and perpetual adorers, forming for him generous apostles of his glory and zealous propagators of his love, so that he may always be adored and glorified socially throughout the whole world.
In example "G," the first chapter is lacking and the second until "ac proinde ut," without an alternative.
In example "H," number 4 is canceled from the first chapter and substituted with a text equal to that of example "D," on the love of Jesus, who annihilates himself in the Eucharist out of love for men and for the glory of the Father.
Making the comparison with the Constitutions of 1863, presented for the decree of approbation, that which is greatly pointed out is the terminological variant: whereas in 1863 it is written "De servitio Eucharistico," in 1864, it is written "De adorationis servitio." This variant has disconcerted the first and recent generations since Fr. Eymard. The chapter declares that the religious have been called and have made profession "uniquely" to serve Christ Eucharistic. Secondly, therefore, from the interpretation that is given by the terms "service of adoration" and "Eucharistic service", the ideal of Eymard has acquired an abundant breath or restriction.
In order to clarify the meaning of the Eucharistic vocation, before the working variants from Fr. Eymard himself, we consider it opportune to start from the terminology that recurs most frequently in the texts presented.
For the choice of terms we are helping ourselves, in a particular way, with the formulas used for religious profession; we hold, in fact, that these contain the fundamental choices of a Congregation.
The Formula of Religious Profession of the Constitutions of 1864 expresses itself in this way:
To the perpetual service of adoration of our God and Lord Jesus Christ who out of love for men remains truly, really, and substantially present, I dedicate myself and all that I have to his greater glory and love and I pronounce these vows. . . .
We note a correspondence between the dedicating of self totally to the service of perpetual adoration and taking the vows for the greater glory and for the love of Jesus Christ. If we look to the formula of profession of the constitutions of 1863, we see another type of correspondence:
To the greater worship of adoration and the reign of our God and Lord Jesus Christ who remains, out of love for men, really, truly, and substantially present, in the most holy sacrament of the altar, I dedicate myself and all that I have, freely to his service. I pronounce the vows. . . .
Here, the cult of adoration and the Eucharistic reign are in correspondence with the service. Above, in the first formula of profession used in the Congregation, March 2, 1859, at the place of the cult of adoration, it contains the terms glory and love:
To the greater love and glory of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, really, truly, substantially present in the most holy sacrament of the altar, I dedicate myself and all that I have to the service. . . .
The central structure of the formula remains intact, while the following terms interchange: service, adoration, love, glory. We hold that for Fr. Eymard this would not be a significant change in the end undone the aim of the Congregation, but a diverse way of expressing it.
Considering this, it seems to us that the terms which recur to express the Eucharistic vocation would be the following: adoration, love, service, glory. This indication is strengthened initially by two texts regarding the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament.
In a retreat of 1861, Fr. Eymard affirms that the Eucharistic vocation consists uniquely: in adoring, in loving, in serving, and in consuming oneself for the glory of Jesus Christ. In regard to the education of novices, he writes:
Each of you has been received into the Congregation in order to adore, love, and glorify the divine Eucharist.
We receive from these two texts also, the order of analysis of the terms, placing in light their use, the proper meaning and the relation existing between them, in order to see if one can speak of an analogy and complementarity, and if these terms share similar meaning.
We begin with analyzing the thematics that regard "adoration."
I. ADORATION
Adoration occupies a position of prominence in the spirituality of Fr. Eymard. Three months before his death, in the retreat of Saint Maurice, he intends making adoration "le pivot" of his life.
Adoration is a key term, which according to interpretation, can restrain or give ample breath to the vision of the Eucharistic vocation. We have pointed out at the beginning of he chapter how the expression "unice," referred to the "service of adoration," could have constituted a problem; the expression, however, is read at the interior of the whole thought of Fr. Eymard and of his spiritual journey.
We shall pause awhile in the analysis, on the meaning of the term "adorer"; in fact, Fr. Eymard calls his religious and the Servants — adorers. The life that Fr. Eymard proposes has as its aim the forming of true adorers.
1. Adoration as public and solemn cult
Fr. Eymard, in a retreat to his religious in January of 1862, indicates, in the form of public and solemn adoration with exposition, the newness of the Congregation:
It is a new Society, at least in its form of public adoration, solemn, and with the Blessed Sacrament exposed. There have been some before but they always had a secondary end that ultimately absorbed the first. (. . .) We must adore first of all — then be zealous in our works.
In the analyzed texts, the public and solemn adoration is defined as means, or unique end, or principal end of the Congregation; from the beginning it takes the characteristic of the "four ends" of the sacrifice of the Mass. The religious Congregation, as "guard of honor," as "court" of the Eucharistic Christ, dedicates itself to the cult and to his glory in the perpetual practice of adoration, of thanksgiving, or propitiation, and of supplication.
Adoration takes on a character even more final when, above all, Fr. Eymard puts forward, as supreme law, the first commandment; the service of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament solemnly exposed, is defined as: the essential point of life, its reason and ultimate end; and it becomes the way to realize the first commandment. He writes to the religious of Marseille in October of 1866 the following:
To adore our Lord Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament as our King and our God, to be attached exclusively to his service — this is the great law, the royal grace, the sovereign virtue of a Religious of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Another situation in which adoration has yet a final aspect is when the virtue of religion is more evident, especially in the years 1862-1863. Adoration is defined as: a royal service to which all is submitted, the first law and absolute end of life. Fr. Eymard writes:
As adorers, they practice the greatest act of virtue of religious; the most excellent of the virtues.
Adoration is the royal activity of the Society. Everything is subordinate to it. The service of the King comes first and is equally divided among you.
One finds with more frequency that adoration is the expression of the cult and of the service to Christ Eucharistic, or that the solemn and public cult of perpetual adoration, with the Eucharistic apostolate, is the means to live the service, that is: to show recognition for the gift of the Eucharist and to give to Jesus Christ all honor, love, and glory that are his due.
In the retreat to the religious of February 1859, Fr. Eymard affirms that the solemn and public cult of adoration is a means to realize the end: to live with Jesus Christ, of Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. In the same year, he presents adoration as the element of the Eucharistic life of Christ:
He adores his Father; he perpetually thanks him; he continues his office of mediator. There he prays incessantly for us.
The Constitutions of the Servants of 1863 and of 1864, and . . . indicate the principal end being the in the solemn and perpetual cult of adoration of Jesus Christ.
Adoration, as cult, in the Directory is defined the end of the service, the end more glorious to God, holier and more apostolic. Eucharistic adoration is the cult of latria to Christ truly present in the Eucharist. It renders to him the same divine homage received on earth and that he now receives in heaven.
It is the great triumph of faith, in which the total submission of reason takes place; it is adoration through all the truths, through all the mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ, which the Eucharist contains. Furthermore, it is the greatest act of holiness on earth; there, one fulfills the gift of self: body, soul, liberty, heart, works, and thoughts; there, all the virtues are exercised.
So, the adorer before the most Blessed Sacrament is fulfilling a universal and perpetual mission of prayer. He continues the mission of propitiation. He offers to God, lively and incessant acts of thanksgiving. He adores by his entire self, by every being, by every grace, and at the same time he is giving the most perfect homage that can be given by a creature.
For a greater understanding, all that we have been saying can be put in light by the Retreat of Rome of 1865. On February 21, Fr. Eymard that the service to be given to Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is:
Adoration of our Lord in his sacramental state in the most Blessed Sacrament of the altar — by the most festive worship of the church — by the four ends of sacrifice;
He defines his religious as: the first adorers of the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and they are approved for this end; therefore:
Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament ought to be the center of my life, as well as my first and only law.
In other passages, he underlines the importance in adoration as an exterior cult and a cult of love. It is the interior spirit, that is, the gift of one's whole self; and again that adoration and the Eucharistic cult are an expression of putting the Eucharist at the center of life, as the natural center, supernatural and determined purpose of one's vocation.
2. Adoration as celestial cult
Another frequent theme in Fr. Eymard is the relation between the life of adoration of the religious and the adoration that is celebrated in heaven, described above all in the Apocalypse; the religious are called to share and to emulate the duty of the angels, as a life dedicated to adoring, blessing and glorifying the God of love. He wrote in 1859:
Jesus is in the Blessed Sacrament for us! He remains in the tabernacle for us. He will be perpetually exposed on His throne of love. So, is it not only just, that we come to pay our respects? That we do from time to time what the court of heaven is doing and will do forever at the feet of the throne of the Lamb.
The adoration of God in glory is the end of the church triumphant, and on the other hand, the adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist is the end of the church militant; therefore through adoration there is need:
To form (. . .) a court of faithful and devoted souls, totally consecrated to adoration, praise, love and service, in a holy rivalry with the court of heaven.
The life of the religious must become an expression of the eternal thanksgiving that takes place in heaven.
What a delicious undertaking! To spend one's life at the foot of the throne of the Lamb and together with the heavenly court. You are worthy, O Jesus, to receive the praise, honor, glory, and power forever and ever.
The relation with the heavenly adoration has some applications on the practical level; adoration acquired a collective dimension, communitarian; the religious, during his adoration before Christ exposed, must be knowledgeable that: he displays the duty of the angels, he is deputized by the Congregation, for the city and the whole church. He is the mediator between God and men; his life must excel, must assimilate that of angels and saints, because the mystery of the Eucharist excels over all the mysteries. Moreover, he must cultivate the study of the sacramental life of Jesus and must live it.
The adorer, finally, with home given to Jesus, in adoration, renders his whole self: body, reason, heart, will — to God an external glory (here on earth) which the angels and saints in heaven can not render to him.
In the retreat of 1867, Fr. Eymard takes up again the theme of imitating the heavenly court — the Congregation, with its religious, is called to encircle always the Word of God. Fr. Eymard affirms:
If the Eucharist happened to be missing, we would have no reason to exist.
After ascertaining all this, it seems to us, that the point of reference which gives meaning to the choices and which are operative, remains always the Eucharist.
3. Adoration in "Spirit and Truth"
To adore in spirit and in truth. That is our vocation: the Father seeks such persons; however there are not many, so he seeks. Very few are satisfied with God. Give themselves exclusively to God. It is not your goods that he wants, but you.
The theme of adoration in "spirit and truth" clarifies finally, completes, and confirms all that has been said on adoration.
Inasmuch as Fr. Eymard writes, in the first text of the Constitutions after the foundation, on the "true adorer in spirit and truth," will be developed with continuity in the following years:
To become a true adorer in spirit and truth, a religious must begin by overcoming his slavery to glory, praise, the bonds and pleasures of the world, in order to have no happiness other than Jesus in the Eucharist. He must work constantly (. . .) to live no longer except in the spirit and life of Jesus Christ. A religious of the Blessed Sacrament must, if he wishes to remain faithful to the grace of his vocation, be happy living in the Cenacle of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To adore in "spirit and truth," Fr. Eymard wishes to say: to have the Eucharist as the sole interest of life, to live the spirit and life of Jesus Christ, to be an interior person, a person of prayer; one then can build the interior or spiritual cult that renders "self" to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
With adoration one is united to the life of Christ Eucharistic, who glorifies the Father in adoration, in thanksgiving and with intercessions, in order to continue and thus complete His reign in this world.
By the worship with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament we make Jesus Christ come to life, work, and reign — I have come to light fire — we are the ones who set fire; "Behold I am with you"; to adore him, to love him, to serve him — and also to grow in holiness through the Eucharist and to make him adored, loved, served, as well as to have him reign.
The "four ends" of sacrifice, too, become an expression of the interior cult; to adore means: to recognize the presence, to offer all one's being, to adore the greatness and love for men, to make the Eucharist the end of one's whole life; to give thanks is: the recognition for the love manifested in the Eucharist, the gift of self and the final sequence of Calvary; propitiation becomes: reparation, invocation of divine mercy and pardon; the supplication is the Eucharistic apostolate of prayer, fruit of adoration, of thanksgiving, and of propitiation, an apostolate that recognizes in Jesus Eucharistic the source of every gift and of every grace.
Through adoration, the Eucharist transforms one in a school where one learns to know Jesus Christ, where the spirit studies and copies the divine model, where the imagination shows it in everything the goodness and the beauty of his heart and of his works; it is above all in prayer that the soul knows Christ, who reveals himself to it; and from this manifestation, begins its mission.
Adoration in spirit and truth, as a way for a life constantly in relationship with the Eucharistic Christ and thus, possessing the spirit of it, occupies a relevant place in the retreat of Rome 1865. On February 11, after having said that adoration is spirit and truth is his vocation, Fr. Eymard concludes that there is a need to live this interior life of adoration; to adore in spirit and truth is to possess the spirit of Jesus Christ, dwelling constantly in him. On February 17, he writes:
It is very evident that I must live with our Lord: he lives in me, since I am his adorer, his servant, attached to his adorable divine person. The essential point is I must live of his spirit — he who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Adoration is a means to arrive at having the habitual thought of God in every situation, in order to nourish and fortify the interior man who is Jesus Christ in us.
These ideas are reaffirmed by that which Fr. Eymard says to the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament in 1866: adoration in spirit and truth is to learn to think, to speak and to dialogue with Christ Eucharistic in every situation.
Your thoughts have this characteristic. They must be for our Lord, through our Lord, with our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. We must reach the point of thinking through the Eucharist. All your thoughts must lead to the Eucharist. Because you have the grace for it, this is your service. It is a necessity for you. Unless you have it, how can you adore in spirit and truth. You would be only a body.
It is necessary to think of God everywhere:
If you learn to think, if you are courageous enough to think, not only when you pray, but in your chores, in your cell, Oh! Nothing is better than that. Your adoration will be new because your thoughts will be new. You will be always new! You must reach this level.
Adoration in spirit and truth is therefore: to serve and to adore Jesus Christ in the Eucharist with one's whole being; to adore him, to love and serve him choosing only him; leaving oneself to enter into Jesus Christ, to work in him, to live only for him and in him, to love him more than oneself.
4. Meditation and contemplation
It is necessary to connect this point to meditation and contemplation; Fr. Eymard speaks many times of the contemplative life, defining it the soul and the foundation of the perfection of the religious, and of the complement that is necessary for it: meditation.
Passages can be found where adoration is considered as one of the principal exercises of the contemplative life, or else where the contemplative life makes up part of the apostolate and is understood as a life of prayer in solitude, or else where Fr. Eymard does not speak explicitly of adoration, but only of meditation.
For Fr. Eymard, "Eucharistic contemplation" is more active than passive, it is the soul who gives itself without ceasing to God and who unites itself more intimately to Jesus Christ; in fact its end is that of fixing the soul in God and in Jesus Christ his Savior. We relate a passage taken from the Directory of the aggregates which exposes his thought.
Contemplation flows naturally from adoration and thanksgiving; it nourishes them and makes them more perfect. Eucharistic contemplation is a state in which the soul is captivated by Jesus in the Eucharist in order to have a detailed knowledge of Its intrinsic perfection, to see his goodness. His goodness in instituting the Eucharist, to study his motives, examine the sacrifices it entails, weigh the gift, appreciate the love. That is its nature. The fruit of contemplation is first of all to focus attention, to be recollected in Jesus Christ as his perfection becomes better understood, the greatness of his love for human beings and the excellence of the unspeakable gift of the Eucharist. This reflection on Jesus Christ preparing, instituting the Holy Eucharist in an excess of love gives rise in the first place to admiration, then praise, then the expansiveness of love. The soul goes out of itself in order to cling to and unite itself to the divine object of its contemplation of love. The virtue of contemplation must be the essential of adoration. Contemplation is to love what the hearth is to the flame.
Eucharistic meditation, as Fr. Eymard calls it, consists in:
Applying all one's senses and all one's faculties to the service and for the love of the divine Eucharist, as to their natural center and the object of our vocation. (. . .) The spirit of Eucharistic recollection means to make the thought of the Eucharist the dominant thought in one's mind, the dominant affection of one's heart, the supreme object of one's desires, in a word, the universal motivation of one's life.
Therefore, meditation is to put oneself interiorly at God's disposition; it has as its center the life of Jesus Christ, in order to dwell in him and to allow God to accomplish his work in the soul.
To you especially, my sisters, that Jesus says: "He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood, lives in me and I in him." Note well that Jesus lives in us because we first live in him.
In the text that illustrates the end of the novitiate of the Servants we find united the thematics we've encountered to now. This text affirms that being true adorers in spirit and truth means to possess the true spirit of adoration; for this to happen one must be formed in the interior life, through the spirit of love and of union with Jesus Christ, to concentrate oneself in him, in order to be ready to adore and serve him.
5. Adorers
To form true adorers in spirit and truth, to Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist constitutes the program of life that Fr. Eymard himself proposes. In a text written at the end of 1856, the adorer is defined as one who makes an hour of adoration and who converges all his thoughts, actions, al his spiritual projects toward Jesus host of love and reparation, of salvation and grace. The term "adorer" is to mean a person that establishes a continued relationship with the Eucharist, center of his life.
Reading some passages of the retreat of Rome of 1865, we are confirmed in all that we have said. On February 26, Fr. Eymard writes:
One must be, very simply, an adorer. That is, to make of my being, of all my life, present and future, a homage of justice and love for our Lord Jesus Christ in the most Blessed Sacrament of the altar, solemnly exposed for me, adore him through me — this is the essential point — I seek, not your things, but you.
I must adore our Lord. His love in the most Blessed Sacrament, his sacrifices, his state, his goodness, in a word, the reason for instituting the sacrament, its perpetuity, its multi-location; — that I put myself in tune with the essential and nourishing grace of this divine sacrament, and unite myself to our Lord by this grace, glorify him in his sacramental state, and then my soul will have found its life.
To be an adorer is to offer one's life to Christ Eucharistic, it is to adore through oneself, to enter into a profound relation with the Eucharistic reality, it is to establish a union with Jesus Christ. Fr. Eymard himself lamented not yet being an adorer, and can do nothing other than affirm this.
I do not have even the basic holiness for my state, the elemental virtue of my religious vocation. You are not yet my sovereign law, the center for my heart, the purpose of my life.
To be an adorer by mission signifies to give oneself to the service and to the glory of the Eucharist with love and zeal; but one cannot satisfy oneself with being a devout adorer of service alone, what also takes place is being spouses and friends of the Eucharistic God; finally, an adorer apostle must always adore and preach Jesus Christ Eucharistic.
In August of 1867, Fr. Eymard defines his religious adorers par etat ("by state") of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament; God, who has called them to this, has predisposed them for the life of adoration and for the Eucharist; therefore not only to make adoration.
The term "adorer," as is contained in the Directory of the aggregates, completes and confirms all that we have seen.
For Fr. Eymard, there is perfect identity between being Christian and being adorers; in fact, it is a matter of having the Eucharist as a principle and center of life. The adorer is he who, having found Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, decides to live in him and for him. Fr. Eymard, who for some time has made Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament:
the habitual object of my practice of the presence of God, the dominant motive of my intentions, the reflection of my mind, the affection of my heart, the object of all the virtues. . . .
Will arrive at the union in action, to a supernatural life with the Eucharist, thinking there with facility and finding there, joy; it will become his noble passion.
Then the Eucharist has become a spirit of love, the divine passion of one's heart. The life of the adorer is nothing more than expression of it; he nourishes his mind with it, he seeks nothing but the Eucharist in science and nature; all his passions are attracted to the Eucharist as a magnet to its pole. For everything that is involved in his studies, or to do, he has only one life or death question; what is there for the glory of the Eucharist in it? And in a choice of life style, of work, of zeal, not his interests, his tastes, that he consults. His love is a royal love; it goes straight to the God of the Eucharist; for its better service, its greater glory. These will be the sovereign reasons for his choice. This is the Eucharistic reign of love.
The aim of his life is: To serve Jesus Eucharistic, to love him and glorify him in the world, making him known, loved, and served. We can see that the term "adorer" corresponds more closely, for meanings and contents, to adoration in spirit and truth, and also embraces the other terms that we are proposing for analysis.
II. EUCHARISTIC LOVE
The reality of love is fundamental in the spirituality of Fr. Eymard, it is sufficient to read what he writes on March 18, 1865, inasmuch as he affirms it:
Love! That is my law, my way, my virtue, my strength, my joy, my happiness, my life, my death, my heaven! Amen.
The love, or the dilectio, is the love of God that has made itself visible, concrete, especially in the Eucharist, and that from the Eucharist, act of love par excellence, it is continually nourished. On this love, Fr. Eymard places the basis for making of religious life a Eucharistic life. It is the Eucharistic love that calls one to be a religious of the Blessed Sacrament, it is this love that must become the soul of the participants in the Congregation, in all that they are and do.
What ought to shine and standout in all the members of the Society is the love that inspired this sacrament, institutes it, and renews it. This Eucharistic love must be the rule and as it were, the character of their evangelical perfection; this their inspiration and supreme virtue and the spirit of this love in all things.
It is so close, this relation of love and Eucharist, that at times, it acquires from it the same attributes, that is: principle, center, and end of life.
1. The love of God
At last, after the desert I am arriving at the mountain of love! What a suffering voyage! How laborious the navigation! Here I am before the throne of love. God be praised!
When he writes these lines, in a meditation that has for its title "God love," March 14, 1865, Fr. Eymard does nothing other than take up again the theme which has guided him uninterruptedly throughout his life; he reaffirms this truth, by placing it as a milestone in the life of his religious.
God is love, a love that is from all eternity, a love of which one cannot doubt, a love that has its proofs in creation, in salvation and in the Eucharist.
2. The love of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist
The Eucharist is the sacrament of love, it is "the fire and the center" of divine love that Jesus Christ has come to cast upon the earth:
The divine love that inspired, instituted, and constantly renews this sacrament of love. Of divine love blazing in the divine Eucharist with a supereminent love. The fire of love which he Lord Jesus lighted in the most Holy Eucharist.
Frequently, Fr. Eymard speaks of Christ in the Eucharist living out of love for the Father and for mankind, and of the Eucharist as proof of this love. To the religious of Marseille, in 1859, he presents Jesus Christ in the Eucharist more as King than as master, more mother than father, and adds:
The Eucharistic love of Jesus. The Eucharist is the sacrament par excellence of love. Love ever ancient. He makes the remembrance. He goes back into eternity, love ever new; always actual, always powerful.
Thus, again in 1862, he says to his religious:
The Eucharist is, 1. Jesus Christ become the memorial, the gift, the sense proof of his love for man. (. . .) 2. The Eucharist is Jesus sacramental. Love whose contact in the individual (. . .). 3. The Eucharistic love for us all as well as for each one. (. . .) The Eucharist — perpetual love — this is the love that makes Jesus the host, the victim, the communion with each person, with everyone and forever.
Jesus Christ in the Eucharist loves with all his being, loves with the same love of the Father, loves to the point of annihilating himself; in the Eucharist, his love has its center of life.
During the Retreat of Rome of 1865, Fr. Eymard meditates more times on the love of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, a love that has a spirit to make itself "host for man," a love that reveals itself as personal, good, affable, patient, joyous, and merciful toward all.
3. "Called by love"
By love, and by love for the most Blessed Sacrament that our Lord has attracted me — this is my grace. He has given me a mission of love, a love for the Blessed Sacrament.
The Congregation is born as a response to the love of Jesus present in the Eucharist; vocations come because they are attracted by this love. In various texts of the Constitutions, we find written phrases such as these:
He who is wounded by Eucharistic love comes knocking at the door of our religion. He who is under the pressure of Eucharistic love and divine grace, who humbly knocks at the door of our religion. He who is attracted by the love of Jesus in the sacrament to our religion.
Love has for its just law that of having love as response. Jesus, who in the Eucharist gives himself to all, calls to a life of love. We read in a text of 1863:
Let all our religious know that they have been called by the mercy of God to inflame all hearts with that fire of love which our Lord Jesus set ablaze in the most Holy Eucharist, in order to extend everywhere the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
The personal love of Christ leads to giving a response of love; to love one responds with love, with imitating the love of Jesus Christ.
4. Eucharistic love as end
One of the texts presented to Sibour indicate the end of the religious of the Blessed Sacrament as: living the Eucharistic life of Jesus Christ, his life of love that perpetually glorifies the Father, his divine charity for mankind.
That love that he has called the religious of the Blessed Sacrament to, becomes now the end of their life; they become true disciples and apostles of the charity of Christ, the religious of love.
The incendiaries of he divine love that the Savior came to bring to the earth, of which the Eucharist is the center and the hearth.
Clearly and most recaptured, either in the Constitutions of the religious or those of the Servants, where Fr. Eymard affirms that the end of the Congregation is to dedicate oneself to the service of the love of the Eucharist and to promote the love of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; the religious must make their own the same mission of Christ, to establish and spread the kingdom of love.
The apostolic mission of the Society is the mission of the Eucharistic love of Our Lord.
Therefore:
I must love our Lord Jesus Christ, love him with a sovereign, absolute. and perpetual love.
5. "The spirit of love that animates all of life"
To the religious of Marseille, in October of 1866, Fr. Eymard indicates that Eucharistic love is the unique means to realize the Eucharistic vocation.
This love will be your virtue, your strength, your perseverance (. . .) that the Eucharistic love of Jesus may be the noble passion of your life, of your spirit, of your grace, of your will.
According to Fr. Eymard, every congregation has the necessity of its "proper spirit" which must animate the whole life of the religious, to form the character of his holiness and of his apostolic ministry; Fr. Eymard means by "proper spirit" the following:
An inspiration, a direction (. . .) the soul of one's behavior. A spirit is needed; without it there is no life. He (the religious) will have the spirit of his state (of life), of his vocation, when he does everything inspired by a thought that leads him to the greatest service of the Eucharist. That is his means and end. You have to feel this thought, this spirit in all the different tasks, in the sacristy, the confessional, in direction, in preaching. In a word, the Eucharist must be his life, and at the same time, his end.
Fr. Eymard detects in Eucharistic love the spirit that makes it so — that the life of a religious may be truly and totally Eucharistic. It is the spirit that is given by the end, the Eucharist. It is the spirit that penetrates the whole person: thoughts, actions, and sacrifices.
The soul that loves Jesus in the Eucharist has no other desire than to serve and to please him, to love him, and to see him loved. It is the spouse of the Canticle of Canticles seeking the welfare of her beloved; she weeps, she languishes — she is dying because the Beloved is away; this is passion, for his glory, of his reign, which inspires, as for Saint Paul, the greatest undertakings.
This reality stays in his heart to such a degree that a great number of times he asks his religious not to make themselves be outdone in love:
Let them live and be inspired in all things by the sacred love of our Lord Jesus Christ; may the Eucharistic love be the life of their virtue, the zeal of their grace, the keynote of their holiness; in such wise, that if in science, in poverty, in works of mercy, and gifts, they are surpassed by others. Never allow them to be overtaken by anyone in divine love.
One can say that there is a progress in Fr. Eymard, in putting forward the essentiality of Eucharistic love. It is a theme almost invariable in the Constitutions, it is an argument in the formation of religious, in the apostolate, in the Directories. As a synthesis of his thought we propose number three (3) of the Constitutions of 1862, born of a more precise formulation of his corrections and additions to the Constitutions of 1864.
The spirit in which they must serve him and in all things sanctify and devote themselves, surely is that spirit of love with which our Lord instituted the most Holy Eucharist, in which he perpetuates this gift of his love to the greater glory of his Father. Let this Eucharistic love of Jesus be the supreme law of their virtue, the theme of their zeal, and the note, as it were, of our sanctity.
"Such love, such life" — he writes on more than one occasion; Eucharistic love is a way for living a Eucharistic life, for uniting oneself always more perfectly to Jesus Christ, for having his spirit.
Only love gives form to the mind, inspires and feeds it. Thought follows love and love produces the imitation . . . if Jesus is my treasure, he will be my thought (. . .) Manete — remain in my love. Love is the Christian sense, divine, that Jesus has come to bring: Ignem — I have come to bring fire. I must work at love in order to have the spirit of Jesus — who then will become the spirit of my heart and mine will be crucified.
Barbiero, Chapter 8: Fire and Flame