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The Union of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary
In St. Francis de Sales and St. John Eudes
Arthur Burton Calkins
Part 3
III. St. John Eudes
We are now ready to consider the work of St. John Eudes [1601-1680],
the saint acclaimed by St. Pius X at the time of his beatification in 1909 as “father, doctor, and apostle of the
liturgical cultus of the Sacred Hearts.” 90 While that is a high and well-deserved encomium, it does not exhaust
the reasons for his importance in our consideration. He was neither a devout humanist like St. Francis de
Sales, nor
a great intellectual like Cardinal de Bérulle and Jean-Jacques Olier,
but he was a marvelously successful pragmatist. 91 While Gautier does not hesitate to call him one of the four “great” founders of the French
School and thereby to rank him with de Bérulle, de Condren
and Olier, 92 Jacques Arragain is even closer
to the mark, I think, when he says that Eudes was a missionary much more than his confreres of the French School
and bears comparison with the great French preachers of missions like Saints Vincent de Paul, Louis-Marie Grignion
de Montfort and the Venerable Jean-Jacques Olier. 93 Olier
had himself invited Eudes to preach a mission at St. Sulpice, 94 and described him as “la
rareté de son siècle.” 95 As Fr.
Charles Lebrun felicitously puts it:
It cannot be denied that the Saint was greatly indebted to Cardinal
de Bérulle and to Père de Condren, but, while guided by their principles, he knew how to undertake
original work and, if he had not their metaphysical genius, he deserves a place by their side because of his zeal,
his practical bent, his oratorical and poetical gifts, and the variety of his works ... If he is not the most profound
writer of the French School, we believe that he is the most popular, and that he has contributed more than any other to the diffusion
of its common teaching. 96
Formed in the Oratory
of Jesus by its founder, Pierre de Bérulle
and his immediate successor, Charles de Condren, John Eudes drank deeply of
their spiritual teaching and made it uniquely his own. 97 If he had done nothing more than write The Life
and the Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls, a veritable vade-mecum of the spirituality of the French School,
he could be truly styled its principal exponent or “vulgarizateur.” 98
But it was around 1643 that his great life’s work began to come into focus as he founded that year the Congregation
of Jesus and Mary following his “discovery” of the Heart of Mary as the great model and means of our union with
Christ. 99 About what touched
off this “discovery” we cannot be completely sure.
It is known that he had been reading the writings
of Sts. Gertrude,
Mechtilde and Teresa at this time 100 and had been confirmed in his intuition by the mystic Marie des Valées.101 The Abbé Bremond simply
holds that this “discovery” was a logical deduction from the writings and piety of the French School. 102 Cognet says that “the undoubted originality of the Eudist views ... must be credited to the author’s own genius, 103 but perhaps the statement of St.
Pius X in the decree of beatification with regard to Eudes’ initiative in the matter of public worship is even
more applicable to the genesis of the insight: non sine aliquo divino afflatu 104 – it was a grace, a matter of inspiration.
A. Principles of His Mariology
Fr. Arragain dates St. John Eudes’ “discovery” of the Heart of
Mary
from
1641 105 and says that before that date nothing
distinguishes his Marian doctrine from that of the French School. 106 While this is true, we cannot help but notice how organically this doctrine will develop
into an exposition on the Heart of Mary. Notice in the following text his Bérullian emphasis on
the inseparability of Jesus and Mary.
Devotion to the most Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, is so pleasing
to her Son, and is so dear and commendable to all true Christians, that it is not necessary to recommend
it to those who desire to lead a Christian life.
I shall only tell you that you must never
separate what God has so perfectly united. So closely are Jesus
and Mary bound up with each other that whoever beholds Jesus sees Mary; whoever loves Jesus loves
Mary;
whoever has devotion to Jesus, has devotion to Mary. Jesus
and Mary are
the two first foundations of the Christian religion, the two living springs of all our blessings, the two centers of
all our devotion, and the two objectives you should keep in view in all your acts and works ...
As
you
must continue the virtues of Jesus and keep with you His sentiments, so you must also continue and maintain in your hearts the love, tenderness and devotion that Jesus cherished for His Blessed Mother. 107
Consistently, he argues for Marian devotion as a means of reproducing the dispositions
of Jesus toward His Mother in each individual Christian. It is a dimension of appropriating the mysteries and states of Jesus. Fr. Hérambourg, the Saint’s first biographer, after paraphrasing part of the above text, adds:
In his spiritual exercises he always rendered to the Mother, in
due proportion, of course, whatever he rendered to the Son. He believed that Christians ought to perpetuate the
life and sentiments of Jesus Christ on earth, particularly
in regard to Our Blessed Lord's devotion to Mary as
manifested in the way He honored her through His choice of her to be His mother. His obedience to her, His
outward behavior toward her during the time of His childhood and His hidden life, and the glory and authority which He invested in her
in heaven and on earth were the chief manifestations of Christ’s deep filial respect and love for His Blessed Mother.
108
As he finds the basis for devotion to Mary in the dispositions
of Jesus, so he also understands the dispositions of Mary to be totally oriented to God. Thus we find
this prayer to Mary in The Life and Kingdom of
Jesus:
O Mother of Jesus, I honor thee, as far as I am able, in the moment
of thy holy conception, and
in the instant of thy birth into the world. I honor all the love, all the adoration, praise, oblations, and
blessings thou didst offer to God at that time. In union with thy love,
purity, and humility
as thou didst adore, love and glorify Him,
and didst refer thy being and thy life to Him, I adore, bless, and love my God, with thee,
my Mother,
with my whole
heart. 109
As a thoroughgoing disciple of de Bérulle, de Condren and,
in some respects Olier, 110 it is not surprising to find him especially attracted to the mystery and veneration of
“Jesus living in Mary.” 111 Hérambourg tells us about this pervasive
dimension of his piety:
All Saturdays and feasts of the Blessed Virgin were consecrated to honoring the life
of Christ in His Holy Mother with all its mysteries. 112
Each year at the beginning of January, St. John Eudes took time
to cast himself at the feet of Our Lord in order
to adore Him in the first moment of His mortal life; to honor the thoughts, sentiments and dispositions
of His soul in that first moment with regard to the Heavenly
Father and to mankind.
113
He had favorite mysteries that were the principal objects of his
devotion
throughout his entire life. The Incarnation of the second divine Person of the Blessed Trinity drew
special honor, not only by reason of the humiliations which the Son of God willed to endure
in this mystery and
the glory received
from it by the
Blessed Virgin Mary, but also because of the great blessings communicated to all men through this mystery,
which constitutes the origin and beginning of their salvation. This also applied to his Congregation in particular, which
took birth on the Feast of the Annunciation, the day chosen by the Church to celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation.
The captivity of Jesus in Mary moved the Saint
profoundly, and he ardently desired that the Infinite God who had become
enslaved out of love might make captive his own mind and heart,
his thoughts and all his affections. He considered the mystery of
the Incarnation the most important in the life of the Savior ... During the holy Season of Advent
the Saint lived in union with the devotion of the Church
to this divine mystery, using the aspirations by which the patriarchs of old
had
expressed
their fervent longing for the coming of the Messias.
He repeated the same supplications so that our
Lord might
renew in him, too, the virtues and the spirit of the Incarnation and of His life in the Blessed Virgin
Mary. 114
Let us now listen to the saint himself in one of his meditations
which focuses on the “mystical” rather than the “physical” presence of Jesus in Mary:
O Jesus, Thou only Son of God, only Son of Mary, I contemplate
and adore Thee living and reigning in Thy most holy
Mother, the divine Author of her existence. St. Paul
says:
Thou art all and dost all in all things [Eph. 1; 23; I Cor. 12:6],
so surely
Thou art and dost all in Thy most holy Mother. Thou art her life,
her soul,
her heart, her spirit, her riches. Thou art
in her, sanctifying
her on earth and glorifying her in heaven. Thou art in her,
accomplishing greater works and giving to Thyself, in and by her, greater
glory than
in all the other creatures of heaven and earth. Thou
art in her, clothing her with Thy qualities and perfections, inclinations and dispositions, imprinting
in her a most perfect image of Thyself, of all Thy states, mysteries, and virtues, and making her so like Thee,
that whoever sees Jesus sees Mary, and he who sees Mary beholds Jesus. 115
At times the statements of our Norman saint may seem excessive
or too effusive. We must recall, however, that his context is ever the careful, dogmatic background of the French
School. While he never fails to laud Mary as the greatest of God’s creatures, he is fully conscious that as a creature she is totally
relative to God.
You must see and adore her Son in her, and see and adore Him alone. It is thus that she wishes
to be honored, because of herself and by herself she is nothing, but her
Son Jesus is everything in her, her being, her life, her sanctity, her glory, her power and her greatness. 116
B. The “Conjoint” Cult of the Heart of Jesus and Mary
The two great monuments, which St. John Eudes raised to the Holy Heart of Mary, are the
liturgy of the Feast of the Admirable Heart of Mary 117 and the book with the same title. 118 In both the former and the latter,
it is clear
that he follows the Bérullian principle of not separating the Mother from the Son so that in one sense he
is celebrating
the Heart of Mary as the focal point of her interior life, her mysteries, her states, her love, her person, while
at the same time he is celebrating the Heart of Mary conjoined to the Heart of Jesus. 119
Let us first consider how this is true of his liturgical compositions
in the opening prayer of the Mass he composed:
Deus, qui Unigenitum
tuum, tecum ab æterno viventem, in Corde Virginis Matris vivere et regnare voluisti: da nobis,
quaesumus, hanc sanctissimam Jesu et Mariæ in corde uno vitam jugiter celebrare,
cor unum inter nos et cum ipsis habere, tuamque in omnibus voluntatem corde magno et animo volenti adimplere; ut
secundum Cor tuum a te inveniri mereamur. Per eundem Dominum. 120
Here he speaks of the Son who lives with the Father from all eternity,
living
and reigning in the Heart of Mary by
the Father’s will,
and of the most holy
life of Jesus and Mary in one heart. It
is clear that he is speaking here of Mary’s Heart in the mystical, rather than physical sense. The same is true of the address to Christ in the prayer
after communion:
Domine Jesu Christe,
qui miranda sanctissimæ vitæ, passionis
et resurrectionis tuæ mysteria, in sacratissimo torde Matris tuæ admirabilis conservari et glorificari
voluisti ... 121
This latter conforms to the teaching of the French School in terms
of the mysteries
of Jesus becoming the mysteries of Mary by
being preserved in her Heart, and also to the Gospel
datum about Mary who “kept all these things in her heart.” [Lk. 2:19, 51].
Finally, let us consider the invitatory antiphon “Jesum in Corde
Mariæ
regnantem venite adoremus. Qui
est amor et vita nostra.” 122 This refrain, which sets the
tone of the feast, invites us to adore Jesus who reigns in Mary’s Heart.
In the beginning of his great summa on the Heart of Mary,
Eudes distinguishes three hearts in Mary, which are one.
The first is her “heart of flesh.” This is:
the noblest part of the human body. It is the principle of life, the first organ to begin
to live and the last to be stilled in death; it is the seat of love, hatred, joy,
sadness, fear and every
passion of the soul. 123
Not only
does this encompass the physical organ, it also involves
by implication what St. Francis de Sales calls the “inferior” or “sensual” portion of the soul. 124
The second is her “spiritual heart” which comprises her intellect, will and
memory as well as “the point of the spirit,”
125 in Salesian language
“the superior portion of the soul” and its “summit,” 126 in the language of Scripture, the soul [psyche] and spirit [pneuma]. The third is her “divine” heart, which
is really God Himself. 127
In the strictest sense, of course, the particular object of the devotion to the Heart of Mary must be limited to
her corporeal and spiritual hearts. 128 The third heart is really her moral union with her Son, a logical corollary of the reality of Jesus
living in Mary, so dear to the French School, but nonetheless an ens rationis, “a metaphysical entity without concrete reality,” as Père Arragain puts it. 129
Our Norman saint justifies this treatment of Mary’s “divine heart,”
of this moral but not essential or hypostatic union
with very convincing arguments.
Do you fear to slight the incomparable goodness of the Heart of Jesus, your God and Redeemer,
if you invoke the charity of His Mother’s Heart? Do you not know that Mary
is nothing, possesses nothing, and can do nothing except in, through and by Jesus?
Do you not know that Jesus is everything and that He can and does accomplish everything through her? Do you not
know Jesus made Mary’s Heart as it is, and that He willed it to be the fountain of light, of consolation and of
every possible grace for those who will have recourse to it in their necessities? Do you forget that not only does
Jesus reside and dwell perpetually in Mary’s Heart, but that He is in truth the heart of her(Heart and the soul
of her soul; and that therefore coming to the Heart of Mary means to honor
Jesus and to invoke her Heart is to invoke Jesus? 130
Although the Heart of Jesus is distinct from that of Mary, and
infinitely surpasses it in excellence and holiness, nevertheless, God has so closely united these two Hearts that
we may say with truth that they are but one, because they have always been animated with the same spirit and filled
with the same sentiments and affections. If St.
Bernard could say he had but one heart with Jesus: “Bene
mihi est, cor unum cum Jesu habeo,” and if it
was said of the first Christians that they had but one heart and one soul, so great was the union amongst them,
how much more can we say that Jesus and Mary had but
one heart and one soul, considering how closely they were bound together by the perfect conformity of mind, will
and sentiment that existed between the Divine Son of God and His Immaculate Mother.
Add to this that Jesus so lives and reigns in Mary that He is the Soul of her soul,
the Spirit of her spirit, the Heart of her heart; so much so that we might well say that Jesus is enshrined in
the Heart of Mary so completely that in honoring and glorifying her Heart, we honor and glorify Jesus Christ Himself.
O Jesus, living in the Heart of Mary! be the life of my heart. Mary, Mother of Jesus,
obtain by thy intercession, I beseech thee, that I may have but one heart with thy Beloved Son and thyself. 131
Interestingly, these excerpts embody every one of the five characteristic principles of
Eudes’ Mariology, which we have sketched above. Ultimately these texts show him to be profoundly theocentric and
Christocentric and illustrate the principle of St. Thomas that devotion is an act of religion, and that consequently
the devotion we have for the saints does not terminate in them, but passes on to God, for it is God Himself whom
we honor in the saints, even the greatest of them. 132
This “conjoint” cult is epitomized in Eudes’ salutations to the “Heart of Jesus and Mary,”
the Ave Cor Sanctissimum 133 which dates from 1643. 134 He adapted it from ten salutations to the Heart of Mary, which St. Mechtilde claimed were
dictated to her by the Lord Himself. To these he added three more salutations “Ave, Cor beatissimum; Ave Cor misericordissimum;
Ave, Cor amantissimum Jesu et Mariæ” and a second part which begins “Te adoramus” and concludes with a consecration.
135 His reflections on
this prayer, which continues to be recited daily by his religious families, the priests of the Congregation of
Jesus and Mary, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of
the Refuge, demonstrate a theological discomfort on his part with the lack of clarity and theological accuracy
which could result from the heavy emphasis on the “conjoint” cult. 136 He never repudiated this beautiful
prayer for which he received a “nihil obstat”
from two doctors of theology in 1645, 137 but he found it necessary to offer more elaborate justifications for it. Here I have recourse to
the excellent detective work of Fr. Arragain:
At first he seems to have had scruples for his(famous Te adoramus
of the Ave Cor Sanctissimum (We
adore you, Heart of Jesus and of Mary). In 1648 at Autun when he launched it for the first time in public, he explains
to us that “since Jesus is living and reigning so completely in Mary … He is the heart of her heart ... He
is the Heart of Mary and, thus, to salute and adore the Heart of Mary is to salute and adore Jesus insofar as He
is … the Heart
of His most holy Mother.” But, in 1650, when he re-edits this salutation at Caen, he replaces the word “adore”
with “honor” in the explanatory note which precedes it and in the salutation itself he puts “Te benedicimus” in place of “Te
adoramus,” and in 1666, he announces to us the solution of his scruples.
He says that it is necessary to take the term adoration in a broad sense 138:
Furthermore, when in this salutation I use the words, Adoramus
te, the reader must not be surprised. There are three kinds of adoration
or worship: the worship of latria,
which is paid exclusively to God; hyperdulia,
which is the special reverence with which we honor the Blessed Virgin Mary; and dulia, which is the respect paid to the saints. Do not think that when you say the words, Adoramus te, we are paying the same reverence and
respect to the Holy Heart of Mary. To the Sacred Heart we owe the supreme worship that is paid exclusively to God
because of His uncreated and infinite excellence; to the Holy Heart of Mary we pay special worship, on account
of her created but pre-eminent excellence. 139
Finally toward 1668 or 1669, St. John Eudes came to the recognition that in the interest of greater theological
clarity
and precision, there
should be a separate cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 140 While his conception of Jesus as the
Heart of Mary’s
Heart,
her “divine
heart,” had
always
been included
in the
“conjoint” cult, he now felt that the time was ripe to establish the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He composed a Mass and Office
for the feast and secured permission in 1670 and 1671 for its celebration from various Bishops under whom he worked.
141 The first public celebration of the Feast took
place at Caen and almost surely at Coutances, Rennes, Lisieux, and
Evreux on
20
October 1672. 142
On 29 July of that year he sent this circular letter to all his priests:
My
dearest and beloved brethren:
It is an inexplicable grace which
our most amiable Savior has accorded us in
giving
our Congregation the admirable Heart of His
most
Holy Mother.
But not being content, in His infinite goodness, to
stop there, He has gone even further in giving us His Own Heart,
along with the Heart of His glorious Mother, to be
the founder and superior, the beginning and the end, the heart and life, of this Congregation.
He conferred this great
gift upon us at the birth of our Congregation, for, although we
have
heretofore
celebrated
one special and particular feast of the adorable Heart of Jesus,
nevertheless we never intended to separate two hearts which God
has so closely joined together, the most
august Heart of the Son of God and that of His Blessed Mother.
On the contrary, from the very beginning of our Congregation it has been our intention
to regard
and honor these two Hearts as one, in unity of spirit,
feeling
and affection, as is clearly indicated
in the Salutation to the Divine Heart of
Jesus and Mary
that we recite each day, as well as in
the prayer
and in several portions of the Office and Mass which we celebrate on the Feast of the Holy Heart of
the Blessed Virgin. But divine Providence, which
guides all things with marvelous wisdom, has willed to introduce the feast of the Heart of the Mother before that
of the Heart of her Son, in order to prepare the hearts of the faithful for the veneration of His adorable Heart, and to dispose them to obtain from heaven the grace of this second
feast by the great devotion theyhave shown in celebrating the first ...
It is this ardent devotion of the true children of the Heart of the Mother
of love which has obliged her to obtain from her beloved Son this signal favor which He has accorded
His Church, that of granting her the feast of His royal Heart which will be a fresh source of an infinity of blessings
for those who are disposed to celebrate it holily.
But who indeed would not do that? What solemnity is more worthy, more holy
and more excellent than this one, the fountainhead of everything great, holy
and venerable in all other feasts? What heart is there more adorable, admirable and worthy of love than the Heart of
this God-Man
whose name is Jesus? What honor is not due this divine Heart which has ever rendered and will eternally render God
more glory and love, at every moment, than all the hearts of men and angels can render Him in a whole
eternity? ...
Should the objection be raised that the feast is an innovation, I shall reply that
innovation in matters of faith is indeed pernicious, but that it is good in matters of piety. Otherwise one would have to frown upon all the feasts in the
Church, since they were also new when they were first celebrated ...
Then let us acknowledge, my
dearest brethren, the infinite grace and incomprehensible
favor with which our most bountiful Savior has honored our Congregation in giving it His own most adorable Heart,
together with the most amiable Heart of His Holy Mother. They are
two inestimable treasures which contain an enormity
of
heavenly
blessings and eternal riches, and He has made our Congregation their depository, that through
it they may then be implanted in the
hearts of the faithful. 143
In this letter, which I have quoted at such length because of my
conviction of its importance as introducing the liturgical cult of the Heart of Jesus, we note that even while
the Saint wishes to promote a separate feast for the Heart of Jesus,
he does not abandon his emphasis on the moral union
of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Let us see how he skillfully
carried this out in the two Magnificat
antiphons and the Benedictus antiphon for
the feast:
Gaude, Maria,
Mater Redemptoris:
ecce vulnerasti et rapuisti Cor ejus,
et
factum
est Cor tuum: ipsumque nobis dedisti, ut
cum Patre
et Matre
cor unum habeamus, alleluia. 144
Benedictum sit Cor amantissimum Jesu et Mariae, fons vivus benedictionis, fornax
amoris, thronus
divinæ voluntatis, sanctuarium Divinitatis,
alleluia. 145
Tibi laus,
tibi honor,
tibi gloria,
O amantissime Jesu, qui dedisti Cor tuum dilectissimae
Matri
tuæ; ut
ipsa tibi uno Corde in salutem humanam cooperans, digna Salvatoris Mater effici mereretur,
alleluia. 146
Now it
remains to be asked: why did
it take St.
John Eudes almost thirty years to
come to the
theological
precision
of a feast for
the Heart of Jesus as well as one for the Heart
of
Mary?
Again, I think Fr. Arragain’s
answers
seem closer
to the
mark than
any others. 147 First,
as one whose own spirituality
was formed and molded under the powerful
influence of Pierre de Bérulle, he was profoundly convinced
that Jesus and Mary should not be separated. The very
text of Bérulle, which we cited above on the happy union
of the two Hearts
148 is cited by Eudes
as an “ecclesiastical approbation” of
his devotion
to the Heart
of Mary in
the seventh
book of The Admirable Heart. 149 Also
the famous text of St. Francis de Sales in the Treatise
on the
Love
of God had made a profound influence
on him. 150 He readily
testifies to these influences on him
in his Life and Kingdom
of Jesus where he recommends without qualification all “the writings of St. Francis
de Sales and of Cardinal de Bérulle, founder of the Oratory of France.”
151 Thirdly, he was greatly influenced
by the
Revelations
of St. Bridget
of Sweden, which he cites with some frequency in his magnum opus, The Admirable Heart 152 and in the circular letter of 29 July 1672 on the
establishment of the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 153 In the first book of the Admirable Heart he quotes these words of Christ to St. Bridget:
I who am God and,
Son of God from all eternity became man in the Virgin
whose heart was as my heart. That is why I can say that my Mother and I have wrought the salvation of man with one heart so to
speak, quasi cum uno Corde:
I by the sufferings I bore in my Heart and in my
body
and she by
the sorrows and by the love of her heart. 154
Fourthly,
in terms of his mystical tendencies 155 it was natural for Eudes to stress the union of the
Hearts of Jesus and Mary because love leads to the union of the lovers and Mary,
as the most perfect of God’s creatures, has
obviously achieved the most perfect union with
God in her relationship with Jesus. 156
Finally, the “conjoint” cult was something that he could preach during
his hundreds of missions. It was not an abstract doctrine for him, but a way of his convincing his hearers that the
life and kingdom of Jesus, which has its greatest triumph in the Heart of Mary, can also come about in us. 157
C. The Sacred Heart of Jesus
St.
John Eudes had begun his great summa of devotion
to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, The
Admirable
Heart,
sometime around 1660, and finished it just three weeks before he died on 19
August 1680. 158 Appropriately and poignantly, the final entry
in his Memoriale Beneficiorum Dei reads: “Today, July
25th of the same year 1680, God granted me the grace to finish my book, The
Admirable
Heart of the Mother of God.” 159 Since the evolution of his thought had taken place by then, the twelfth and final book of his chef d’œuvre
is consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
thus crowning the work
of his lifetime,
and arriving at the summit of his thought. In this
development, he shows himself to be eminently
a product of
the French
School of spirituality, but not according to
the
inaccurate
hypothesis
of the Abbé Bremond, who held that it was just a matter of a logical step from the Bérullian Feast of Jesus to
the Eudist Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 160 The paradigm for this
evolution
is far better represented by Fr. Arragain,
who characterizes the movement as ad Cor Jesu per Cor Mariæ. 161 Eudes himself
has told us as much in his famous circular letter of 29 July
l672
already
quoted above:
Divine Providence,
which guides all things with marvelous wisdom, has willed to introduce
the feast of the Heart of the Mother before that of
the
Heart
of her Son,
in order to
prepare the hearts of
the faithful for the veneration
of His adorable Heart,
and to
dispose them to obtain from heaven the grace of this second feast by the great devotion
they have
shown
in celebrating the first ...
It is this ardent devotion of the true children of
the Heart
of
the Mother
of love which has obliged her to obtain from her beloved Son this signal favor which
He has accorded His Church, that of granting her the
feast of His royal Heart which will be a fresh source of an infinity of blessings for those who
are disposed to celebrate it holily. 162
The establishment of the Feast, even as the clarification
of his thought on this matter, does not follow our preconceived logic, but the inner logic of Eudes the
mystic. It is
the crowning achievement of his entire “spiritual and apostolic itinerary.” 163 According to Eudes’ understanding, it is the gift
of Mary’s Heart. He can make this assertion because for him the third dimension of Mary’s Heart, her “divine heart” is Jesus Himself,
as we have seen above. 164
Further, he
says
that the Three Divine Persons of the Trinity continually and eternally
give Mary the Heart of Jesus “so that they may give
it to us by means
of her mediation.” 165
As Eudes had distinguished “three hearts in Mary which are one” 166 so he makes the same distinctions
with regard to the Heart of Jesus. 167 First there is the “corporeal Heart” of His deified body:
a furnace of love divine and of incomparable love for us. Since the corporeal Heart
is hypostatically united
to the Person of the Word, It is enkindled with flames of infinite love for us. Its love is so intense
that it constrains the Son of God to bear us continually
in His Heart. 168
Although Eudes has been accused of largely ignoring
the physical
Heart of Jesus and preaching a devotion other than that ultimately adopted by the Church, this is
surely false.
169 As Fr. Milcent puts it,
this first dimension and material object of the devotion
is an expression of tie realism of the Incarnation which characterizes Bérulle
and his disciples: the taking seriously in Jesus of humanity.
It is, certainly, assumed by the Eternal Word, but it
remains nonetheless human and corporeal. Jesus had, as His mother, a true human heart, which emotions could
make beat more quickly and more intensely. 170
Secondly, there is the “spiritual Heart” of Jesus. 171 As in Mary, it comprises intellect, will and memory [the biblical psyche] as well as “the point of the spirit” [the biblical pneuma]. 172 It is the entire human interior of Jesus and embraces
all His states as the Incarnate Word. 173
It is precisely
here that Eudes goes beyond his mentors in emphasizing love for His Father
and for us as the principal characteristic of the “spiritual Heart” of Jesus. Here is the evaluation of Fr.
Boulay:
These two holy men [Cardinal de Bérulle and Charles de Condren]
principally recommended to their disciples and themselves practiced the cult of adoration and reverence towards
God and His Son, in their writings speaking only of honoring and adoring Jesus in His Divine Majesty and
greatness, of abasing and annihilating oneself in His Presence, and the same, in due proportion, in relation to
Mary, whom they envisaged especially in her excellences and her sovereignty. Not that their heart was not
filled with love of our Lord and His holy Mother;
the divine fire consuming their souls shone forth
in all their words; but love is not the object on which their regard was fixed by preference,
nor did their devotion betray itself by
acts or sudden outbursts of love. The Venerable Fr.
Eudes, on the contrary, united
love to respect and veneration in his cult, making the love predominate. 174
Thirdly, there is the “divine Heart” of Jesus
existing from all eternity in the bosom of His Adorable Father, which
is but one Heart and one love with the love and Heart of His Father, and which, with the Heart and love of His
Father, is the source of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when He gave us His Heart, He also gave us the Heart of His Father and of
His Adorable Spirit. 175
If the “spiritual Heart” of Jesus represents His created love emanating
from the soul and spirit of Christ, the “divine Heart” represents His uncreated, eternal divine love. Whereas
the “divine Heart” of Mary,
as we have pointed out above, 176
is an ens rationis and emphasizes her union with God which far exceeds that of any
other creature, the “divine Heart” of Jesus is Ens
in se; It
is divinity.
It should be further noted that these “three Hearts of Christ which
are but One Heart,” which I prefer to refer to as three dimensions of the Heart of Jesus, correspond with precision
to the Church’s defined understanding of the Incarnate Word.
They
point in turn to His body, to his human interior [soul and spirit 177] and to His divinity. Following
the very same
schematization, the Venerable Pope Pius XII spoke of the threefold love of Christ in his encyclical Haurietis Aquas:
The Heart of the Incarnate Word is deservedly and rightly considered
the chief sign and symbol of that threefold love with which the divine Redeemer unceasingly loves His
eternal Father and all mankind.
It is a symbol of that divine love which He shares with the Father and the Holy
Spirit,
but which He, the Word made flesh, alone manifests
through a weak perishable body, since “in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”
It is, besides, the symbol of that burning love which, infused into His soul,
enriches the human will of Christ and enlightens and governs its acts by the most perfect knowledge derived both
from the beatific vision and that which is directly
infused.
And finally – and this is a more natural and direct way – it is the symbol also
of sensible love, since the body of
Jesus Christ, formed by the Holy Spirit, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, possess full powers of feelings and perception. 178
D. Conclusions
While the “divine Heart” of Jesus could never depend on Mary except
in the sense of choosing to be dependent upon her (the kenosis
of the Incarnation), His “corporeal” Heart was dependent upon her in the
sense that “she cooperated with the Blessed Trinity to form the human Heart of Jesus.” 179 In a text reminiscent of St. Francis de Sales,
180 St. John Eudes
speaks of the interdependence of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the source of the life of Mary, the
Mother of God. When that admirable Mother was carrying her Beloved Son in her blessed womb, her virginal Heart was the source of the natural bodily life of her divine
Child, but the Heart of that adorable Child was, at the same time, the source of the spiritual and supernatural
life of His most worthy Mother. Hence the divine
Heart of the only Son of Mary was the source of all the pious thoughts and feelings of His Blessed Mother, of all
the sacred words she spoke, of all the good deeds she performed,
of all the virtues she practiced, and of all the pains and sorrows she suffered
in order to cooperate with her Beloved Son in the work of our Salvation. 181
If she is the source of his “corporeal Heart,” He is the source
of her “spiritual Heart.” Indeed in the mind of Eudes, the real union between the Hearts of the Mother and the
Son is a moral union, one of will and disposition, hence it is a union of their “spiritual
Hearts” whereas since the union of the Heart of Jesus with the
Father is by essence, it is clear that it is of the “divine Heart” which he speaks.
Let us also offer Him in thanksgiving the Heart of His Eternal
Father, the Heart of His holy Mother, the hearts of all the angels and saints and of all men; they are ours to give as though
they belonged to us. St. Paul assures us that with the gift of His Son the Eternal Father has given us all things:
Omnia cum ipso nobis donavit [Rom.
8:32], and that all things are ours: omnia vestra sunt [I Cor. 3:22]. But above all let us offer Him His own Heart; He has given it to us; therefore
it is ours and is the most acceptable offering we could make to Him. It
is His own Heart and at the same time the Heart of His Eternal Father,
one by unity of essence. It is also the heart of His
most holy Mother, whose Heart is one with His by unity of will and affection.
182
We saw that in the thought of St. Francis de Sales the Hearts of
Jesus and Mary are primarily identified with the “superior portion of the soul” [psyche]
and its “extremity and summit” [pneuma]. 183 While Eudes is even more systematic
and comprehensive in his treatment, he makes essentially the same identification. He does treat of the “corporeal
Heart” of Jesus as well as of Mary although, as Fr. Lebrun points out,
“in the devotion to the Heart of Mary, the heart of
flesh
does not occupy so prominent a position as it does in devotion to the Heart of Jesus.” 184 As we are well aware, Eudes also treats of the “divine
Heart” of Jesus as well as of Mary. In Jesus this is His divinity
itself,
uncreated love. In Mary, this is her total relativity
to God, her
complete orientation to Him, which, because of her Immaculate Conception,
is filled with the life of God Himself in a way unparalleled
in any other human creature. Both Pourrat and Gautier lament that the “divine Heart” of Jesus is “one of the elements
of the Eudist cult that is most neglected, at least under this form.” 185
There can be no doubt, however, that the thrust of Eudes’
teaching centers on the “spiritual Hearts” of both Jesus and Mary.
We have already pointed out that their primary link
to each other is at this point of psyche and pneuma. What
Fr. Pourrat
says about the “spiritual Heart” of Jesus applies also, mutatis
mutandis, to Mary.
The “spiritual heart”
is, without a doubt, the principal element in his
devotion, and this element is Bérullian. Here,
the heart is a symbol. It typifies the
very Person
of Christ and also His interior, “the higher part of His soul,
with all the natural and supernatural perfections
which are contained in it, such as its natural faculties, the memory, the understanding, and the will, the plenitude of grace and
of virtue with which it was crowned, and the wonderful life of which it is the principle.” Although the heart typifies the summing-up of the
dispositions of Christ, it is, above all, the symbol of love, the love of
Jesus for His divine Father, for His most holy Mother, and, above all – as St. Margaret
Mary teaches – His love for us. 186
A final comment. The Eudist devotion to the Sacred Heart
of Jesus is at the same time more comprehensive and
more complicated than that of Margaret Mary, and it could not win, in
a few years, the
world-wide popularity enjoyed by the cult of Paray. The masses,
it has been said, are instinctively attracted
to the most simple devotions and, as at Paray
“preference in the devotion to the Heart of the God-Man
is given to what is human,” so it is not surprising that the faithful as a whole are drawn by the Paray form of
the devotion.
187
This is not to pit St.
John Eudes against St. Margaret Mary.
Both have their place in God’s providential design. Eudes spent years tilling the soil. After the events of Paray-le-Monial
he was largely forgotten, yet his original work,
more than anyone else’s shows the theological
depth and soundness of the cultus of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The same can be said of his devotion
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary vis-à-vis Rue du Bac, Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, Blangy, Pellevoisin, Beauraing and especially Fatima. He laid the theological
groundwork. He contradicts none of these apparitions approved by the Church. Virtually every one of their
emphases can be found in his writings. He provides the wider theological context for understanding them all. He
was their precursor. Even if one presents the private revelations of Berthe Petit on the union of the Hearts of
Jesus and Mary, we can say that Eudes anticipates them.
Even more truly than the venerable founder of St.
Sulpice said it of him can we say that he was “la rareté de son siècle” and add “et de notre”. 188
Version: 12th February 2014
Endnotes
90. Latin text in Lebrun Sp
61 [English
text
in SH 179].
96. Lebrun Sp 262, 260; cf. also Bremond
546.
98.
Arragain Ec 105; cf. also F. Lebesconte, “Vie et Royaume de Jésus: Synthèse Doctrinale de l’École Française,” Spiritualité de l’Éco1e Française et Saint Jean Eudes (Québec, 1957)
126-41.
100. Lebrun Sp 60; Arragain Ev 49.
101. Milcent 156-57, 160, 222,
263; Arragain
Ev 47-48.
107. Kingdom 271 [OCE 1:337-138 (emphasis mine).
109. Kingdom 300 [OCE I:503].
110. On Eudes as a disciple
of Olier, cf.
Lebrun Sp 72, note 1.
111.
Interestingly Eudes had commented on de Condren’s prayer, Veni,
Domine Jesu in Kingdom 208-210,
[OCE I:438-440,] but he must certainly have known it in the later version of Olier as O Jesu vivens in Maria as well.
114.
Hérambourg 85-86. (emphasis mine).
115.
Kingdom 204; [OCE 1:432-433]
(emphasis mine).
116. Kingdom 272 [OCE I:338] (emphasis mine).
117.
Cf. AH
333-352. [OCE XI:251-317]. The first celebration
of the liturgy composed by the saint
took place on 8 February 1648 at Autun; cf. Milcent 221-224.
118.
He began this magnum opus sometime around 1660 and finished it three weeks before he died in 1680; cf. Milcent 417-419.
119. This term “conjoint”
is used to describe the beginnings of this cultus by Fr. Charles Lebrun
in OCE VI:xciv-xcviii and by Lebrun Sp 75 and by Fr. Jacques Arragain in Arragain Ev 60.
120.
AH 333 [OCE XI:255, 312 (emphasis mine). An
English translation is also provided there; another
is given in Angelico A. Koller, S.C.J., Reparation to the Sacred Heart: Theology of Consolation (Hales Corners, WI: The Priests of the Sacred Heart, 1971) 84. Neither translation seems totally satisfactory.
121.
AH 337 (English translation provided) OCE XI:317.
122. AH 340. (English
translation provided) OCE XI:256.
123. AH 8, 10 [OCE VI:133-34, 136];
cf. also
Le Doré 16-48.
125. AH 8-10 [OCE VI:133-136]; cf. also Le Doré 79-101.
127. AH 11, 24-28 [OCE
VI:97-116.] At various times Eudes
calls both Jesus and the Holy Spirit the “divine
Heart” of Mary. Cf. Le Doré
205-274; AH 24, note 1.
128. Cf. Lebrun Dev 313; AH 24, note
1.
130.
AH 53 [OCE
VI:189] (emphasis mine).
131. Meds 240-241 [OCE VIII:129-130] (emphasis mine).
132. ST II-II, q. 82, art. 2, ad 3.
133. Text in Latin
and English given in SH173-174; text
in Latin and French given in Lebrun CJ 21-23.
136. Cognet 99; Williams 106.
138. Arragain Ev 62 (my trans.).
139. SH 173 [OCE VIII:491-492].
141. Daniel Sargent, Their Hearts be Praised: The Life of Saint John Eudes (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1949)
226-229, 234.
143. Letters 226-228 [OCE X:459-462] (emphasis mine).
144. SH 147 [OCE XII:56].
145. SH 161 [OCE XII:63].
146. SH 166 [OCE XII:70].
149. AH 203 [OCE VII:347-348].
150. Cf. above 12-13; also Lebrun Dev
35-36.
151. Kingdom 28 [OCE I:197].
152. Cf. AH 24, 172, 183, 319; SH 29, 54, 110 [OCE VI:99-102; VII:141-143, 154; VIII:88, 251, 279-280, 332].
153. Letters 227 {OCE X:461].
154.
OCE VI:99
(my trans.).
This text is only summarized, not given verbatim in AH 25.
155. O’Carroll 202; Claude
Guillocheau, S.J., “Le Cœur dans l’Œuvre de Saint
Jean Eudes,” Revue
d’Ascétique et de Mystique 37 (1961) 68, 185.
159. Letters 314 [OCE XII:135].
160. Bremond 549-552. On this very matter Bremond wrote to Fr. Charles Lebrun
on 31 March 1919 and confessed about his treatment of Eudes: “Perhaps I ‘Bérullise’
him too much.”
161. Arragain Ev 64; Arragain Ec 110.
162. Letters 227 [OCE
X:46-461] (emphasis mine).
163. Clément
Guillon, C.J.M., En Tout
1a Vo1onte de Dieu: Saint Jean Eudes
à travers Ses Lettres (Paris: Les
Éditions du Cerf, 1981) 123.
165. AH 108-109 [OCE VIII:330].
167. For the sake of
consistency with my earlier treatment, I
am reversing Eudes’ order of exposition
of these “Three Hearts of Jesus which
are but One Heart.” This is also the
order he follows in his exposition on the Heart of Jesus in AH 10 [OCE VI:37].
168. SH 128 [OCE VIII:346]; cf. Le Doré:
49-78.
170. Milcent 449 (my trans.).
171. SH 127-128 [OCE VIII: 345-346];
cf. Le
Doré 103-117.
172. AH 8-9 [OCE VI:34-35].
173. SH 85 [OCE VIII:309];
cf. Milcent 451.
174. D. Boulay, Vie du vénérable Jean Eudes I
(Paris, 1905) 209-210 as quoted in Bremond 548.
175.
SH 126 [OCE VIII:344-345]; cf. Le Doré 118-129.
177. Cf. ST III, q. 6, art. 1 &
2.
178.
HA #54-57
[D-S #3924]. Cf. Carlo Colombo, “I1 Triplice Amore di Cristo e 1a Psico1ogia di Nostro Signore,” A. Bea, S.J. et H. Rahner, S.J.,
eds., (Cor
Jesu: Commentationes in Litteras Encyc1icas Pii XII “Haurietis Aquas”
I: Pars Theologica (Rome: Herder,
1959) 309-345; Charles Boyer, S.J., “Le Triple Amour du Christ pour les Hommes dans
les Écrits de Saint Augustin,” Cor
Jesu 1:571-594; Luigi Mario Cardinal Ciappi, O.P., The Heart of Christ the Centre of the Mystery of Salvation
(Rome: C.d.C. Publishers,
1983) 185-198.
179. SH 109 [OCE VIII:331].
181. SH 123-124 [OCE VIII:343]
(emphasis mine).
182. SH 89 [OCE VIII:312] (emphasis mine except for Latin quote).
184. Lebrun Sp 81; Lebrun
Dev 287.
185. Gautier 335; cf.
Pourrat 400.
186.
Pourrat 400. He is quoting from Lebrun CJ 57-64.
188. Olier called him
“the marvel of his century.” I add “and of ours.” The late Fr. Joaquín Maria Alonso, C.M.F. substantiates
this contention in his article on the Immaculate Heart in Stefano De Fiores, S.M.M. e Salvatore Meo, O. S.M., eds. Nuovo
Dizionario di Mariologia (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 1985) 447-448.
Copyright ©; Msgr Arthur Calkins 2014
Version 22nd February 2014
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