Of the importance to remember us of our baptism.
A recent call for the attention of Pope François makes remind to the Eudists of the importance of the baptism. In August, 2017, he asserted:
I would like to ask you: how much of you remember the date of their baptism? Do not answer because some people would be ashamed! Think of it and if you do not remember it, today you have a duty to make by returning home: visits your mother, your father, your aunt, your uncle, your grandmother, your grandfather and ask them: what is the date of my baptism? And never forget it. [1].
Undoubtedly, we can wonder: what is the importance to remember the date of its baptism? The Pope continues:
The commitment of today is to learn or to remember the date of its baptism, which is the date of the revival, it is the date of the light, it is the date in which - if you allow me we were contaminated by Christ in the baptismal fountain. There we died in the death. We were twice born: the first one in the natural life, the second thanks to the meeting with Christ to the baptismal spring. There we died in the death to live as son of God in this world " [2].
Sure that readers who were in touch with Saint Jean Eudes's works can assert: it seems that saint Jean Eudes is speaking through Pope François! And how not think of it while there are assertions so similar in the thought of the saint of the 17th century. Indeed, for saint Jean Eudes, thanks to the baptism, we begin to live for real..
begun with Baptism to live on the real life, which is the one that we have in Jesus Christ, and it divine sacrament being the origin of all our happiness, it is certain that, if we had had the use of reason, when we were baptized, we should have returned to God some very particular duties on this subject. But, because we were not capable of it, it is very reasonable to take every year some leisure, in the time in which we were baptized, either at some other time, to occupy us and maintain with God in the following exercises " (O.C. I, 505).
Saint Jean Eudes proposes then a series of exercises which we have to do for Jesus Christ because of our holy baptism: a rise to Jesus Our Lord, a pondering over 4 big mysteries (eternal birth, temporal birth, death and grave and résurection) as prototypes and copies of our Baptism, a solemn profession of the Christ in his holy baptism, renovation of the promises bapismales, homages in three peronnes divine because of our baptism, a rise in it Very Holy Trinity and a rosary to the Very Holy Trinity. Of what precedes we deduct the importance of the baptism in saint Jean Eudes's works, to the point that in 1654 it published an entire work: Contract of the man with God by the holy baptism (O.C. II), in whom we discover that the Baptism is a contract of alliance which gives the right and duties between Christians and God.
We compromise to live sincerely our baptism and to raise constantly our Spirit to her very Holy Trinity so that she comes to live and to reign in the depths of our heart:
Holy and adorable trinity, I adore you in your divine gasoline and in your three eternal People; I adore you as having been present in my Baptism, I adore all the intentions which you had on me there. I apologize to you of the obstacle that I brought to their fulfillment, and in satisfaction I offer you all the life, the actions and the sufferings of my Lord Jesus Christ and of his very saint Mother. I give myself to you, o divine Trinity, for the fulfillment of these same intentions. O eternal Father, o Only son of God, o holy Spirit of the Father and the Son, come in me, come in my heart and in my soul, separate me from all which is not you, pull me to you, live and reign inside I, annihilate all there which displeases you, and do that all the uses of my being and my life are totally dedicated to your pure glory (O.C. I, 518).
[1] Francisco, Audiencia General, Roma: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2017. Disponible en el sitio web.
[2] Francisco, Audiencia General, ibid.