Tourailles and Saint John Eudes' Birth
Jean Eudes was born on November 14th, 1601 after three years of marriage of Isaac Eudes and Marthe Corbin. P. Álvaro Torres assures that his " arrival was considered by them, and then by saint John Eudes, as a special favor of God and the fruit of Marie's maternal intercession " [1]. The future priest was born and he received the sacraments of the baptism and the eucharist in the church of his home town of Laughed, in the diocese of Sées, which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. He tells himself his arrival to world in the following way:
My father and my mother have been three years since the beginning of their marriage, without being able to have children, by an evil spell which had been thrown to them, which put it hindrance, they made wish, in honor of the happy Virgin, go to Notre-Dame of Recouvrance, which is a place of worship in the same Virgin, in a chapel, which is in the parish of Tourailles, in the diocese of Séez; in continuation of which my mother having become pregnant, made a pilgrimage with my father in said chapel, where they offered me and gave me to Our Lord and to Notre-Dame.. (O.C. XII, 103-104).
Saint Jean Eudes reviews his life from merciful love which God had for him and he considers that in all the good or bad events there is to discover God's will and to make of our life a constant prayer for his glory. Thus he uses this "evil spell" to assure Jesus and Mary that it is totally up to them:
Tuus sum ego, o Domine Jesu; tuus sum ego, o Domina Maria. Accipite et possidete me totum,ut totus impendar cum Jesu, et Maria, et omnibus Sanctis, in laudem et gloriam aeternamsanctissima Trinitatis. Amen, amen, fiat, fiat. Sit nomen Domini benedictum, qui habitare facitsterilem in domo, matrem filiorum laetantem. (O.C. XII, 104).
Tourailles reminds the big importance of the discovery of divine will today: in front of the difficulties which appear to conceive Jean Eudes and his brothers, his parents did not opt for the revolt against God or to make their own will and leave God aside; they made will of the Heavenly Father. This will is not a submission but an experience of love::
I observe the verb "making". He does not ask me to submit myself or to resign myself to God's will but to make it; that is to give myself a reality in my life by a concrete activity. Make that it exists in me. That I give an existence in my life to something that he asks for to me not only to me but to the whole world. I consider known this is why my deep relation with the Lord holds: if I do not assume the way for which he asks me, it does not re-know me as his this knowledge entraine experience and love. [2]
The capacity to discover in every event God's will brings to the conclusion that our life is holy because our actions are led in a christian way. That we did them " saintly and divinely, and as Jesus Christ made his, that is in Jesus Christ and for Jesus Christ; that is in mind of Jesus Christ and in his holy and divine capacities " (O.C. I, 441).
Finally, Jean Eudes, conscious that its birth was registered in the divine plan, reads its life in the light of this plan and in the light of the worship of the Embodied Verb. It was one of the memebers of Madam Acarie's circle, before Cardinal Pierre of Bérulle, who then based the French School of spirituality. Thus we meet beautiful expressions and conclusions as:
if the opinion of the doctors is real, which hold that the soul is inborn in the body of the male children the fortieth day according to their design, my soul was created by God and united with my body, the 25th of March, day in which the Son of God was embodied, and the happy Virgin was made Mother of God. Because I was born the 14th of November; and consequently, having been designed nine months before, the 14th of February was the day of my design. Yet, for this day until the twenty-fifth of March, exactly forty days ago. (O.C. XII, 104).
That the example of Jean Eudes which sees all its life according to God's merciful love, helps us today to discover the importance to make divine will, to approach us God with a sincere heart e grateful for all the favors which he made us throughout our life.
[1] Álvaro Torres Fajardo, "Introducción", en Obras Escogidas. Bogotá: Centro Carismático Minuto de Dios, 1990, 7.
