4 February: Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus Grialou

February 4
BLESSED MARIE-EUGENE OF THE CHILD JESUS GRIALOU
Priest

Optional Memorial

Henri Grialou was born in Aubin, in Aveyron (France), on December 2, 1894. After his priestly ordination on February 4, 1922, he was captivated by the doctrine of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and St. John of the Cross and decided to join the Discalced Carmelites. After serving as superior in France, in 1937 he was elected to serve as a General Definitor of the Order in Rome. In 1948, he was appointed Apostolic Visitor of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in France and religious assistant to their federations. From 1955 he was able to devote himself full-time to the secular institute Notre Dame de Vie, which he started in 1932. He died in Venasque on March 27th, 1967, the feast day of the institute. He was beatified in 2016 by Pope Francis.

From the common of pastors or of holy men (religious)

Office of Readings

Second Reading
I Am A Daughter of the Church, Fides, Notre Dame Indiana 1955, 665-666

From the writings of Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus, priest

The saint in the whole Christ

It is especially in their common work that the Holy Spirit glorifies the instruments He has chosen. The Holy Spirit makes Himself lowly with saints in order to glorify them. Inspirer of the work by His light, efficacious agent by His omnipotence, yet He hides Himself under the human traits of the apostle. Anyone wanting to analyze the character of the works could, in fact, find the raison d’être of each one of them in the personality of the saint. The manifold works and institutions in which the Spirit has put His leaven of immortality and in which the Church takes just pride, show forth admirably the gifts, the desires, the diverse genius of their founder. The Holy Spirit appears in this world under a thousand human faces that reflect the power and grace of His hidden presence. The Spirit never repeats Himself in the exterior forms He chooses. Is this not the reason why Saint John of the Cross asks us never to take a saint for our model? This would be to expose oneself to failure in suppleness, in fidelity to the movement of the Spirit, who manifests His power and perfection as Spirit in the variety of His works and the perfection of His incarnation in each one of His instruments.

The delicate charms of this loving collaboration of God and the soul, these playings of the love that unites them, in turn, brilliant and hidden, all these splendors of lowliness and of power are only beauties of here below, a reflection that reaches us from the beauty of the work the Holy Spirit is building. This work is the Spouse who comes up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her Beloved; this is the masterpiece of Divine Mercy, the whole Christ in whom God has brought together and orientated all things. For the beauty of the Church of God, Jesus gave His blood; and the Spirit continues to immolate His victims after filling them with the marvelous gifts of His grace. We are all dedicated to the consummation of this work. Our gaze must rest on it lovingly and there remain fixed.

The saint is such only because he has entered by transforming union in the whole Christ. Identified with Christ Jesus, he continues Christ’s priestly prayer for union. With the Spirit of Love, he groans within himself, “waiting for the adoption as sons”; and under Love’s captivation, works to consummate in unity all those whom God has “predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son.”

Responsory

R/. We have the first fruits of the Spirit; * as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
V/. For in this hope we were saved. * As we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Canticle of Zechariah

Ant. What you say of me does not come from yourselves; it is the Spirit of my Father speaking in you.

Prayer

God, rich in mercy,
you gave Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus
the grace and light to guide your people
along the paths of contemplative prayer
and missionary witness toward the fullness of Christ.
Grant us through his intercession
to grow in submission to the Holy Spirit
and to work, in faith, for the coming of your Kingdom.

Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Canticle of Mary

Ant. This is a faithful and wise steward: the Lord entrusted the care of his household to him, so that he might give them their portion of food at the proper season.

Blessed Marie-Eugene making a visitation
Image credit: Discalced Carmelites

This is a provisional English translation of the proper office for the optional memorial of Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus Grialou, published by the Secular Institute Notre Dame de Vie pursuant to the Decree of the Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (Prot. N. 638/16) dated 14 January 2019, its effective date. This translation was submitted to the General Secretary for Information of the Discalced Carmelite Order.

#BlessedMarieEugeneOfTheChildJesus #HenriGrialou #Liturgy #NotreDameDeVie #optionalMemorial #priest

4 February: Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus Grialou

February 4
BLESSED MARIE-EUGENE OF THE CHILD JESUS GRIALOU
Priest

Optional Memorial

Henri Grialou was born in Aubin, in Aveyron (France), on December 2, 1894. After his priestly ordination on February 4, 1922, he was captivated by the doctrine of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and St. John of the Cross and decided to join the Discalced Carmelites. After serving as superior in France, in 1937 he was elected to serve as a General Definitor of the Order in Rome. In 1948, he was appointed Apostolic Visitor of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in France and religious assistant to their federations. From 1955 he was able to devote himself full-time to the secular institute Notre Dame de Vie, which he started in 1932. He died in Venasque on March 27th, 1967, the feast day of the institute. He was beatified in 2016 by Pope Francis.

From the common of pastors or of holy men (religious)

Office of Readings

Second Reading
I Am A Daughter of the Church, Fides, Notre Dame Indiana 1955, 665-666

From the writings of Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus, priest

The saint in the whole Christ

It is especially in their common work that the Holy Spirit glorifies the instruments He has chosen. The Holy Spirit makes Himself lowly with saints in order to glorify them. Inspirer of the work by His light, efficacious agent by His omnipotence, yet He hides Himself under the human traits of the apostle. Anyone wanting to analyze the character of the works could, in fact, find the raison d’être of each one of them in the personality of the saint. The manifold works and institutions in which the Spirit has put His leaven of immortality and in which the Church takes just pride, show forth admirably the gifts, the desires, the diverse genius of their founder. The Holy Spirit appears in this world under a thousand human faces that reflect the power and grace of His hidden presence. The Spirit never repeats Himself in the exterior forms He chooses. Is this not the reason why Saint John of the Cross asks us never to take a saint for our model? This would be to expose oneself to failure in suppleness, in fidelity to the movement of the Spirit, who manifests His power and perfection as Spirit in the variety of His works and the perfection of His incarnation in each one of His instruments.

The delicate charms of this loving collaboration of God and the soul, these playings of the love that unites them, in turn, brilliant and hidden, all these splendors of lowliness and of power are only beauties of here below, a reflection that reaches us from the beauty of the work the Holy Spirit is building. This work is the Spouse who comes up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her Beloved; this is the masterpiece of Divine Mercy, the whole Christ in whom God has brought together and orientated all things. For the beauty of the Church of God, Jesus gave His blood; and the Spirit continues to immolate His victims after filling them with the marvelous gifts of His grace. We are all dedicated to the consummation of this work. Our gaze must rest on it lovingly and there remain fixed.

The saint is such only because he has entered by transforming union in the whole Christ. Identified with Christ Jesus, he continues Christ’s priestly prayer for union. With the Spirit of Love, he groans within himself, “waiting for the adoption as sons”; and under Love’s captivation, works to consummate in unity all those whom God has “predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son.”

Responsory

R/. We have the first fruits of the Spirit; * as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
V/. For in this hope we were saved. * As we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Canticle of Zechariah

Ant. What you say of me does not come from yourselves; it is the Spirit of my Father speaking in you.

Prayer

God, rich in mercy,
you gave Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus
the grace and light to guide your people
along the paths of contemplative prayer
and missionary witness toward the fullness of Christ.
Grant us through his intercession
to grow in submission to the Holy Spirit
and to work, in faith, for the coming of your Kingdom.

Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Canticle of Mary

Ant. This is a faithful and wise steward: the Lord entrusted the care of his household to him, so that he might give them their portion of food at the proper season.

Blessed Marie-Eugene making a visitation
Image credit: Discalced Carmelites

This is a provisional English translation of the proper office for the optional memorial of Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus Grialou, published by the Secular Institute Notre Dame de Vie pursuant to the Decree of the Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (Prot. N. 638/16) dated 14 January 2019, its effective date. This translation was submitted to the General Secretary for Information of the Discalced Carmelite Order.

#BlessedMarieEugeneOfTheChildJesus #HenriGrialou #Liturgy #NotreDameDeVie #optionalMemorial #priest

Quote of the day, 16 January: Blessed Marie-Eugène

We perceive the attitude of the Blessed Virgin: an attitude of silence, an attitude of adoration before the mystery unfolding within her. From this mystery arise lights within her faculties, illuminating her entire soul. Surely, it is a gentle dawn, the dawn of which our Father, St. John of the Cross, speaks. What intimacy with the Word, who dwells in her womb and takes on human nature from the Virgin’s flesh under the action of the Holy Spirit!

Our Father, St. John of the Cross, speaks in his Living Flame of Love about the Word, who, though seemingly asleep in the soul, sometimes awakens. This is what the Virgin Mary experiences in the depths of her being under the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, under the power of the Most High. She lives profoundly this mystery—a mystery of light and darkness, a mystery that remains ever hidden.

We too must adore this incarnate Word, who is soon to be revealed and will become our brother. Let us adore this humanity of Christ, who is being formed in the Virgin’s womb and about to appear. Yes, we can adore—not the Virgin Mary herself, of course, but the Word who dwells within her.

In giving birth to the incarnate Word, Mary, in a certain sense, also gives birth to the Church, for the Church is nothing other than the fullness of Christ. During these days, let us also turn our gaze to St. Joseph. We can imagine the affectionate reverence with which he gazes on the Virgin Mary. We can also perceive his faith and his hope in the great things about to unfold.

The prophets contemplated this mystery from afar; Joseph contemplates it up close. Let us behold St. Joseph—the faith shining in his eyes, the hope filling his soul and faculties, all directed toward these imminent fulfillments. Let us also consider the profound and affectionate respect with which he gazes on the Virgin Mary. During these days, let us ask him to be our master of prayer, to lead, guide, and inspire us, instilling in our prayer the faith required to contemplate this doubly hidden mystery: hidden now, and hidden in the hearts of all the souls Christ came to save.

At the same time, may he place within us the hope of renewal and rebirth—for our souls and for the Church—and the love that orders everything: love not only for the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph but also for the incarnate Word, the Child Jesus who is about to appear.

Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus

Homily, 20 December 1964 (excerpt)

Translation from the French text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.

Featured image: The Holy Family is an oil on canvas painting by American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) created around 1910. It comes from the collections of the Muskegon Museum of Art in Michigan. Image credit: Muskegon Art Museum / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

#BlessedMarieEugeneOfTheChildJesus #HenriGrialou #IncarnateWord #Jesus #mystery #silence #StJoseph #VirginMary

Quote of the day, 21 November: Blessed Marie-Eugène

Before the Annunciation, Mary was the daughter of God in prayer. Certainly, she didn’t yet know about her divine motherhood. She was aware of her grace, the treasure she possessed, the abundance of this grace; yet she remained unaware of herself in the sense that she didn’t recognize the superiority of this grace over ordinary and common grace.

The Virgin was concerned only with uniting herself to God. It was this self-forgetfulness, this purity, that allowed God to pour Himself into her. She continually sought Him, going to find Him in the Temple, and orienting herself toward Him like a child to her Father.

Let us not think that simplicity implies limited horizons. From a human perspective, Mary surely does not seek satisfaction for her faculties; no, she turns solely toward God, practicing in her external actions—required by this simple orientation—the virtue of obedience, like a child who does what is asked without seeking anything beyond it, without even becoming attached to the work itself.

We, on the other hand, are restless in our faculties; Mary is not. She finds this peace in faith. Everything else would be an unnecessary distraction, diverting her from her contact with God. For her, this contact is entirely simple, without ecstasies or raptures, for her faculties are flexible enough to receive and endure—without leaving a trace in her senses—the brilliance and anointing of the Divinity present within her.

What matters, in fact, is not strength but flexibility. The strong are inevitably broken; the flexible bend and endure. In the Virgin, simplicity and flexibility reach perfection. Nothing externalizes itself in her. “She is so simple that I fear she will not be recognized,” they said about Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. The same can be said of the Virgin at that moment.

Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus

La Vierge Marie toute Mère (The Virgin Mary, All Mother)
Présence Maternelle: La prière de Marie (Maternal presence, Mary’s prayer)

de l’Enfant-Jésus, M 2019, La Vierge Marie Toute Mère, edited by Institut Notre-Dame de Vie, Éditions du Carmel, Toulouse.

Featured Image: This detail from The Annunciation by the Italian artist Orazio Lomi Gentileschi (1563–1639) is an oil on canvas painting executed in 1623 for Charles Emmanuel I, the Duke of Savoy. It is one of the masterpieces found in the collections of the Musei Reali di Torino. Image credit: Adobe Stock (stock photo)

#Annunciation #BlessedMarieEugeneOfTheChildJesus #BlessedVirginMary #HenriGrialou #prayer #unionWithGod