Today August 2

Today is the feast of St. Peter Julian Eymard (1811 - 1868). This man, this "saint of the Eucharist," had a rocky relationship with his dad, who was opposed to his vocation and was not above using guilt to discourage him, notably after the death of his mother (which he only heard about too late to make her funeral, even though he rushed home from the mental hospital where he worked). It actually wasn't until later -- after a dynamic Oblates of Mary preacher convinced his father that he let him go.

Peter, whom even in life was declared to be "a great saint" by another saint, St. John Vianney, who met him and admired him, was very much his own man. He was a middle-class guy, his dad was in trade (oil and knives, actually), and he received only a middle-class education. He was expected to go into trade himself, but he knew he had a vocation to the priesthood. He tried to teach himself Latin, but that never works as well as with a teacher. So he apprenticed himself to a priest who promised to teach him, but put him to work with the mentally ill instead. While it was both a danger and a disappointment to him, I like to think that it was a tremendous growth experience for him and is somewhat responsible for his remarkably patient and kind attitude later in life, despite the almost Jansenistic and certainly severe and puritanical spirit in which folks received their religious training in those days.

He advocated frequent Communion (way ahead of his time) -- one could say Communion was the center of his life: he started orders based on adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, for men, women, and laymen -- and he even counseled a young man to consider leaving the (priestly) order to continue with his art. "One should not enter our order as an escape but as a fulfillment," he said. That young man turned out to be the great sculptor Auguste Rodin.

He'd been a diocesan priest but asked to leave to join the Marists. After serving them for 17 years, he asked to leave them to start his own order. He had no money and no prospects, but he scratched up some "calico, which cost us 8 cents a yard, to cover the altar" -- the altar in the chapel was always beautifully decorated. Our Lord was in good hands. St. Peter was very happy and died in peace. Before he died, St. John Vianney told Marguerite Guillot (a female platonic friend of St. Peter's and with whom he'd founded the women's order, the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament), "When you see him, tell him for me all that friends tell each other when they meet, and that we shall all meet in heaven."

When his crumbling coffin was opened 9 years after his death, his body was found perfectly intact. He'd been dug up to take him from La Mure to Paris. Folks who'd known him in life recognized him, of course, but even people who'd only seen him from his picture recognized him. He'd never been embalmed, but there he was, with no trace of even an odor of decomposition. At a later exhumation, there was nothing left but bones. St. Peter Julian, pray for us.