Life
Eymard was born 4 February 1811 at La Mure, Isère, France. His first attempt as a seminarian ended when he departed because of poor health. Nevertheless, on 20 July 1834, he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Grenoble. In 1839, he joined the Marist Fathers, where he worked as a well-respected spiritual advisor with seminarians and priests. He worked with the Third Order of Mary and other lay organizations promoting devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the Eucharist, particularly in the Forty Hours. He rose to the position of Provincial of the Society at Lyon in 1845. In 1856, due to disputes with the Marists, Eymard left them and founded the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament and, in 1858, together with Marguerite Guillot founded the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament, a contemplative congregation for women.
The Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament began working with children in Paris to prepare them to receive their First Communion. It also reached out to non-practicing Catholics, inviting them to repent and begin receiving Communion again. Eymard was a tireless proponent of frequent Holy Communion, an idea given more authoritative backing by Pope Pius X in 1905.
Eymard overcame a number of difficulties to reach his goals, including poverty in his family and in his newly founded community, his father's initial opposition to his only son’s desire to be a priest, years of serious illness and pain, a Jansenistic striving for inner perfection and the difficulties of getting diocesan and later papal approval for his new religious community. Eymard was a contemporary and a friend of other saints including Peter Chanel, John Vianney and Marcellin Champagnat.
The French sculptor Auguste Rodin received counsel from Eymard when Rodin entered the Congregation as a lay brother in 1862, having given up art after the death of his sister. Eymard recognized Rodin's talent and advised him to return to his vocation. Rodin later produced a bust of Eymard.
Eymard died on 1 August 1868. He was declared venerable in 1908, beatified in 1925, and canonized by Pope John XXIII on 9 December 1962. His feast day is celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church on 2 August. He was named Apostle of the Eucharist.
Read more about this topic: Peter Julian Eymard
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannnot endure it.... Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“My love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)