Canonization of MOTHER marie eugenie

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Thoughts from mother Marie Eugenie

"I want to seek God and his Love, and to give myself generously in God’s service." [reflection]
“What is lacking to your sacrifice is lacking to your joy.” [reflection]
God had done so much for me that I wanted to do something in return. [reflection]
We are persons gifted with liberty and intelligence, and God expects us to try to solve the problems we encounter. [reflection]
Seek only God; want only God and his service; seek only the Kingdom in our relationships with people. [reflection]
Rest on only one thing: the infinite fidelity of Jesus Christ. [reflection]
I, too, want to bring my stone to the edifice of salvation and glory that humble architects are building; and if necessary, I want to mingle my drop of blood with theirs. [reflection]
What draws down the grace of God is a life woven out of ordinary acts. It is work; physical work. It is the effort to do it well in the spirit of obedience. It is self-forgetfulness. [reflection]
Keep me, Lord, from occupying myself in planning and arranging everything that I have committed to your wisdom and love. Take my natural anxieties from me so that only one remains – that of doing each of my duties as it arises, according to the light and grace I receive at that moment. [reflection]
A person filled with love of God and of love of neighbor reflects something of heaven. [reflection]
Resolve to have as a goal not glory, fortune, or the things of this earth – but the good of souls, the glory of God, and the extension of the Reign of Jesus Christ. [reflection]
He sends each day a new thought to our mind, a more gentle feeling to our heart. Just the right thought and feeling that we need for the weakness of the present moment, because His treasures are inexhaustible and His graces as varied as our miseries each day. [reflection]
My favorite virtues are humility and obedience. [reflection]
There is another coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to which we are directly committed. We are engaged in various works of zeal. Is our main concern in our work with pupils that they pass their examinations, that they know more history or geography? No, our first concern is that the reign of Our Lord be established in them. . . .[reflection]

It is fitting that the faithful ask God to establish His Kingdom in this world even though it no longer seems to want Him. It is good to pray with ardor and to say, “Come with Your gentleness which converts, with your power which subdues. Come with the charm of your wisdom and beauty. [reflection]
Is [Advent] just a time of commemoration, of celebration of four thousand years during which the patriarchs and prophets longed ardently for the coming of the One who would bring the perfect law, the law of love? It is that certainly, but it is also very much more. When the Church places on our lips words of longing for Jesus Christ, this is not just to remind us of the desires of our ancestors, but it is also to arouse our own longing for the coming of Jesus Christ in us. [reflection]
We give up false pleasures in order to have the happiness that hope gives, the happiness of union with God. [reflection]
Grant me peace. Not the peace that eliminates conflict, but the peace of Jesus Christ, that comes from great humility and generosity. [reflection]
I cannot do things halfway and I want to live by faith; the rest doesn’t matter to me. [reflection]
The fruit of living in the Light is Love, but this is impossible if we do not practice justice and truth. [reflection]
Let us use our time to fill ourselves with truth and love, and then go out boldly to work for Jesus Christ. [reflection]
True love is generous. To love is to give of oneself. [reflection]
God leads us, and no wiser or more loving hand can guide our destiny. [reflection]
Go to the crib. When you kneel at His feet, listen to what He will say to each of you. [reflection]
If we have not already done it, let us begin our lives again now, leaving everything behind us: all the oppositions, the preoccupations, the distractions….all the things we have wasted our lives on. [reflection]
Like Mary, we should receive the Word of God and meditate on it. [reflection]
Let us draw near to Mary; she is our mother and a woman that we can imitate in so many ways. [reflection]
The beauty of Nature speaks to me of God and bids me to trust in God. [reflection]
The word of God that is proclaimed in the Gospel should make us seek Jesus Christ with great simplicity so we can love Him more each day. [reflection]
The Assumption is God’s affair. When I feel weak, I abandon myself to God in a way that I cannot express. [reflection]
Certain experiences [at the foundation of the Congregation] gave us concrete fellowship with the poor, made us understand their labor and their suffering. [reflection]
Let us love with the spirit that animated Jesus and Mary in their relationships – with affability, peace, kindness and service. [reflection]
To do good to others, virtue is more important than knowledge. [reflection]
The Truth is not just an object of our analysis; above all, it is the object of our love. [reflection]

Let us ask God to give us a big and magnanimous heart. And, at the same time, let us work for it. [reflection]
The great affair of becoming a saint is to cling to God and converse often with him. [reflection]
Our congregation had such weak, powerless beginnings that are out of all proportion to the good that it has already pleased Our Lord to pull from it, that one would hardly dare recount them if it wasn’t precisely in the absence of all strength and human wisdom that the works showed themselves to be purely of God. The spirit of faith, the love of Jesus Christ, the desire for his Kingdom, the trust in his his providence were the sole foundations of the Assumption. [reflection]
My gaze is completely fixed on Jesus Christ and the extension of his Kingdom. [reflection]
The peace that Our Lord brings us is not a peace without struggle, but a peace that costs something. It is not from nature but from grace, and it comes from searching for God before all else. [reflection]

I have discovered that Sister Marie Vincent is quite scandalized by our gaiety. I believe that our openness of character has made her doubt our sensibility, our joy has made her doubt our devotion, and our liberty of spirit has led her to doubt our religious spirit….My sisterly attitude toward my sisters and their liberty have astonished her. Living joyfully as we remain at the post that God gives us -- isn’t that a duty like any other? [reflection]

The greatest virtue that I notice in the saints is hope, one of the virtues that is most lacking in our own times. If there were more hope, there would be more saints. I am speaking about that hope which, supported by our knowledge of God and of ourselves, makes us count very much on God. [reflection]
When you cannot meditate, put yourself at the feet of the Lord like a very poor person before the One who is rich in all good things and who can give you all…There is no need for many words…God sees the heart, and this prayer of simple presence before God, should be the most intimate cry of the heart that asks Jesus Christ to give us his grace, his spirit, and by all of that to be present himself in us. Present yourself to Jesus Christ like someone chilled to the bone presents himself to the rays of the sun. [reflection]
I asked God for the gift of his Holy Spirit so as to have a large heart that would be active for the good of others.

When I pray, I feel the desire to let allow myself to be seized by the Spirit of God, to receive on this feast of Pentecost the gift of the Spirit’s breaking the bonds that bind me too tightly to myself. [reflection]

What is it that makes character and intelligence grow, what is it that strongly coordinates all learning, serves as goal, connection, reason? In a sense, it is a philosophy, and in another, even larger sense, it is a passion. But what passion should be given? A passion of faith and love, a passion for making the law of Christ a reality. [reflection]
What characterizes our spirit is a certain liberty of spirit that allows each one the character of her own grace.

If the girls of Bordeaux are butterflies, let them fly without cutting their wings, without wanting to gather up their thousand diverse nuances into one uniform color; we can only try to direct their flight. [reflection]
All that we have to do for the young is to teach them to be simple, frank, loyal, and generous, being as honorable as possible in all that is natural. On these foundations, grace then comes to produce marvelous effects, to establish something that is great, noble, and holy, something that moves toward eternity. [reflection]
It is God who directs everything, and never was there a more loving or wiser hand to direct our destinies. [reflection]
Seek to have a great spirit of faith…The spirit of faith is different from just faith itself. It is a habit of putting faith into action, of seeing everything by that faith, of speaking by its lights, of thinking only according to its truth.

Faith is one of the conditions of my state; I have no possible usefulness except in the order it makes. And it is folly for me to not be all that I am with the greatest possible fullness. [reflection]
Don’t ever think about the worries of the day gone by or to come during the night. I used to do that at the beginning, and I fell ill because of it. We are day laborers and the Master whom we serve does not demand that we think about tomorrow’s work. I prefer that you think about Robinson Crusoe instead of worrying and tormenting yourselves over what you have done or what you will do.” [reflection]
God, who created human nature and made it after his own image, loves this work of his hands. To attract his loving gaze, it is not necessary for the creature to be gifted with beauty, grandeur, intelligence and all that captivates the attention of men. He is deeply interested in the most humble, obscure or scorned existence; he follows all its movements. He is the friend who knows our joys and our pains and who understands all our emotions. [reflection]
Why not have a joyful detachment? Since God is Father, let us have confidence in him, let us go up to him who is infinite goodness. Adoration accepts everything from the hand of God; such an acceptance is neither sad nor sorry, but joyous and trusting. [reflection]
Adoration is the greatest, most ardent love that can be in the heart of the human person. In Mary, all was adoration. [reflection]
Among these doctrines, we must always choose those that give the most honor to God, the ones that say most insistently that God is good, that he is infinite goodness, infinite wisdom, that we must trust in him, expect everything from him, that he is Father and that there is not a single moment when we cannot throw ourselves into his arms. [reflection]
We must nourish ourselves on light in order to give light.

Gather up each word of the Gospel as a treasure. Let the Gospel live in us and let us live in it. [reflection]
In order that Jesus Christ live in us, it is necessary that he live in our heart, in our spirit…that he live in all our actions…in our memory, in our intelligence, in our imagination and in all of the faculties of our soul. Then, when he will be part of us, we will be other Christs. [reflection]
I believe that we are placed here below precisely to work for the coming of the Kingdom of our Heavenly Father in us and in others. I believe that each one of us has a mission on earth. . . . [reflection]
For me, it is painful to hear the earth called a place of exile; I regard it as a place of glory for God. [reflection]
There is only one stone and that is Jesus Christ. It is on Jesus Christ that we are built, that all is built. [reflection]
I knew that once I was decided, nothing could stop me from trying to try to imitate Jesus Christ in his mission of Savior. I wanted to give myself, not lend myself, to Jesus Christ.
[reflection]
I struggle against the Holy Spirit and wretched creature that I am, I even try to escape from him. God be praised because just up to now I have been vanquished in the fight! Eventually I finish by putting myself into the hands of God, saying that his will be done. When I say that sincerely an ineffable peace fills my soul, everything seems easy to me, and it seems absolutely certain that God is with me. The Spirit struggles with me like an eagle. [reflection]
I hold to my faith as to something that I discovered, and, if I had to renounce certain ideas that led me to it, I don't know if I would remain Catholic…Many things scandalize me and make me sad; for me, the Christians are not Christian enough. Is it that I am more ardent in my hard-won faith? [reflection]
I was really converted and I conceived the desire to give all of my energy – or rather, all of my weakness – to that Church which, to my eyes from that moment on, held the secret and the power of good here below…But the members of that Church – I didn’t know them at all. Throughout the time that I tried to gain (by the study of Christianity) the intellectual renewal that you had prompted in me, I was dreaming about them as apostles. Later, however, I found that they were only men.” [reflection]

My thoughts are a troubled sea that tire and weigh me down. So much instability, never any rest... And then all those dreams of the heart, those needs for affection that nothing ever satisfies….And the anguish, the moments of disgust and boredom with life… I am alone, alone in the world, in a bitter isolation of the soul. And what does it all really matter? These friends that love me and yet don't know me, who shake me by the hand without worrying at all about my heart…When I am with them, I feel that I am more alone than ever. [reflection]

With respect to devotions, you will be quite amazed at mine, Sisters, because it’s not so common. It is the “Being of God ,” and the astonishing thing is that I have been penetrated by that thought since my childhood. When I made my First Communion, it seemed to me that the One that I had just received carried me to the throne of God to render to Him, in me, the homage that by myself, I was unable to give to him. [reflection]

I felt a silent separation from everything that I’d been related to before so that I could enter, alone, into the immensity of the One that I possessed for the first time....At the moment when I received Jesus Christ, it was as if all that I had seen on earth -- even my mother -- was no more than a passing shadow. It seemed to me that my eyes were closing on all that I had known so that they could open on the One who alone was my “all.” Lost in my God, my soul forgot all the rest…. [reflection]

Lord, I thank you for sending me this day. I accept all that it brings for love of you.

... Easter is a great day, a day in which we ourselves must try to go from one life to another life. You know that is the meaning of the word Passover. How the Apostles were transformed! How, from weak beings before the day of Easter, they became strong, full of faith, ardent! How they began to be soaked in the spirit of the apostolate that would confirm in them the grace of the Holy Spirit! We have already received the Holy Spirit in such a way that Easter can produce all its transforming and forward-moving effects.

Try to allow the Spirit entrance everywhere, that He penetrate everything…that He reign everywhere, enlighten everything, transform everything, lead all on the paths of eternity, on the paths to heaven.
God is our Father and, at any moment, we can throw ourselves into His arms.
Each day, God unveils before our eyes something marvelous that delights and enthralls us.
Let us do the good that we can right now with love and confidence.
The person who looks for God at all times finds joy everywhere.
My life must be a constant "yes" to God.

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How You Can Become A:

Pope Benedict XVI at Canonization Mass,

June 3, 2007

Pope Paul VI at Beatification Mass of Mother Marie Eugenie, February 9, 1975

St. Segolene Church, Metz

where Marie Eugenie made her

First Communion

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

rue Ferou, where Marie Eugenie and the first Sisters began the Assumption

Icon of Mother Marie Eugenie