Venerable John Eudes

Father Eudes, moved by the situation of several women of ill repute who had converted during the various missions he had conducted, and fearing that they might fall back into disorder, gathered them in Caen in 1641 in a house he had rented for them, and placed them under the guidance of pious individuals whom he had tasked with training them in virtue and work. This community was approved by the Bishop of Bayeux, and finally erected as a religious Order by Pope Alexander VII in 1666. This most respectable and u pape Alexandre VII Pope reigning at the end of Olier's life. seful Order was established successively in various cities of France, and currently possesses a greater number of houses than before our first revolution. The one in Rennes was established in 1673 and is the oldest of the Order after Caen. Next comes, in 1676, the one in Guingamp, which, since the Revolution, has been transferred to Saint-Brieuc; the one in Vannes, which has not been re-established; then those of Tours, La Rochelle, and Paris. Since the Revolution, others have been established in Versailles, Nantes, Lyon, Toulouse, Valence, Le Mans, in Italy, in England, and in America.

The well-deserved reputation of Fr. Eudes caused him to be called from all sides to give missions. He would have wished to be able to announce the word of God in all the provinces of the kingdom, because he had nothing more at heart than the salvation of souls; but it was impossible for him to go everywhere he was desired. Normandy, a part of Brittany, Burgundy, Beauce, the Soissonnais, Paris and its surroundings, were the only places he evangelized. M. Olier, M. Olier Founder of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice. pastor of Saint-Sulpice, founder of the seminary and of the pious and learned company which bears the name of the same Saint, called him to Paris in 1651, counting much on the zeal and talents of such a holy priest to help him renew his immense parish. Fr. Eudes conducted a mission there with his confreres that lasted the whole of Lent, and the fruits of which met the expectations of the virtuous pastor. In 1660, he conducted two other missions in Paris which produced an incredible number of remarkable conversions: one in the church of the Quinze-Vingts, and the other for the parish of Saint-Sulpice at the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The latter especially had much brilliance: one saw all that was great in the city and at court, and the Qu reine-mère Queen of France who attended the missions of Jean Eudes. een Mother herself, attending it with assiduity. It was at the procession that ended it that Fr. Eudes, holding in his hand the Most Holy Sacrament, spoke for half an hour before the Queen Mother with a strength and an unction that moved all the listeners to tears.

Everywhere he preached with success, and the eagerness that the faithful showed to hear him corresponded to the vivacity of his zeal. Often the crowd was so considerable that the largest churches were too small: then he would lead his audience to a public square or a nearby field, and it was then that he spoke with the most strength and unction. His extraordinary talent for touching hearts attracted to his missions the most educated persons, as well as those who were the least: one saw priests and religious mingled with the laity; persons of quality flocked there like the common people. Also, it would be impossible to tell the number of Protestants he brought back into the bosom of the Church, of public and scandalous sinners he converted and brought to a pious and edifying life; the restitutions he caused to be made, the peace re-established in families, the communities of men and women recalled to regularity and their first fervor, etc., etc. His missions in the cities sometimes lasted three months or more, and the confessors were occupied during all this time. He conducted one hundred and ten or one hundred and twelve by himself, without counting those he had conducted during his lifetime by the priests of his Congregation, which amount to about seven hundred. The region where he conducted the most is the diocese of Coutances, where he remained on several occasions for entire years. He conducted several in Brittany, at different times, especially in the diocese of Saint-Malo, and later in Rennes and in the neighboring countryside.

The mission of Renne Rennes Episcopal see where the saint exercised his ministry. s lasted more than four months: it opened on the first Sunday of Advent in 1669, and did not end until Easter. During all this time, Father Eudes, although in his sixty-ninth year, preached every day, often several times a day, in the various churches of the city, and with as much strength as he had at the age of thirty. The assiduity of the faithful at the exercises was extraordinary. There were three sermons a day; as soon as the hour approached, all the shops were closed, and people rushed to find a seat. Mgr de la Vieuville, then Bishop of Rennes, witness to the change that the mission produced in the morals of the inhabitants of this city, thought that such zealous ministers were fit to form the young ecclesiastics of his diocese, and begged Father Eudes to establish a seminary in Rennes, where there was none yet. At the end of his mission, he put him in possession of a house he bought for this purpose, and the inhabitants, in gratitude for the efforts the missionaries had made, hastened to furnish it with furniture, linen, and all the necessary objects. Father Eudes left there priests of his Congregation in sufficient number to direct the seminary and conduct missions in the diocese. This house still exists today, and is an annex of the military hospital, which occupies the magnificent seminary that these priests later had built with their own funds. It is the sixth and last seminary that Father Eudes established himself. The minor seminary of this city, which was also given to the Eudists, was not founded until 1690, ten years after his death, by Mgr de Beaumanoir de Lavardin, who was Bishop of Rennes after Mgr de la Vieuville.

Several other seminaries were successively formed by the Congregation, in Avranches, Valognes, Blois, Dol, Senlis, Domfort, and Séez. Father Eudes had founded a college in Lisieux; his successors established others in Avranches, Valognes, and Domfort. They also had an establishment in Paris which was not a seminary, but a house of study for the members of the Congregation. Father Eudes, convinced that there was no better way to inspire solid piety and maintain lasting fervor than devotion to the divine hearts of Jesus and Mary, preached this double devotion everywhere, which he extended more than anyone else. He usually established at the end of missions a confraternity in honor of the most holy Heart of Mary, such as the one that still ex ists in the C Cœur de Marie Central devotion promoted by the saint. hurch of Saint-Sauveur in Rennes, and which dates precisely from the time of the mission he gave in that city. He then instituted for persons called to a higher perfection, the Society of the Heart of Mary, which he made not a simple confraternity, but the Third Order of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge. This pious society, which has spread mainly in the dioceses of Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and Vannes, continues to produce abundant fruits there.

The blessings with which God had favored all his undertakings, since he had instituted in his Congregation, as early as 1648, the office and the feast of the Heart of Mary, with an octave, determined him, in 1672, to establish another to honor the divine Heart of Jesus. It had already been about thirteen years since he had compos divin cœur de Jésus Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. ed, for each of the two solemnities, a Mass and a particular office where everything is full of the sweetest unction. He was thus the first to propagate in the Church these two devotions, so beautiful and so touching, which have since been and are still every day the source of so many graces.

He continued to conduct missions until the age of seventy-five. The last one he worked on was that of Saint-Lô, in 1676. His infirmities only increased from that time on. His confreres, or rather his children, who wished to keep him as long as possible, obliged him to retire to the seminary of Caen, where he occupied himself actively with his dear Congregation. It was then that he put the finishing touches to the constitutions he had given it, and to a book entitled: *The Admirable Heart of the Mother of God*.

At the end of July 1680, he was struck by a violent illness, in which he suffered greatly and always with the most edifying patience. He received the last sacraments with that lively faith which characterized him, and died on August 19, at the age of nearly seventy-nine. The clergy of all the parishes of Caen attended his funeral; later the Bishop of Bayeux and his en tire Caen Location of the foundation of the first seminary and place of the saint's death. chapter traveled to Caen, and celebrated a solemn service for him there, in which his funeral oration was delivered by one of the canons; and the faithful flocked to these two ceremonies, so eager were people from all ranks of society to honor the memory of this great servant of God who had done so much good throughout the country, and especially in the city of Caen where he had resided the longest.

It was not only in the times following his death that public homage was paid to the memory of Fr. Eudes: the church of the Heart of Mary, which he had built for the seminary of Caen, and where he was buried, having been abandoned since the Revolution, his body was exhumed and solemnly transported, on February 20, 1810, to the church of Notre-Dame. The Bishop of Bayeux went to Caen expressly for this pious ceremony, which was attended by all the clergy of the city as well as an innumerable multitude of the faithful; the constituted authorities themselves wished to take part in it: so vivid was the memory of his good deeds and virtues one hundred and thirty years after his death.

A decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, dated February 7, 1874, admitted the introduction of the cause of beatification and canonization of the venerable Eudes.

Despite the external works to which he devoted himself all his life, Fr. Eudes found the time to compose a large number of works: there are as many as twenty-one, almost all of which have as their direct object to honor and cause to be honored Jesus Christ and his holy Mother, or to lead ecclesiastics to the perfection of their holy state. The principal ones are: 1° The Life and Kingdom of Jesus; 2° Contract of Man with God through Holy Baptism; 3° The Good Confessor; 4° The Apostolic Preacher; 5° The Memorial of the Ecclesiastical Life; 6° The Admirable Childhood of the Most Holy Mother of God, her Admirable Heart; 7° Explanation of the Divine Office, of the Admirable Sacrifice of the Holy Mass; 8° Interior Exercises on the Mysteries of Jesus; 9° The Testament of Jesus and the Testament of the True Christian; 10° Christian's Manual; 11° The Christian Man; 12° Meditations, in 2 vol.; 13° The Divine Childhood of Jesus, etc.

The Congregation of Jesus and Mary, known as the Eudists, was re-established in Rennes in 1826, and its rules were approved by the Holy See on June 10, 1864; in 1792, it had given eleven martyrs, ten at the Carmes and one at Saint-Firmin, in the September massacres.