St.John Eudes Confessor Father Doctor of the Church (1601-1680)

A native of Normandy (France), St John Eudes took a vow of chastity at 14 and after a brilliant stint of studies under the Jesuits at Caen, entered the French Oratory of Cardinal Berulle. Ordained at 24, he proved to be the most prodigious missionary priest France had seen since the days of St Vincent Ferrer, “the prodigy of his age”. Ably assisted, during the next 20 years, he held over 110 missions, each of which lasted six weeks or longer, and, attended by a tremendous concourse of people, effected conversions by the thousands. Inveighing uncompromisingly against all manner of sin from the pulpit, in the confessional he was paternal compassion personified. Twice he risked his life by bringing succour to victims of the plague and preparing the dying for a good death.

In 1643, with the approval of Cardinal Richelieu, John Eudes left the Oratory and founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary for priests, to further their sanctification and to give popular missions. The seminaries conducted by his “Eudists” were a great aid in overcoming Jansenism, stressing as they did the true doctrine of God’s infinite compassion for humankind. But the Jansenists countered with a campaign of calumny, which was directed especially against his recently founded enclosed Sisters of Our Lady of Refuge for penitent women of ill fame a Congregation from which later sprang the Good Shepherd nuns. When, for a while, he was forbidden to preach and to hear confessions, he devoted his efforts to ascetical writing and to spreading devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, their feasts being first celebrated in 1672 and 1648 respectively, with a Mass and proper office specially composed by him. The Society of the Heart of the Most Admirable Mother founded by him is a kind of Third Order. Born on 14 November 1601, John Eudes died on 19 August 1680. At his beatification in 1909, he was proclaimed “Father, Doctor, and apostle of the liturgical cults of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary” by Pope Pius X. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI on 31 May 1925.

Reflection: “Our wish, our object, our chiefpreoccupation must be to form Jesus in ourselves, to make his spirit, his devotion, his affections, his desires and his disposition live and reign there” (St John Eudes).