Saint John Eudes, priest, who for many years devoted himself to preaching in parish missions, then founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary for the training of priests in seminaries, as well as another congregation, of the nuns of Our Lady of Charity, for the strengthening of penitent women in the Christian life, and greatly fostered devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, until he fell asleep piously in the Lord at Caen in Normandy, France.
Lifespan: 1601–1680
Beatified: 25 April 1909 by Pope Pius X
Canonized: 31 May 1925 by Pope Pius XI, Vatican Basilica
Memoria liturgica: 19 August
“You must never separate what God has so perfectly united. Jesus and Mary are so intimately bound to one another that whoever sees Jesus beholds Mary.”
John Eudes
John Eudes was born at Ri, in Normandy, on 14 November 1601, into a farming family. He studied with the Jesuit fathers at Caen, near his village; that experience allowed him to breathe the Ignatian spirituality, to grasp its charism in depth, and to receive an excellent cultural formation — so much so that he would find it easier to speak Latin than French!
In 1623 he decided to enter the Oratory founded by Pierre de Bérulle, educating himself “to see God in all things and above all things.” Bérulle, of a noble French family, had wished to embrace religious life, but no order would accept him so as not to run counter to his family’s wishes. He resolved instead to enter the diocesan priesthood, completing his studies with distinction and committing himself to the conversion of heretics. Cardinal Du Perron would say of him: “If you want to convince heretics, bring them to me; if you want to convert them, bring them to Francis de Sales; but if you want to convince and convert them at one stroke, send them to Bérulle.” To bring about a reform of the Church, Bérulle looked to the Carmelite model in Spain and, after no small effort, succeeded in founding a reformed Carmel in Paris: his goal was to offer a model of authentic Christian life. Alongside this, he identified and formed a group of priests, drawing them into common life to pray together and support one another in the difficulties of ministry — an experience inspired by the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri. Bérulle was created Cardinal in 1627 and died in 1629.
John thus entered the Oratory of Paris, where he devoted himself to study, and on 20 December 1625 was ordained a priest. Through his commitment to popular missions he became keenly aware of the immense poverty in which the people lived, both materially and in spiritual and moral terms. It was precisely this context of misery that would facilitate the spread of the Jansenist philosophical-theological-political movement, founded by Jansenius (1585–1638). Its central idea was that man is born corrupt and therefore destined to do evil, and that the only path was a “rigorous” application of the spiritual life — going so far as to abolish all devotion and popular piety, regarded as mere distraction for the people.
Although John acknowledged the rampant spiritual and moral laxity of the age, he did not agree with the remedies proposed by the spread of this doctrine: “The science of devotion,” he wrote, “consists in having no exclusive attachment to any particular practice or exercise of piety.”
In 1627 plague broke out in Normandy, and John was given leave to return to his homeland to care for the sick. During the day he visited and tended them; at night — to avoid infecting his companions — he slept inside a barrel. He himself fell ill and was saved only by a miracle.
When the epidemic had run its course, he resided at the Oratory of Caen, where he threw all his energies into missions throughout Normandy, marvelling at the abundant fruit such work bore, yet at the same time aware that the enthusiasm of the faithful was short-lived: there were too few trained priests to continue cultivating what had been sown.
He began to feel the need to establish centers of formation for priests — something the Council of Trent had, moreover, strongly urged: seminaries.
In 1642, encouraged by Bérulle and by the bishops of the region, he left the Oratory and founded at Caen the first seminary, an initiative that spread throughout France, also through the Congregation of Jesus and Mary for the formation of future priests. He did likewise for women, founding the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity.
He drew inspiration from the Ignatian spirituality and that of Bérulle, bringing to it that characteristic “devotional” sensitivity which was so distinctly his own, his gaze fixed on the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. For John, devotion was not vague sentimentalism but — drawing from biblical spirituality — an expression of the love with which God has loved us: a place of recollection, discernment, and decision. If Jansenism aimed at a pure, sterile rationalism, John knew how to unite the transmission of knowledge with the legitimate affective and interior movements of the faithful. What mattered was to recognize Christ as the “Interior Master” and to live as he did:
Pensa, ti prego, che nostro Signore Gesù Cristo è il tuo vero capo, e che fai parte delle sue membra. Egli ti appartiene come il capo al corpo. Tutto ciò che è suo, è tuo; il suo spirito, il suo cuore, il suo corpo, la sua anima e tutte le sue facoltà… Tu gli appartieni… E non basta che tu appartenga al Figlio di Dio, ma devi essere in lui, come le membra sono nel loro capo… Queste verità traggono origine nel cristiano dal battesimo, vengono accresciute e rafforzate dal sacramento della confermazione e dal buon uso delle altre grazie partecipate da Dio e ricevono il loro supremo perfezionamento dalla santa Eucaristia.
“Think, I beg you, that our Lord Jesus Christ is your true head, and that you are part of his members. He belongs to you as the head belongs to the body. All that is his is yours: his spirit, his heart, his body, his soul, and all his faculties… You belong to him… And it is not enough that you belong to the Son of God; you must be in him, as the members are in their head… These truths spring in the Christian from baptism, are increased and strengthened by the sacrament of confirmation and by the good use of the other graces communicated by God, and receive their supreme perfection from the holy Eucharist.”
In 1672, a year before the revelations of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, he composed the liturgical texts for the feast of the Sacred Hearts that he introduced in his city.
He died on 19 August 1680 at Caen; he was beatified by Saint Pius X in 1909 and canonized by Pius XI in 1925.