FR MARIE-EUGÈNE, FOUNDER OF NOTRE-DAME DE VIE: TAKING CARMEL INTO THE POST-MILLENNIUM WORLD

The author has worked in films, television and religious publishing, and has taught catechetics at the Carmelite church in Kensington, her parish since 1972. She is well-acquainted with the Carmelite secular institute, Notre-Dame de Vie. In this article, she introduces the life of its founder, Fr Marie-Eugène, whose mission was for lay people to take Carmelite spirituality into the world, and to lead others to a living relationship with the Holy Spirit. The year 2007 marks a triple anniversary: the fortieth of his death, the seventy-fifth of Notre-Dame de Vie, and the sixtieth of secular institutes in the church.

LUCY O’SULLIVAN

Fr Marie-Eugène and Elizabeth

It does not seem a coincidence that the ‘Year of Fr Marie-Eugène’, marking the fortieth anniversary of his death, commenced in March 2007 – thus embracing the closing months of the centenary year of Elizabeth of the Trinity. Both French Carmelites, whose lives overlapped by twelve years, were imbued with the spirit of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and were influenced by Thérèse. Within two years of Thérèse’s death, Elizabeth, aged nineteen, had read Story of a Soul, making more than ten pages of notes and four copies of Thérèse’s act of surrender to God’s merciful love. In his masterpiece on Carmelite spirituality, I Want to See God, published in 1949, Fr Marie-Eugène makes three references to Elizabeth. In the third of these, spanning four pages – in a chapter headed, ‘Theology and Supernatural Contemplation’ – he presents her spiritual characteristics, underlining the differences and similarities with those of Thérèse:

Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, a Carmelite of Dijon, less known to the majority of Christians, exercises nevertheless in the world of spiritual contemplatives an influence that can be compared to that of the sainted Carmelite of Lisieux. While still at home, Sister Elizabeth experienced sensibly the presence of the Holy Trinity in her soul. A Dominican, P. Vallée, with the luminous soul of a theologian and contemplative, gives her the explanation of her experiences by expounding for her the dogma of the indwelling of God within us. At the Carmel of Dijon where she entered, Sister Elizabeth lived this dogma and the one that completes it – that the apostle Saint Paul opened up to her in his contemplative Epistles – the mystery of the divine adoption which, through Christ, God extends to all humanity… Let theologians learn from Sister Elizabeth to make use of the truths of dogma in order to be recollected in God: they will thus help her to fulfil her mission, which is to attract souls to recollection…[1]

Elizabeth’s charism of understanding the inner meaning of the scriptural doctrine of the Trinity and indwelling of the Holy Spirit returns to the prayer and worship of the early church. She is not intellectualising the Trinity as dogma or definition, but in praise and prayer allows a direct route through deep faith in the presence of God in the Holy Trinity. Elizabeth waited seven years before entering Carmel. A talented and sensitive young woman with an intense desire to offer herself to God, she developed a lay contemplative spirituality in the years before she was allowed to enter Carmel. Once in Carmel, and with an understanding of Romans 8:29-31 – on the call to conformity with Jesus – she could write to her family, to her sister Guite, and especially to her young friend Françoise de Sourdon how they outside the convent and she, inside, were at the ‘source’ of union and love – experiencing together the doctrine of the indwelling of God in the soul. Elizabeth’s spirituality, based on scripture and the great spiritual writers, looks towards a contemplation that will be taken into the marketplace.

Fr Marie-Eugène and Thérèse

When, in 1922, the newly ordained Henri Grialou entered the Carmelite monastery in Avon-Fontainebleau and took the name of Fr Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus, it was the beginning of a long apostolate to spread the doctrine of Carmel to all Christians. He believed that the spirit of Carmel is not only for those who are inside its convents; rather, the integration of contemplation and daily work is a calling that is open to every living person. As he said in a homily of July 16^th, 1947:

I had the impression that this spiritual treasure of Carmel had to be diffused humbly and widely to all souls, that it should not remain reserved to a privileged class. This treasure, this love of God wants to spread itself out and seeks out souls from all places to call them to its intimacy and to reveal the secrets of its heart. We find the same idea in St Thérèse of the Child Jesus…she wants a legion of little souls to make the love of God known not only in the world of the monasteries but in the suburbs, on the boulevards, wherever there are souls whom God calls to his divine intimacy.

Henri Grialou was born in 1894. Before his entry into Carmel, he had read Thérèse’s Story of a Soul and experienced her powerful protection while fighting in the trenches of the First World War. In 1923, Thérèse was beatified, and she would be canonised in 1925. Already as a young Carmelite, Fr Marie-Eugène was struck by the powerful doctrine of the saint from Lisieux, sensing his mission to spread her message beyond the limits of the cloister. In 1947, fifty years before Thérèse was declared a doctor of the church, he gave a conference in anticipation of that event – presenting her teaching on spiritual childhood, and showing its importance for the universal church by revealing it to be within the reach of everyone.[2]

Moved by the Spirit

As a young religious, Fr Marie-Eugène experienced the dynamic powerful force of the Holy Spirit. Throughout his life, he was to emphasise the importance of becoming a conscious collaborator of its sanctifying apostolic action. In one of his spiritual classics, Where the Spirit Breathes,[3] a compilation of his spoken conferences, he reiterates the significance of understanding, knowledge, relationship, and possession of the Holy Spirit. Part Three of this book is called ‘In the Grip of the Spirit’ and includes a final section on ‘Apostles seized by the Holy Spirit’, where action and contemplation are shown to be inseparable and to lead to divine joy and achievement. Under the subheading, ‘The Primacy of the Holy Spirit’, Fr Marie-Eugène expounds on ‘The Living Presence of the Holy Spirit’, ‘Collaboration with the Holy Spirit’ and ‘Perfect Union with the Holy Spirit’. Then, in the fourth section, ‘Our Great Treasure: Faith in the Holy Spirit’, he earnestly advises:

Let us make an act of faith in this Holy Spirit who is in our souls. The Holy Spirit is not a thought, or a reality living in higher regions. He is Someone within us, who is the Life of our soul, the living Breath of our soul, the Guest of our soul acting in us unceasingly. He is a living Person, intelligent and loving, who dwells in us. We should therefore resolve to live with the Holy Spirit and seek Him out frequently. When we enter within ourselves to pray or to examine our conscience and attitudes, the first thing we ought to seek, almost the only thing, is the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. He is there as our friend, our Guest. He, the architect of the Church, the worker of our sanctification, is there.[4]

Embracing the Carmelite spirit

The work of the Holy Spirit in the apostolate of Fr Marie-Eugène was to reveal itself dynamically with Marie Pila, a philosophy graduate in Paris, who in 1919 came back to Marseilles and founded a secondary school for girls with two teacher friends. The three ladies felt called to continue their profession in the secular world, not as nuns in an enclosed order; yet they were strongly drawn to the spirit of Carmel. In 1929, they met Fr Marie-Eugène, who became their spiritual director discerning their vocation, while the three continued at the school, leading a secular life based on prayer. The group – the future secular institute – was founded in 1932.

Unexpectedly, Fr Marie-Eugène was moved to Agen, several hundred miles away. But before he left, he was given the property of Notre-Dame de Vie, Our Lady of Life, in Venasque, near Avignon, Provence; it included a shrine where Our Lady has been venerated since the sixth century. Placing the three teachers under the patronage of the Virgin Mary, he gave them a basic preparation in prayer and contemplation, and suggested they should come to Venasque for a period of formation in solitude for a year. There, they submitted to the workings of the Holy Spirit, in adoration and intimate union of prayer, and then returned to their consecrated life in the world. Gradually, other women were to join them in search of the same spiritual ideal: they wished for a consecrated life dedicated to God, and a secular life embracing the Carmelite spirit. This was the beginning of the foundation of Notre-Dame de Vie, although both Fr Marie-Eugène and Marie Pila later insisted that the real founders were the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and that they themselves had merely been instruments in their hands.

The foundation of Notre-Dame de Vie

Secular institutes were officially recognised by Rome in 1947, with the promulgation of the Constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia by Pius XII. Fr Marie-Eugène now understood that this was what he had been led to establish. In 1948, Notre-Dame de Vie became a diocesan secular institute. By the time John XXIII gave his opening address to the Second Vatican Council in October 1962, Notre-Dame de Vie was established as a secular institute of pontifical right.

By 1973, the Institute of Notre-Dame de Vie was made up of three autonomous branches: lay women, lay men and priests. The first men met Fr Marie-Eugène in 1947, when he was giving a conference in Paris on Thérèse as a future doctor of the church, and in 1962 the male branch came into being. The men who joined were involved in education as teachers or group leaders who worked with a youth organisation that combined leisure activities and Christian formation for children. The men had the same calling as the women: with no wish to be married, or to be priests. They wanted complete consecration to God and complete lay life; they wished to remain in the world and felt they would best serve the gospel by having a profession. The first priests, who came in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were diocesan. They felt the need for a stronger spiritual life, to enrich their priestly mission. They were attracted to the solitude offered in retreats and everyday silent prayer that would counter the over-activity involved in carrying out their priestly duties. The first priests to become members took their first vows in the Institute in 1964.

Today, consecrated members of Notre-Dame de Vie number over six hundred and are present in twenty countries across four continents. Besides their chosen profession in life, they are involved in the life of the local church, helping parishes with catechesis or catechetical formation, running prayer groups or organising retreats. They return to a house of solitude for a month of prayer and renewal each year; and normally, after twelve years, for a whole year. This retreat recognises the primacy of God in their lives and the essential need of solitude to renew their double vocation of prayer and action. Consecrated members of Notre-Dame de Vie take the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Daily contemplative prayer and the eucharist are at the heart of their lives. Associates and families share in the same spirituality, but their daily commitment to silent prayer is adapted to fall within the context of their domestic life and family demands.

Renewal in the post-millennium church

On Easter Monday, March 27^th, 1967, Fr Marie-Eugène died. All the graces and events of his life are summed up in the three Latin words he uttered shortly before his death: ‘Traditus Gratiae Dei’, ‘surrendered to the grace of God’. To those who knew him, founder members or members of the Institute, he is a model, an inspiration, an intercessor, a father; and they continue his work and foundation of Notre-Dame de Vie. For those of us without a structure or formation, Where the Spirit Breathes is a vade mecum, a Vatican II spiritual catechism: it draws on his lifetime experience of prayer, contemplation, action, and teachings on the Spirit. It can be placed beside his two major works on Carmelite spirituality, I Want to See God and its sequel, I am a Daughter of the Church: these works envelop the spirit of Teresa of Avila and especially John of the Cross, presented in the language of today and through the simplicity of Thérèse’s ‘Little Way’.

These practical spiritual guides can be opened, shared, taught and passed on by religious and lay communities. In the midst of life, people in parishes and families with limited time can read these books to receive a theological grounding. United with Elizabeth’s deep faith in the presence of God in the Holy Trinity, they can be transformed in love and raised to a life of grace – to a life of action, prayer and contemplation. All this anticipates the words of John Paul II in his apostolic letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte:

…our Christian communities must become genuine ‘schools’ of prayer, where the meeting with Christ is expressed not just in imploring help but also in thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly ‘falls in love’. Intense prayer, yes, but it does not distract us from our commitment to history: by opening our heart to the love of God it also opens it to the love of our brothers and sisters, and makes us capable of shaping history according to God’s plan. (#33)

Fr Marie-Eugène’s cause for beatification has been opened. With the coming yearlong celebrations,[5] and with the publication of his biography by Guy Gaucher, OCD – the renowned biographer of Thérèse – Fr Marie-Eugène’s huge contribution to the post-Vatican II renewal in the Holy Spirit, and his opening up of a life of baptismal grace lived more fully, will be given the recognition that it deserves.