Word of God for our time

In one of his conferences, Fr. Marie Eugene addressed Therese in this way: “You came as word of God for our times, word of God for the humble and the little, word of God for the great and the valiant, word of God for the cloisters and the boulevards...” A word that remains pertinent and so universal!

Let us listen once more to Fr. Marie-Eugene:

To our sophisticated and bored civilization, which has lost the sense of the infinite and suffers from this, God has sent a child who, with the charm and luminous purity of her simplicity, brings us once more the eternal message of his love, namely, that He has created us out of love, that his love is still vibrant and all the more eager because of our desertion, and that he is waiting for us to love him and to let ourselves be loved by him like very small children.”

It is by prayer that Therese made contact with God’s love and received it in fullness through union with Him. It is this prayer that Fr. Marie Eugene taught all his life. Through Notre Dame de Vie Institute, he wanted men and women who devote two hours of every day to prayer and who witness in every social milieu to the special love of God for each person.

Just like Therese of the Child Jesus, Fr. Marie Eugene had a deep knowledge of the love of God, and of his Merciful Love in particular, of the gratuitous love he wants to give to everyone, no matter how miserable and wounded he may be, in order to tend his wounds, to comfort and lift him up.

This love encompasses the whole Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. Therese understood it well when she declared: “I am a child of the Church.”  In her footsteps, Fr. Marie Eugene declares: “Only one reality can be the object of our life: God, Jesus Christ, the Church.”