Jean-Pierre Medaille, SJ, wrote in The Eucharistic Letter that the women of LePuy were to model their lives on Jesus in the Eucharist, hidden, secret and emptied of self. Jesus is the human face of The Divine Love. Reading this litany of characteristics you could be turned off because they are not attractive personality traits in our material world. Our world promotes physical beauty, youth, popularity, social status, media attention, FOMO (fear of missing out) and uncontrolled egos to name a few. Why would anyone want to be hidden, secret and empty of self? The Divine Love presents Love’s self to us in three ways… passion, relationship, and agape. Jesus was passionate with an inclusive love of everyone. There were no insiders or outsiders. Inclusive Divine Love was present in Jesus, even in the face of betrayal. Jesus associated with people who society did not think were “polite company.” Jesus was the Divine Love with all of his friends and family. Divine Love that, at the cross, made sure his beloved mother Mary would be cared for by the beloved disciple John. Jesus is given by the power of the Holy Spirit to his disciples to be Love’s hands and feet in a broken world (agape). Jean-Pierre Medaille is the most familiar personage in our family of Joseph. A Jesuit priest, born in 1618 in Carcassonne, France, he studied humanities and philosophy at the Jesuit College in Toulouse. Early in his religious formation, his Jesuit superiors recognized his energy and spiritual potential “instructing men and women in spiritual living and working in the service of Jesus.” While his other friends were missionaries in North America and Asia, Medaille ministered in the remote mountains of Southern France. Wandering around these mountains, Medaille co-created with the Divine Love. FOMO was not in Medaille’s vocabulary. Instead of wishing he were somewhere else, he energized his world while his Jesuit superiors scrambled to find out what he was up to in this hidden rural part of France. They experienced FOMO. In a Jesuit archive dated February 20, 1651, his Jesuit superior wrote that Medaille’s “extraordinary undertaking , the foundation of I know not what grouping of women,” made him uneasy. He wanted to know, “the nature of his plan and from whom [Medaille] obtained permission to busy himself with such matters which are hardly in accordance with our Institute.” From our very beginning, CSJ is hidden, secret and emptied of self. These are powerful characteristics modeled after Jesus. There is no time for FOMO. The Divine Love is always inviting us to live with passion, be relational and serve justly; no Fear Of Missing Out.
