It's the Feast of
St. John Eudes,
3rd Class, with the color of
White. In this episode: the meditation: "Charity: A Virtue That Acts", today's news from the Church: "Bishop Schneider: The SSPX Provides the Church a Historic Service", and today's thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Have feedback or questions about the DD or our other shows?
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Sources Used Today:
- "Charity: A Virtue That Acts" — From Trinity Sunday to the Assumption
- "Bishop Schneider: The SSPX Provides the Church a Historic Service" (FSSPX.news)
- The Spiritual Life — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
Please support our new project, the Archbishop Lefebvre Biography Audiobook:
Saint John Eudes was one of the great missionary priests of seventeenth-century France, but his most lasting contribution came from something Catholics today take almost for granted: devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
He was born in Normandy in 1601 and entered the priesthood during a difficult period for the Church in France. Many Catholics received very little religious instruction, and the formation of priests could be uneven at best.
John decided to go where the people were.
For decades, he traveled through towns and villages preaching parish missions. These weren't quick Sunday sermons. A mission might last several weeks, with preaching, catechism, confessions, and instruction filling the day. Thousands sometimes attended, and John could spend hours in the confessional afterward.
Then the plague arrived.
When an epidemic struck Normandy, John volunteered to care for the sick. He knew that returning each evening to his religious community might expose the other priests, so according to tradition, he lived for a time in a large barrel or cask in a field outside town.
It's an odd image.
One of France's great future saints finishing a day of ministry to plague victims and going home to sleep in a barrel.
But it tells you something about him.
John also became convinced that reforming Catholic life required better priests. Complaining about bad clergy wasn't going to fix anything. So he founded seminaries to give young priests serious spiritual and theological formation. Eventually he established the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, known today as the Eudists, to continue that work.
But his deepest legacy came from the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Long before devotion to the Sacred Heart became widespread through Margaret Mary Alacoque, John Eudes was preaching about the Heart of Christ as the burning center of His love for mankind. He also taught that the Heart of Mary was perfectly united to the Heart of her Son.
And he didn't stop at preaching about it.
In 1648, John composed and celebrated a liturgical feast in honor of the Holy Heart of Mary. Later, in 1672, he established a feast honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus within his communities. He wrote the Mass texts and Divine Office himself.
That makes him one of the great pioneers of two devotions that would eventually spread throughout the entire Catholic world.
John died in 1680, but the prayers and liturgical texts he composed continued long after him. Today, the Church remembers him not simply as someone devoted to the Sacred Heart, but as one of the men who helped give that devotion its liturgical voice.
Saint John Eudes, apostle of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, pray for us.
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What is the SSPX Podcast?
The SSPX Podcast is produced by Angelus Press, which has as its mission the fortification of traditional Catholics so that they can defend the Faith, and reaching out to those who have not yet found Tradition.
What is the SSPX?
The main goal of the Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic Faith in its fullness and purity, to teach its truths, and to diffuse its virtues, especially through the Roman Catholic priesthood.
Authentic spiritual life, the sacraments, and the traditional liturgy are its primary means of bringing this life of grace to souls.
Although the traditional Latin Mass is the most visible and public expression of the work of the Society, we are committed to defending Catholic Tradition in its entirety: all of Catholic doctrine and morals as the Church has always defended them. What people need is the Catholic Faith, without compromise, with all the truth and beauty which accompanies it.
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