Saint Peter Julian Eymard

Saint Peter Julian Eymard was a French priest, first of his diocese, then a Marist, and finally the founder of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament and of the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament. A decree of the Holy See calls him an outstanding apostle of the Eucharist. The Church celebrates his memorial on August 2.

He was born on February 4, 1811, in La Mure, in the diocese of Grenoble. His father, who had lost several children, long opposed his priestly vocation. The brief of beatification recounts that as a small boy Peter Julian was found in church right beside the tabernacle and told his sister, who had been looking for him, that he was close to Jesus in order to listen to him. He received his First Holy Communion at the age of twelve. He entered the seminary in Grenoble at twenty and was ordained a priest on July 20, 1834.

For several years he was a pastor in his diocese. In 1839, with his bishop’s permission, he joined the Society of Mary, the Marists, in Lyon, where he held positions of responsibility, among them that of provincial. While praying at the Marian shrine of Fourvière in Lyon, he understood that he was to spread public and perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and to found a community of priests who would strive for holiness through the Eucharist.

With the consent of his superiors he left the Marists and moved to Paris. There in 1856 he began the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, and on January 6, 1857, its first community began public adoration. In 1858, together with Marguerite Guillot, he founded the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament. He also established an association of priest adorers and a Eucharistic aggregation for the laity, and he prepared adults and young workers for their First Communion. For him adoration was the source of love for the poor of the Paris suburbs and for priests in need.

He taught that the Eucharist must be at the center of every Christian’s life and encouraged frequent participation in Mass. He honored Mary as Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. Saint John Vianney bore witness to the holiness of his life. Pius XI and Paul VI emphasized that his work prepared the way for the Eucharistic Congresses. The young Auguste Rodin, who after his sister’s death spent a few months as a novice in his congregation, made a bust of him, and Eymard encouraged him to stay with sculpture.

Worn out by work and by the trials of his last years, he died on August 1, 1868, in his native La Mure, at the age of 57. His body rests in Paris. Pius XI beatified him in 1925, and John XXIII canonized him on December 9, 1962, at the close of the first session of the Second Vatican Council. In 1995 John Paul II, responding to requests from bishops, priests and faithful in many countries, ordered his memorial to be inscribed in the calendar of the whole Church.