Feast day: August 2
St. Peter Julian Eymard
A French priest, once a colleague of the Curé of Ars and St. Peter Chanel, who devoted his life and two new religious congregations entirely to the Blessed Sacrament.
Peter Julian Eymard was a French priest of the nineteenth century, born in 1811 in the Alpine town of La Mure to a modest family. His path to the priesthood was hard — early attempts failed through illness and his father's opposition — but he persevered, was ordained, and served first as a parish priest and then as a member of the Marist Fathers, rising to a position of responsibility in that congregation.
Throughout his life one devotion grew steadily until it consumed him: love of the Eucharist, the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. He became convinced that the cure for the coldness and unbelief of his age was a renewed, ardent adoration of the Eucharistic Lord, and that he was called to devote himself entirely to fostering it.
Leaving the Marists — a costly and painful step — he founded in 1856 the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, a community of priests dedicated to perpetual adoration and to spreading Eucharistic devotion, and, with a collaborator, a corresponding order of women. He promoted frequent Communion and the solemn exposition of the Sacrament at a time when such practices were rare.
He died in 1868, worn out by his labours. Canonized in 1962, he is honoured as the great 'Apostle of the Eucharist,' the priest who gave his life to drawing others before the tabernacle.
Called the 'Apostle of the Eucharist,' he gave up everything to promote adoration of Christ in the Sacrament, founding both priests' and sisters' communities for it.
Image: Bendi07 (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
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