St. Peter Julian Eymard

St. Peter Julian Eymard was born in 1811 at La Mure d'Isère in the French Alps, the son of a knife-maker. Drawn to the priesthood from boyhood despite his father's opposition, he was ordained for the Diocese of Grenoble in 1834. Five years later he joined the newly founded Marists, where his gifts quickly made him a trusted superior and spiritual director. The turning point of his life came through the Eucharist. While carrying the Blessed Sacrament in a Corpus Christi procession in 1845, and again in prayer at the Marian shrine of Fourvière in 1851, Eymard was seized by the conviction that his vocation was to give the Eucharist the same devoted, organized apostolate that other mysteries of the faith had received. With the blessing of the Church, he left the Marists and in 1856 founded in Paris the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, priests and brothers dedicated to perpetual adoration and to Eucharistic ministry; in 1858, with Marguerite Guillot, he founded the contemplative Servants of the Blessed Sacrament for women. Eymard's apostolate was strikingly pastoral for his time. He prepared poor working youths and adults of Paris for First Communion, promoted frequent Communion decades before St. Pius X made it the norm, and taught that adoration must overflow into charity. A friend of St. John Vianney, who warmly encouraged his work, he wore himself out preaching, writing, and governing his young congregations, and died at La Mure on August 1, 1868, after a stroke. Beatified in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, he was canonized on December 9, 1962, by Pope St. John XXIII, at the close of the first session of the Second Vatican Council. St. John Paul II inserted his optional memorial into the General Roman Calendar on August 2. Known as the Apostle of the Eucharist, he is a patron of Eucharistic devotion, and his relics are venerated in the Corpus Christi chapel of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers in Paris.