St. John Eudes

Who was St. John Eudes?

John Eudes (Jean Eudes in French) was a 17th-century priest from Normandy who spent his life preaching parish missions, training priests and spreading devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The priest Jean-Jacques Olier, his contemporary, called him "the prodigy of his age," and the Catholic Encyclopedia judged that France had probably not seen a greater missionary since St. Vincent Ferrer. His brother was the historian François Eudes de Mézeray.

He founded two religious families: the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, known as the Eudists, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge. He died at Caen on August 19, 1680.

The life of St. John Eudes

A child of the Norman countryside

John was born on November 14, 1601, at Ri, a village in Normandy. According to the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, his parents had been unable to have children until they made a vow at the Marian shrine of Notre-Dame de la Recouvrance at Les Tourailles; after his birth they had six more. At fourteen he made a private vow of chastity. He studied with the Jesuits at Caen, entered the French Oratory of Pierre de Bérulle on March 25, 1623, and was ordained a priest on December 20, 1625.

The plague years

Plague struck Normandy in 1627 and again in 1631, and the young priest volunteered to nurse the sick. So as not to carry the disease back to his fellow Oratorians, he slept at night in a large cask set in a field. The story is part of his traditional biography, told, for example, in Catholic Culture's life of the saint.

Missionary and founder

At thirty-two he began preaching parish missions. By the Catholic Encyclopedia's count he preached at least 110, mostly in Normandy but also in Paris and at Versailles, some lasting weeks or months.

On those missions he met women who wanted to leave prostitution and had nowhere to go. A townswoman named Madeleine Lamy, who sheltered some of them, told him bluntly that instead of gazing at statues in church he should find these women a decent house. In 1641 he founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge for them. Pope Alexander VII approved it in 1666.

He saw that the deepest need of the Church in Normandy was for well-trained priests. When his superiors in the Oratory would not allow him to open seminaries, he left the Oratory. On March 25, 1643, after a night of prayer at the shrine of Notre-Dame de la Délivrande, he arrived at Caen with five companions and founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary and the first seminary in Normandy. The bishop of Bayeux closed it in 1650; it reopened in 1653. The Eudists faced strong opposition, especially from Jansenists, and Eudes never obtained papal approval for them in his lifetime.

The Hearts of Jesus and Mary

The heart of Eudes's teaching is that Jesus wants to live in the Christian. The Eudists quote him: "He belongs to you, but more than that, He longs to be in you, living and ruling in you, as the head lives and rules in the body. He wants His breath to be in your breath, His heart in your heart, and His soul in your soul."

From that idea came his devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He composed a Mass and Office for a feast of the Holy Heart of Mary, first celebrated in 1648, and for a feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, first kept in 1672. His book Le Cœur Admirable de la Très Sainte Mère de Dieu is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as the first book ever written on devotion to the Sacred Hearts. All of this came before St. Margaret Mary Alacoque's visions at Paray-le-Monial became widely known. In 1903 Pope Leo XIII called Eudes "Author of the Liturgical Worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Holy Heart of Mary."

Miracles of St. John Eudes

The miracles proposed for his beatification were approved by Pope Pius X on May 3, 1908, and he was beatified on April 25, 1909. Healings were reported at his tomb in Caen soon after his death. Pius XI canonized him on May 31, 1925; we have not found an open source describing the miracles approved for that step.

Symbols of St. John Eudes in art

John Eudes is shown as a French priest of the 1600s in a black cassock with a plain white collar. Look for:

• A heart crowned with flames and a cross, the emblem of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, often held in his hand, as in the portrait of about 1673 and the statue in St. Peter's.
• A crucifix, the sign of a missionary preacher.
• A pulpit or a crowd, for his parish missions.
• A wine cask, in scenes of the plague years.

Feast day and where St. John Eudes is honored

His feast is August 19, an optional memorial on the General Roman Calendar. See the feast days calendar.

Eudes was first buried in the choir of the Eudist seminary church in Caen. In 1810 his bones were moved to the former Jesuit church of Notre-Dame, called the Gloriette, and since 1884 they have rested in its crypt. His skull and a thigh bone, given to the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, are kept in the restored chapel of his house at 30 rue Jean Eudes, the old "Mission" where he died. For the centenary of his canonization in 2025, the Eudists and the sisters opened a pilgrimage route linking Les Tourailles, Ri, La Délivrande and Caen.

Prayer to St. John Eudes

The Church's prayer for his memorial, the collect of the Roman Missal (English text as given by Catholic Culture), reads:

O God, who wonderfully chose the Priest Saint John Eudes to proclaim the unfathomable riches of Christ, grant us, by his example and teachings, that, growing in knowledge of you, we may live faithfully by the light of the Gospel.

Catholics ask his intercession for priests and seminarians, for parish missions, for women in danger and for a deeper love of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. See more patron saints.