John Eudes was born on 14 November 1601 at Ri in Normandy to a family of peasant stock. He studied with the Jesuit fathers at Caen near his village, where he drank deeply of Ignatian spirituality, received a solid cultural formation, and grew so at ease in Latin that it became easier for him than French. In 1623 he entered the Oratory founded by Pierre de Bérulle, learning "to see in everything and before everything God." Formed in that school of priestly reform and common life inspired by Saint Philip Neri, he was ordained a priest on 20 December 1625.
In the work of popular missions he came face to face with the immense material and moral poverty of the people. That misery favored the spread of Jansenism, which stressed human corruption and a harsh spiritual rigor that suppressed popular devotion. John recognized the real laxity of the age, yet he rejected Jansenist remedies. "The science of devotion," he wrote, "consists in not having an exclusive attachment to any particular practice or exercise of piety." He sought instead a living union with Christ and Mary that joined sound doctrine to the legitimate affections of the heart.
When plague broke out in Normandy in 1627, he obtained leave to return home and care for the sick. By day he visited and tended the stricken; by night, so as not to infect his companions, he slept inside a barrel. He himself fell ill and was saved only by a miracle. After the epidemic he resided at the Oratory of Caen and threw himself into missions throughout Normandy. He marveled at the abundant fruit, yet saw how quickly fervor faded for want of well-formed priests who could continue what the missions had sown. The Council of Trent had already called for seminaries; encouraged by Bérulle's spirit and by the bishops of the region, John left the Oratory and in 1642–1643 founded at Caen the first of the seminaries that would spread through France under the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, known as the Eudists, dedicated to the formation of future priests. In the same period he founded the Congregation of the Ladies of Our Lady of Charity to confirm penitent women in Christian life.
Drawing on Ignatian and Bérullian sources, he gave devotion its distinctive Eudist warmth by fixing the gaze of the faithful on the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. For him devotion was no vague sentimentality but the biblical expression of the love with which God has loved us—a place of recollection, examination, and decision. Against sterile rationalism he taught the faithful to recognize Christ as the "interior Master" and to live as members of His Body: "Think, I beg you, that our Lord Jesus Christ is your true Head, and that you are one of His members… All that is His is yours: His spirit, His heart, His body, His soul and all His faculties… These truths take their origin in the Christian from Baptism, are increased and strengthened by Confirmation and by the good use of the other graces God shares, and receive their supreme perfection from the holy Eucharist." He insisted that Jesus and Mary must never be separated: "You must never separate what God has so perfectly united. Jesus and Mary are so intimately linked that whoever sees Jesus looks upon Mary."
In 1672, a year before the revelations granted to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, he composed the liturgical texts of the Sacred Hearts for the feast he introduced in his city; the Masses he prepared for both Hearts were celebrated in his lifetime. He preached missions across France, including Paris and Versailles, becoming known as a powerful evangelist and confessor, and he wrote extensively on the Hearts despite Jansenist opposition. He died at Caen on 19 August 1680. Pope Saint Pius X beatified him on 25 April 1909; Pope Pius XI canonized him in Saint Peter's Basilica on 31 May 1925, proposing him to the whole Church, and especially to the clergy, as a splendid light of the priestly office and of the apostolate.
Ask Saint John Eudes to obtain for you a living devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and today practice one of his virtues—zeal for the formation of priests, merciful care for the wounded, or the resolve never to separate Jesus from His Mother.
