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Vigils Reading – Bl. Marie Joseph Cassant
June 17
BLESSED MARIE JOSEPH CASSANT2
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Joseph Cassant was born on March 6, 1878 in the southern French town
of Casseneuil, the younger son of Pierre and Marie Cassant… Whereas Joseph’s
elder brother, Emile, was clearly marked out to continue his father’s agricultural
work, Joseph’s…single ambition was to be a priest.
Joseph’s devotion to the Eucharist drew the attention of the pastor, who
took him in and began to direct his studies toward seminary. However it soon
became apparent that Joseph’s talent did not lay in academic studies. The
pastor then directed his interests toward the Trappist life, thinking that
academics would not be of such importance there. The pastor took Joseph into
the rectory and established a Trappist way of life there for the two of them.
Priest and teenager arose every night at two a.m. They celebrated the whole
Trappist horarium including the whole Divine Office, manual labor, a rigorous
silence and kept to a vegetarian diet.
Joseph entered the Trappist Abbey of Sainte Marie du Desert, near
Toulouse at the age of sixteen. The novice was captivated by the Novice Master,
Fr. Andre Malet. He was well equipped to help the novice overcome his natural
tendencies to scrupulosity and discouragement. Instead of putting the emphasis
on Trappist asceticism and penance… he led Joseph to an emphasis on love…
thus bringing him to a spirit of peace rather than turbulence. He fought to give
himself in complete confidence in Jesus, rather than succumbing to paralyzing
anxiety… With the help of his director, Fr Andre, he sought to live as much as
possible within the Sacred Heart of Jesus, seeking to make Christ’s inner
attitudes his own.
His greatest challenge was the studies, as his pastor had originally
expected. It was during his time of studies that Joseph first showed ill health.
He suffered from migraine headaches and other difficulties… As he prepared
for the priesthood, he started to show the classic symptoms of tuberculosis. But
his firm conviction was that God’s will was that he not complain. He was
ordained a priest on October 12, 1902. By this time, everyone was aware that
Joseph’s ordination was a participation in the death of Jesus… But suffering was
an art that Cassant knew well because of his love of Jesus… In the early morning
of June 17, 1903, as Fr. Andre was celebrating Mass for his friend’s intentions,
Joseph went to the Lord.
We might ask: what does Joseph Cassant have to offer us today? First of
all, he instructs us. A man of little intellectual capacity and a very ordinary
experience of prayer, Cassant is nonetheless a theologian of the monastic life.
He saw, and makes us see, that the personal relation with Jesus is the heart of
Christian monasticism. He understood that the central monastic practices –
obedience, silence and humility – are Christological realities, expressions of
Christ’s Sonship and means of our conformity to Christ… Trappist vocation is a
lifelong process of healing. Joseph Cassant is a monk who was healed, and Fr
Malet by betting on and developing the essentially healthy aspect of Joseph was
the instrument of the cure. Finally, Cassant challenges us. The tools that he
brought to the monastery were few but indispensable: a good and upright will,
with a consistent practice of fidelity and generosity, an interior and exterior
obedience to the formation offered by his superiors. He staked his spiritual
destiny on the sanctifying power of the conversatio and was sanctified by it.
2 Cist. Studies Quarterly = vol. 39.1 2004 – pg 67.5