Eustace Kugler, the sixth child of Michele, a blacksmith and farrier, and Anna Maria Schuster, was born on January 15, 1867, in Neuhaus, a tiny village near Nittenau in the Province and Diocese of Regensburg, Germany. Baptized on the same day, he was given the name Joseph. From his earliest years, he showed an uncommon inclination toward piety and Christian virtues, along with a lively intelligence and an open, cheerful, and generous character. Simple, innocent, and candid, he led a hard and difficult childhood.

After successfully completing primary school in Nittenau, he was sent to Munich to apprentice in the art of ironwork. Following a violent shove from a mean and violent coworker, he fell from a scaffold, seriously injuring his leg and remaining slightly lame for the rest of his life. In January 1893, at the age of 26, he entered the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God, also known as the Fatebenefratelli: on October 20, 1894, he received the novice habit; on October 21, 1895, he took his simple vows; and on October 30, 1898, his solemn vows. Esteemed and admired by all for his exceptional qualities of prudence, competence, and diligence, he served for 20 years as Prior in various hospitals of the Order in Bavaria and for 21 years as Provincial of the Bavarian Province until his death on June 10, 1946. He was beatified in Regensburg on October 4, 2009.

 

1.               The Source of His Apostolate

The spirituality of Blessed Eustace Kugler has its origins in a Christian and fervently Catholic family. His childhood was hard and difficult, yet full of simplicity and genuine innocence. The deep faith lived out in his family and instilled by his parents made him a strong, resolute, and determined man. A life lived in the shadow of contented and blessed poverty[1] shaped this young man into a far-sighted, courageous, and prophetic religious. Simplicity and sobriety were the characteristics that accompanied him throughout his life.  The dominant source of his apostolate was always the yearning for holiness. His life, marked by suffering from a young age, led him to live his spirituality by drawing upon the Passion of the Lord, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Eucharist. Humility was his dominant virtue. He firmly believed that God resists the proud and grants grace to the humble. He had resolved to imitate his model: Jesus, who says, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart[2] ”.

The Lord’s invitation is surprising: He calls simple people burdened by a difficult life to follow Him; He calls people with many needs to follow Him and promises them that in Him they will find rest and relief. The invitation is addressed in the imperative form: “come to me,” “take my yoke,” “learn from me”[3] .

 

Blessed Eustace made Jesus’ invitation his own, living his life in humility and meekness with a tender gaze toward the suffering, the little ones, the poor, and the needy.

Brother Eustachio began his life marked by trial, poverty, and suffering[4] ; these painful experiences refined his sensitivity, preparing him to one day become a true son of St. John of God. The foundation of his apostolate was always the desire to serve the suffering and the sick, a desire nourished by great faith, profound piety, and a constant readiness for sacrifice.

During his hospitalization following a fall from a scaffold, his piety and kindness became increasingly evident. His humility, lived to the point of heroism, shaped his humanity, making him sensitive and open to others, and becoming a tangible and credible sign of merciful love, just as our Constitutions affirm:

 

“Through our free and total self-giving to God,

we accept being sent into the world as signs of his merciful love.

The simplicity of our life proclaims that the transformation of human realities is possible only through the spirit of the Beatitudes.

We are witnesses that Christ is the Lord of history;[5]

we proclaim the greatness of God’s love and show people

that He continues to care for their lives and their needs”[6] .  

 

            Blessed Eustace, with his profound and authentic spirituality, built his entire hospitaller life around service to the sick, first as a simple brother and later as a local and provincial superior. His profound spirituality enabled him to open his eyes to the world of suffering as God sees it.  He continually nourished his hospitaller spirituality by making his actions ever more human, keeping in mind the words of Jesus: “Whenever you did these things to one of these least of my brothers, you did them to me.”[7]

He had shaped his entire life around a living and concrete spirituality, imitating his founder, St. John of God:

 

·                 He was always seen deep in prayer.

·                 He drew his physical and spiritual strength from his constant communion with God.

·                 He prayed fervently, entrusting all his plans to God and the Virgin Mary.

·                 At the monastery, he humbly served as a blacksmith, performing all necessary tasks, including those for the hospital.

·                 Praying the Rosary was his “weapon” for overcoming every difficulty.

·                 Unwavering trust in Divine Providence[8] .

·                 A deep sense of justice.

·                 He cared for the sick with extraordinary devotion.

·                 Humility in every task he undertook[9] .

·                 He devoted himself to caring for the bodies and spiritual conversion of the sick.

·                 He cared especially for the poorest and most abandoned of the sick[10] .

 

 

            His life, nourished by prayer and illuminated by the Word of God and the Eucharist, made him a man of profound humanity, open to dialogue and hospitality, attentive to the fragile and vulnerable of his time. He knew how to set aside what was non-essential to make room for relationships with the sick, his confreres, and his collaborators.

 

            The journey of faith that began in his childhood, cultivated and nurtured throughout his life first as a layperson and then as a religious, enabled him to understand and live out his profound humanity as an indispensable example of a credible witness to the Gospel.

 

 

2.               His Apostolic Style    

 

There is no Gospel without humanity. We can only have our first experience of God in the reality of the Incarnation. Blessed Eustace, sensitive to the needs of the sick and the people he met, saw in them the presence of God drawing near to his humanity.

His confreres said of him that he was goodness personified[11] . 

            The habitual, modest, and admirable way in which he translated his charity toward his neighbour into practice at every hour of the day was his goodness, his amiability, his kindness—cordial, generous, constant, always true to himself—which he showed in his demeanor, in conversation, and in his correspondence with everyone: insiders and outsiders, young and old, poor or rich, uneducated or learned, brothers or collaborators.

During the spiritual exercises of 1895, he wrote: “Do you want to know what your bliss in heaven will be like one day? Ask yourself what your fraternal love is like”[12] .

 

            Faithful to the imitation of Jesus, his Master of life, “who did not come to be served but to serve,”[13] made himself a servant to all throughout his long religious life. Whenever Brother Eustace, even while serving as Provincial Superior, took the night shift caring for the sick, it was known from the start that the sick would be well cared for.  In his daily apostolate, he was a model for all his confreres: he provided comprehensive care for the sick, ensuring they received every material and spiritual need.

Humility and simplicity were the virtues that made him beloved in the eyes of those he served and his confreres. With simplicity and serenity of spirit, combined with kindness and frankness of manner, and the affable, understanding, and gently cheerful tone of a father, he earned the esteem, affection, and trust of those who approached him. His confrere, Brother Bernardo Schelle, writes: “The affectionate kindness he showed to everyone, combined with his genuine and unsimulated humility, disarmed the hardest hearts, the most ambitious aims, and the most rebellious spirits.” In this way, he once again confirmed the words of Jesus: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”[14] —that is, the hearts of their fellow human beings.

Among his exhortations, one phrase stands out and has become famous: “Heal with love and lead without pride”[15] . 

He always used kind words toward the sick and the people he met; his words were inspired by his sensitivity and gentleness of spirit.

The phrases he habitually used:

“Please forgive me for bothering you with another transfer…”

“I would, however, like to caution you.”

“I would like to draw your attention…”.

“Please, however, allow me…”.

“I would be grateful if…”.

“I beg you, dear brothers…”

And he discreetly exhorted them to the virtue of humility whenever a good opportunity presented itself. Both verbally and in writing, he told them: “Be and remain humble: then you will please God.”[16]

 

            When he passed through the sickrooms, he always had the kindest words of encouragement, spoken to each one with a manner full of care and kindness.

His humility was put to the test when, during his term as Provincial, he inaugurated the hospital in Regensburg that he had envisioned and built with dedication and sacrifice, despite many opponents. On the day of the solemn inauguration, June 19, 1929, many people were publicly praised for their commitment and hard work, while the Provincial Father was overlooked; yet not a word of resentment or bitterness escaped his lips.

            His apostolic style found concrete expression in his fatherly and motherly care for the poor and the sick. He had internalized the charism of St. John of God so deeply that he made it a way of life, living out with dedication the four vows he had taken at his religious profession.

Sensitive of heart and open to grace, he made hospital service the manifestation of his love for Jesus. His favourite patients were: the epileptics, the most restless, the severely disabled, and all those who were left on the margins because they were difficult to care for; he said that these were the Lord’s favourites. 

            In his simplicity and humility, Brother Eustace was no stranger to the world. In fulfilling the vow of hospitality and the mission of the Fatebenefratelli, and in the leadership and administration of his charitable institutions, he was always guided by strict observance of the Constitutions and by the application of the Word of God, uniting progress and charity. Blessed Eustace was a modern man and a lover of progress: in welfare, science, and construction. During his 21 years as Provincial, he brought progress and innovation, in accordance with the demands of science and technology, by founding two more modern hospitals in Regensburg: this is the prodigious fruitfulness of Blessed Eustace’s humility, rooted in the charity of Christ and the progress of science.

During his term as Provincial, he also faced the grim period of Nazism, which he had to contend with in various circumstances. From the very beginning, Brother Eustace sensed the destructive seeds and catastrophic consequences contained within that dangerous ideology. Exhorting and encouraging his confreres, he said: “The Lord will not let these trees grow up to the sky.”  Those were difficult times during the war; he defended his patients with suffering but with equal determination, especially the most fragile and those most at risk who lived every day under the threat of racial laws. The Charism of Hospitality, which Brother Eustace lived with faith and trust in the Lord, enabled him to overcome all the difficulties of the time, opening new paths of hospitality to adequately respond to the needs of so many sick and poor people whom the war had created.

During the last ten days of his illness, he constantly held the Holy Rosary in his hands. To those who asked him how he was feeling, he invariably replied: “I am returning to my heavenly homeland”; or: “I am going home.”

On June 10, his health deteriorated; at 4:30 p.m. on Pentecost Monday, 1946, he gave his soul to God. Brother Eustace was 79 years old and had been a religious for 50 years. He fell asleep in the Lord quietly and serenely, just as he had always lived.

On his nightstand he kept a small piece of paper on which he had written in his own hand the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and other notes on devotional practices for praying the Pentecost novena and preparing for death.

            “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps 8:5) It is a question full of wonder and expectation. It is a question full of that intentional sensitivity that fills the heart with tenderness. Psalm 8 is a celebration of the greatness and beauty of humanity, which can be grasped only in relation to God’s immense greatness and mercy. In his humility, Brother Eustace was able to perceive this divine presence in humanity and place himself at its service as a way to remain ever united with God.

The liturgical collect expresses very well the greatness of this figure, highlighting the great virtues of humility and charity that made him a giant of hospitality with these words:

 

O God, strength of those who hope in you,

who granted Blessed Eustachio (Kugler)

the grace to live with great humility among his brothers

and to serve the sick with singular charity,

grant us also, through his intercession,

to trust firmly in you,

and to serve with tireless charity

all those who are suffering and in need.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is God,             

and lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy

Spirit,for ever and ever.

[16] Circular Letter from Brother Eustachio Kugler dated June 20, 1930.