Chapelle Sainte-Agnès de Jardenc
Former parish church, near chemin du Buya, 2 km south of Monteynard, France [ Map ]
On the outskirts of the village of Monteynard, the former parish church is a small stone building surrounded by a cemetery and magnificent mountain scenery.
Significance
When Eymard was posted to Monteynard as a young parish priest in 1837, he came to a parish that had been abandoned after the Revolution and was in great need of renewal. Eymard lived with his sisters in the Monteynard parish house in 1837-39. Because the old church was located on the outskirts of Monteynard, he also opened a small chapel in the centre of the village.
During his interlude at Monteynard, Eymard revitalised the Catholic faith in the area, but he became increasingly dissatisfied with his own vocation as a diocesan priest and returned to thoughts of joining a religious order. When Eymard left Monteynard to become a Marist in 1839, he was not overcome by a sense of having abandoned the parish.
‘I entrusted Monteynard into the hands of God’, Eymard told his sisters.
‘Do as I did and do not worry’, he said. ‘The Good Lord does not want you to do so’.
Eymardian Places 