THE CONSTANT REMINDER: BE IN ORDER TO DO

Separated from his community, Eugene reminds them of the heart of our Oblate vocation: mission is that of inviting others to share in what we are living and experiencing ourselves as a missionary community: BE in order to DO!

Love one another. Let all agree in maintaining good order and discipline by fidelity to the Rule, obedience, abnegation and humility.
The Church expects you all to be a powerful aid in her distress; but be well convinced that you will only be good enough to achieve something in the measure thatyou advance in the practice of religious virtues.

Letter to Hippolyte Courtès, 22 February 1823, EO VI n. 93

Our mission is to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to seek it before all else (cf. Mt 6: 33). We fulfil this mission in community; and our communities are a sign that, in Jesus, God is everything for us. Together we await Christ’s coming in the fullness of his justice so that God may be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15: 28).

Growing in faith, hope and love, we commit ourselves to be a leaven of the Beatitudes at the heart of the world.

CC&RR, Constitution 11

 

“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.”      Oliver Goldsmith

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2 Responses to THE CONSTANT REMINDER: BE IN ORDER TO DO

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    When I read the “Be in order to do” my yes was a little too loud, a little too forced. I question myself if I have been ‘doing a little bit in order to be’? My humanness is rising up before me, my weaknesses, my sins, my acting out of my woundedness. Has this affected my community around me? How has this wounded my community?

    Abnegation – I had to look up the word. Self-denial. Why? Obviously I did not want to really look at and reflect on this today. Have I been trying to focus on things? Clothing or a new “thing” that I didn’t really need – that I want to somehow make me feel better? Am I trying to be something ‘bigger or better’ than I am? It hasn’t worked. Has it been a distraction, a refocusing? Certainly.

    Not an entirely comfortable start to my day. I have walked away from this screen twice, feeling that for sure I have nothing to offer. Am sure this posting was not written to spark this but this is where I have been led. So, I restart my day, asking that my heart be filled. I find myself praying and asking for forgiveness, asking to be able to start this day again, asking for the grace to be as I have been created to be. I find myself saying and breathing the Lord’s Prayer. “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, our trespasses, our sins ….”. Lord let me start again. May I somehow preach your love in how I live it out with my community today. Little and ordinary, focussed on You.

  2. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    This seems a little strange for me today. Still fighting the cold which knocked me out last week. I don’t seem to be able to ‘do’ a whole lot right now. How easy it is to run from the being. “Be in order to Do”.

    As I continue I realise that I have not really spent any time with Constitution 11. “Growing in faith, hope and love, we commit ourselves to be leaven of the Beatitudes at the heart of the world.” I am not exactly in love with that part about committing myself to be leaven of the Beatitudes. I am not sure I want to go any further. I feel tears rising from within me as I remember my little prayer of “Lord make me little, make me hidden, make me ordinary, make me a lamp to my neighbour’s feet.” In a need to escape I run to pick up a copy of Jetté’s ‘Apostolic Man’. I find what I am looking for on page 128: “…to transform the word from within, by being at its heart a leaven of the Gospel Beatitudes. The leaven raises the dough and transforms it.” A sinking feeling within me, yet at the same time there is a small joy emerging. I need to remember this, take it in and make it mine somehow. Jetté continues: “The Beatitudes express the perfection of the new man [woman] who is born of the Gospel. Through love for the Lord Jesus and thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit within him, this new man is poor and free, humble and merciful; his heart is pure and it thirsts for justice and peace; he goes even to the point of finding his joy in the sufferings he endures for Jesus Christ. […] It is in this way that, through his activity, his word, his prayers and witness of his life, he cooperates with Christ in evangelizing the world.”

    I surrender – again. Is this what I want? Yes, yes and yes. So why do I forget so often and try to do? I remember Nicanor saying to me that we come together in community to support the mission, and we support each other. There it is. This reminding, this is that support. I am suddenly more at ease, with my own weakness and brokenness, knowing that I am loved, knowing that God gives me what I need in so many ways. I am grateful. And I am not ready to let my day begin.

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