While waiting to find a permanent house, the three Oblates lived at the seminary.
… You appreciate the advantage of being lodged in the seminary while waiting to find a suitable place. Who knows if God will not find for us some vocation or other amongst so many young students who may be able to conceive some esteem for us in seeing so close to them those whom we would place beside them.
Letter to Henri Tempier, 7 April 1825, EO VI n. 176
As soon as they were established in the seminary, Eugene wrote to the new community:
Without seeming to make a point of it, adopt a very amiable manner with the seminarians. Father Mie must take care not to bring up the subject openly, but my whole desire and my hope is that some of these young people, touched by your good example, your regularity and the sublimity of the ministry to which you are devoted, may become attracted and desirous of joining our ranks.
Letter to Fathers Mie, Honorat and to Brother Guibert, 2 June 1825, EO VI n.180
Yvon Beaudoin takes up the story of our fourth establishment:
Father Pierre Nolasque Mie, the superior, Father Jean-Baptiste Honorat and Hippolyte Guibert, now a deacon, left for Nîmes on May 16…They shared the seminary refectory and chapel in common with the seminary professors and students, and also took their recreation with them. This close and daily association was intended to bring in vocations, for these three Oblates were reputed to be skilled recruiters. Bishop de Chaffoy, however, was not going to be caught by this manoeuvre: in the decree erecting the house, he specified that he would allow “diocesan clergy to be associated to the work of the missions” only “in three years’ time” (Decree of 25 April 1825). Before this time came, the Oblate community had moved into a new house that had been purchased in the spring of 1827 and was located in an area that was completely Protestant.
“Nîmes, Oblate House from 1825 to 1830” in Oblate Historical Dictionary, Volume 1.
“Has it never dawned upon you that the essence of witnessing is just plain honesty? You are salt – whether you feel like it or not. You are not told to act like salt but to be what you are. You are a light. God has done a work in your life. Don’t try to shine. Let the light that God put there shine out. It demands no more than honesty.” John White
I almost hear it now – ‘Be in order to do’ – ‘be, simply be’. This morning I had the thought “my grace is enough for you”. To not do is hard, incredibly hard. Even asI acknowledge this my mind goes a hundred miles an hour to try and figure out what I can ‘do’ so that I can be. This kind of letting go – it plain sucks!
I pause now to look at what John White says; “Don’t try to shine. Let the light that God put there shine out. It demands no more than honesty.” Who am I to God? How do I do that?I have a tiny idea, now to allow it to grow. Do I have something to offer? I can only share my struggle and – what I have been given. How do I do that in the light of the charism? I have a suspicion that it is already beginning, a tiny bit perhaps. Certainly not of my doing.
Having just returned from the Chemin de St Jacques experience and a subsequent visit to Aix where we were welcomed warmly by Benoit and 2 priests, and now reintegrating into every day life in Arnprior, I really get today’s reading.
On the Chemin, of course the emphasis is on walking each day and all the associated things with that. However, everyone is doing the same thing so the distinction becomes who you are, not what you do. Words fail me to describe this. The light I have in me from God shines clearly for others to see. And I clearly could see the light in each person I encountered.
Now that I am back in the city, I feel the tug to do things and to define myself by what I do. Well this time I am going to resist. Every day, when I arise, I will ask myself what do I want to be today, not what I am going to do. As they say, the real Camino starts when you get back home.
The quote from John White is very true and insightful. I wonder what kind of experience he had to know this and articulate it so well. And yes I was thinking Nimes is in Languedoc.