THE APPROBATION OF THE OBLATES: GRATITUDE THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD

Now that Eugene knew that the approbation was being granted, he began to look forward to finishing the remainder of the work connected with this, and to return home to his community. As he reflects on the events, we can touch his joy and relief and his consciousness of the work of God in the whole process.

Now I begin to hope to be able to leave immediately after Easter, unless the procedure with the brief is drawn out at length. I lull myself into thinking the contrary for I find that it is indeed a long time since I am separated from you and the family; but I feel that it had to be so and the good God has chosen me to render this service to the Society; and I ought to offer thanksgiving to him for whom we work, for having so well disposed hearts in my favor, that each of those with whom I had to deal advanced to meet me half-way, were favorable to begin with and found good in all I proposed, as if the Lord revealed to them the sentiments of my soul and let them perceive from within that my sole ambition is to please God and procure his glory by serving the Church and saving souls. I must add, that from the facts I presented and all that the weight of the truth obliged me to say, they conceived, the Pope especially, a very favorable idea of the whole Society, which ought to stimulate us to deserve more and more, by our devotedness to all good, a protection so high and so honorable. Amen.

Letter to Henri Tempier and all the Oblates, 18 February 1826, EO VII n 226

In his Diary his opinion is reinforced as he narrates:

I also wanted to see the Archpriest Adinolfi for he was not at the secretariate. Shortly after that, I met him in the street. We stopped to chat a minute. He again remarked on his great surprise at the success of our undertaking. “We never saw anything like it,” he said, “the Pope himself wanted the Brief of Approval expedited; he himself dedicated some things he wanted them to insert in it, etc.” Actually, the Archpriest, under-secretary of the Congregation, could not get over it. I concluded from his look and surprise that, if things had depended on him, we would not have reason to be so happy.

Roman diary, 20 February 1826, EO XVII

 

“If you depend on God’s grace there is no such thing as impossible.” Sri Chinmoy

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1 Response to THE APPROBATION OF THE OBLATES: GRATITUDE THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    “as if the Lord revealed to them the sentiments of my soul and let them perceive from within that my sole ambition is to please God and procure his glory by serving the Church and saving souls.” To enter into this place of my soul, the deepest and truest part of being can be fearful for I know that once I push through the mists of ego and self protection I will find God and myself. Myself recognized and reflected in the eyes of God. In God I find who I am, my goodness and beauty and my smallness and my sin. It it here that I experience the divine, and so find the courage to look at what is my ‘raison d’être’. God as my center, my core, always and ever with me. the very root of that goodness and beauty,

    I am a little surprised sometimes to find myself so eager and strong to work within and as part of the Church. Nothing so lofty as in the words of Eugene, ‘saving souls’, but simply a reliance on her gifts and teachings and with her, a burning fire to give and share all of the love that I have been given. To love as I am loved, as I know love.

    To look and admit that my my soul ambition, my reason for being, is to love God and to love as I am loved sounds pious and impossible at best and yet that is what I strive for, for my whole being to be centered on and around God. I would never in my wildest dreams have thought that I would look at myself and see God, that God would be the most real and central core of my life, my being. But God gave me that desire and so I asked for it. And as in the gospel of Matthew God responded. I don’t boast about it, but it fills me with quiet joy and and wonder. It is as Sri Chinmoy said.

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