OUR FOUNDING VISION TODAY: PROPHETS AS LAMPS OF THE NEW WORLD

We are members of the prophetic Church. While recognizing our own need for conversion, we bear witness to God’s holiness and justice. We announce the liberating presence of Jesus Christ and the new world born in his resurrection.

CC&RR, Constitution 9

Eugene looked at the Cross and saw himself as he really was: confused and lost and lacking direction. Conversion meant that he had finally found his focus. It was seeing himself through the eyes of the Crucified Savior that gave him a focus. They led him to begin to look at the world through those same eyes and understand the purpose of his life as being a “co-operator of Christ the Savior.”

Through the eyes of the crucified Christ he became aware of a crowd of poor lost people milling at the foot of the Cross, focused on themselves and their misery – just like the women at the empty tomb who had to be brought to their senses by the angel and told: “He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.”

“Galilee” is the place of our everyday lives. The message of the Crucified Savior is a summons to fully immerse ourselves in our everyday lives as the place to discover the liberating presence of Jesus Christ and the new world born in his resurrection. Just like Eugene, once we enter into this personal process as missionary disciples, then we find ourselves becoming even more aware of those around us who are most in need of the same change of vision.

Here is the Oblate message and mission: journey with the poor and abandoned, in their humanity, to discover the liberating presence of Jesus Christ and the new world born in his resurrection in their human struggles and joys, and then to accompany them in their growth as Christians and saints in the process.

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“A zealous man feels that like a lamp he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach and work and give money, he will cry and sigh and pray.”   J. C. Ryle

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1 Response to OUR FOUNDING VISION TODAY: PROPHETS AS LAMPS OF THE NEW WORLD

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    Last week I was on a retreat and the focus was the Cross. It was a wonderful retreat, we were offered so much that I think it will take many months to unpack all that we were given. In the midst of it all I had to look at myself. Like Eugene I looked at myself and saw myself as I really am. But there all similarity ends for the small bit of focus which I found – while it has led me to seeing through the eyes of our Crucified Savior it has not pointed to anything so exalted as being a ‘co-operator of Christ the Savior’.

    “He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.” “Galilee is the place of our everyday lives.” Coming off of the retreat and returning to the ordinary of my life these words are like a very small lamp; not terribly prophetic and not terribly bright. This lamp does not light up any great deeds or missions ahead of me, it barely glimmers in the dark of uncertainty and fear.

    In coming to this place this morning I seem to be bringing into focus a little more clearly how I am called to move forward. Perhaps this is my Galilee, my everyday life which is quite ordinary. It is here that I might find the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.

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