200 YEARS LATER: THE MOST DEPRIVED

Today, Eugene’s call on behalf of the “most deprived” continues to ring out to all the members of his Mazenodian family:

Where the Church is already established, our commitment is to those groups it touches least. Wherever we work, our mission is especially to those people whose condition cries out for salvation and for the hope which only Jesus Christ can fully bring. These are the poor with their many faces; we give them our preference.

CC&RR Constitution 5

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1 Response to 200 YEARS LATER: THE MOST DEPRIVED

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    There are no qualifiers in this Constitution, no time frames, no lengthy lists of names of those to be excluded.

    I am reminded of Jesus this morning and how on Calvary, on the cross how he loved, those very ones who were putting him to death. Was he the poor one, were his mother and disciples the poor ones, were the Romans or the Jewish scribes and Pharisees the poor ones?

    I struggle with the reminder of the elections tomorrow to the south. Though it is not my country I am touched in many ways and am a small part of what happens there and how we will live with that here. I struggle with some of the ‘them’ (the ‘them’ who are hard to love and who can be even harder to remember in a small prayer to God). It is hard for me to love those that I am fearful of, those that I cannot understand, those who seem to be the very antithesis of who I strive to become and all that I believe in. A small prayer seems all that I can manage. Seventy times seven.

    I think of Eugene and his stance from 1832 to 1837 – who he decided to love and how he could best manage that. I think of the “Tattooist of Auschwitz”, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who in order to live was forced to permanently mark/brand his fellow prisoners. How he found ways to love in what could only be described as the ‘hell hole’ of the world at that time.

    The poor with their many faces, the most deprived. I am uncomfortable with some of my thoughts. It would be so much easier to hate and deride some than it is to love them.
    I look again at the title – this was not what I expected this morning, not where I wanted to be. I think of Eugene and Lale, and of Jesus – who they ‘walked with’, who were their preference.

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