200 YEARS AGO: NOTA BENE – SEE TO IT THAT YOU HAVE SOLIDLY VIRTUOUS PRIESTS

See to it that you have zealous, altruistic and solidly virtuous priests and soon you will bring back to the fold the people who have wandered away from their duties.

1818 Rule, Part One, Chapter One. The ends of the Institute, §3. Nota Bene.
Missions, 78 (1951) p. 15

In 1818 he was writing this for his own Missionary priests. In 1826 this text was modified into what today we know as the “Preface” addressed to all the members of the Mazenodian family. If we want to make a difference to the 21st century, the same principles still apply: people must be able to recognize in the quality of our lives that which we preach to others.

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1 Response to 200 YEARS AGO: NOTA BENE – SEE TO IT THAT YOU HAVE SOLIDLY VIRTUOUS PRIESTS

  1. Eleanor Rabnett says:

    There is a small thrill when I see the words “Mazenodian family” – how wondrous is our Lord that he should lead each and every one of us to our place of belonging.
    I doubt that any of us are used to looking at ourselves – even if it be in the mirror of the eyes of others – and see the goodness of our own beings – it is much more likely that we look at others and see their ‘Godness’.
    For some reason I think this morning of Blessed Joseph Gerard and of his endearing fidelity and goodness and how he loved. I do not pretend to know him as well as many, but I do not remember him writing to Eugene or later to Fr. Fabre ‘blowing his own horn’. It was no different for those first members who came here to North America in 1841 and onward.
    Yesterday I looked at a piece on Facebook of a group of members of this family who drove together from the Czech Republic to Germany – zealous, altruistic and solidly virtuous members of the Mazenodian family. The difference they make in my own life as I see the face of God in them! I can only imagine the affect they are having on those around them. There was a thrill of joy as I looked at each of their faces – a thrill that comes from recognizing within them the same shared charism and spirituality which fills my heart. I recognized in them and the many here at home in the “quality of our lives that which we preach to others”.

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