THE EXPANSION OF MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES FOR THE CONVERSION OF NON-CHRISTIANS BUT ALSO TO FOUND SCHOOLS AND A SEMINARY

Turning our attention to Ceylon (Sri Lanka today), we recall how the first four Oblates had arrived there in 1847, with the charge of reviving the faith of the Catholics who had abandoned it and converting over a million people who did not know Jesus Christ.

Father Semeria always cooperated with Bishop Bettachini who made him his secretary. He accepted that Bishop Bettachini placed the three priests in three missions distant from one another: Father Semeria in Jaffna to the north, Father Ciamin in Mantotte to the west and Father Keating in Batticaloa to the East, and we do not know where Brother de Steffanis was doing his ministry. Later, Father Semeria would see to it that the missionaries were allocated two by two in the missions. When the second group arrived in 1849, Fathers Semeria and Le Bescou were in Jaffna, Fathers Ciamin and Leydier in Point Pedro and Fathers Keating and Mouchel in Batticaloa. Two more were to arrive in 1850.

Your Eminence, to conclude the picture I wish to place before you, I would recall that 10 Oblate missionaries are working in the Vicariate of Jaffna in Ceylon and others will follow when it may please the Holy See to entrust that Vicariate to the Congregation, not only to facilitate the expansion of missionary activities for the conversion of non-Christians but also to found schools and a seminary.

Letter to Cardinal Fransoni, Prefect of the S. Cong. of Propaganda Fide, 25 July 1850, EO V n 16

REFLECTION

We will spare no effort to awaken or to reawaken the faith in the people to whom we are “sent, and we will help them to discover “who Christ is”. Our mission puts us on constant call to respond to the most urgent needs of the Church through various forms of witness and ministry, but especially through proclaiming the Word of God which finds its fulfilment in the celebration of the sacraments and in service to others.

OMI Rule of Life, Constitution 7

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THE AMAZING EXPANSION OF THE CANADIAN MISSIONS

In Canada the Oblate missions were expanding, as we see in this report that Eugene sent to Rome to Cardinal Fransoni, Prefect of the Sacred  Congregation of Propaganda Fide.

In Canada, we have two communities in the diocese of Montreal for the urban and rural missions; one community in Saguenay, in the diocese of Quebec, for missions in the colonies and among the Indigenous. In the diocese of Bytown the Oblates of Mary Immaculate do practically everything: they have a novitiate, staff the seminary, go on missions among the Indigenous of Abitibi and Temiscaming and evangelize the lumbermen, the hundreds of men who spend most of the year in the woods cutting lumber. They used to be more like wild men than Christians, but they have changed completely since the Oblate Fathers have been visiting them at the cost of great hardship and sacrifice. Moreover, the Oblate Congregation is still providing almost all services in the vicariate of St. Boniface on the Red River and is moving towards Ile a la Crosse and Hudson Bay.

Letter to Cardinal Fransoni, Prefect of the S. Cong. of Propaganda Fide,, 25 July 1850, EO V, n. 16

REFLECTION

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” (Ambrose Redmoon)

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THE HABIT DOES NOT MAKE THE MISSIONARY

After his arrival, D’Herbomez was amazed to see the “renowned missionaries of Oregon at his first encounter with them. Brother Verney was dressed in a French cap, goatskin leggings, and moccasins, covered by a green cloth under an old blue vest and a frock coat. Pandosy was dressed in a worn out cassock, an old straw hat, goatskin leggings and thick shoes. All this made D’herbomez exclaim, “The habit does not make a missionary’”(Young p. 102).

At first, Ricard considered sending D’Herbomez to the Swanomish tribe on Puget Sound. However, he later decided that D’Herbomez could better use his time learning English, Chinook and Walla Walla. Initially, they sent him to serve in the Yakama missions with Father Chirouse. In August 1851, Chirouse, D’Herbomez and Brother Verney traveled to Chirouse’s mission of Saint Joseph in the Yakama country. For D’Herbomez it was an arduous journey through dangerously steep mountain passes. However, they were relieved and happy to arrive at the wilderness mission they would call home. (Young 115 -116)

REFLECTION

Often we romanticize our ideas of the early Oblate missionaries beautifully dressed in their spotless cassocks and Crosses while preaching and converting. The narratives of their actual experiences shatter this romantic picture. What counts is the quality of their lives, their courageous and zealous preaching of the Gospel, and the witness of how they lived their message.

“Beware, so long as you live, of judging persons by their outward appearance.” Jean de La Fontaine

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FOR THESE MEN, ONLY GOD CAN ACCOUNT FOR THE SACRIFICE OF ALL THEY SUFFER FOR HIS GLORY AND THE SALVATION OF THE POOR AND TRULY ABANDONED SOULS.

In writing to the Society of the Propagation of the Faith requesting financial assistance for the foreign missions, Eugene gave some details of the Oregon and Red River missions.

I wish to begin this letter by expressing my thanks to you as well as to the Council for the grant allocated to the missions served by the Missionary Oblates of Mary. You would not believe the extreme needs of the missions, among others, of Oregon and Red River. In Oregon, the men are on the verge of dying from hunger. The reports I receive show me missionaries reduced to eating, as if it were a banquet, dogs and wolves, walking barefoot since they do not have the means to purchase shoes, and forced to clothe themselves by cutting up a blanket to make a sort of cassock. You know that I did not neglect to send them what they needed most, but the passage to reach that extremity of the world is so lengthy that they suffered considerably during the long wait.

The men in Red River live in any icy environment and are so distant one from another that it costs an enormous amount of money to procure even the simplest foodstuffs. For these men, only God can account for the sacrifice of all they suffer for his glory and the salvation of the poor and truly abandoned souls.

Letter to the President of Propagation of the Faith, 20 March 1850, EO V, n 11

Young p. 90-91: “They remained quietly among the tribes, slowly getting to know the ways of the people. While they could claim the comfort of land, they could not claim to have settled it. Food was scarce. After they had run out of wolf and dog, they had to resort to killing the horses and cattle that they were hoping to use as work animals. Their diet consisted mainly of potatoes and the catch of the day. Their clothes were in tatters and their shoes were falling off their feet. Worse than the physical tortures of their poverty were the tortures of loneliness. On the bright side, the mission continued to expand and the outreach to the native peoples grew more effective. Chirouse and Pandosy continued to improve in their study of the native languages as they traveled among the various people of their concern.They also began to have a sense of how to operate a mission among the natives, themselves.”

REFLECTION

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28: 19-20)

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HE ADAPTED THE LOCATION OF THE MISSION TO THE LIFESTYLE OF THOSE HE WAS SENT TO SERVE

In the meantime, this is what the first group of Oblates had been doing in Oregon before the arrival of this second group of three missionaries.

Eugene had surmised:

I do not know if we can count on establishing Christian communities amongst the Indigenous people; in such a case we should leave Providence to act and if God calls upon us to make the faith flourish in this glacial world, we will not lack men ready to consecrate themselves to this ministry.

Letter to Bishop Guigues, 13 April 1850, EO I, n 131

But, despite the odds against them, they did succeed. Beginning in 1847 they built a wooden chapel and house at the meeting of the Yakima and Colombia Rivers. They dedicated this mission to Saint Rose of Lima. The place chosen for the Saint Rose mission proved unsuitable because of the lack of timber for building and of arable land. Besides, there was no Amerindian encampment in that place and the Oblates did not stay long. In the meantime Father Ricard made a foundation on the south shore of Puget Sound bay.
Beginning in 1848 and 1849, Fathers Chirouse and Pandosy together with Brothers Blanchet and Verney, founded three other missions about 50 kilometres from one another “at the request of the chiefs of small Yakima tribes numbering about 150, or 200, or at most 300 each” as Father Ricard wrote to Father Faraud on February 10, 1852. At each place the missionaries built a small poor chapel. When they arrived in the region there was “neither parish, nor mission, not chapel, nor house.”
https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/oregon-united-states-1847-1860/

Ron Young (p. 85):  “Saint Rose, Immaculate Conception, Saint Joseph and Holy Cross in the diocese of Walla Walla were little more than wilderness huts, sparse and uninviting. It would take time before they could be built up into anything resembling more than a one-man hovel. However, the locations were well chosen for encountering the native peoples of the area. Further, Father Chirouse showed great initiative by following Kamiakin’s tribe to their winter retreat and establishing another mission there in order to continue the evangelization he had begun. In this way, he adapted the location of the mission to the lifestyle of those he was sent to serve.”

REFLECTION

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

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A SEA VOYAGE OF AROUND 230 DAYS

As the Oblate Congregation grew and became more widespread we find that Eugene’s letters do not always give too many details of the missions.  For this reason, I think it important to fill in the details with some narrative. We may not be able to hear the words of Eugene speaking, but through the lives and achievements of the Oblates, we hear his charism and his spirit fully alive.

The first group of 5 Oblates, under Fr. Ricard, had travelled to Oregon via sea to New York, and from there, “they traveled by ship, stagecoach, steam ship, on foot, covered wagon and horseback to reach their destination. Finally, the 2000 mile Oregon Trail would have left them exhausted. Yet, when they arrived, they were ready to begin at once to establish their mission among the native peoples of the area. ( Ron Young, The Mission of the OMI in Oregon, p.69).

The second group were carrying much-needed supplies. On November 29, 1849, we had read in Eugene’s diary that Fr. Louis D’Herbomez (27) and Brothers Gaspard Janin (51) and Philippe Surel (30) had set sail for Oregon.  As there was no Panama Canal, they had to go right around the continent of South America.

I yesterday received a letter from Rio de Janeiro from our Fr. d’Herbomez who is on his way to Oregon and who, on February 14th, had only reached so far, after leaving Marseilles in November.

To Fr. Bellon at Maryvale, April 21, 1850, EO III n 38

They reached San Francisco on July 19, 1850 – a sea voyage of around 230 days! Six weeks later they finally arrived at their destination in Oregon.

Ron Young writes (p. 102)

The small group was sent with twenty-two pieces of freight filled with basic supplies and long-awaited money for the Oregon Mission. Unlike their predecessors, these missionaries would travel the entire journey by sea from France, around Cape Horn, to San Francisco. From San Francisco they traveled to Portland, Oregon, aboard the ship Caroline. Continuing onward, they traveled to Fort Vancouver up to the Columbia River.

REFLECTION

These ships were no luxury cruise liners with air conditioning and refrigeration, and one can only admire these missionaries and all the personal discomfort they were prepared to undergo for the salvation of souls.

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FAILURE IS NOT FATAL: IT IS THE COURAGE TO CONTINUE THAT COUNTS

Ordination of Brother Richard Moloney in my chapel. I ordained him sub-deacon and will ordain him deacon at Sitientes and priest on Easter Monday. He is one of the three who is destined for the Buffalo mission.

Diary 22 February 1850, EO XXII.

The first three Oblates sent to Buffalo were 25 years old and had just finished their studies and been ordained. Pierre Amisse was the superior, accompanied by Richard Moloney and Francois Xavier Pourrat. On arrival they were unable to take over the church promised them because the pastor refused to leave. They were discouraged and also realized that they needed to become more proficient in English if they were to cope. After 15 days the trio of youngsters left and went to Montreal. It would take another year before a more permanent community of Oblates arrived – and from then on, the Oblates were to remain in Buffalo until today.

REFLECTION

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” (Winston Churchill.)

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HE PUT BEFORE ME SOME VERY GOOD REASONS FOR HAVING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF OUR CONGREGATION SET UP IN HIS INTERESTING DIOCESE

I have had three Bishops here one after the other, and you can understand that with such guests it is not easy to have time to oneself. One of these prelates was Bishop Timon, the Bishop of Buffalo in the United States, whom I had for eight days. He put before me some very good reasons for having an establishment of our Congregation set up in his interesting diocese. It is clear that there will be plenty to do there, and moreover his diocese is not far from Montreal, and so will serve as a connecting link with our other establishments. And so I yielded to his request.

Letter to Fr. Étienne Semeria in Jaffna, 17 January 1850, EO IV n 14

Yvon Beaudoin writes: “The minutes of the General Council’s January 4,1850 meeting speak favorably of accepting an offer to have the Oblates come to Buffalo, among the factors favorable to accepting this offer were Buffalo’s unique location only 24 hours from NY equidistant to Montreal where the Oblates were already established and only 48 hours to Bytown whose Episcopal Seat was held by Bishop Guigues, o.m.i., who was also the Oblate Vicar in North America and the promise which Buffalo had for growth as a major city in the United States. The minutes mention that the Bishop was seeking three Oblates and describe the offer of a small parish and college, the revenues and land of which would be given to the Oblates. The Bishop was requesting three Oblates, The proposal received the full acceptance of the Council.”

REFLECTION

The Oblates of Texas and of Buffalo engage in friendly rivalry about which the first Oblate establishment in the USA was. Texas claims that the Oblates got there first. Buffalo says “yes. but you left soon afterwards, while we have stayed for the longest.” Both are wrong, because Oregon was the first place in the USA where the Oblates came.

On a more serious note:

“There is no ministry, however, which is foreign to us, provided we never lose sight of the Congregation’s primary purpose: to evangelize the most abandoned.” (OMI Constitutions and Rules, Rule 7b)

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THIS PRELATE INSPIRES ME SO MUCH

Visit of Bishop Timon, Bishop of Buffalo. This prelate inspires me so much that I shall not refuse his request.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 26 December 1849, EO XXII

Bishop John Timon was a Vincentian religious who had been a missionary in the south of the USA and in Texas. When the Diocese of Buffalo, in Western New York State, was established in 1847, it was he who was appointed its first bishop.

Two years earlier marked the beginning of the period of mass starvation in Ireland known as the “potato famine.” It had caused thousands of people to leave the country and move to England and the USA. Many came to Buffalo, where many Irish had already been settled for some 20 years.

“Here on Buffalo’s south side in an area known as the Old First Ward, where the great majority of the 6,300 Irish people in the city lived — along the docks, near the railroad terminal and the city’s rapidly expanding factories — Timon was a hero from the moment of his arrival. Isolated in the First Ward as much by choice as by prejudice, Buffalo’s Irish — very much like the Senecas earlier in the century — were separate and, as far as the rest of the city was concerned, largely invisible…

The Irish of Buffalo lived in large, extended families in small one-and-a-half- and two-story frame houses in the narrow, wind-swept streets just off Lake Erie in the south side of the city… Schools, churches, and homes shared the limited land area with breweries, grain elevators, railroad yards, and market places. Hemmed-in between the lake in the west, the small yet clearly defined central business district in the north, the railroad tracks in the east, and the Buffalo Creek in the south, Irish South Buffalo — Timon’s Buffalo — was densely packed. Irish people (particularly the men who lived in the several large boardinghouses in the neighborhood) were everywhere: on the streets, in the taverns, working hard at unskilled jobs along the docks and in the factories.

Within weeks after his arrival in 1847 . . . Timon moved the bishop’s see from St. Louis Church in Buffalo to a ramshackle wooden-frame Irish church on the fringes of the city’s Irish working-class neighborhood in the south part of the city […]. Thus, by the early 1850s, Bishop Timon had become completely identified with the working-class Irish neighborhood of South Buffalo.” (https://buffaloah.com/h/timon/timon.html)

It is easy to understand why Eugene was so inspired by Bishop John Timon!

REFLECTION

“We will let our lives be enriched by the poor and the marginalized as we work with them, for they can make us hear in new ways the Gospel we proclaim.” OMI Constitutions and Rules, Rule 8 a

“If you’re in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They’re the ones that’ll help”  (John Steinbeck).

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25 JANUARY 1816 – 25 JANUARY  2025: THE GIFT OF HOPE CONGREGATES PILGRIMS INTO A COMMUNITY

HOPE: THE GIFT OF THE CRUCIFIED SAVIOR ONE GOOD FRIDAY  

A moment of encounter one Good Friday turned an unsettled 25 year-old into a man with a purpose: a man with new meaning and hope. Eugene became totally enthralled by his relationship with Jesus Christ and the change he had made in his life as his Savior! We, too, on various occasions of our lives have experienced God-moments – encounters that have given meaning to our lives and filled us with hope for the present and the future.

Sweet hope, you have always brought me happiness, and been precious to me for bringing me to see in God a delightful perfection which made me love him with a pleasing trust

Eugene’s retreat notes, May 1824, EO XV n. 156

A PILGRIM OF HOPE

Eugene became a pilgrim on the journey of discovery on how to live the new vision of hope given by his Savior. As a pilgrim he was led to discern a vocation to the priesthood, to learn as much as possible about God in the seminary and daily nurture his constant search for a deeper relationship with God.

As a newly-ordained priest dedicated himself as a bringer of hope to those whose lives had no focus. His preaching to the poor was an invitation to join the pilgrimage of hope that Jesus the Savior offered. To the youth he offered the same invitation as he did with the prisoners and whoever he came into contact with.

GOD’S IMPULSE TO CONGREGATE A COMMUNITY OF PILGRIMS OF HOPE

On January 25 we commemorate how Eugene was impelled by God to invite others to join him in his life and ministry. We celebrate the day in which the Missionaries of Provence became a community of pilgrims dedicated to bringing the hope of the Savior to the people who needed it most. On 25 January 1816, this group of inspired men came together to officially begin their community life and ministry and drew up a brief Rule of Life.

OUR CHARISMATIC GOD-GIVEN MISSION: PILGRIMS OF HOPE IN COMMUNITY

Today, 219 years later, that same flame that was burning in Aix, is burning in the generous hearts of the Oblate Charismatic Family extended over more than 60 countries – all of us form the Oblate community of pilgrims of hope. A happy feast day to all.

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