Eugene de Mazenod speaks to us

A Happy Easter to you.

I have had some reactions to the reflections on the Oblate Constitutions and Rules that I have been doing for several weeks. Thank you for encouraging words.

These reflections will be paused for a month and will resume towards the end of May.

The reason is that these coming weeks are going to be busy with some retreat and teaching sessions and workshops which will involve extensive travel. I am also in the process of preparing to assume a new ministry while continuing to be responsible for and teaching in the Kusenberger Chair of Oblate Studies.

I look forward to resuming our exploration of the contents and meaning of our Rule of Life for all the members of our Oblate Charismatic Family.

In the meantime, I remind you that you can consult 15 years of reflections (over 3300 entries) on the website: https://www.eugenedemazenod.net. There is a search engine where you can enter a word or theme to consult the entries.

Be back soon!

Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples,
‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ (Matthew 28: 7)

After journeying with him through the sad event of his Passion, after weeping over the torments that our sins made him endure, how consoling it is to see him rise triumphant over death and hell, and what gratitude must fill our hearts at the thought that this good Master has really willed to make us sharers in his resurrection, destroying the sin that is in us and giving us a new life.

Eugene de Mazenod  to his mother, 4 April 1809, EO XIV n 50

As members of his Oblate Family we find echoes of this sentiment on Constitution 9 of our Rule of Life:

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. 

The description of the response of a new Oblate applies not only to a novice, but to each of us today as we renew our experience of God’s love on the Cross:

The novice, having experienced the Father’s love in Jesus, dedicates his life to making that love visible. He entrusts his fidelity to the one whose cross he shares, whose promises are his hope. (Constitution 59).

On Good Friday Eugene had experienced “the Father’s love in Jesus” and he was impelled to spend the rest of his life “making that love visible.” He entrusted that mission to every member of the Oblate Family:

The cross of Jesus Christ is central to our mission. Like the apostle Paul, we “preach Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2: 2). If we bear in our body the death of Jesus, it is with the hope that the life of Jesus, too, may be seen in our body (cf. 2 Cor 4:10). (Constitution 4)

May this Good Friday be a day of renewed and grateful awareness of the Father’s love in the crucified Christ for each of us and for those entrusted to our care.

On this day when we recall the last supper and the self-giving of Jesus Christ in the institution of the Eucharist and the beginning of the passion, as members of the Oblate Family we are reminded of the response of Eugene to the oblation of Jesus Christ in April 1816:

Briefly put. Father Tempier and I felt that we should not delay any longer, and on Holy Thursday (April 11, 1816), when both of us had taken our place under the structure of the beautiful repository we had erected over the main altar of the Mission church, in the night of that holy day, we pronounced our vows with an indescribable joy. We enjoyed our happiness throughout this beautiful night, in the presence of Our Lord, at the foot of the magnificent throne where we had placed Him for the Mass of the Pre-sanctified the following day.

 Eugene de Mazenod’s Mémoires in Rambert I, p. 187

Our present Rule of Life reflects the “we pronounced our vows with an indescribable joy” of our Founder and invites each of us the members of his Oblate Family, according to our state in life, to renewing our desire to

… give ourselves to the Father in obedience even unto death and dedicate ourselves to God’s people in unselfish love. Our apostolic zeal is sustained by the unreserved gift we make of ourselves in our oblation, an offering constantly renewed by the challenges of our mission. (Constitution 2)

May the “indescribable joy” of the oblation of Jesus Christ, and our response in oblation, be ours this Holy Thursday.

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. (Constitution 5)

One of the “faces of the poor” today can be recognized in the negative effects of social media and the control it can have on our thinking, our choices, our sexuality, our relationships and our indifference to world events.

“Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.
The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime, all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.” (Pope Francis)

Pope Francis clarifies the role which social media is capable of having with regard tho the “salvation and hope which only Jesus Christ can fully bring:”

“The challenge is to rediscover, through the means of social communication as well as by personal contact, the beauty that is at the heart of our existence and journey, the beauty of faith and of the beauty of the encounter with Christ”

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. (Constitution 5)

Father Rois, our Superior General, reflects on his experience of the second part of our motto: pauperes evangelizantur (Matthew 11:5) – the poor are having the Gospel preached to them:

I am a witness of many poor people in vulnerable situations who have expressed their gratitude for our presence. Among the many testimonies we can recall the experience of the Nivaclé Indigenous people in Paraguay who recognize that they owe their existence to the presence of the missionaries and many others who have seen their own culture valued thanks to the presence and studies of the missionaries. I myself have heard some express their gratitude for our gratuitous presence in countries where our mere presence is a sign of hope for threatened and repressed peoples.

The reflection of Wayne Muller, a spiritual author, helps us to reflect on our attitude of response to the poor with their many faces:

“As we serve others we are working on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well. It is not a question of who is healed first. When we attend to ourselves with compassion and mercy, more healing is made available for others. And when we serve others with an open and generous heart, great healing comes to us.”

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. (Constitution 5)

Saint John Paul 2 captures the meaning of these words in his Encyclical Redemptoris Missio:

“Our times are both momentous and fascinating. While on the one hand people seem to be pursuing material prosperity and to be sinking ever deeper into consumerism and materialism, on the other hand we are witnessing a desperate search for meaning, the need for an inner life, and a desire to learn new forms and methods of meditation and prayer. Not only in cultures with strong religious elements, but also in secularized societies, the spiritual dimension of life is being sought after as an antidote to dehumanization.”

The Oblates gathered at the General Chapter of 2022 pledged, on behalf of the Oblate Charismatic Family:

We make a commitment to go to the aid of the poor with their many faces. They are disfigured by suffering. They are marked by the stigma of war. They are traumatized by abuse and exploitation at work. They are alienated from their own original history. They are scorned in the land of welcome and exile. They are humiliated because of their color, culture, or language.
We take the responsibility to do much more to promote justice and peace. The earth belongs to God, but the fruits of the earth belong to all.

Sometimes we feel so distant from and helpless when confronted by the many faces of the poor. Our missionary charism calls us to respond in whatever way we can materially – but also to remember the ripple effect caused by personal service in our own environment which spreads and multiplies. In the words of the proverb: “Great acts commence with small deeds.”

We are a missionary Congregation. Our principal service in the Church is to proclaim Christ and his Kingdom to the most abandoned. We preach the Gospel among people who have not yet received it and help them see their own values in its light. Where the Church is already established, our commitment is to those groups it touches least. (Constitution 5)

Fr. Fernand Jetté OMI, Superior General 1974-1986, wrote:

“I know, for example, in what high esteem we are held by the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, an esteem that goes back a long while… Why? The reason, so it would seem, is the total availability the Institute has shown in responding to the Church’s appeal in favour of the poorest and most difficult missions, those which others either could not or did not dare to accept. Another reason is our perseverance, our faithfulness in staying on in impossible conditions. ‘We know quite well,’ Pius XI told the Capitulars of 1926, ‘what the Oblates have accomplished in the Far North of Canada, in Southern Africa and at the Equator. They always go to wherever there is some particular feature of danger, challenge and fatigue, difficult climate, and sacrifice, and they are always there first. We know that the Oblates make this their specialty: it is as glorious as it is difficult’.”

(The Mission ad Gentes, 1979)

We are a missionary Congregation. Our principal service in the Church is to proclaim Christ and his Kingdom to the most abandoned. We preach the Gospel among people who have not yet received it and help them see their own values in its light. (Constitution 5)

Thousands of Oblates have dedicated their lives to bringing people who did not know Gospel to the salvation Jesus Christ. In Eugene’s lifetime alone, we find scores of young men in their early 20’s setting out for North America, Africa, and Asia. Most of them knowing that they would never see the land of their birth and their families again – yet they set out with enthusiasm and courage. They gave all for the salvation of the souls who had never heard of the Gospel.

In 1853 Eugene had written:

Whoever wishes to become one of us must have an ardent desire for his own perfection, and be enflamed with love for our Lord Jesus Christ and his Church and a burning zeal for the salvation of souls.

With hindsight we may be tempted to judge them by today’s standards as we realize how many mistakes they made – but they were people of their time and gave their lives for the good of others with the best intentions. Today people in over 60 countries know the Gospel as a result of the seeds they sowed through their oblation.

We thank God for the witness of the men and women of our Oblate Family “enflamed with love for our Lord Jesus Christ and his Church and a burning zeal for the salvation of souls.”

We are a missionary Congregation. Our principal service in the Church is to proclaim Christ and his Kingdom to the most abandoned. (Constitution 5)

This says it all: it is the desired goal of every Oblate ministry. The test of authenticity and fidelity to our God-given charism is this question: does the witness of my lifestyle and does my activity proclaim Christ and his Kingdom to the most abandoned? Do people see that my life would make no sense if Jesus Christ and his Kingdom were not a part of it?

Constitution 5 reflects Eugene’s conviction about our vocation:

Will we ever have an adequate understanding of this sublime vocation! For that one would have to understand the excellence of our Institute’s end, beyond argument the most perfect one could propose to oneself in this world, since the end of our Institute is the self-same end that the Son of God had in mind when he came down to earth. The glory of his heavenly Father and the salvation of souls. […] He was especially sent to evangelize the poor: Evangelizare pauperibus misit me. And we have been founded precisely to work for the conversion of souls and especially to evangelize the poor

Retreat of October 1831, EO XV n 163

Pope Francis reminds us that it is through an unbroken chain of witnesses that we come to see the face of Jesus. Consequently, it is our witness and our words that enable the most abandoned to see the face of Jesus.