YOU ARE MISSING YOUR AIM AND RENDERING YOURSELF USELESS

The mission in the village of Ventabren gives us an indication of how Eugene guided the young Oblates in the ways of doing an Oblate mission. It was preached by Fathers Jean Baptiste Honorat (aged 24 and a priest for two years) and Jacques Marcou (aged 24 and just ordained a priest), and the seminarian Marius Bernard (aged 22). Father Marius Suzanne (aged 24 and a priest for two years) joined them later.

Eugene had heard reports about Honorat’s style of preaching and set about to assist him to do so more effectively:

The man who brought me your letter says that when you are in the pulpit, you put yourself in a mood of despair, that’s the word for it; but why utter such cries? If it is a natural failing which makes you shout all the time…. I have nothing to say except to deplore it but if you can do otherwise and yet shout, thinking you obtain better results thereby, you are greatly in error and quite at fault, for you are missing your aim and rendering yourself useless; in that case, it is a disorder. Get it firmly into your head that they lose half of what you say when you shout in that manner, and this is very annoying when it is an instruction that everybody should grasp. That is not the way to act, on the contrary, one should indulge somewhat rarely in outcries. That is the way to give them some effect.

Eugene was also alarmed at a report on the health of this Missionary.

The man added that you have spit blood; I did not believe it because you have said nothing to me about this, nor have our two other brothers, but if so, I order you to cease immediately to preach and very expressly to let me know so that I may leave everything here and go to finish the instructions that remain to be made.
Adieu, I embrace you all with all my heart.

Letter to Jean Baptiste Honorat, 24 January 1824, EO VI n. 126

 

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”   Plato

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2 Responses to YOU ARE MISSING YOUR AIM AND RENDERING YOURSELF USELESS

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    I remember the ‘missions’ that we would go to when I was growing up, and then also in some of the churches in my adult life. The priests would shout – it would be ‘fire and brimstone’, damnation all the way. Totally focussed on how we were doomed to eternal damnation, on our sinfulness and nothing on love or redemtion [at least I don’t remember hearing any of that]. I would ‘turn myself off’ and not listen, and once I was an adult I would not go back for the following evenings or weekends. Certainly in Eugene’s time they would have had to raise their voices and project their voices to be heard in some of those big churches – no microphones back then. When I hear Eugene writing, speaking to Honorat I wonder if when he uses the word shout it is with the idea of more than just a raised voice because he also mentions ‘despair’ which gives rise to the “tone” of the preaching.

    To sit and contemplate with this for the past little while has allowed me to look at how I receive what others are teaching and sharing, what works for me and what holds me back. And I have to ask, how do I speak, how do I write. Is it a ‘lecture’ or am I ‘sharing’ what is most important and dear to me in my life? Today I will give a retreat based on Eugene’s Lenten homily at the Church of the Madeleine, spoken with strength and passion, truth and love. It set me on fire. Like the Samaritan woman at the well who ran to tell her towns people to come and listen to the man she met who knew all about her. Not something to be “used” against them, but something she could not contain within herself, not something she wanted to keep to herself. My aim today – to share and look at and walk with. I want to take this with me.

  2. Jack Lau, OMI says:

    As I ponder this reading I am touched once again by Eugene’s omnipresence and his role as father and teacher. Preaching is an important part of being part of the Oblate family. I say this because I am celebrating and praying for Eleanor as she shares “the sermon at La Madeleine”. I also was reading a commentary on line from a Dominican Website http://word.op.org/ and today’s reflection was given by a Lay Dominican Miss Laura Dejmek, O.P., (I did notice the initials!) So I reflect upon all this, we as daughters and sons of de Mazenod are call to preach, not with fire and brim stone but with heart and soul and we speak the language of the people, which is not a translation from the Latin. It is real, compassionate and inviting lifting up each and every person and reminding them of their human dignity.

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