This extract from the Roman Diary of Eugene seemingly has no importance:
I ended the day with a visit to the church of the Holy Apostles for the last day of the novena for the Immaculate Conception. Ordinarily the Pope gives the blessing but the Cardinal Dean replaced him.
Roman Diary, 7 December 1825, EO XVII
Yet, hidden in this simple sentence is a reality and an intuition that was to change our Oblate image. The novena in preparation for the feast of the Immaculate Conception was taking place in Rome with great solemnity at the Church of the Holy Apostles, near where Eugene was staying. It was during the period of this celebration that he decided to change the name of his Congregation. Yvon Beaudoin writes:
From 1818 to 1825, the Congregation bore the name Missionaries of Provence. After the founding in March of 1825 of the house in Nîmes, a house outside of Provence, the missionaries called themselves Oblates of Saint Charles. In Rome, during the octave of the feast of the Immaculate Conception that was celebrated with solemnity, the Founder decided to call his missionaries the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
“It was an inspiration,” wrote Father Rey, “which passed from his heart to his head. From the beginning, he used to call oblates those who had finished their novitiate and made their vows in religion. From now on, they will be Oblates of the most holy and immaculate virgin Mary and more briefly the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. But they would bear this name only when the vicar of Jesus Christ would have brought them to birth, or by the fact that he adopted this religious family, he would confer upon them a kind of baptism by assigning it a place among the congregations recognized by the Church.” (REY, I, p. 358-359)
Father de Mazenod immediately incorporated this name into his petition to the Pope which he finished [ed. the next day] December 8.
Yvon Beaudoin, “Oblates of Mary Immaculate” in the Historical Dictionary I, http://www.omiworld.org/dictionary.asp?v=5&vol=1&let=O&ID=885
“Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.” Florence Scovel Shinn
““It was an inspiration,” wrote Father Rey, “which passed from his heart to his head.” I continue to marvel at Eugene and his ability to move from his heart. He listened with his a heart that was wide open to God and where he was being led and moved from there.
I think perhaps that it might often feel safer to move from my head, to listen more with just my ears. But that way, though it might be a lot safer is also a lot more dull and probably just plain deadly. I miss hearing the whisper of God and experiencing a deep embrace. So totally unsatisfying that there is always the temptation to move away looking for ‘something else’ that is not so true, not what I really yearn for.
When I prepared our prayer for our recent Oblate Associate gathering, I prepared it as a short reflection on a piece from “Give us this day” and a second short piece from “St. Eugene speaks to us”. I felt they were both speaking to the same thing and wanted to share that with the others. I briefly questioned what I was preparing to offer our group (what if it didn’t work, what if I was way off-base?). It worked. If I had listened only to my head then I most likely would have gone with something prepared by another which would have been okay, except it would deny what my heart was hearing and then trying to say.
Thank God that Eugene listened with his heart, he heard and then acted upon it. Am not sure what his fears, doubts or internal questions might have been, but he faced them and then walked through them, as I guess he did with all of his life. It is that which inspires me, which speaks to my heart, which helps me to reflect on how I wish to live and who I will walk with along the way.