Two hundred years have passed since Eugene and his first companions expressed their founding vision in writing and in actions. Today that initial vision continues to inspire us and is expressed in a special way in our Rule of Life, revised in 2012. Our first ten Constitutions capture the founding vision and the spirit which has continued to inspire us and be expressed for two centuries. I will share these with you in the coming days.
The call of Jesus Christ, heard within the Church through people’s need for salvation, draws us together as Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
Christ thus invites us to follow him and to share in his mission through word and work.
We are a clerical Congregation of pontifical right. We come together in apostolic communities of priests and Brothers, united to God by the vows of religion.
Cooperating with the Saviour and imitating his example, we commit ourselves principally to evangelizing the poor.
CC&RR Constitution 1
God calls you to the kind of work
(a) that you need most to do, and
(b) that the world most needs to have done….
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” L. Buechner
I sit here almost ready to apologise for not being a cleric or a member of the ‘religious’. No I won’t do that for I am exactly as God has created me to be. I am reminded of little Liesel Meminger who I met yesterday in the film “the Book Thief”. I continue to hear God’s call for I am sure that it is etched in my being, branded with the fire of tenderness; to feel Eugene’s words touching my heart, they too calling to me, inviting me. Not just a one-time thing for either of these for they are outside of time itself and so are always present to me.
Its as if God is saying to me Eleanor I want you to do [this] and Eugene saying this is how you can do it. It calls me to ponder this morning as I sit here, not well enough to get on with my day, so I sit and let the words of the first Constitution wash over and within me. It surprises me still that I should feel such a connection with one particular saint and way of living for there are many others and yet it is to this that I feel called to live out as best I can.
Hearing again the words, allowing them to enter into my heart and become a part of me still brings me profound joy. It is intensely personal this call from God, this invitation from St. Eugene, this sharing in the charism with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, indeed with the entire Mazenodian Family. It is a part of that Founding Vision that that is mentioned above. Two hundred years later it continues to be alive. Today it is for me to rest and get better for there is much to do and even more to be. The place where God calls me to is the place where my deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
I take great comfort in the words of L. Beuchner, I do not know this person but his or her words – wow. My heart is on fire again and burns wildly – his words growing with life within me. Is it any wonder that I want to speed up as we approach Holy Week.