I am still grieved, my dear friend, by what I have seen at Notre Dame du Laus.
Eugene had discovered, during his visit to the Oblate community in Laus, that the young Father Guibert was having difficulty in maintaining the correct Oblate spirt in the community. He was young learning how to be a community superior and had tried to reestablish a more faithful observance of the Rule, but encountered resistance based on health and work pressure, and had made concessions far too generously.
May it be God’s will that my exhortations have produced the effect that I have the right to expect. I hope that each will have told himself that he is rigorously obliged to observe our Rule strictly.
Where would we be if we were only faithful to it in the houses that I can supervise myself? Once that is achieved, we will still be far from realizing the goals that we propose; we must be filled with our spirit and live only by it. This is self-evident without it being necessary to explain it.
Letter to Hippolyte Guibert, 29 July 1830, EO VII n 350
Throughout his life, Eugene insisted on the primacy of living every aspect of Oblate life according to the precepts of the Rule of Life. In this Rule was expressed the God-given spirit of how to live, pray and evangelize as a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate – and which is shared by the whole Mazenodian family today
A few years ago I asked Mark Blom OMI why the novitiate was so disconnected from the world (my wording) for it seemed to me that in Eugene’s time and later and even today in some places the novices are like a group set aside, with less than normal contact with family, friends and the world. I asked him why it was so strict about the rules etc. And I remember Mark explaining to me (again my words, I am paraphrasing) that it was done so that those people, men in the case of Oblates, those novices needed to become imbued, steeped in a particular spirit and way of life that would become such a part of their selves, it would be their rooting. I understood (and agreed with) what he was saying. I could find times in my life when I had to experience the same thing.
I look at what Frank has shared, writing that in the Rule [of Life] we find the God given spirit of how to live, pray and evangelize, and it is shared with all of us who make up the Mazenodian Family. I remember when I began this journey that I had no idea of what it would look like and I made the decision at the time that I was not going to let specific words derail me or take me off the path God had chosen for me to walk, and that Eugene had invited me to walk with him.
In doing this I believe that we each of us become and be the person that God created us to be. We do not become little mini copies of each other, but we do share in this wonderful spirit that Eugene invites us to live with him and the rest of this awesome family. It is an ‘inner stance’ and we seem to recognize it in each other. Imagine what it must look like, this inner way of being as we live, pray and evangelize. How blessed we are to have this Rule of Life!
I often wonder what he would say today…?