How to make this ideal a reality in the lives of the people the Missionaries were serving? Their methodology had three steps:
to make men reasonable
then Christians
and finally to help them become saints.
1818 Rule, Part One, Chapter One, §3. Nota Bene.
Missions, 78 (1951) p. 16
Firstly, it was necessary to come into contact with the human reality of each one.
“The Word became human and made his home among us” (John 1:14).
The people described in the Nota Bene were “wallowing in ignorance” about God and their faith. Through their preaching and teaching the Missionaries aimed at helping them to reflect and make decisions about their lives in a rational way. Over the course of 200 years Eugene and the Oblates have interpreted this call in a wider sense as referring to all the aspects connected with the human welfare of the person. The history of the actions of the Mazenodian Family continue to bear witness to this in five continents.
Secondly, to help people to become more deeply Christian by “teaching them who Jesus Christ is” and inviting them to enter into a life-giving relationship with God.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Finally, the call to help people to become heroic in their response to God.
“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:13-14).
To become saints – to be so fully imbued with the values of the Kingdom of God so as to share its fullness in the Resurrection. Saint Eugene, Blessed Joseph Gerard, Blessed Joseph Cebula, and the Blessed Martyrs of Spain have been officially recognized as being saints.
Eugene was convinced that everyone who lived the Rule fully was assured of a share in the fullness of the Kingdom. These were three steps necessary to achieve this: human, Christian and then saints.
Today these three steps continue to be present in our approach to evangelization:
We will always be close to the people with whom we work, taking into account their values and aspirations…
…we strive to bring all people – especially the poor – to full consciousness of their dignity as human beings and as sons and daughters of God.
CC&RR, Constitution 8
I love these lines from The Preface – they contain within them all the hopes and desires of any who have fallen in love with God and who wish to see all of life through the eyes of our crucified Saviour.
I think of Eugene’s model – Jesus and how Eugene and his first companions learned and lived from Him. And how the Oblates and members of what we call the Mazenodian Family have been faithful to the original spirit in a relevant and life-giving way some 200 years later.
I think of the many who have heard over and over what our vocation is not rather than on what it is. I am reminded of Eugene’s numbers and scope of his beginning in Aix (and now his family is worldwide). I look at what was at first confined to a group of priests and which is now shared with a family of peoples around the world – priests, brothers, sisters, laity, friends…
This morning I fall in love all over again with the Constitutions and Rules – especially C 8 which is before me. Eugene SHARED with all his experience of God and the charism given to him by the Spirit – All for All. This is what I find in the Mazenodian Family.
“We will always be close to the people with whom we work, taking into account their values and aspirations…
…we strive to bring all people – especially the poor – to full consciousness of their dignity as human beings and as sons and daughters of God.” I begin to see what is seen by others – it is humbling and joyous at the same time. That our God should love us so!
Taking my usual “glass half empty” view on things, and feeling a bit despondent on families signing up their children for sacramental preparation but not caring about their part in the journey, there are times when it seems we are now trying to move parents (and their children) from their lives where the God has no place, straight to sainthood. It is hard to “be close to the people with whom we work, taking into account their values and aspirations…” when the values and aspirations have little to do with God; however, they have at least “signed up”, even if it’s under a feeling of obligation. We do look at this as a starting point, but by necessity we need to be time constrained, and cannot work one person at a time, nor “push” them where they have no interest in going. And so, after the preparation time is “over”, most feel that that is where their obligation ends. We have been unable to excite them to see their lives “as sons and daughters of God”, and I despair that for most Christianity is not important, let alone more rigorous RC demands, and the thought that “sainthood” is a goal for all has not / cannot be even imagined.