The cooler months of the year were the period when the Oblate parish missions were preached – especially in the rural villages where the inhabitants were busy in the spring, summer and fall with their crops. Although Eugene could not directly participate in these activities, he was the one who coordinated the personnel and spirit of the missions. This was especially important as the majority of the Oblates were very young. Several of his letters in early 1835 deal directly with the missions.
What you tell me about the effect produced by occasional sermons given at Grenoble confirms me in the attitude I have always adopted of dissuading our men from this type of activity which has never been the cause of a single act of love of God, let alone produce a conversion.
Let’s stick to our missions, retreats, catechetical instructions, this is the way grace communicates itself to souls.
Let’s go straight for our objective by the simplicity of our ministry and leave human considerations to those who seek something other than God.
Letter to Bruno Guigues, 17 January 1835, EO VIII n 502
This morning I had to reread this offering, and as I did the words “spirit of the missions” and “Let’s stick to our missions, retreats, catechetical instructions, this is the way grace communicates itself to souls” seemed leap from the screen and a light was turned on within my mind.
I remember some years ago when we in the English-speaking world were asked by the Church to revert to the language of the new Roman Missal which was a more literal translation of Latin into English. Many of us decided that some of the wording was not easily read or understood; the wording was awkward, limiting and not particularly inclusive in the greater sense of that word. We asked ourselves what had happened to Vatican II. During our community days the Missal became the focus of one of our sessions and there was lively discussion on what we should and could do – or not do. A very elderly Oblate stood up and said three words: “Obedience, obedience, obedience.”
I am reminded this morning that God gave us a specific charism through Eugene de Mazenod. If we are obedient to that, to the ‘spirit of the missions’; to the Constitutions and Rules; to how we go about our lives as members of the Mazenodian Family – that is how the grace of God will be communicated to the poor and the abandoned, to all who are waiting to hear God’s word. That obedience that the old priest spoke of: there is a freedom that comes with it. Not that I love the translation but with obedience I am free to go and be who I have been called to be.