AT THE SERVICE OF THIS SANCTUARY SO AS TO GIVE A BETTER DIRECTION TO PEOPLE’S DEVOTION

The missionaries in charge of the Shrine of Our Lady of Osier are reminded:

As to matters outside the house, remember that Providence has put you at the service of this sanctuary so as to give a better direction to people’s devotion. I pray that their devotion to the Holy Virgin will bring them to conversion through your ministry.

Letter to Bruno Guigues, 3 September 1835, EO VIII n 541

People came to the shrine because of their devotion to Mary – the mission of the Oblates as co-operators of the Savior, was to direct that devotion to the Savior and not to stop at Mary. The aim of the sanctuary was not directed at Mary, but to her example and intercession that led people to conversion to her Son.

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1 Response to AT THE SERVICE OF THIS SANCTUARY SO AS TO GIVE A BETTER DIRECTION TO PEOPLE’S DEVOTION

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:

    This morning I think of the many ways that God uses to bring each of us home, of the different families that God has introduced me to on my life journey and who played a significant role in how I walk my journey. As a child it was the Loretto Sisters – Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, then in my teens an Honorary Oblate, later the Franciscans, Madonna House and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (where my heart has found a home).

    Having never looked at it with quite this focus I see the presence of Our Lady in a very real way throughout my life. I did not always recognize her, but then for the first half of my life I did not recognize Jesus. All of them instruments of God’s magnificent love.

    I did not flit from one to another as does a bee from flower-to-flower. No there was something steady and relentlessly loving in my movements; step-by step. There were no time-limited order to the steps; rather it was like the master of a magnificent symphony who first composes the melody and then brings it all together writing the notes for individual instruments which will add to and fill out the completed master piece in a way that would not have been possible on their own.

    The aim of the Mazenodian Family is not directed at Mary, or even St Eugene de Mazenod; it is with Mary, St Eugene de Mazenod and so many before us who become our models and who intercede for us that we and those we touch are led to ongoing conversion to Jesus, our crucified Saviour.

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