Eugene’s missionary mandate to the first community of Oblates to go to Canada stressed how important it would be to support one another.
Therefore be mutually encouraging and edify one another. Be united in the same spirit, working together for the faith of the Gospel.
Then, addressing Father Jean Baptiste Honorat, the superior of the community:
You especially whom we have appointed to lead and direct your brothers, excel more in merit and virtue rather than in being elevated as the one in charge; endeavour more to endear the hearts of those under you by charity and mildness than to lead them by authority.
Strive by the observance of our Rules and the practice of piety towards God to show yourself such that your companions may seek avidly to follow you step by step and to imitate you.
The rest of the community was charged to be supporting:
As for you whom Our Saviour has deigned to call, rather than your fellows, to so great a work, endeavour with all your strength to respond to this holy vocation of God and moreover seek carefully to lighten the burden imposed on your Superior by humility, by the practice of mortification, zeal for perfection, assiduity in prayer, respecting him truly for God’s sake, joyous obedience and especially a sincere love.
Letter of obedience to the first Oblate missionaries to Canada, 29 September 1841, EO I n 8
In a machine the smooth running of every component is essential for it to achieve its purpose. The same is true in every community that we are a part of, no matter how unimportant our role may appear.
This past Saturday Yvon Ouellet, Oblate Associate died from cancer and yesterday afternoon Ron Kedrosky, Oblate Associate also died from a very long battle with cancer. Both men left behind their wives, sons, daughters and grandchildren. And while there is quiet joy that they are home with the Beloved, we ask you Lord to be with all who loved them even as we give thanks for the time we had with them.
I feel as if Eugene’s letter that we are reading is written to all members of our Mazenodian Family: not just those early Oblates who left their homes to go to foreign lands but for each of today in our present time regardless of our state of life or the role that we have been given to fulfill. Eugene’s words seem to leap out from the screen: “…endeavour with all your strength to respond to this holy vocation of God… by humility… by respecting him [or her] truly for God’s sake, joyous obedience and especially a sincere love.” And “Be united in the same spirit, working together for the faith of the Gospel.”
In joyous obedience and sincere love. How often I need to have these very words in front of me, reminding me to let go of my petty thoughts and struggles; so that the love which is our foundation, our powerhouse as some might say, will be the light that shines on us and colours our being and our doing. More than half empty words, they must be our lived reality.
If I look at another with even just a small degree of self-righteousness, a speck of disrespect or wanting them to do things my way, then it is not sincere love, it is not joyous obedience and there is no respect or humility. And I will be left only with a heart that is empty and dark.
Lord I want to strive to show myself in such a way that my companions might look at how they can truly follow me step-by-step and imitate me; just as I strive to do the same with all of my brothers and sisters.
“…we give ourselves to the Father in obedience even unto death and dedicate ourselves to God’s people in unselfish love. Our apostolic zeal is sustained by the unreserved gift we make of ourselves in our oblation, an offering constantly renewed by the challenges of our mission.” (C2)