TAKE CARE TO PRESERVE, ALL OF YOU, THE FAMILY SPIRIT WHICH ANIMATES US. I LOVE YOU ALREADY AS MY CHILDREN. CONSIDER ME AS YOUR FATHER.

Posted on August 9, 2021 by franksantucci

A new experience for the Founder, who until now had personally known every Oblate: the lifetime commitment of a new Oblate whom he had never met! He writes in his diary:

Letter from Father Dandurand from Longueuil. This Father writes to tell me that he is beginning a retreat in order to make his oblation on Christmas day. His letter is full of pious sentiments. He will be the first fruits of Canada. We are able to give thanks to the Lord, because he is a very good individual.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 22 January 1843, EO XXI

Eugene now wrote directly to the first Canadian Oblate:

I could not receive, my dear Father Dandurand, a more agreeable gift for the holy season of Christmas than the letter you wrote on the occasion of your approaching oblation. When it was delivered to me, your consecration to God had already taken place and you were decidedly one of us, that is, you had become member of a body which has Mary for Mother and which, under her patronage, wherever her members are to be found, wages the battles of the Lord to destroy the empire of the demon and spread with all its might the Kingdom of Jesus Christ…

You are the first fruits of this fine country of Canada to which the Master of the Vineyard has sent the workers of our family. For this reason I owe to you my dearest affection and you can count on it.

I hope your example will soon be followed by men of goodwill and devotion like yourself. Already Father Leonard and Father Durocher follow in your footsteps. The good God will grant that we shall see others imitate these fine priests of whom much good has already been reported to me.

Take care to preserve, all of you, the family spirit which animates us. I love you already as my children. Consider me as your father. A day will perhaps come when it will be granted to me to see and embrace you as I actually do in spirit. I give you my blessing and recommend myself to your prayers.

Letter to Father Damase Dandurand, 22 January 1843, EO I n 15 b

Sentiments which surely Saint Eugene continues to express today every time there is a new member of the Mazenodian Family

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One Response to TAKE CARE TO PRESERVE, ALL OF YOU, THE FAMILY SPIRIT WHICH ANIMATES US. I LOVE YOU ALREADY AS MY CHILDREN. CONSIDER ME AS YOUR FATHER.

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Oblate Associate says:
    August 9, 2021 at 12:07

    I look at the timeline and am amazed when I think that not even two full years have passed since the Oblates arrived in Canada. A sure and real sign of the Spirit moving in and among them, then and now. What powerful models were those first Oblates who arrived on our shores from France, that diocesan priests would meet them and decide to join them.

    Eugene most assuredly sharing his charism with them through his sons. And now that continues as he speaks to his sons and daughters, clergy, religious and laity alike.

    I come here to this place, to hear Eugene speak to me, through his letters and through his sons and daughters. Do we recognize it is Eugene speaking to us… sharing himself and his heart with each of us?

    I remember saying to an Oblate some years ago how grateful I was to be a daughter of St. Eugene and the man corrected me saying “no, no, you are his adopted daughter.” What a fine distinction to make but it matters not to me as I think of Kay Cronin HOMI who adopted me in a sense long before I turned my life around and returned to the church. I think of how upon moving to Ottawa the parish of St. Joe’s (my current parish) adopted me as one of their own, as did the families of some of my dear friends.

    I am sure that Fr. Damase Dandurand OMI was delighted to get Eugene’s letter, and that all of us who come to this place to be and pray with each other are able to feel the sentiments Eugene shared: “I hope your example will soon be followed by men [ed. and women] of goodwill and devotion like yourself.” What kind of an example am I of this holy way of being and living? Hopefully there are traces of Eugene’s spirit and heart.

    Reply

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