WE NEED MEN AND THEY ARE SENDING ME CHILDREN!

Posted on November 22, 2022 by franksantucci

“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.” (Hudson Taylor)

The Canadian Oblate, Alexandre Taché, was a 22 year-old scholastic when Eugene sent him to St Boniface.  Writing to Fr Pierre Aubert about him, Eugene said:

I did not wait for your letter to decide that an associate priest be sent to you. You had gone when my orders arrived at Longueuil. I wrote again that they send you a priest as one of the two who were to join you. I presume however that the dear companion who went with you to found the house of Red River has been raised to the priesthood and also that he has had to place his profession in your hands as I had authorized. It is good to make one’s vows on the battlefield in the face of the enemy one has come so far to fight.

Such thoughts were on my mind on the 17th of this month and indeed I spoke of them at the fine reunion we had of all our Fathers and Brothers who renewed before me and in the presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ the consecration they had made of themselves to the Lord in years more or less remote.

Letter to Fr Pierre Aubert, St Boniface Canada, 21 February 1846, EO I n 61

The two missionaries, Father Aubert and Scholastic Taché and two Grey Nuns left on June 25, aboard a boat belonging to the Hudson Bay Company and they arrived in Saint-Boniface on August 25 after sixty-two days travel. Taken aback at seeing the young missionary, Bishop Provencher is supposed to have said: “We need men and they are sending me children.(”https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/tache-bishop-alexandre/)

Bishop Provencher ordained this “child” to the diaconate as soon as he arrived, and to the priesthood in October 1845, and on the following day Father Aubert witnessed his perpetual oblation in St Boniface. Five years later Alexandre Taché became a Bishop and was to be a major force in the establishment and growth of the Church in Western Canada.

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One Response to WE NEED MEN AND THEY ARE SENDING ME CHILDREN!

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Lay Oblate says:
    November 22, 2022 at 13:03

    Trust in God is what I am hearing, trust that God will give us what we need. Taché was young yet he allowed himself to be inspired and led by the Holy Spirit, becoming and being as sent by God (through Eugene).

    I look at the pace of God in bringing me back into the Church and giving me the sacraments again. I no longer question why the Beloved waited so long: God is making use of me and the gifts I am given according to God’s own plan.

    This past year I was asked to coordinate a team on the parish Synodal Journey. And I shared more than once that I and we needed to trust in the Holy Spirit in our endeavors to listen to our parish family and then be able to send that up to the Archdiocese, trusting that the Spirit would ensure that what needed to be said would make it up to Rome and be heard. And I asked how we could continue growing together as the bishops worked, but not waiting for that to happen. How was the Spirit leading us in this new way?

    “Working Document for the Continental Stage – Enlarge the space of your tent” (Is 54:2). To read and realise that what we from all around the world were grateful for and what we thought was most important to us was shared by others. An exquisite gift of grace.

    In five more days we will begin a new Church year, the start of Advent, a sacred time of hope and preparation. All in God’s time! Eugene sending out a very young man who had not yet completed his full formation. God waiting until I was almost 50 to open my eyes to the Oblates and for Eugene himself to invite into the family. God waiting for more than 50 years after the second Vatican Council to continue it’s work by calling for this Synod of the Bishops to take place.

    No matter our age, we are all God’s children. “God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.”

    Reply

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