WHO ARE THE POOR FOR THE OBLATE FAMILY? (Constitution 5)

Posted on April 1, 2025 by franksantucci

St Eugene’s charism is very clear on how to identify the poor: “The call of Jesus Christ, heard within the Church through people’s need for salvation” (Constitution 1).

After having laid the foundations, the Rule now begins to spell out who these poor are. They are the “most abandoned” whom the structures of the Church do not adequately reach:

We are a missionary Congregation. Our principal service in the Church is to proclaim Christ and his Kingdom to the most abandoned. We preach the Gospel among people who have not yet received it and help them see their own values in its light. Where the Church is already established, our commitment is to those groups it touches least.

Wherever we work, our mission is especially to those people whose condition cries out for salvation and for the hope which only Jesus Christ can fully bring. These are the poor with their many faces; we give them our preference. (Constitution 5)

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One Response to WHO ARE THE POOR FOR THE OBLATE FAMILY? (Constitution 5)

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Lay Oblate Associate says:
    April 1, 2025 at 14:57

    “We preach the Gospel among people who have not yet received it and help them see their own values in its light.” And it is not just for “those others…” for if I am called to love others to see their own light, then perhaps those others are called to help me see my own light. One of the depths of our Oblate Family Motto…

    Who are the poor for the Oblate Family? It is most certainly those we see through the eyes of our crucified Saviour, while at the same time recognizing within ourselves our own poverty (that is perhaps the most difficult to face). In a sense it is all there in the Gospels that light up our way as we go out to others. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)and then in the Gospel from John 9.1-41 which we had last Sunday (Christian Initiation: 2nd Scrutiny) when Jesus was asked who sinned and was it the blind man or his parents? Jesus’s response was: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” God’s gift to each of us!

    We are the poor in many senses and we recognize those who are the poor and most abandoned. It is always the Beloved (Jesus the Christ) who saves and instills us with hope; so it to them that we offer our preference.

    I look at the image of the 37th General Chapter depicting how we walk and journey together as Pilgrims of Hope in Communion.

    An impossible way of being, and yet we walk together… in this year of deepening our experience(s) in preparation for the 200th Anniversary of the approval of the Church with this on-going map…

    Reply

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