We are members of the prophetic Church. While recognizing our own need for conversion, we bear witness to God’s holiness and justice. We announce the liberating presence of Jesus Christ and the new world born in his resurrection. (Constitution 9)
Taking up the invitation of the theme of the 37th General Chapter, we recognize our missionary vocation of being called to offer hope to a broken world that experiences war, poverty, and the degradation of creation. Hope in Jesus Christ calls us to “offer explicit witness to the saving love of the Lord, who despite our imperfections offers us his closeness, his word and his strength, and gives meaning to our lives” (EG 121).
(Acts of 2022 General Chapter n. 10)
The brokenness of the world touches every aspect of our lives and we feel so helpless in doing anything about it. St Eugene inspires us to have confidence in God as his cooperators:
We need to have some courage and confidence in God who shows us the road and will not abandon us when we act in his name and for his glory. Everywhere we have established ourselves we have made a feeble start.
Letter of Eugene to Fr Guigues in Canada, 5 December 1844, EO I n 50
Here he was writing to the first missionaries in Canada who were few and feeble – yet their persevering confidence in God was to bear astounding missionary fruit. His words continue to speak to us today. Healing a broken world begins with our own personal and community world.
Through him, with him and in him… We are never alone in this world, always and without exception we are in the presence of our crucified and resurrect Saviour, the Church, our Oblate Charismatic Family, our communities, intentional groups… Eugene knew that he could not do it on his own, he needed other like-minded brothers to help him, accompany and serve with him, to help rebuild the Church in France (and now the whole world). And if we are missionaries then we have been sent, to go out to others rather than asking that they come to us.
Once again our world is broken and where we are bombarded with ideas of how to focus on “me, myself and I”. A world where others are silenced, ignored and treated as if they are not worthy to be accorded with even small measures of dignity, respect or life.
We are reminded of how Eugene himself had to make this discovery as he asked “what would Jesus do?” Jesus who talked to the woman at the well, touched and healed the lepers and spoke of the Samaritan who cared for a man who had been robbed and beaten.
The care, support and healing that always begins with God might look a little different than it did 200 years ago, still rises up from within each of us who make up a community, a family… Here hope gives birth to trust in God who is the initiator of all life.
If we look only at what another(s) can do for us or who and why others are deemed to be unworthy, then we will be unable to share all of the goodness which God kissed into us at our birth.