IT IS GOD’S GRACE THAT GIVES US THE DESIRE TO IMITATE JESUS AND THE APOSTLES (Constitution 3)

The community of the Apostles with Jesus is the model of our life.
Our Lord grouped the Twelve around him to be his companions and to be sent out as his messengers (cf. Mk 3:14). (Constitution 3)

Henri Tempier’s reply to Eugene’s invitation was a source of great joy for Eugene. It shows the apostolic “one heart and one soul” that marked his relationship with Eugene:

“May the good God be blessed for having inspired you to prepare for the poor, for the inhabitants of our countryside, those who have the most need of instruction in our religion, a house of missionaries who will go and announce to them the truths of salvation.

I share your views completely, my dear brother… What you want most in those you choose as your collaborators is priests who will not get into a rut of routine and daily hum-drum… you want priests who will be ready to follow in the footsteps of the Apostles and work for the salvation of souls with no other reward here on earth but hardship and fatigue. I think that God’s grace has given me this desire. If not, then I wish with all my heart that I will have it, and working with you will make it all the easier to attain. You can, therefore, count entirely on me.”

Hneri Tempier to Eugene, 27 October, 1815 Cf. REY I, p. 183

A few years later, Eugene repeated his conviction that it is Jesus who calls us to imitate the apostles, a call that continues to this day for all of us in the Oblate Family:

Persuaded as I am that the good God has given you to us in answer to our prayers, that he called you like the Apostles with the most evident signs of a truly divine vocation to follow him and to serve him in the ministry which resembles most that which he prescribed for his apostles, with whose work he willed to associate you”

Letter to the scholastic Hippolyte Guibert, June 26, 1823, EO VI, n 109.