After the Easter break, I take up our family history once again through the writings of St Eugene. The story thus far:
-
we are in the year 1816 and the community of Missionaries of Provence came together in Aix en Provence on 25 January.
-
They drew up the basic direction of their life together and presented it to the Diocesan authorities.
-
They then entered a time of prayer and reflection on retreat to prepare themselves to express their ideals in a practical way in the mission to the village of Grans that four of them began on 11 February. Henri Tempier stayed behind in Aix to look after the house, the youth congregation and the local ministry that was beginning to take shape around the new community.
-
The mission in Grans lasted five weeks and was packed solid with activities and hardly any time to pause and rest. The exhausted Missionaries returned to Aix, with the experience of having working together on mission as having helped them to clarify some of their ideas. Auguste Icard was expelled as not being suitable for this lifestyle (cf entry of 3 November 2010) and Eugene emerged with the conviction of the need for a more formal commitment.
-
Consequently he and Henri Tempier pronounced their vows on Holy Thursday April 16.
-
The church had been repaired and was opened of public worship on Palm Sunday.
-
After Easter the whole house became available to the missionaries and their time would have been spent organizing the house, preparing for the next mission and gradually developing the house and church as a place of permanent mission.
-
The community life was supplemented with daily Mass and sermon and evening prayers in the church for the public, the youth congregation meetings every Thursday and Sunday, confessions three days of the week in the church, and beginning to welcome people for retreats.
All this developed gradually as the Missionaries responded to the situations around them and their mission developed and became clearer.
Today we continue to live the same dynamic in our house in Aix. Just as Eugene and his first companions tried to discern God’s will and direction for them by means of their everyday activities, so too does the same momentum continue today as the Oblate Congregation is engaged in discernment for the establishment of an international community here with a somewhat different mission to that which we are exercising today. Whatever the direction to be decided on, the underlying aim is to be as faithful to the founding inspiration of Eugene and where the demands of the 21st century are inviting us to respond.