For 15 years our daily “St. Eugene Speaks” has been exploring his writings in chronological order. To mark the forthcoming bicenteary of our Papal approval I have paused the chronological reflections on his writings so as to focus on the Constitutions and Rules, asking the question: “How does Eugene Speak” through the Oblate Rule today? At the same time, in these days of the important OMI Inter-Chapter gathering, I am also recognizing how Eugene speaks to us through what is happening at the meeting in India:

“The third day of the Inter-Chapter began with a retreat, giving participants time for silence, prayer, and reflection. Fr. M. Chinnapan OMI, invited the Oblates to reflect on four dimensions of union: with oneself, with others, with nature, and with God. He reminded them that the first three open the heart and prepare the way for the deepest union, communion with God, which is found through silence and interior depth.” (OMIWORLD)

Here I recognize the spirit of Eugene in our Constitutions and Rules. Deepening our humanity by being in communion with ourselves, others, and nature open our hearts to union with God on our Christian journey towards sanctity (Preface) as cooperators of the Savior (Constitution 1).

“The desire to co-operate with him draws us to know him more deeply, to identify with him, to let him live in us” (Constitution 2). The rest of our Book of Life spells out how to achieve this.

As members of the Oblate Charismatic Family, we are called to become persons of union so as to lead others to the same union with self, others, nature and God in a fragmented world that daily drives people to growing disunity, division and confusion. “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” (Constitution 5)

In a report on the second day of the Inter-Chapter meeting in India we read:

“In the afternoon, Fr. Robin Seelan, SJ, addressed the Oblates with a reflection on ‘reverence’ and its role in living synodality during the InterChapter. He noted that the word itself does not appear in the Constitutions and Rules, yet it is deeply present in the Oblate vocation. It can be recognized in the ardent desire for perfection, the inflamed love for Christ and the Church, the burning zeal for the salvation of souls, and the freedom from disorderly affections. Fr. Seelan reminded the assembly that reverence is not a technique or a method. It is a movement of the heart, a disposition, a spirituality. It is something to be lived and experienced, rather than simply discussed or studied.” (https://www.omiworld.org/2025/08/19/a-day-of-listening-and-reverence/)

The speaker captured something of the spirit of our Constitutions and Rules, which we recognize in St Eugene’s words to the poor and most abandoned in the Church of the Madeleine: “My brothers, my dear brothers, my respected brothers” and how this was to be his characteristic approach to everyone as an Oblate and bishop.

This spirit of reverence is reflected in Constitution 5: “We preach the Gospel among people who have not yet received it and help them see their own values in its light.”

In Constitution 7: “We have as our goal to establish Christian communities and Churches deeply rooted in the local culture and fully responsible for their own development and growth.”

In Constitution 8: “ We will always be close to the people with whom we work, taking into account their values and aspirations.”

The reflection concluded with an invitation which also applies to every member of the Oblate Charismatic Family not present at that gathering  “to embody reverence in every aspect of their lives: in personal witness, in community living, and in apostolic mission. This Inter-Chapter, he underlined, is not only an organizational meeting but a moment of dialogue and openness. It calls for purposeful listening in prayer and silence, creating the conditions for an authentic ‘conversation in the Spirit.’”

The Prayer of the Inter-Chapter participants

“We stand before You, Holy Spirit, as we gather together in Your name.
With You alone to guide us, make Yourself at home in our hearts;
Teach us the way we must go and how we are to pursue it.
We are weak and sinful; do not let us promote disorder.
Do not let ignorance lead us down the wrong path nor partiality influence our actions.
Let us find in You our unity so that we may journey together to eternal life and not stray from the way of truth and what is right.
All this we ask of You, who are at work in every place and time, in the communion of the Father and the Son, forever and ever.
Amen.

Our mission puts us on constant call to respond to the most urgent needs of the Church through various forms of witness and ministry.

(Constitution 7)

This phrase certainly mirrors the spirit of Eugene and the first Missionaries! In their parish missions they used every possible form of ceremony, symbolic gestures and ministry to communicate their message and respond to the needs of the people. As Bishop of Marseilles, Eugene had the same approach in responding to the most urgent needs of the members of the local church and beyond. Apart from pastoral letters, sermons and personal contacts, he responded by enlisting as many people as possible in the charitable responses of the diocese. He wrote:

Admire how these charities are multiplying. How many new institutions have an objective that was previously unknown!

Childhood, old age, the sick, the poor, the worker bent from morning to night under the weight of the workday and the heat, the innocent in peril, the disgusting and remorse-ridden vice, the young prisoner already initiated into the habits that make criminals, the serious offender hardened in crime, the rich man himself often so helpless before God on his deathbed:
charity embraces everything; and when there are new needs, it invents new responses when necessary:

spiritual help, bodily help, bread for the soul, bread for the body; instructions for ignorance; advice, guidance, support for weakness; a sanctuary for virtue or for penance; pious sentiments, sweet consolations, supernatural strength for the dying;

all types of good works are lavished in the name of Jesus Christ.

Pastoral letter of Bishop de Mazenod to the Diocese of Marseilles for Lent 1847

Our mission puts us on constant call to respond to the most urgent needs of the Church

Constitution 7)

At this moment, delegates representing every area of the Oblate world are gathered in India in a meeting that takes place in between our General Chapters. Constitution 7 focuses exactly on what this meeting is about: to examine our “constant call to respond to the most urgent needs of the Church” as Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

We invite every member of the Oblate Charismatic Family to join in prayer to accompany our delegates as they open themselves to the directions of the Holy Spirit in discerning responses to the most urgent needs of the Church today.

You can follow the progress of the inter-chapter on the OMIWORLD website: https://www.omiworld.org

203 YEARS AGO ON AUGUST 15, 1822

Our mission puts us on constant call to respond to the most urgent needs of the Church through various forms of witness and ministry.

(Constitution 7)

Preaching missions at home and sending missionaries abroad have been traditionally central to our apostolate. There is no ministry, however, which is foreign to us, provided we never lose sight of the Congregation’s primary purpose: to evangelize the most abandoned.

Rule 7b

Oblate missionaries have been amazingly generous and creative in responding to the ever-changing needs of the Church, as Pope Francis recognized:

“Your missionary history is the story of many consecrated people, who have offered and sacrificed their lives for the mission, for the poor, in order to reach distant lands where there were still “sheep without a shepherd”. Today, every land is ‘mission territory’, every human dimension is mission territory, awaiting the proclamation of the Gospel. Pope Pius XI called you ‘specialists of difficult missions’. The current field of mission seems to expand every day, embracing the poor again and again, the men and women bearing the face of Christ who ask for help, consolation, hope, in the most desperate situations in life.”

(Pope Francis to the 2016 Oblate General Chapter)

The homepage of the OMIWORLD website daily reflects Oblate responses to the most urgent needs of the Church throughout the world: https://www.omiworld.org. Make it the homepage of your browser. You can also download the OMIWORLD app and find even more Oblate Family news on Facebook “OMI World.”

Hopefully my daily reflection in “St Eugene Speaks” imparts something of the Eugene’s spirit to impel us to respond to the most urgent needs of the Church.

We will spare no effort to awaken or to reawaken the faith in the people to whom we are sent, and we will help them to discover “who Christ is”

CC&RR, Constitution 7

Here we find our Oblate ministry spelt out in a nutshell. Too often Eugene is presented solely as a do-gooder with a special love for helping the poor. He certainly was this, but his focus of “doing good” and “serving the poor” was very specific and clear: it was to reawaken their faith and to accompany them in their journey of discovery as to “who Christ is” for them.

Eugene was not primarily a philanthropist, or social worker, or NGO or popular influencer – to use contemporary expressions. His love for the poor was focused on their faith and on their relationship with Jesus the Savior. This is why he founded the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and gave us this focus as the fundamental reason for our vocation.

We will spare no effort to awaken or to reawaken the faith in the people to whom we are sent, and we will help them to discover “who Christ is”.

Constitution 7

Eugene’s instruction to every member of his missionary family:

Insist on making Jesus Christ known and loved. Speak often of this divine Saviour and of all he has done to save mankind. Make them resolve never to spend a day without praying.

Letter to Fr. Jean Viala, 17 January 1849, EO IV n4

From the very beginning of our missionary history, our goal has been: “teach who Jesus Christ is” (Preface). Today the same sentiment continues to be expressed in this way.

May this be our guiding light today in all our actions.

We will spare no effort to awaken or to reawaken the faith in the people to whom we are sent, and we will help them to discover “who Christ is”

Constitution 7

Our helping others has to begin with ourselves. If we have not discovered what it means to have Jesus Christ as the center and point of unity of our lives, and do not live with and for him, we have only empty theories to offer to people. Our Constitutions and Rules point the way to achieve the personal holiness which comes from knowing Jesus Christ. Constitution 2 invites us to be:

ready to leave everything to be disciples of Jesus. The desire to co-operate with him draws us to know him more deeply, to identify with him, to let him live in us.

Constitution 31 sums it up well:

We achieve unity in our life only in and through Jesus Christ. Our ministry involves us in a variety of tasks, yet each act in life is an occasion for personal encounter with the Lord, who through us gives himself to others and through others gives himself to us.

May all those we meet be touched by “the Lord, who through us gives himself to others.”

We will spare no effort to awaken or to reawaken the faith in the people to whom we are sent, and we will help them to discover “who Christ is”

CC&RR, Constitution 7

We were initially founded to “re-awaken the faith in the people” whose faith and religious expression had been stifled as a result of the French Revolution – primarily by conducting extensive parish missions in the rural villages.

In the course of this ministry, the Oblates came across people who had never been evangelized, thus necessitating a ministry to “awaken” their sense of God and religious knowledge. It was in the foreign missions, however, that the ministry to awaken the faith of people in Jesus Christ took root. Writing to a missionary sent to North America, Eugene said:

Foreign missions compared to our missions in Europe have a special character of a higher kind, because this is the true apostolate of announcing the Good News to nations which have not yet been called to knowledge of the true God and of his son Jesus Christ…. This is the mission of the apostles: “Go, teach all people” this teaching of the truth must penetrate to the most distant nations so that they may be regenerated in the waters of baptism.

You are among those to whom Jesus Christ has addressed these words, giving you your mission as he gave their mission to the apostles who were sent to convert our fathers. From this point of view, which is a true one, there is nothing higher than your ministry and that of our other Fathers who are wearing themselves out in the glacial regions to discover the indigenous people whom it is their task to save.

Eugene’s letter to Fr. Pascal Ricard, 6 December 1851, EO II n 157