Eugene de Mazenod speaks to us

“Our love for the Church inspires us…” (Constitution 6)

 Writing to his mother who was vehemently opposed to the idea of his becoming a priest, Eugene reminded her of what happens at Baptism:

So do not grudge, dear mama, do not grudge this poor Church, so terribly abandoned, scorned, trampled underfoot – but which even so was the one who gave birth to us all in Jesus Christ – the dedication that two or three individuals out of the whole of France (a small number I count myself happy to be one of) wish to pay her of their liberty and life. And what reason could you possibly have for wanting me to delay any longer from committing myself, and devoting myself to the Spouse of Jesus Christ?”

Letter to his mother, 11 October 1809, EO XIV n.61

At our baptism these words were addressed to each of us: “ N., the Christian community welcomes you with great joy. In its name I claim you for Christ our Savior by the sign of his cross. I now trace the cross on your forehead, and invite your parents and godparents to do the same.”

This is why we are called to love the Church.

“Our love for the Church inspires us…” (Constitution 6)

As part of his search for the meaning of his life, his gradual journey of conversion, the 22 year-old Eugene read and studied and made notes:

One of the things that strikes me most in religion is “catholicity”, that communion that exists among children of one same Father who receives on high the intentions they form at the same time in lands so distant and who truly wills to give them in return a merit shared in common.

The idea that I am a member of that great family of which God himself is Head… seems to instantly make my soul surge, with an intensity that is difficult to express.

Jottings in Eugene’s notebook, May 1804, EO XIV, n 7

Today, our Oblate Charismatic Family is present in over 60 countries. What an awe-inspiring thought that we are an expression of the communion that exists because we are all children if the same God as Church.

Constitution 6 begins with the words:

Our love for the Church inspires us…

The outstanding characteristic of the life of Eugene was his passionate love for Jesus Christ as his Savior, and as his Way and his Truth and his Life. We are thus not surprised to read in his last Pastoral Letter before his death:

How is it possible to separate our love for Jesus Christ from that which we owe to his Church?” These two kinds of love merge: to love the Church is to love Jesus Christ and vice versa. We love Jesus Christ in his Church because she is his immaculate spouse who came out of his opened side on the cross

Lenten Pastoral Letter, February 1860.

The Church for Eugene was the Body of Christ, the great communion of all the baptized. As the members of his Charismatic Family, we too are urged to allow our love for Jesus Christ to lead us to recognize his living presence in the Church.

After many weeks of traveling for charism animation activities, and a trans-Atlantic move of from San Antonio to Rome (including the Kusenberger Chair of Oblate Studies), St Eugene is ready to speak to us again.

In the chapel of the General House in Rome we are privileged to have the Statue of the Immaculate Conception, lovingly referred to as the “Oblate Madonna.” It was while praying in front of this statue that Eugene experienced a mystical realization. He received the assurance that this tiny religious congregation was blessed by God and that, despite all the tribulations it was experiencing, it contained the seed of a great tree that would flourish.  Looking at the nascent Oblate Congregation he exclaimed:

I found it worthy,
everything pleased me about it,
I appreciated its rules, its statutes;
its ministry seemed awe-inspiring to me, as it is indeed.
As I looked at the Society I found in it a sure, even infallible, means of salvation.

Letter to Henri Tempier, 15 August 1822, EO VI n 86

In view of the 200th anniversary of our official recognition by the Church and the approval of our Oblate Rule, I have been reflecting on the articles of the Constitutions and Rules seen through the eyes of Saint Eugene. Starting at https://www.eugenedemazenod.net/?p=5991, we have looked at the first five Constitutions already and, because of their importance in understanding our charism, I invite you to relook at them and, with Eugene, to find in them an awe-inspiring means of salvation.

I had hoped to resume the daily reflection today, but circumstances have forced me to postpone for some time longer. I have been involved in end-of-academic year activities at Oblate School of Theology, and travel for Oblate charism animation activities in several parts of the world. At the same time I am also preparing to assume a new ministry in Rome, while continuing with all the activities of the Kusenberger Chair of Oblate Studies.

On the website you can find 15 years’ worth of St Eugene reflections (3324 of them) where he continues to speak and inspire us: https://www.eugenedemazenod.net/

As I re-read some of these past entries I am always happy to see that they are still very relevant for today.

Looking forward to continuing our reflections in July from Rome.

A Happy Easter to you.

I have had some reactions to the reflections on the Oblate Constitutions and Rules that I have been doing for several weeks. Thank you for encouraging words.

These reflections will be paused for a month and will resume towards the end of May.

The reason is that these coming weeks are going to be busy with some retreat and teaching sessions and workshops which will involve extensive travel. I am also in the process of preparing to assume a new ministry while continuing to be responsible for and teaching in the Kusenberger Chair of Oblate Studies.

I look forward to resuming our exploration of the contents and meaning of our Rule of Life for all the members of our Oblate Charismatic Family.

In the meantime, I remind you that you can consult 15 years of reflections (over 3300 entries) on the website: https://www.eugenedemazenod.net. There is a search engine where you can enter a word or theme to consult the entries.

Be back soon!

Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples,
‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ (Matthew 28: 7)

After journeying with him through the sad event of his Passion, after weeping over the torments that our sins made him endure, how consoling it is to see him rise triumphant over death and hell, and what gratitude must fill our hearts at the thought that this good Master has really willed to make us sharers in his resurrection, destroying the sin that is in us and giving us a new life.

Eugene de Mazenod  to his mother, 4 April 1809, EO XIV n 50

As members of his Oblate Family we find echoes of this sentiment on Constitution 9 of our Rule of Life:

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. 

The description of the response of a new Oblate applies not only to a novice, but to each of us today as we renew our experience of God’s love on the Cross:

The novice, having experienced the Father’s love in Jesus, dedicates his life to making that love visible. He entrusts his fidelity to the one whose cross he shares, whose promises are his hope. (Constitution 59).

On Good Friday Eugene had experienced “the Father’s love in Jesus” and he was impelled to spend the rest of his life “making that love visible.” He entrusted that mission to every member of the Oblate Family:

The cross of Jesus Christ is central to our mission. Like the apostle Paul, we “preach Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2: 2). If we bear in our body the death of Jesus, it is with the hope that the life of Jesus, too, may be seen in our body (cf. 2 Cor 4:10). (Constitution 4)

May this Good Friday be a day of renewed and grateful awareness of the Father’s love in the crucified Christ for each of us and for those entrusted to our care.

On this day when we recall the last supper and the self-giving of Jesus Christ in the institution of the Eucharist and the beginning of the passion, as members of the Oblate Family we are reminded of the response of Eugene to the oblation of Jesus Christ in April 1816:

Briefly put. Father Tempier and I felt that we should not delay any longer, and on Holy Thursday (April 11, 1816), when both of us had taken our place under the structure of the beautiful repository we had erected over the main altar of the Mission church, in the night of that holy day, we pronounced our vows with an indescribable joy. We enjoyed our happiness throughout this beautiful night, in the presence of Our Lord, at the foot of the magnificent throne where we had placed Him for the Mass of the Pre-sanctified the following day.

 Eugene de Mazenod’s Mémoires in Rambert I, p. 187

Our present Rule of Life reflects the “we pronounced our vows with an indescribable joy” of our Founder and invites each of us the members of his Oblate Family, according to our state in life, to renewing our desire to

… give ourselves to the Father in obedience even unto death and dedicate ourselves to God’s people in unselfish love. Our apostolic zeal is sustained by the unreserved gift we make of ourselves in our oblation, an offering constantly renewed by the challenges of our mission. (Constitution 2)

May the “indescribable joy” of the oblation of Jesus Christ, and our response in oblation, be ours this Holy Thursday.

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)

One of the “faces of the poor” today can be recognized in the negative effects of social media and the control it can have on our thinking, our choices, our sexuality, our relationships and our indifference to world events.

“Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.
The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime, all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.” (Pope Francis)

Pope Francis clarifies the role which social media is capable of having with regard tho the “salvation and hope which only Jesus Christ can fully bring:”

“The challenge is to rediscover, through the means of social communication as well as by personal contact, the beauty that is at the heart of our existence and journey, the beauty of faith and of the beauty of the encounter with Christ”