Eugene de Mazenod speaks to us

We are a missionary Congregation (Constitution 5)

“We were born for the mission and we exist for the mission. The Founder was impelled to begin the community of Aix in order to evangelize the inhabitants of his area, especially the ordinary people. He requested Rome’s approval in order to assure the Congregation’s existence and its missionary activity.

Our growth, too, is due to the mission. With our going to Canada in 1841 and especially with our missionary commitments among the Indians, there quickly followed an explosion of vocations and enthusiasm, accompanied by a meaningful image that adhered to the Oblate work. Thus began a missionary epic in different parts of the world: from Sri Lanka to South Africa, from Oregon to Texas.

The Founder’s vision took on new depth: evangelization was conceived not only as proclaiming Jesus Christ in order to reawaken the faith, correct behaviour and renew religious practice, but also as introducing people to Christ and to the Church in the way the Apostles did at the beginning of the Christian era. Oblates are “apostolic men” not only because they follow Christ and generously give themselves, but also because they are doing the same things that the Apostles did, namely, going out into the whole world in order to evangelize people. The desire for universality that the Founder had nourished as a young man and had expressed in the first Rules was now being realized.

The Oblate is the missionary of the poor, missionary to people. He is open to every human person in need, welcomes the latter’s aspirations, accompanies him on his journey, reveals to him who Christ is. He is open to the whole world, listening to its appeals and anxieties, sustaining the Congregation’s commitments, making himself everywhere available. The Congregation’s future will depend on the quality of our life, on our courage and our availability to respond to the challenges and needs of the Church wherever the Spirit will invite us to witness to the Gospel.”

Fr. Marcello Zago, Superior General, 1988

We are a missionary Congregation (Constitution 5)

“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21), said Jesus as he entrusted his disciples to God’s mission. God’s mission has a Church, and God’s mission has our Oblate Family. It is not that we own our mission, but that God has called us to be a part of God’s mission of salvation.

Jesus invites us to participate in his mission – his mission has the Oblate Family as part of it. In this sense we understand better Eugene’s description of us as “cooperators of the Savior” and “co-redeemers of the human race.” We are not doers of our mission, but we are instruments that God uses to join Jesus in his mission.
This Constitution invites us to rethink our missionary motivation: no matter how important or how insignificant we may think our actions to be, they make a difference because God is using us at home, at work, in every situation as religious, ordained, married or single missionaries.

Mother Teresa’s words capture the sense of our vocation as cooperators: “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”

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)

Eugene used the expressions, “poor” and “most abandoned” interchangeably, always referring to the same people. The “most abandoned” were usually the materially poor who did not have the means to receive spiritual help. As Eugene and the early Oblates became increasingly involved in this mission, so did their horizons open to include all groups who were in need of “the hope which only Jesus Christ can fully bring.”
Initially, when the young Eugene went to the seminary, he expressed his reason for doing so as:

As the Lord is my witness, what he wants of me, … is that I devote myself especially to his service and try to reawaken the faith that is becoming extinct amongst the poor…

Letter to his mother, June 29, 1808, EO XIV, n. 27

After his ordination, in his first Lenten sermon to the poor of Aix en Provence:

The poor, that precious portion of the Christian family, cannot be left in their ignorance. So important did our divine Savior consider them that he took it upon himself to instruct them; and he gave as proof that his mission was divine the fact that the poor were being instructed: Pauperes evangelizantur.

Notes for Lenten Instructions, March 1813, EO XV

Over 40 years later, when he saw the misery of the poor in London: “Poor people, they need food for the body. How much more do they need food for the soul.”

St Eugene’s charism is very clear on how to identify the poor: “The call of Jesus Christ, heard within the Church through people’s need for salvation” (Constitution 1).

After having laid the foundations, the Rule now begins to spell out who these poor are. They are the “most abandoned” whom the structures of the Church do not adequately reach:

We are a missionary Congregation. Our principal service in the Church is to proclaim Christ and his Kingdom to the most abandoned. We preach the Gospel among people who have not yet received it and help them see their own values in its light. Where the Church is already established, our commitment is to those groups it touches least.

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)

On our journey of reflection on the Constitutions and Rules, it is important to have a “map” that we can consult from time to time to situate us – this is especially the case for the lay members of our Family who live the spirituality of St Eugene which is expressed in the Oblate Rule.

Constitution 1 lays the foundation:

Constitution 2 focuses on how we FOLLOW the Savior:

All this is summed up in one word: OBLATION  – “The Cross of Jesus Christ is central to our mission.” (Constitution 4)

What I have presented above is only half the picture because I have concentrated on what Eugene’s charism expects us to BE. All this, however, is focused on mission. As Constitution 1 points out: ” The call of Jesus Christ, heard within the Church through people’s need for salvation, draws us together…”

These first Constitutions tell us what we must BE in order to respond to “people’s need for salvation.”

The rest of the Rule is a directory of how the members of the Oblate Family put all this into practice.

Before we begin to explore our mission, an invitation for you to look back on our reflections over recent days (from https://www.eugenedemazenod.net/?p=5978 onwards) and to consider how to live these key elements in the diagram above.

REFLECTION – MY RESPONSE TO CONSTITUTIONS ONE AND TWO

“The call of Jesus Christ, heard within the Church through people’s need for salvation, draws me into the  Family of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Christ thus invites me to follow him and to share in his mission through my words and my work.

As part of an apostolic community of Priests, Brothers and Laypersons I commit myself to cooperate with the Saviour and imitate his example,  principally to evangelize those who have most need of the presence of Jesus the Savior in their lives.”

Through the eyes of our crucified Saviour we see the world which he redeemed with his blood, desiring that those in whom he continues to suffer will know also the power of his resurrection (cf. Phil 3: 10). (Constitution 9)

This phrase is the key that opens the door of our mission and the key for reading and interpreting the whole book of the Constitutions and Rules.

Our Oblate mission is a response to the cry of those who are poor because they do not know or recognize Jesus Christ in their situation. Constitutions 5 to 9 will spell this out with more clarity.

What is the key that opens the door of my life and mission? Who or what is it that holds my life together? How do I express this?

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). Through the eyes of our crucified Saviour we see the world which he redeemed with his blood, desiring that those in whom he continues to suffer will know also the power of his resurrection (cf. Phil 3: 10). (Constitution 4)

“Desiring that those in whom he continues to suffer will know also the power of his resurrection.” Here is the litmus test for the question: “who are the poor for the Oblate Family?” They are unequivocally those who do not know Jesus Christ as their Savior. Those who suffer darkness and a lack of direction in their lives. They are the people who experience any physical, moral or spiritual suffering and do not recognize the invitation to turn to the Crucified and Risen Savior for strength. They are the persons who suffer with others, with injustice, with the destruction of natural resources for healthy living and do not have a relationship with the Savior to sustain and focus them.

All these and more are the persons who need to recognize the Crucified Christ in their sufferings. Our mission is to accompany those who are suffering to look at themselves through His eyes, so as to help them to “plug into the power source” of His resurrection

Eugene was convinced that the blood of the Savior made everyone equal in God’s eyes. From his earlies ministry it was a principle that he insisted on, as we see in the statutes he wrote for the young people he worked with after his ordination.

The identity given by the blood of the Savior had to be put into practice in all the events and relationships of their lives. Mirroring the social situation of the time, some of the members of the Youth Congregation came from homes where there were servants.

They will instruct very gently those who are subject to them. They must remember that the servants, however lowly they appear in the eyes of this world, are nevertheless called one day to share the immortal crown of glory – together with their masters – that has been acquired with the precious blood of the Saviour and Master they have in common.

Règlements et Statuts de la Congrégation de la Jeunesse, 1813, p. 24

Through the eyes of our crucified Saviour we see the world which he redeemed with his blood, desiring that those in whom he continues to suffer will know also the power of his resurrection (cf. Phil 3: 10). (Constitution 4)

The potato famine massacred the population of Ireland. Bishop Eugene wrote a pastoral letter to his diocese asking people to help the Irish financially. In it we find the foundation of his Oblate mission: his conversion experience at the foot of the Cross and his realization that he had been redeemed by the blood of the Savior. His mission was to bring others to the same realization.

The reason for helping the Irish Catholics went deeper than charity:

Let it not be said they belong to an empire other than ours. That would be completely unworthy of Christian charity for we are all, as long as people dwell on earth, children of our Father in heaven and neighbours to each other; and moreover, the Irish belong like us to the great Catholic family.
Not only is the blood of the same human family common to us but the blood of our Redeemer in which we share as recipients of the same grace and the same sacraments.

Bishop Eugene’s Circular Letter to the people of Marseilles, 24 February 1847, EO III Circular n 2.

This profound conviction that the blood of the Redeemer is common to all formed the foundation of Eugene’s understanding of the Church primarily as the Body of Christ.

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). Through the eyes of our crucified Saviour we see the world which he redeemed with his blood, desiring that those in whom he continues to suffer will know also the power of his resurrection (cf. Phil 3: 10). (Constitution 4)

As cooperators of the Savior, we are invited to look at people through His eyes. Eugene is a good teacher for us. In his first Lenten sermon in Aix en Provence, he addressed his poor listeners:

Come now and learn from us what you are in the eyes of faith.
Poor of Jesus Christ, afflicted, wretched, suffering, sick, covered with sores, etc., all you whom misery oppresses, my brothers, dear brothers, respected brothers, listen to me.
You are God’s children, the brothers of Jesus Christ, heirs to his eternal kingdom, chosen portion of his inheritance…
…let your eyes see for once beneath the rags that cover you, there is within you an immortal soul made in the image of God whom it is destined to possess one day, a soul ransomed at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ, more precious in the eyes of God than all earth’s riches, than all the kingdoms of the earth, a soul of which he is more jealous than of the government of the entire universe.
Christians, know then your dignity…

Notes for the first instruction in the Church of the Madeleine, E.O. XV n. 114

What a difference it would make if we were to train ourselves to see everyone through the lens of the eyes of the crucified Savior!