“Bishop Michael O’Connor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was passing through Marseilles at the end of 1843 and he asked Bishop de Mazenod for some Oblates for the major seminary in Pittsburgh. The Founder’s reply was negative because of lack of personnel. Bishop O’Connor renewed his request for priests and, on June 7, 1848, he met with Father Guigues in Longueuil to arrange details for an establishment of the Congregation in Pittsburgh. Fathers Adrien Telmon, Augustin Gaudet and the scholastic Eugène Cauvin were appointed to staff the major seminary.” Y. Beaudoin https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/pittsburgh-pennsylvania-united-states-1848-1849/)
Eugene wrote about this to Bp Guigues:
If we succeed at Pittsburgh, we will soon have other establishments in the United States. Already proposed is the seminary of Detroit. When we have a third establishment we will form a new Province; this is all the more desirable since already our Fathers in the United States have difficulty in receiving directions from Canada.
The training of clergy in seminaries was one of the important missions of the Oblates, which explains why Pittsburgh was accepted as an Oblate mission. This first foothold in the eastern United States was so important that they were prepared to make an exception by taking on a parish as well.
It appears that the Bishop of Pittsburgh insists that our Fathers serve a church in the central part of the city where he wishes them to be placed. Let us not be particular and since Providence has permitted us to expand, let us take care of each mission which God confides to us.
Letter to Bp. Bruno Guigues, 15 September 1848, EO I n 102.
REFLECTION
“If you are seeking what God wants you to do with your time He will reveal it to you. Just don’t be surprised if it is the last thing you ever thought you would do.” S. Stephens.
I take occasion in speaking of this to recommend that you greatly insist on our Canadian Fathers, correcting their accent and taking as a model the pronunciation of the English with whom they live. They are young enough to succeed in this if they willingly pay attention to this matter. How many of our people from the provinces have corrected their accent while living at Paris.
Letter to Bp. Bruno Guigues, 15 September 1848, EO I n 102.
The zeal of the Missionary Oblates knew no limits. Yet it was not sufficient to dive headlong into a missionary situation – one had to be prepared and the learning of the language of the people was essential. Here Eugene adds the important element that is was not sufficient to know the grammar and vocabulary of a language, but that the missionaries had to learn the pronunciation of the language as it was used by the local population.
REFLECTION
We Oblates pride ourselves on “being close to the people.” In these days of international multi-cultural communities we prove that we have a genuine love and concern for the people we minister to when we take the trouble to immerse ourselves in their cultural expressions to the best of our abilities. People judge us according to our goodwill when we show that we are trying our best.
The Oblate missionaries in Oregon were doing first evangelization and thus had no income and infrastrucure. They relied on grants from the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, to whom Eugene wrote:
These missionaries do not appeal to your aid, they say, to construct beautiful churches as in the United States, but to construct huts where they can shelter themselves from the inclemency of the seasons and to purchase the poor food to support their efforts and not die of hunger. They had already penetrated among the tribes and reached the point of gathering the latter around them when the tragic war of the Americans came to dash their hopes. When they wrote to me it was their intention to push deeper into the hinterland, beyond the reach of the combatants, to exercise their most worthy ministry with fewer obstacles. May God protect them from other sorts of dangers.
Letter to the Members of the Central Council of the Propagation of the Faith, 24 October 1848, EO V n 115
REFLECTION
“Without the assurance of food, clothing and shelter, unless you’re prepared to die, there’s no other way but to work.” (Tatsuhiko Takimoto)
Saint Eugene will take a pause in writing new reflections until August 12. In the meantime there are 3115 daily reflections you can access from the home page (www.eugenedemazenod.net )
So St Eugene still speaks!
Instead of deterring young Oblates from volunteering for the foreign missions, the narratives of the Oblates, and all their hardships and challenges in making Jesus the Savior known, spurred them on to desire to be courageous missionaries themselves.
Nothing is comparable to the joy your letters afford me. One quivers on receiving them, reading and rereading them again and again ever with renewed pleasure, then one has them read to others until everyone is ecstatic. For do not believe that the description you make of your weariness and privation frighten those who long for the missions to the indigenous peoples. On the contrary, they are envious of your lot and beg me with even greater insistence that they may go and share it with you. You can be quite certain that I do not think of deterring them from so holy a vocation or of dulling their zeal. Far from that.
Letter to Fr. Pascal Ricard in Oregon, August 1848, EO I n 100
REFLECTION
When we listen to our elderly Oblates narrating the adventures of their missionary lives, we are inspired to want to emulate them and apply their spirit to today’s challenges. When we listen to our elderly Christians narrating the story of their lives as followers of Jesus, we are inspired to want to live by the same spirit today. How blest we are to have our elders!
What can I say of our men in Oregon and on the shores of the Red River? For food they have a little bacon, they have no bed but the bare ground, and with that they are content and happy as men who are doing the will of God. Fr. Ricard who was dying when he left has regained his health and the last time he wrote to me he said that he had not even had a day’s cold although he was sleeping at night under the stars and often lying in mud.
Those who are moving towards Hudson’s Bay, with cold weather registering 30 degrees, dragged by dogs across the ice, forced to make a hole in the snow in order to pass the night with the snow as their bed, delight one with the story of their adventures.
Letter to Fr. Étienne Semeria, 17 August 1848, EO IV (Ceylon) n 4
REFLECTION
When one is enthralled by the power of the Cross, everything is possible to endure!
Eugene encourages his Oblates in Oregon in their disappointment at being so coldly received by the bishop. He invites them to focus on what is the unchanging ideal of their vocation: oblation for the salvation of souls as is expressed in their Rule of Life.
Establish from the beginning the invariable ideal of your Institute and a rule of wise conduct, exact and uniform, to which each must conform. In your missions more than everywhere else obedience to the superior and fidelity to the Rules must be observed.
Your letter speaks of a trial, that is to say, of the behaviour of your Bishop, so ungrateful for the alacrity with which we have sent him personnel… For the rest, I see in this mission the finger of Providence and am not disturbed by this annoyance.
You belong too much to God, my dear children, not to offer Him this sorrow, with so many other sacrifices. You fulfil your great mission independently of the satisfaction which could have been afforded to you by greater cordiality on the part of the one who should alleviate your solitude. I have seen on the map the area you have to evangelize, with what interest I follow you in your apostolic journeys.
Letter to Fr. Pascal Ricard in Oregon, August 1848, EO I n 100
REFLECTION
To see situations through the eyes of the Crucified Savior is the Mazenodian way of reading situations. In this way we recognize the finger of Providence in all that we experience – and the strength to be able to persevere.
In 1847, Eugene had responded to the invitation of the local bishops to send Oblates to work in present-day Oregon and Washington states. He had chosen Father Pascal Ricard, one Oblate Brother and three scholastics for this new mission. It took them seven months of travel to reach Walla Walla. Four months later, two of the scholastics were ordained priests while the third chose to mission as a Brother. (see https://www.eugenedemazenod.net/?p=5355 and the following 9 entries)
After the difficulties of the journey, the reception from the Bishop was not very welcoming. Eugene complained about him to Bishop Bourget of Montreal:
I was going to say in confidence how little the Bishop of Walla Walla had responded to the alacrity with which I had, in his pressing appeal, furnished him with devoted missionaries. Having been provided, during the period that our good Fathers were on their way by sea, with what he thought would suffice, I believe he was annoyed to see them arrive. He received them in the first place more than coldly and does not appear to have become more amiable towards them since. What appals me is that the distance between us and these good missionaries means that they are going to suffer greatly before I can get to them the reinforcements which I had to presume this prelate would furnish since he had asked me for them as a great favour, his letter being proof of that.
Letter to Bishop Bourget of Montreal, 12 February 1848, EO I n 93
Bishop Bourget tried to calm the waters by responding: “I believe that Fr. Ricard and his confreres might well have been surprised by the cold manner of the Bishop of Walla Walla. But I hope that when they will have lived with him, they will better be able to judge the goodness of his heart. He is naturally serious and his manner is cold and even glacial to anyone approaching him for the first time. Besides you understand that in the sorrow one feels on leaving his fatherland and in the middle of the fatigues of a long and uncomfortable journey, one is not naturally inclined to laugh.” (Footnote in EO I n 93)
REFLECTION
Sometimes we can be very shallow about the way in which we speak about carrying the Cross. These four Oblates had responded to the call of the Crucified Savior through their oblation, and had sacrificed themselves to bring the message of salvation through the Cross and Resurrection to people who had never heard the Gospel. Their sufferings were redemptive. When we encounter situations of suffering let us never forget that the Cross is the doorway to the resurrection – we may not understand, but God uses us as instruments in these situations.
Fr. Telmon was being sent to Pittsburgh USA, and was hesitating because of his poor knowledge of English. Eugene’s reaction was to be the same towards all the Oblates who were sent to mission: learn the local language of the people!
How is it that all our Fathers in Canada have not made it their duty and their pleasure to learn English? We have thirty Oblates at the seminary and there is not one who is not learning this language. You should hear all these young men conversing. They speak nothing but English in their recreation periods. What does Father Telmon mean by protesting on the grounds that he does not know English?
This is a new mentality consonant with the republican spirit of our time. Formerly missionaries were sent all over the world; not one knew the language of the people he was going to evangelize. They set to with courage and they succeeded… So put your people to work at learning English.
Letter to Bishop Guigues in Bytown, 25 July 1848, EO 1 n. 99
REFLECTION
We Oblates pride ourselves that people always recognize us as being “close to the people” – the foundation of this is to learn their language. This, however, is more than linguistics. It is an invitation, which refers also to our own native language, to learn the lived “language” of the people: their values, their hopes and dreams, their sufferings, all that is important to them so as to be able to journey with them in Christ Jesus, and they with us.
I have received a letter from Fr. … [ed. name not given in the text] with which I am not pleased. Obedience is little or badly known to our Fathers in Canada. They know not how to submit themselves without complaining and they always have to put their own feelings ahead of the instructions of their superiors. This is a sorry state of affairs, diametrically opposed to the spirit and the letter of our Constitutions and indeed to the very essence of the religious spirit.
Letter to Bp Bruno Guigues, 26 September 1848, EO I n 103
REFLECTION
Our OMI Constitutions and Rules remind us: “In the Superior, we will see a sign of our unity in Christ Jesus; through faith, we accept the authority he has been given. We will give our loyal support once a decision has been made and, in a spirit of cooperation and initiative, we will devote our talents, our activity, our very lives, to our apostolic mission in the Church.” (C 26)
It is not only vowed Oblates who have a Superior. In the Church all of us are called to listen to those who represent our unity in Christ Jesus .
