Eugene de Mazenod speaks to us

Fr. Guigues, receiving the instruction from Eugene to send two Oblates to the new mission, responded: “I consider this foundation imprudent and consequently contrary to God’s will. We are two thousand miles from Red River; . . . communication is extremely difficult; for the subjects, it will be a life of loneliness and of every kind of danger. ” (Quoted in Leflon II p 164)

Bishop de Mazenod was not impressed that his orders had not been carried out, and responded with a strongly-worded letter which ended with:

To settle this matter once and for all, I order you to write to Bishop Provencher and tell him that we are granting the request he made on behalf of his vicariate apostolic and that you have two missionaries to put at his disposal for that purpose.

Letter to Fr. Bruno Guigues, local superior in Canada, 24 May 1845, EO I n 54

Fr. Guigues had no choice but to carry out the order and send the two men chosen by Eugene: Fr Pierre Aubert and a Canadian scholastic Alexandre-Antonin Taché, who had not yet been ordained.

REFLECTION

“You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”   (Henry Drummond)

A good summary of the life of St Eugene. How true is it of your life?

Bishop Provencher had been entrusted with the Vicariate of Red River (later known as St Boniface) which extended from the Rocky Mountains to the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and from the United States to the Arctic Ocean; and to minister to such an immense area, he had only five priests at his disposal. In 1843 he went to Europe in search of missionaries and met Bishop Eugene who promised him two Oblate priests.

Writing to Father Guigues, the Oblate superior in Canada, Eugene instructed:

I’ll go further: judging the importance of the mission proposed by the Bishop of Juliopolis [ed. Bishop Provencher] and by what you tell me about the representations of this Prelate, and mindful of the obligations we have towards him, my decision is that you ought to undertake it with the means you have at your disposal. It will not be a proper establishment at first and instead of three persons, you will only send him two for part of the year if you cannot do otherwise, but you cannot risk the great setback that you fear of seeing this mission taken away from you and of losing the opportunity, as you argue very well and rightly, of evangelizing the whole of North America by serving in the diocese of Quebec, Montreal, Kingston and Red River.

Fully aware that the “means at his disposal” for evangelization and sacraments consisted of Oblate priests who were already over-extended in their commitments in Canada (3 in Montreal, 4 in Saguenay, 4 in Bytown and a few scholastics in training), Eugene continued:

We need to have some courage and confidence in God who shows us the road and will not abandon us when we act in his name and for his glory. Everywhere we have established ourselves we have made a feeble start. The time has not yet come to do otherwise. So, I repeat, without hesitation, respond to the wish of the Bishop of Juliopolis and begin this work even with only two Oblates while awaiting others from the goodness of God.

Letter to Fr. Bruno Guigues, local superior in Canada, 5 December 1844, EO I n 50

REFLECTION

“In dreams begin responsibilities.” (William Butler Yeats)

The history of the world and of Christianity is made up of God inspiring people to undertake “crazy” adventures! If properly discerned and carried out in God’s guiding presence, humanly unexpected results follow. Joseph was a dreamer, Peter and Paul, Francis and Clare of Assisi, Ignatius and Mary Ward, Eugene de Mazenod and his missionary family, just to mention a few “dreamers”… Do I allow God’s dream for me to impel me in light and empower me in darkness?

In the previous entries I have gone into a fair amount of detail on the question of the nomination of Bruno Guigues as the first bishop of Bytown, later known as Ottawa. I did this, firstly, because it opens an important chapter in the history of the missionary expansion of our Mazenodian Family.

These letters also show the deep faith of Eugene in God’s guidance and his way of making difficult decisions. He shared with and listened to the opinions of people whose opinions he respected: Bishop Bourget of Montreal, the Oblate General Council, Oblate Bishop Guibert, and Bruno Guigues himself among many others. He also listened to the fears and disagreement of the Oblates in Canada and showed them that he understood how they felt. As Founder, Eugene was aware of the bigger picture of the good of the Church and of the Oblate Congregation. Putting his trust in God, through constant prayer, he went ahead with approving the nomination – and his insight was to prove to have been the correct one that was to bear much ongoing fruit in the future.

We must leave ourselves in the hands of divine Providence and pray God to direct events according to his good pleasure and not according to the pretentious claims of people.

Letter to Hippolyte Courtès, 8 March 1822, EO VI n 81

REFLECTION

May we learn from Eugene the need to listen, consult, pray and rely on God’s guidance – today we call this the “synodal way.”

The spirit of the Oblate Constitutions and Rules applies to the ministry of all members of the Mazenodian family, according to their particular state:

“Our life is governed by the demands of our apostolic mission and by the calls of the Spirit already dwelling in those to whom we are sent. Our work makes us dependent on others in many ways; it requires real detachment from our own will and a deep sense of the Church” C25

“In major decisions and in matters concerning the life and mission of the whole community, there will be a process of discernment conducive to consensus” R26a

One of the beautiful spiritual practices of Eugene was the way in which he united himself with the members of his missionary family in the Eucharistic presence of Jesus. In this way he experienced a unity with each of them, no matter how far away in distant continents. Here he wrote to Fr. Guigues about wanting to be as closely united as possible, across the Atlantic, and the moment of his consecration:

I would at least wish to know the day decided for your consecration so as to unite myself intimately to the sublime ceremony by offering the Holy Mass at the same moment for you. It is not that I forget you a single day.

Yesterday again, while carrying the Blessed Sacrament in a general procession, I conversed openheartedly with our beloved Lord. I also spoke to Him unreservedly of all our missionaries who are so often exposed to losing their lives in His service. I had just received the letter wherein you speak of the shipwreck of our Fathers who were miraculously saved. I returned to the house more consoled, more strengthened, more grateful than ever; let us redouble our confidence; it is God Himself who leads us.

Letter to Fr. Bruno Guigues in Canada, 7 June 1847, EO I n 84

REFLECTION

This practise has come to us today as “oraison” which Eugene described as “the audience that our divine Master gives us when we come to pay him our respects at oraison which is made in his presence before his holy tabernacle. I recall it to your mind, my dear child, so that you meet with me at this rendezvous. This is the only way of reducing distances, to be at the same moment in our Lord’s presence, it is so to speak like being side by side. We do not see each other, but we sense each other’s presence, hear each other, lose ourselves in one and the same central point.”

Eugene concluded the correspondence on the contentious issue of the appointment of Fr. Guigues to establish a diocese in Bytown with fatherly words of encouragement. He begins by recalling how he had known him since his childhood:

[The Church and the Congregation] should derive great advantages from this measure were the one elected to be as I have known him, that is to say, eminently attached to the family which gave him birth, which has nurtured him in her bosom since childhood, which loves and esteems him as one of her most distinguished members, which counts on him… as she counts on the most devoted of her children. If I had not had unlimited confidence in you, I would certainly not have consented to allow you to be placed in a position which would furnish to weak and ordinary members plausible pretexts for some form of forsaking. But it being you, the thought would never have come to me and I repulsed it as a horrible injustice when it was insinuated in the eccentricities of a depressing correspondence.

In this circumstance, it is God who has done everything. In your soul you have enough resourcefulness to make up what may be lacking at the moment. I see in your promotion a benevolent disposition of Providence towards our Congregation which is at present exposed to some vexations on the part of some bishops in Canada.

Resign yourself then, my dear son, to the designs of Providence and think of nothing more than to prepare yourself in a holy manner to receive the fullness of priesthood by the imposition of hands of the happy bishop of whom I envy the privilege which might have been reserved to me, were we not separated from one another by 2000 leagues.

Letter to Fr. Bruno Guigues in Canada, 7 June 1847, EO I n 84

REFLECTION

We see in this letter Eugene’s heart of a father and his desire that his missionaries be a united family. Bruno Guigues had proved himself a responsible and devoted member of this family and the future would show that this would never change. I believe that Eugene continues to look on all the members of his Mazenodian Family, vowed and lay, with the same paternal affection and intercession for our welfare.

“The greatest gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.” – Kendall Hailey

The proposed appointment of Fr Bruno Guigues to the episcopacy caused agitation among some of the Canadian Oblates who appreciated his gifts and administrative abilities and did not want to lose his active presence in his role as the Oblate superior. This could not have been very pleasant for Guigues, and so Eugene wrote to support him.

My very dear friend, although tortured by the innumerable letters which the good Father Allard writes to ask me to prevent your episcopate and that for very honest but exaggerated reasons, I cannot repent of having given my consent to your election.

I could have been troubled by the representations provoked by the love of our Fathers for the Congregation and for you, but never have I repented of having cooperated in something that I have believed, before God, to be good, opportune, advantageous for the Church and very honourable for our Congregation which could suffer no detriment but which, on the contrary, should derive great advantages from this measure…

Letter to Fr. Bruno Guigues in Canada, 7 June 1847, EO I n 84

REFLECTION

Having convictions can be defined as being so thoroughly convinced that Christ and His Word are both objectively true and relationally meaningful that you act on your beliefs regardless of the consequences.

– Josh McDowell

After chiding Fr Allard for exaggerating in his critical expressions, Eugene gives him fatherly advice.

What then must be done? Let us believe we were mistaken and put all our efforts into deriving all possible benefit from the position in which the good God places us. One should then regret having pronounced oneself too strongly in a sense contrary to that which divine Providence has chosen. Instead of murmuring, let each be concerned with his duty and confide himself to the goodness of God who never abandons us when we are what we should be.

Eugene constantly refers to the spirit of oblation, of giving ourselves to being God’s instruments by doing God’s will.

I like to repeat that we must comply with joy, happiness and the most entire surrender to the most holy will of God and cooperate with all our power in the accomplishing of His designs which can only be for the greater glory of His holy name and our own good, that is, the good of us who are his submissive and devoted children. Let no one draw back from this attitude and henceforth let all misgivings cease, all murmurs, all statements quite contrary, to these incontestable principles.

As the father of the Oblate Family, Eugene concludes as he often did when writing to his sons:

Adieu, my dear Father Allard. Keep in mind my observations which even if they must be severe, weaken in no wise the esteem and affection that God gives me for all my children and for you in particular whom I bless with all my heart and tenderly embrace.

Letter to Fr. Jean-Francois Allard in Canada, 8 and 9 July 1847, EO I n 85

REFLECTION

“The supreme rule regarding fraternal correction is love: to want the good of our brothers and sisters”  (Pope Francis)

Father Allard, in Canada, had been very critical of the possible appointment of Fr Guigues to Bytown and had expressed his opposition very strongly. Eugene could not let this pass without comment and advice.

It is quite a long time, my dear Father Allard, since I last wrote to you. I wished by my silence to suppress a painful discussion. You were demanding with too much pressure and exigency the impossible. In this lowly world, my dear friend, one must not be too exclusive in one’s opinions when not knowing how to resign oneself to things that are not going in the direction one wishes.

We must recognize that above our feeble conceptions there is a sovereignly wise Providence who conducts all things by ways unperceived and often incomprehensible to the ends He proposes and when His most holy will is manifested to us by events, it is our duty to submit ourselves without fretting and to abandon entirely our own ideas which then cease to be legitimate and permissible.

Letter to Fr. Jean-Francois Allard in Canada, 8 and 9 July 1847, EO I n 85

REFLECTION

The decision had been made with a great deal of discussion, discernment and prayer. Eugene’s advice to Father Allard is pertinent to us too when we do not agree with a decision that has been made by rightful authority in the Church after due process.

“Our life is governed by the demands of our apostolic mission and by the calls of the Spirit already dwelling in those to whom we are sent. Our work makes us dependent on others in many ways; it requires real detachment from our own will and a deep sense of the Church.” (The Oblate Rule of Life Constitution 25)

It was Eugene’s confidence in Divine Providence that made him survive the disapproval of the Canadian Oblates at the nomination of Fr Guigues to the new episcopal see of Bytown. He described each letter that he received from them as a dagger-thrust into his heart.

Ah, Monseigneur, who can describe the sorrow and anguish to which my boundless confidence in your views has subjected me. Not a letter have I received from Longueuil which has not thrust the dagger deeper into my heart.

Yet, Eugene understood their concern and sympathised with their fears:

… All is lost, they say, in Canada because of this step to which, according to them, I have had the weakness to acquiesce – all is lost, they mean, for our Congregation… Yet I sympathize with their sorrow. It takes its source in the confidence which they have in their superior. They would not have had misgivings if the choice had fallen on anyone else less necessary to the Congregation in Canada.

Despite all this, Eugene’s faith in God’s guidance never faltered

For my part, I declare to you that the more I think of it, the more I am reassured, seeing in this disposition of Providence the will of God which will not permit our family to suffer from a measure we have only accepted in order to obey that which we have believed is decreed for her.

Letter to Bishop Bourget of Montreal, 4 June 1847, EO I n 83

REFLECTION

“We are entirely in the care of Divine Providence, and it is very sweet to remain so in peace. The Cross is never lacking; may it be our consolation.”

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne (French missionary to the USA and a contemporary of St Eugene)

Eugene’s closeness to God was such that he placed his major administrative decisions into God’s guiding hands. This is clearly shown when he writes to Fr Guigues about his episcopal appointment to Bytown:

I have placed the matter in God’s hands, wishing only to do his holy will. I am perfectly at rest. I have done my duty throughout in this affair. God knows it and the whole Congregation will attain this conviction when she will see the results.

When the time comes you will have to prove that our Fathers were mistaken in their anxieties concerning your episcopate, worries inspired by their attachment to the Congregation and to you.

I will only have one regret, that of not being able to impose my hands upon you myself, but 1500 leagues are an insurmountable obstacle.

Letter to Fr. Bruno Guigues in Canada, 24 January 1847, EO I n 80

REFLECTION

St Vincent de Paul was another influential saint for Eugene. He too was convinced of the power of entrusting ourselves and our decisions to God’s providential care.

“Divine Providence is never wanting in things undertaken at Its command. Even though the whole world should rise up and destroy us, nothing could happen but what is pleasing to God. The less there is of a person in affairs, the more there is of God.” (St Vincent de Paul)