Eugene de Mazenod speaks to us

Eugene, writing in the third person, as the “Director”, for the official Diary of the Youth Congregation spoke about the importance of his baptism anniversary on 2 August.

In the references that we have to Eugene’s birthday, we see them as occasions for reflection on his life and its direction. Two examples from his diary:

I do not believe that there is any other Congregation giving such a moving example in the Church.

With this typical Mazenodian hyperbole Eugene began 1843 on an exultant note as he surveyed the missionary activities of his sons.

All of its members are simultaneously employed in diverse countries in the two hemispheres to bring souls back to God and to wage violent war against Hell. To have missions in the dioceses of Marseilles, Fréjus, Aix, Avignon, Valence, Grenoble, Ajaccio, in England, in Ireland, in Canada and in the United States, is truly marvelous.

I have just received letters from Longeuil which should be printed. Father Telmon and Father Dandurand, who should have made his vows for Christmas, did marvelously well in the diocese of New York; in addition, the Bishop would wish to give them charge of the French church in his episcopal city, while the Bishop of Toronto  calls them to take over the mission to the Iroquois.

Vocations were starting to come forward in Canada:

The three priest novices, who are making ever better progress, are joined by an acolyte in his second year of theology and a college professor;several others have already taken steps towards admission, and the Bishop encourages and eases them on in spite of the lack of candidates for his own parishes.

Letter to Father Hippolyte Courtés, 4 January 1843, EO X n 785

In France it is the custom to send greetings to everyone for the new year (unlike the custom of sending Christmas wishes in some other parts of the world). Eugene responds here to the new year greetings of Father Courtès. He had been a member of Eugene’s youth congregation in Aix and one of the first novices to join the Missionaries in 1817 – ths having a special place in the Founder’s heart

It was with delight, my dear Courtès, that I read the letter you sent me for the New Year. I truly needed to hear from yourself the sentiments that you express to me so well and which correspond with those that I have always had for you.

Love imprints its character in my soul, it is indestructible. It is the final answer to all.

Letter to Father Hippolyte Courtés, 4 January 1843, EO X n 785

Eugene’s whole life was motivated by love as the final answer to all: love of God and love of others.

Bishop de Mazenod suffered when he saw people in Marseilles whose lives were far from good living. Once, for example, passing a group of people who were living lives of dissipation led him to express his pain at their situation in his diary:

The inability to reach such a great number of souls like them, the pain of seeing them losing themselves without being able to do anything to turn them away from vice and help them save themselves, causes me great pain and sorrow.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 22 April 1839, EO XX

How could he be close to this portion of his flock?

The inability to reach such a great number of souls by conventional means led him to invite the cooperation of many in the diocese to form various groups to reach out to all areas of society and their needs beyond the parish structures. The list is an extraordinary testimony of the closeness of the Pastor to all the flock, especially the most abandoned who were far away from the Church. Through charitable societies and works, not linked to the local parish structures he held out a helping hand. He established and supported a network of people through whom he could express his pastoral closeness to those in need.

Blessing the new house of the Sisters occasioned this grateful reflection:

How consoling for the heart of a bishop to see rising up around him, in the midst of this immense populace where so many vices abound, where so many Christians live in a perpetual state of apostasy, communities more or less numerous, but entirely animated by the best spirit which produces, so to speak, the counterbalance to the mass of iniquities which unceasingly call forth the anger of God, in order to appease it by the sanctity of their life. It’s a veritable compensation to offer to the Lord. Here are the just who would have saved Sodom, if it were present, from the devouring flames which reduced this guilty city to ashes.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 27 December 1842, EO XXI

During his time in Marseilles, Bishop Eugene was responsible for bringing in twelve congregations of religious sisters to meet the needs of the poor and abandoned in his diocese. When he could not “import” he was instrumental in the founding of four new congregations of sisters in the city.  In this extract from his diary, he speaks about one of these new foundations.

Mass at the Victimes du Coeur de Jésus [Victims of the Heart of Jesus] I solemnly blessed their chapel and gave the habit to two postulants. My method is to support the zeal of all those who wish to consecrate themselves to a life of perfection, to prayer and to penitence… As well, whatever may be said about it, I will always favor this type of vocation and the establishments that result from it.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 27 December 1842, EO XXI

Father Telmon was a missionary fireball whose enthusiasm knew no limits. We will come across many examples of this in later entries. His enthusiasm was not always practical, however, as this entry in Eugene’a diary shows.

Letter from Father Telmon who urges me to accept the proposal made by the bishop of Toronto to establish ourselves in his city. “Through this diocese, we would find ourselves in charge of missions to the indigenous. We would have the most vast field for the zeal of those who would have worked there and most promising for building up the morale of the novices of Europe. The Jesuits will be going there.”

What is to be done, my good Father Telmon, in order to be adequate for all the work, it would be necessary to be as numerous as these Fathers. The time has not yet come. Let’s be patient and wait until the good God gives the order.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 9 December 1842, EO XXI

Good advice for our daily lives and concerns.

What Eugene wrote about the Brothers holds true, where applicable, to all the vocations within the Mazenodian Family:

I reply that I have always considered it an injustice to make men, who have come to us to become religious, work from morning till evening. Surely they have to work but they must also pray and be instructed in the duties of the religious life. They are not common labourers, they cannot be treated as hired domestics who are paid so that they work the whole day. Our Brothers must be present at the oraison…

Letter to Fr. Vincens, 8 December 1842, EO IX n 783

He then lists all the times of common prayer and spiritual exercises to be attended by every member of the community.

Today, the Oblate Rule says;

Oblate Brothers share in the common priesthood of Christ. They are called to cooperate in their own way in reconciling all things in him (cf. Col 1: 20). Through their religious consecration, they offer a particular witness to a life inspired by the Gospel.

Brothers participate in the missionary work of building up the Church everywhere, especially in those areas where the Word is first being proclaimed. Missioned by the Church, their technical, professional or pastoral service, as well as the witness of their life, constitute their ministry of evangelization. (Rule 7 c)

Father Jetté, commenting on this Rule, says

“Since the beginning of the Congregation there has been a considerable change in the vocation of the Oblate Brother. Very briefly we could sum it up in these terms: from a temporal helper to the priest, the Brother has become his associate in the apostolic ministry…

The Brother is no longer considered as being first of all a man at the service of the priest, whom he thus liberates from material tasks in order to allow him to be more free to carry out his pastoral responsibilities; the Brother is rather seen as being himself an “apostolic man” who is associated to the priest and who is in his own way engaged in the work of evangelization. In this work there is a ministry proper to him that the Church through the Congregation entrusts to him: a ministry of technical, professional or pastoral service, depending on the needs of a given milieu and the aptitudes and fitness of each Brother.

Rule 3 first of all establishes the spiritual basis of the Brother’s apostolic vocation: “Oblate Brothers” — as all Christians, for that matter — “share in the common priesthood of Christ. They are called to cooperate in their own way in reconciling all things in him (cf. Col. 1:20).”

The Apostolic Man,  pages 88-89

I would take this a step further and paraphrase the same question for the whole Mazenodian Family: ” Do not such services become a -ministry- from the fact that the Associates have received a mission they are to fulfill as laity in the Church?”

This also points to the responsibility of the Mazenodian Family to ensure instruction in the charism and the opportunities for spiritual expression  and growth personally and in mission.

Eugene de Mazenod founded the Missionaries in 1816 as a group of priests to conduct preaching and sacramental ministry for the most abandoned in Provence – priestly ministry. Soon, laymen felt called to the apostolic religious life and mission of the community, but without the desire to be priests. Thus from 1818 onwards the possibility opened up for men to be Oblates as religious without being priests, and the vocation of the Oblate Brother was born. I would take this a step further and say that the vocation of the Mazenodian Family was born: laity participating in the charism given to Eugene de Mazenod.

From the beginning, Oblates had one mission, and all participated in it according to their talents. Initially the Brothers supported the mission through common prayer and ensuring the functioning of the community structures so that the priests could dedicate themselves fully to the preaching and sacramental ministry. Later they were to participate in evangelization in more direct ways.

The problem arose that some of the priests treated them as domestic workers. Eugene went to great lengths to correct this situation, as he wrote in his Diary:

Letter from Father Vincens about his novitiate and what he must grant to the Coadjutor Brothers who no longer must be considered like salaried domestics. They are entitled to everything that may be done by religious men. In addition, their work must be moderated by pious exercises and everything that the Rule prescribes.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 8 December 1842, EO XXI

Father Jetté comments:

A brief historical review can help us to understand better this distinction in the Oblate life. In the beginning, Eugene de Mazenod wanted to establish a Society of priests who would dedicate their lives to evangelizing the poor, especially by the preaching of missions and the celebration of the sacraments (Reconciliation and the Eucharist). These men were called “missionaries” or “apostolic men”. Lay persons soon came to join them: they wanted to consecrate themselves to God in the Oblate religious life and to cooperate, according to their preparation and talents, with the missionary activity of these “apostolic men”….

Since then until today our terminology has changed: the terms “missionary” and “apostolic men” are now equally applied to the Brothers and to the priests.

The Apostolic Man p 47 -48

Today the Brothers participate in the Oblate mission in many different ways. This united mission is expressed in the first Constitution of the Rule:

We come together in apostolic communities of priests and Brothers, united to God by the vows of religion. Cooperating with the Saviour and imitating his example, we commit ourselves principally to evangelizing the poor.

And in C 7:

Just as priests and Brothers, we have complementary responsibilities in evangelizing, so too today we can say that all members of the Mazenodian family have complementary responsibilities in evangelizing.

After a year of the Oblate missionaries’ presence in Canada, they had made such an impression that three diocesan priests had come forward to join them. Each of these priests, Fathers Dandurand, Léonard and F. Durocher, would play a major role in the Oblate mission there for many years. It was thus important to send more Oblates to Canada to be involved in the formation process

As for Father Perron, he has already been destined for Canada. His presence becomes all the more necessary in that three priests have already joined us, and you know well enough that we need to present them with a model of regularity other than the men we have over there.

Letter to Fr Hippolyte Courtès, 24 November 1842, EO IX n 780

The underlying reason was that, in the midst of demanding pastoral work and missionary absences, there had to be a visible community to give witness to the Oblate charism of apostolic community as the dynamo of the mission.

Today, sadly, in many parts of the world the missionaries are so busy doing generous ministry, but without the witness of a visible apostolic community. These are the very areas where there are few or no vocations to the Missionaries.

The same holds true of our groups in the Mazenodian Family. The groups that witness to being part of a supportive apostolic community in their daily lives experience life and growth.

People need to SEE Eugene’s charism, spirituality and mission in action.