Eugene de Mazenod speaks to us

Writing to Bishop Guigues, Eugene shared his optimism about the Oblate presence in England, and its chances of expansion.

We are making giant strides. Apart from the novitiate which we are soon to have in England, as well as a house of studies, we are being offered at London an establishment which is under discussion with Mgr Wiseman and another magnificent establishment at Dublin.
 
All our members in England have an excellent attitude, are extremely attached to their vocation and filled with love and devotion for the Congregation. Moreover there is nothing easier than governing them. This is truly a blessing from God in that conversions are continually happening. An English bishop said to me recently while passing through Marseilles that the Oblates of Mary have made the Congregation the most esteemed in England, so impressive is the fine spirit and edifying example shown by all of them.

Letter to Bp Bruno Guigues, 4 March 1849, EO I n. 112

In the footnote, Yvon Beaudoin quotes from the General Council minutes of July 8, 1849 about the establishment of a house of studies and its importance:

“In order to attain this high purpose, the Most Reverend Father General has made known to the Council that he would choose the most capable Fathers to whom to confide this important mission prepared with intelligence and perseverance on the part of Rev. Fr. Casimir Aubert. Moreover, the Most Reverend Father General announced that it was his intention to send a certain number of Scholastic Oblates during the vacation to form the initial group of this house of advanced study. Several Fathers and Brothers were accordingly designated during the same session to become part of the numerous contingent destined to go and support as best they can the religious movement in England and to evangelize the poor souls still dwelling beneath the cloud of error and heresy in the vast English possessions spread over the ancient as well as the new world”.

For Eugene the establishment and growth of the Oblates in England and Ireland was important because Oblate missions were opening in several of the British colonies, where knowledge of the English language was important. A novitiate and house of theological studies for Oblates was now necessary in England.

Eugene was always conscious that the spirit of the Congregation, according to which it was founded, should be the guiding light of all their lives and actions. Today we use the word “charism” to describe this God-given spirit.

All our Irishmen have been imbued in France with the excellent spirit which belongs to them and the attachment that they manifest for the Congregation. We must find a means to avoid the disadvantage in question. Here it is. In deciding to proceed with this plan of a house of theological studies, we could place in it both the Irish who have already spent some time in France and the French who are destined to the foreign missions. The English and the Irish would come on exchange to study for at least two years in France, to be trained in our spirit and our language and to become known to the Superior…

Letter to Fr Casimir Aubert on official visitation in England, 24 February 1849, EO III n.2

In the footnote, Yvon Beaudoin quotes from the General Council minutes of July 8, 1849: “It will serve as novitiate for the members who come from Great Britain and Ireland. It will also be a house of studies for the course of theology for those of our members destined to go and evangelize distant and foreign countries either in America, or in Canada or wherever English is spoken. The establishment, situated a short distance from the great manufacturing town of Birmingham and the celebrated university of Oxford, could acquire eventually the importance which will be necessary for it to become better known and to exercise a salutary influence on minds now turned towards Catholicism”

The Founder wanted the Oblates in Britain to establish themselves in an independent mission in an urban setting. At first it seemed this setting would be in Manchester  but the success of the Oblate mission there in 1849 induced the Apostolic Vicar of the Lancashire District Bishop George Brown to think of offering the mission of Holy Cross chapel in Liverpool to the Oblates. …. On 18 January 1850 the mission was officially placed in the care of the Oblates.

This part of the city was a vast dockland slum, housing many thousands of Irish immigrants who had fled Ireland after the devastating potato famines of 1845 and 1847. Many had used Liverpool as a staging area to go to other lands, but thousands stayed in the area in the most squalid conditions. It was made up of dingy tenements, joined together in airless courts and polluted by open sewers and piles of rubbish. By the end of 1847 over 300,000 impoverished and fever-ridden immigrants from the Irish famine had settled in the Liverpool area. These immigrants formed the vast majority of the parishioners of the parish. It was estimated that the parish contained about 11,000 Catholics, though this number kept increasing with the arrival of every ship from Ireland. (https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/liverpool-holy-cross-parish-1850-2001/)

A year later Eugene visited Liverpool:

After having accomplished my mission at Manchester, which was to bless the first stone of the church to be raised by our Fathers in the district which has been assigned to them, a ceremony which was performed with as much solemnity as at Marseilles, I went to Liverpool where another kind of marvel was waiting for me. Our Fathers, as you know, are in charge of the district of Holy Cross inhabited by a great number of poor Irish to whom they provide the aid of religion. It would be too long to describe to you all that is done in this miserable shed which serves as a chapel and which fills up six times on Sundays.

Letter to Fr Henri Tempier, 10 July 1850, EO III n 42

In April, 1848, Fr. Daly acquired a property in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, without informing the Superior General. He had hoped to establish a noviciate to serve the growing number of vocations. This project ended in disaster because to pay the inflated price demanded by the unscrupulous vendor, Fr. Daly was forced to offer the title deeds of Penzance as collateral. After prolonged litigation the decision was given against Fr. Daly and the property of Penzance mission was seized. The Oblates were forced to give up that mission. (https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/anglo-irish-province-1841-1945/)

To unravel this mess, Eugene sent Fr. Charles Bellon to England as superior:

God has not blessed this acquisition made in spite of the prescription of our holy Rules. Being an enterprise of a sort too human, it has suffered the fate of human affairs.

Letter to Fr. Charles Bellon in England, 15 September 1848, EO III n. 20.

The property of Ashbourne had cost 220.000 francs. To pay this sum, they could not count on the aid of the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, the revenues of which diminished considerably after the Revolution of 1848. The Congregation, burdened with debts, was absolutely unable to assume this new obligation. The Founder wrote to Fr. Semeria, in Ceylon:

Do you know we have more than forty Oblates and still more novices but we have nothing left for future investment, being so much in debt that we have no more security to offer for new loans. So Fr. Tempier is totally demoralized. He frets from morning to night that we have nothing left and we will have to dismiss the novices but, when it comes to doing so, my courage fails even more than his. We possess much masonry, large houses but no revenues and it is in this extreme need that the Propagation of the Faith leaves us in the lurch for they are not giving us anything, any more than they are giving to you

Letter to Fr. Étienne Semeria in Ceylon, 17 August 1848, EO IV n. 4.

REFLECTION

“In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.” (George MacDonald).

In 1846 John Henry Newman and his community who had recently been received into the Church were granted the site as a house of retreat and study. It was Newman and his followers who gave it the name “Maryvale”, which it still retains, and it is specified in the Papal Brief as the location of the first English Oratory of St. Philip in 1848.
In the light of this it is easy to understand the enthusiasm with which the Founder greeted the acquisition of Maryvale by the Oblates.

So now you are installed in your holy house which, I am sure, shall not fall away from its deserved repute, while in your hands. It is a delicate trust. To be the successor of so many men renowned for their wisdom and holiness is no small thing. It would seem to me that all eyes in England are fixed upon you and that great examples of virtues will be expected from a place sanctified by Milner, Newman, etc. I cannot recover from my astonishment at seeing you established in this place and I do not cease to thank God from the bottom of my heart.

Letter to Fr. Arnoux in Maryvale, England, 20 July 1849, EO III n 29.

It was offered to them by Bishop Ullathorne as a novitiate and house of studies when it was vacated by Newman in 1848.The terms were that they were to serve the local mission and keep the property ‘in tenantable repair’. On 8 July 1849 the General Council approved its acceptance by Fr. Aubert, the superior of the Oblate mission in Britain. (https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/maryvale-old-oscott-england-1849-1852/)

The house was intended to be more than a novitiate. A decision was made that all Oblates assigned to the foreign missions should spend at least a year in England to learn English and become inculturated.

REFLECTION

“If we look to the saints, this great luminous wake with which God has passed through history, we truly see that here is a force for good that survives through millennia; here is truly light from light.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

We continue to recall the beginnings of the Oblate mission in the Anglo Irish Province.

In 1845 Ambrose Phillips de Lisle invited the Oblates to take charge of the chaplaincy which he maintained in Grace Dieu, Leicestershire. Fr. Aubert assigned three Fathers to this mission and Bishop de Mazenod sent Fr. Cooke to assist them. The pastoral work at Grace Dieu was similar to that undertaken at Penzance. In 1847 the Oblates, were invited to take charge of the church at Everingham in Yorkshire, and were later asked to work in Aldenham, near Shrewsbury and at Fairfield and Failsworth in Manchester.

Meanwhile, Bishop Ullathorne offered them the tenancy of Old Oscott, renamed Maryvale by John Henry Newman who had presided over the establishment of the English Oratorians there. This served as a noviciate and scholasticate for the next three years when Maryvale had to be given up. Mr. Peter Middleton of Sicklinghall in Yorkshire in 1848, invited the Oblates to take up the care of souls in the vicinity of his mansion and offered them the possession of a house and church that he had just completed. The noviciate and scholasticate then moved to Sicklinghall. During these momentous and inspiring years the pattern of the Oblate mission apostolate in England was similar to that of other missionary societies that had come from the continent to gather in the growing harvest of souls. It was in these rural centres that the Fathers served their apprenticeship before taking up the incalculably larger apostolate in the cities. (https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/anglo-irish-province-1841-1945/)

Eugene’s reaction:

My good and very dear son, your letter was balm for me in all that it said to uplift me. Even if our temporal affairs are not brilliant in England, at least a good spirit reigns amongst our Fathers and the edification afforded by their regularity can perhaps produce as many conversions as their words. I bless the Lord for this with all my soul and look forward with consolation beyond words to the still greater good that will ensue…

To Fr. Charles Bellon in England, 15 December 1848, EO III n 22.

REFLECTION

“I cared not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls to Christ.” (D. Brainerd)

Fr. William Daly was the first Oblate from Ireland. Having studied in Marseilles he was ordained in 1841 and sent to England and Ireland to investigate the possibility of an Oblate establishment there.

The priest in Penzance wished that a religious congregation would take over the parish. Eugene agreed and Fr. Daly went to Penzance in January, 1843 where he supervised the completion of the church building and the pastoral care of the people of the area. He was later joined by a secular priest, and together they established the faith firmly in Penzance and evangelized the surrounding area where they set up several Mass stations. Eugene reported:

“I have received most satisfactory news from the Penzance mission in England. That mission is expanding to all the surrounding towns which are receiving the missionaries with a sort of eagerness. Fr. Daly writes that conversions are multiplying.”

Letter to the President of the Council of the Missionary Society of Propagation of the Faith in Lyon, 6 February 1845, EO V n 91

REFLECTION

“No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.” (Oswald J. Smith)

Perhaps with a touch of Mazenodian exaggeration, Eugene declared:

The word of the English bishops, whom I have had occasion to see as they passed through here, is that our Congregation is the most esteemed of all in England and the bishops compete for the advantage of having her in their dioceses.

To Bishop Bruno Guigues, 10 May 1849, EO I n 118

Very few letters concerning the early years of the Anglo Irish province have been preserved. Yet this was an important mission that was to send Oblate missionaries all over the world for well over a century. In the light of this, in the following entries I would like to fill in some of the early history from other sources.

REFLECTION

“The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become.” (Henry Martyn)

Thirty-eighth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I celebrated the feast, as is customary, in the inner chapel of the monastery of our holy Capuchin Sisters where I always receive the most touching testimony of the daughterly affection of these holy ladies. I spent the rest of the day in the Major Seminary with the retreatants who are preparing for ordination tomorrow. After the evening prayer, before taking leave of them, I spoke to them of my thoughts which were doubtless in keeping with the inspirations they have received from the Holy Spirit in these holy days.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 21 December 1849, EO XXII.

REFLECTION

“From the Eucharist comes strength to live the Christian life and zeal to share that life with others.” (Saint John Paul II)

The Bishop of Dijon had written to me asking for some information about the association of the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament which I approvedon June 30, 1848. I answered him saying that I had in fact authorised this association of the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament because I could seenothing that was not edifying in the idea and that the promoters of this devotion were all very pious persons who rightly attached great value to thesuccess of their work.
 
I also said that at first I feared that this new association would infringe upon the older one which has been active for a long time in my diocese andwhich is the work of the institute of our Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament whose mother house is in Marseilles; but that in fact the one did not interfere with the other and that our divine Saviour was all the more honoured in the sacrament of his love.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 4 November 1849, EO XXII.

REFLECTION

To respond to the spiritual and material needs of his diocese, Bishop Eugene founded many associations of laity dedicated to specific aspects of his ministry. With his solid devotion to the Eucharist, one can understand why spreading this devotion was so close to his heart.

“The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time that you will spend on earth. Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in heaven, and will help bring about an everlasting peace on earth.” (Mother Teresa of Calcutta)