The pilgrims from the villages came to Laus to express their devotion to Mary, and the Missionaries helped them to focus with Mary on Jesus Christ.
Wherever our ministry takes us, we will strive to instill genuine devotion to the Immaculate Virgin who prefigures God’s final victory over all evil.
CC&RR Constitution 10
Eugene describes a practical expression of this in his letter to Adolphe Tavernier:
I am stopping since it is impossible for me to continue; my hand is trembling to the point of not being able to hold the pen; don’t be alarmed at this phenomenon, I know the reason for it. The nerves of my arm are tired out from a grueling exercise that it had to carry on for two hours.
All the faithful gathered here would not go away satisfied without having kissed the relic of the true cross and the reliquary is too heavy. In short, I cannot go on and I prefer to send you this scribbling rather than have you think that I neglected writing to you.
Letter to Adolphe Tavernier,2 July 1820, O.W. XIII n. 30
This simple gesture of the pilgrims, in a Marian shrine, towards a reliquary that recalled the Cross of Jesus shows the spirit of the Missionaries: WITH Mary to the Savior, because always “the cross of Jesus Christ is central to our mission” (CC&RR Constitution 4)
With Mary Immaculate, the faithful handmaid of the Lord, and under the guidance of the Spirit, we enter into closer union with Jesus Christ.
CC&RR Constitution 36
“Mary is the sure path to our meeting with Christ. Devotion to the Mother of the Lord, when it is genuine, is always an impetus to a life guided by the spirit and values of the Gospel.” Blessed Pope John Paul II
” … the Missionaries helped them to focus with Mary on Jesus Christ.” and “WITH Mary to the Savior,..”. I remember very clearly shortly after my conversion experience and return to the church telling/asking Jesus that I wanted/needed to meet his mother. I think that I have always taken my devotion to Mary as simply one more gift from God. She has always been my mother (not excluding my blood mother) – it is one of those ‘both and’ things. And all those years ago when my newborn son died I gave him over to Our Lady to care for and take him to God (in those days I still believed that the Church taught that unbaptised babies went to Limbo rather than to be with God). It was an instinctual, natural and non-thinking way of being. I think that it is with her I have learned to find my place, myself at the foot of the cross. And there is great mystery in all of it somehow.
The ‘Oblates of Mary Immaculate’ – the name alone is one of the things that spoke to me when I first started to really look at the Oblates, who they were/are. I believe God speaks of “my beloved Oblates”, however I also believe/feel/experience the Oblates as “her beloved Oblates”. It is much more than just taking on a name, or declaring oneself to be a part of another. There is there – truth and life and being. As I said part of a great mystery.