During the day, I was busy preparing the petition to present to the Pope on the day he grants me an audience.
Roman Diary, 8 December 1825, EO XVII
This day was the feast of the Immaculate Conception and it was during the days of prayer in preparation for it that Eugene had had the intuition to change the name of the Oblates. In the last paragraph of the petition to the Pope we come across the use of this name for the very first time:
At the same time, we ask Your Holiness that, in the Brief of Approval which the Missionaries request, you give them the name of Oblates of the Most Holy and Immaculate Virgin Mary instead of Oblates of Saint Charles
Petition for approbation to Pope Leo XII, 8 December 1825, EO XIII n.48
This continues today in our Rule of Life:
“Mary Immaculate is patroness of our Congregation. Open to the Spirit, she consecrated herself totally as lowly handmaid to the person and work of the Saviour. She received Christ in order to share him with all the world, whose hope he is. In her, we recognize the model of the Church’s faith and of our own.”
CC&RR, Constitution 10
“When we choose a patron of a group we spontaneously think of a person who incarnates the qualities and activities of the group in the best possible way.” Fernand Jetté OMI
“Oblates of the Most Holy and Immaculate Virgin Mary” – as I read this I savoured the words. There was a small spurt of joy as I ‘tried them on”, noticing the fit, noticing the comfort and rightness, A small burst of pride that I should be associated with such a group of people. Great gratitude to God for having gifted me with the Oblates to live and walk with, and the gift of myself to them, religious and lay associates both.
I am a modern but not so young woman, I don’t exactly speak using phrases such as ‘most holy’ and ‘immaculate virgin’. They too fit, they are right. And ‘most holy’ – I am not sure why I struggled with this – perhaps secretly I wanted to be like that and knew that I would never be able to quite ‘measure up’. Thank God that I have been able, for the most part to get rid of that damnable measuring stick that I carried around with me. I still want to pull it out from time to time but not so much any more. And the ‘immaculate virgin’ thing. I have to laugh with myself for I have spent years struggling with the whole ‘virgin’ thing, the whole ‘immaculate virgin’ thing. I mean “lets get real here”! How could this be? Recently I listened to Ron Rolheiser’s DVD titled “Eucharist: God’s Way of Embracing Us” where he speaks of a virgin as being someone incomplete, unfulfilled in a total way, as waiting for more, for Jesus to return. We are all virgins, men and women, lay and religious, Gentile and Jew.
I look at “Maman”, at Mary, our Most Holy and Immaculate Virgin, our patron, who has set the example of a way of life, whom we try to emulate. No measuring stick but I do look at the august company that I am keeping and at the many I have come to love. I think of what James Martin, SJ said “My vocation is not only the way I love God, but also the way God loves me.”