Eugene delights in the letters he receives from the Oblates evangelizing at Roquevaire, who share their missionary joys with him.
I have no need to tell you how much I bless the Lord for all he is doing through your ministry; we are all in transports of joy, as if this were new to us. I have read our Fathers’ letter to the community, after the explanation of the Rule; it has the all the content needed to encourage our good novices to work in the acquisition of the virtues which ought to be the foundation of the building of Oblate life; I well believe that it made their mouths water.
The mission continues also in our church; it would take ten confessors permanently and we are only three halves.
Letter to Hippolyte Guibert, 20 March 1827, EO VII n 267
Eugene always shared the letters of the missionaries with the community, and especially with the young men in Oblate formation. Hearing about the missionary adventures of their older Oblate brothers made the younger ones impatient to go out and begin being missionaries themselves. We touch something here of the excitement of the Acts of the Apostles and the early years of the apostolic times. In the future when the Oblate missionaries were to go to North America, Africa and Asia, their letters would become a steady source of incentive for new members of the Oblate congregation to wish to do likewise. Today, as we reflect on 200 years of Oblate missionary life, the lives, generosity and achievements of thousands of members of the Mazenodian family invite us to an enthusiastic response.
“Don’t just tell your kids to be active and to get outside and play. Lead by example.” Summer Sanders
Is this not what we do with each other when we share our stories – with each other, and with those we know and work with, with those we come into contact with. Indeed this is what is done here in this place each day. I leave here inspired, fired-up and ready to go out on the path God has set me down on.
I find that it ‘fires me up’ when I hear through others and newsletters and posts of what others are doing, how they are, etc. I recognize something greater than myself and my being leaps with excitement. “I want to be like him or her.” “This is how I want to live and love, this is how I want to be.”
It is today a part of our ‘formation’ and of our coming together, the sharing of our stories and then the sharing of Eugene’s life and those early Oblates, the sharing of the news and stories of members of our great family and of others around us. God gives us all so much, the very way of our lives. And it is only natural to live it out loud, to proclaim it by our very lives, actions, breaths. Just as it happens within us, others see and respond with their ‘yeses’, wanting to live as do we, to be filled with the life and joy that they see in us. Words can be wonderful, but lived example is the truth of those words, the blueprint of how we can do it, the blueprint of putting our love into action. It began with God, with Jesus, with the apostles, with Eugene, with the Oblates, with each of us, this fire of passion, this flame rekindled.