THE YOUNG MEN LIVING THERE TO PREPARE FOR PREACHING MISSIONS
As the Oblate missions developed in France and outside, it was essential to ensure a supply of new missionaries to meet the demands of evangelizing the most abandoned. For this reason Eugene had established our first juniorate, at Notre Dame des Lumières, to complete the schooling of youth who were discerning a possible vocation. The government authorities accused him of running a school, in competition with the local schools and using their funding. Eugene responded.
My dear Rector, Thank you for kindly addressing yourself to me for information about the facts that were reported to you relative to the community of Lumières. I cannot understand without further information how anyone could tell the Inspector that there were 60 pupils there who were in no way different from educational boarding school students. The young men living there to prepare for preaching missions are eleven or twelve in number. There are none there who are preparing for a lay career. Everyone, once they are sufficiently prepared, is directed to the novitiate properly speaking…
I would not tolerate keeping anyone who does not have the intention of being a missionary for diocesan or foreign missions, and I am certain that the Director of the community keeps scrupulously within the limits of the goal I have mentioned. He knows very well that if he went beyond them he would diminish the spirit and purpose of an institution that I am not supporting in order to have pupils for school and that he would compromise a precious interest of the spiritual order for the good of souls.
The letter gives us the opportunity to see the whole picture of training for Oblate missionary life: postulants, novices and scholastics.
However, my dear Rector, I can explain how the number that they gave to the Inspector about the number of young people at Lumières is so much above what is there. They confused the students from the Major Seminary in Marseilles where they are studying theology, who went to spend their breaks at Lumières with the young men who live there on a regular basis. The first have already completed their novitiate and are there only for the holidays without being at all taken up with classical studies, and they are usually some 18. The others, much fewer in number, are as yet only postulants who are quite different from boarders in an educational institute, are far from being able to pay for any upkeep for the establishment for which I must find other sources. They do not belong to well-to-do families as you were told.
+ C.J. Eugene, Bishop of Marseilles.
Letter to the Rector of the Academy at Nimes, 22 July 1844, EO XIII n 102
The practice of having Oblate juniorates has generally been discontinued. This letter, however, reminds us of the ongoing need for an awareness of the need for vocations to all the branches of the Mazenodian Family and the importance of cultivating a missionary vision that inspires participation.
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I am reminded this morning of what has been happening here in my city and in a number of locations across our country. It is as if one persons’ stance which is different from another’s negates that which is different and so overrides the other(s).
I think of the early apostles and disciples who were sent out – not just to enrich a few who already knew the Good News, but to all, including those amongst us, those in our families and communities. It is not just about me being sent out to evangelize the ‘others,’ but also about being evangelize by them.
I think of our “Vocations Café” which is a conversation between many persons and how they and we are called and live out our respective vocations: men, women, the youth, religious and lay… Jarek’s Vocation Café is about our shared visions and their commonalities between us.
St. Paul’s description of being different parts of the one body comes to mind. There must be space enough for all of us to live out in the manner that we have been called. I look at the various levels of academia that exist in today’s world. I think of how St. Paul University is open to all peoples of different faiths and beliefs, to meet different needs. And it is the same with the Oblate School of Theology and the International Scholasticate in Rome. Different schools of learning, with different peoples from diverse cultures. These and more fill unique needs for different people and different vocations. Yet we are all one in the Church.
This is how we cultivate a cultivate the missionary vision that will inspire the participation that Frank speaks of. It is not about numbers but about values that we espouse and share, that we invite others to participate in according to their ‘milieu and cultures.’ There truly is room and space for all.