LET US BE PROUD TO BE ONE WITH SUCH APOSTLES OF THE LORD.
Eugene invites all the Oblates to be inspired by the extreme personal sacrifices being made by the first four members of their religious family to go to western North America to teach people “the love of Jesus Christ.”
I have just received a letter from Father Ricard. It is dated August, and they had another 200 leagues to travel before reaching their destination. Our three missionaries, as well as the brother catechist, are well; but what a trip they have just made.
Let none among us complain anymore of anything. for we have so generous an advanced contingent that makes conquests for Jesus Christ by so many sacrifices, and what merits do they not acquire in the eyes of the Lord and of the Church.
Dear Brothers, how admirable they are! Let us pray much for them and let us be proud to be one with such apostles of the Lord.
Letter to Fr Toussaint Dassy, 12 February 1848, EO X n 966
REFLECTION
In his stirring visionary writing at the beginning of the Oblates, the Preface, Eugene had described the spirit of Oblate missionaries:
” free from inordinate attachment to the world or to family, men filled with zeal, ready to sacrifice goods, talents, ease, self, even their life, for the love of Jesus Christ, the service of the Church, and the sanctification of their brethren. And thus, filled with unbounded confidence in God, they are ready to enter the combat, to fight, even unto death, for the greater glory of his most holy and sublime Name.“
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I hear Eugene’s passion in his letter to Fr. Dassy, and in the Preface that appears in every version of the Constitutions and Rules. One of the great gifts is that it is in his own words, no matter the language we use or the age we live in. We may hear complaints that it is too holy, too wild, too exuberant, too, too… Yet our hearts still respond to his invitation.
Eugene’s words to Tempier, to place himself at the foot of his crucifix before reading Eugene’s letter. It is with Mary that we stand at the foot of the cross, a place filled with angry, jeering shouts, with the gasps of stifled breaths, and with the stench of bodily death. It is also a place filled with indescribable love without end.
Eugene’s passion which at times scared me, now excites and invites me to continue to walk with him, just as his letter to Fr. Dassy was aimed at doing for the young men that he was charged to help them become an intimate part of life’s adventure.
It is a freedom given to us as we explore our own sense of being and making our oblation – never alone but as a community, a family.
I love the Preface as it invites us to the uncharted depths our very selves. It is in this way that we find a sense of pride as we walk together with those disciples; walking in the footsteps of Eugene and his sons and daughters.