Continuing his heartfelt reflections on the young Oblate, Jean-Pierre Bernard who had just arrived in Canada and was dying of typhus, Eugene confided in his diary:
Since his ordination to the sub-diaconate, this dear son had done no other than grow rapidly in virtue. His generosity was unfailing. Passing through Paris, he kissed the relic of the martyr Perboyre and wrote to me, “You understand why?” He was so happy to sacrifice himself for the salvation of those who did not believe! […]
The holy Bishop of Montreal has ordered a novena for him, and we’re still hoping for his recovery […] All I fear is that the Lord has found him ripe for heaven and will take this good worker away from us before he can carry out all that his good will inspired him to do. It’s a great sacrifice that the good Lord requires of me. I do everything as if it wasn’t meant to be and I pray with confidence. Who knows if God, in anticipation of these prayers which come from the depths of my heart and which my trust in his mercy inspires, will not have granted me the preservation of this precious child? This thought sustains me as I await the first letter from America.
Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 6 March 1848, EO XXI
REFLECTION
“Prayer is an act of love; words are not needed. Even if sickness distracts from thoughts, all that is needed is the will to love.” (Saint Teresa of Avila)
This love that Eugene and Teresa of Avila speak of is possible for each of us to experience, in the way that we have been called, in the way that we live our oblation. I feel as if my heart is bursting this morning only because of the great love that God drenches our beings with… Our oblation, our will to love is most surely the greatest gift that we have been given, every bit as much as the sorrows, struggles and sin that God allows us to experience. And I sit and see the simple beauty of the cross before us and within us…
We recognize it in the other(s) that we meet and accompany, sharing how God through others helps us. We recognize it in the confusion and loss of control that a friend, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son and any other experiences – when the only thing left is prayer. It is then that we move forward with confidence. It is then that the Spirit works through us. Aware of their frailty we take their hand, we hold them, we share remembered treat and all the small ordinary ways that love appears.
Perhaps the only way that we can be this way is through prayer, through entering into the heart of Jesus and being…
It is then that our prayer lives and become a way of our very breathing in and breathing out…