NOTHING IS COMPARABLE TO THE JOY YOUR LETTERS AFFORD ME

Posted on July 23, 2024 by franksantucci

Instead of deterring young Oblates from volunteering for the foreign missions, the narratives of the Oblates, and all their hardships and challenges in making Jesus the Savior known, spurred them on to desire to be courageous missionaries themselves.

Nothing is comparable to the joy your letters afford me. One quivers on receiving them, reading and rereading them again and again ever with renewed pleasure, then one has them read to others until everyone is ecstatic. For do not believe that the description you make of your weariness and privation frighten those who long for the missions to the indigenous peoples. On the contrary, they are envious of your lot and beg me with even greater insistence that they may go and share it with you. You can be quite certain that I do not think of deterring them from so holy a vocation or of dulling their zeal. Far from that.

Letter to Fr. Pascal Ricard in Oregon, August 1848, EO I n 100

REFLECTION

When we listen to our elderly Oblates narrating the adventures of their missionary lives, we are inspired to want to emulate them and apply their spirit to today’s challenges. When we listen to our elderly Christians narrating the story of their lives as followers of Jesus, we are inspired to want to live by the same spirit today. How blest we are to have our elders!

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1 Response to NOTHING IS COMPARABLE TO THE JOY YOUR LETTERS AFFORD ME

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Lay Oblate Associate says:
    July 23, 2024 at 14:25

    I think so often to those I met in the Czech Republic. I follow their lives and am so very grateful to how they share themselves and their experience of God. Awaiting their monthly sharings I am filled with joy and wonder how they walk within our hearts. We respond and then wait to receive the next chapter in the lives of those we love.

    Love invites us to love, according to the many gifts we have been given. I think of Eugene in Marseilles who found ways to love and speak with all; not just back then but today in the present.

    It is both gift and responsibility as an elder, a grandmother or grandfather to inspire, guide and love without expectation or demand. Such is the gift to be an elder. We do not enforce, but rather we celebrate what we have been given by sharing it with all whom we meet in the present. We rejoice, celebrate, laug, cry and inspire others with whom we walk for each of us was kissed into life before time began. This is a gift not a right. If/when we allow ourselves to enlarge our tents (Is 52:4) we do not wait for those who come to us, but rather like the father of the prodigal son, we go out and keep watch for those we love to appear on our horizons.

    “Growing in faith, hope and love, we commit ourselves to be a leaven of the Beatitudes at the heart of the world.” (C 11)

    Reply

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