We strive to reproduce in ourselves the pattern of his life. Thus, we give ourselves to the Father in obedience even unto death and dedicate ourselves to God’s people in unselfish love. Our apostolic zeal is sustained by the unreserved gift we make of ourselves in our oblation, an offering constantly renewed by the challenges of our mission. (Constitution 2)
Looking at the Cross on Good Friday, Eugene was overwhelmed the love of God who gave everything for him. The response of this young man was oblation: giving everything to God:
What more glorious occupation than to act in everything and for everything only for God, to love him above all else, to love him all the more as one who has loved him too late.
Eugene’s Retreat Journal, December 1814, EO XV n.130
Oblation became the central characteristic of his life as a person, as priest, as founder, as Superior General and as Bishop.
I have all my life desired to die a victim of charity. You know that this crown was withheld from me right from the first days of my ministry. The Lord had his designs since He wanted to trust me to give a new family to His Church…
Eugene’s letter to Henri Tempier, 12 September 1849, E.O. X n.1018
It is this spirit that all the members of the Oblate Family are called to absorb and assimilate:
Our Lord Jesus Christ has left to us the task of continuing the great work of the redemption of mankind.
It is towards this unique end that all our efforts must tend;
as long as we will not have spent our whole life and given all our blood to achieve this, we having nothing to say;
especially when as yet we have given only a few drops of sweat and a few spells of fatigue.
Eugene’s letter to Henri Tempier, 22 August 1817, O.W. VI n. 21
It is only in loving greatly, with daring humility and trust (from Constitution 8) that I will find myself able to make an unreserved gift in my oblation. It is never a one-time event but rather a part of a greater flow. There are valleys and there are peaks and perhaps the most difficult part to be in is the small and narrow place between both of them.
When I first heard Jesus say my name, tell me how I am loved and finally claimed me as his own I was overwhelmed. By the very grace of God I sensed that I was being called to “Love” but to do that I first had to learn how to allow myself to be loved and to love in return. I would only be able to do it by offering myself, who I am to God and then through God I would be able to love as I was/am loved.
It did not all happen at once and I think of the term “ongoing formation”. It never ends but it deepens even as it moves outward. This offering of ourselves is always renewed by the challenges and struggles of our mission, of serving those with whom we are sent out to share our experience(s) of God; they are both big and small at the same time.
Each of these articles in our OMI Rule of Life, try ensure that we do not stand alone but rather work together as a greater whole. They point us in a specific direction of living in community which is made up of many persons as we share with each other.
I am reminded of an image that Frank shared many years ago, with Jesus in the centre with a flaming heart, and surrounding Jesus was each of the apostles, again with flaming hearts and the flow of the fire flowing to and from each other and back and forth to and from Jesus. The sense one gathered was that those hearts all burned brightly as they continued in an ever-growing spiral to all that they could reach – to all of us who make up the Oblate Charismatic Family and further. The Oblate Constitutions & Rules are the living expression of our shared Charism.