WE KNOW THAT THE OBLATES MAKE THIS THEIR SPECIALTY: IT IS AS GLORIOUS AS IT IS DIFFICULT. (Constitution 5)

Posted on April 9, 2025 by franksantucci

We are a missionary Congregation. Our principal service in the Church is to proclaim Christ and his Kingdom to the most abandoned. We preach the Gospel among people who have not yet received it and help them see their own values in its light. Where the Church is already established, our commitment is to those groups it touches least. (Constitution 5)

Fr. Fernand Jetté OMI, Superior General 1974-1986, wrote:

“I know, for example, in what high esteem we are held by the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, an esteem that goes back a long while… Why? The reason, so it would seem, is the total availability the Institute has shown in responding to the Church’s appeal in favour of the poorest and most difficult missions, those which others either could not or did not dare to accept. Another reason is our perseverance, our faithfulness in staying on in impossible conditions. ‘We know quite well,’ Pius XI told the Capitulars of 1926, ‘what the Oblates have accomplished in the Far North of Canada, in Southern Africa and at the Equator. They always go to wherever there is some particular feature of danger, challenge and fatigue, difficult climate, and sacrifice, and they are always there first. We know that the Oblates make this their specialty: it is as glorious as it is difficult’.”

(The Mission ad Gentes, 1979)

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1 Response to WE KNOW THAT THE OBLATES MAKE THIS THEIR SPECIALTY: IT IS AS GLORIOUS AS IT IS DIFFICULT. (Constitution 5)

  1. Eleanor Rabnett, Lay Oblate Associate says:
    April 9, 2025 at 13:21

    I think of my Grandmother who always made sure that as I grew up I remembered how much she loved me and how she placed me into the hands of God and Our Lady. I have a picture of her standing atop the Hotel Vancouver when it was being built in 1916 and she is standing solidly amidst the construction on the top floor (before it had a roof and walls) looking out over the city.

    I look again at Fr. Jetté’s words of accepting missions that others were unable to dare to accept. Each of them, and each of us dare to let go of that which is safe and known and to take a challenge. We share in the same charism, no matter our state of life, our milieu and cultures.

    My grandmother who was 18 years old when that picture was taken, doing what was not considered to be proper for a young woman at that time. Her family had survived the great Potato Famine in Ireland and dared to root themselves in Nelson BC and then Vancouver. They and she dared greatly.

    We might not be among the first, but still we come together in life’s journey as pilgrims of hope in community. We dare to ask for a portion of your spirit (Sandy Prather, HOMI) and find ourselves once again daring to say: “Come and learn who you are in the eyes of God…”

    Reply

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