Almost every evening I am with you before the Blessed Sacrament when you are saying your evening prayers. I delight in this thought in the chapel of M. Liautard where I go at that hour to adore our divine Master. Think of me at that moment.
Here we come across one of the pillars of Eugene’s spiritual practice: his evening meditation before the Eucharist through which he communes with all the persons who are important in his life. In Oblate tradition we call this practice “oraison.” Eugene’s writings give us an idea of the importance of this practice, especially when the members of his missionary family were geographically dispersed.
Oraison was a time of informal prayer where he could commune with God and with his loved ones in the Communion made possible by Jesus Christ. Here he received strength for whatever he was doing:
It is my only consolation for I pine far from you; nothing lessens our separation.
Pray for the blind or the wicked who are troubling us.
Letter to Henri Tempier, 26 July 1817, O.W. VI n. 18
Not all of us will have the ability to place ourselves before the Blessed Sacrament for our practice of “oraison” but that does not mean that we cannot practice this way of prayer. While it might seem easier if one is lives in a monastery, but the Beloved is always with us – it is us who get distracted by the TV or the computer, the noise from the neighbours or even our own family members… and there are and ever will be work and tasks to be started and those not yet finished.
The journey is not yet over for us but, by the grace of God it is always possible.
There is within each of us a place where we meet the divine. A place where we let go of ourselves and enter into the heart of Jesus – to just “be” with all of our brothers and sisters… It is there that we are replenished, strengthened and renewed so that we can walk in the “hope of becoming one with…
There it is again, the theme of the last General Chapter: “Pilgrims – in hope of communion”. I have added the dash there to remind me these are more than just ‘catchy’ words: I want to somehow concretize them in my life, in my very being. Oraison. Oblation. More than just words but a way of being.
I am so grateful that Fr. Chicho reminds us of the living theme of who we are as members of the Mazenodian Oblate Family. Oraison – entering together into the heart of Jesus, becoming ‘one with…” as pilgrims who walk in hope of communion…