Pope to OMI Chapter: ‘Embrace the poor with new
missionary drive’
(Vatican Radio) Pope
Francis told the participants in the General Chapter of the Oblates of Mary
Immaculate (OMI) to ‘love Jesus with passion and the Church without
conditions’.
His exhortation came in a
private audience in the Vatican’ Clementine Hall on Friday, as the Oblates celebrate the 200th anniversary since their founding.
The Chapter re-elected Fr.
Louis Lougen on 30 Sept as Superior General for a second six-year
term.
Recalling the order’s
founder, St. Eugene de Mazenod, Pope Francis said he was a ‘man of Advent’ who
‘loved Jesus with passion and the Church without conditions’, telling the
Oblates to follow his example of ‘docility to the Spirit’.
The Holy Father said their
missionary work, though difficult, should make them ‘joyful witnesses’ of the
Gospel.
‘Following the example of the
Founder’, he said, ‘may “among yourselves practice charity” be your first rule
of life and the premise of every apostolic action; and may “zeal for the
salvation of souls” be the natural consequence of your fraternal charity.’
Recognizing their
deliberations at the 36th General Chapter, the Pope said the ‘fraternal
experience of prayer, confrontation, and communitarian discernment [should] be
a stimulus for a new missionary drive’ towards the poor and most abandoned.
He said the Church and the
world is going through an epochal change, expanding ever more the field and
scope of the Church’s mission of evangelization.
The Church, he said, ‘needs
men who carry in their hearts the love of Jesus Christ, which permeated the
heart of the young Eugene de Mazenod, and the same unconditional love for the
Church, which seeks to be a house ever more open. It is important to toil for a
Church for all, ready to welcome and accompany!’
To this end, ‘adequate,
evangelical, and courageous’ responses must be sought to the personal
questioning of the men and women of today.
Pope Francis then provided a
key with which to live the missionary life.
‘Look to the past with
gratitude, live the present with passion, and embrace the future with hope,
without becoming discouraged by the difficulties you encounter in the mission
but rather be strengthened by faithfulness to your religious and missionary
vocation,’ he said.
The Holy Father concluded by
reminding the Oblates of Mary Immaculate that their name is, in the words of
the Founder, St. Eugene de Mazenod, ‘a passport to Heaven’.
Below is a Vatican
Radio English translation of the Pope’s address:
Dear brothers,
It is with particular joy
that I welcome you, who represent a missionary religious Family dedicated to
evangelization in the Church. I greet you all with affection, beginning with
the newly-elected Superior General and his Council. You are here for the General
Chapter, in the year in which you celebrate the bicentennial of your foundation
through the work of St. Eugene de Mazenod, a young priest eager to respond to
the call of the Spirit. At the beginning of its history, your Congregation
labored to reignite the faith, which the French Revolution was extinguishing in
the hearts of the poor in rural Provence, overwhelming also many ministers of
the Church. In the space of a few decades, it expanded throughout the five
continents, continuing on the path begun by the Founder, a man who loved Jesus
with passion and the Church without conditions.
Today you are called to renew
this twofold love, remembering the two hundred year lifespan of your religious
Institutes. Your jubilee, for a fortuitous and providential coincidence, occurs
in the Jubilee of Mercy. Indeed, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate were born from
an experience of mercy, lived by the young Eugene one Good Friday in the
presence of Jesus crucified. May mercy be ever at the heart of your mission, of
your efforts of evangelization in the world today. On the day of his
canonization, St. John Paul II defined Father de Mazenod a ‘man of Advent’,
docile to the Holy Spirit in reading the signs of the times and aiding the work
of God in the story of the Church. May these characteristics be present in you,
his children. May you also be ‘men of Advent’, capable of discerning the signs
of the new times and guiding your brothers on the paths which God opens in the
Church and in the world.
The Church is living, together
with the entire world, an epoch of great transformation in the most diverse
areas. She needs men who carry in their hearts the love of Jesus Christ, which
permeated the heart of the young Eugene de Mazenod, and the same unconditional
love for the Church, which seeks to be a house ever more open. It is important
to toil for a Church for all, ready to welcome and accompany! The work
necessary to realize all this is vast; and you also have your specific
contribution to make.
Your missionary history is
the history of many consecrated persons, who offered and sacrificed their lives
for the mission, for the poor, to reach distant lands whose people were still
‘without a pastor’. Today, every land is a ‘missionary land’, every human
dimension is a missionary land, which awaits the proclamation of the Gospel.
Pope Pius XI defined you ‘specialists in difficult missions’. The scope of the
mission today seems to expand every day, embracing ever new poor people – men
and women with the face of Christ who plead for help, consolation, and hope in
the most desperate situations of life. Therefore, you are needed: your
missionary daring and your availability to bring to all the Good News, which
frees and consoles.
May the joy of the Gospel
shine above all on your faces and make you joyful witnesses. Following the
example of the Founder, may ‘among yourselves practice charity’ be your first
rule of life and the premise of every apostolic action; and may ‘zeal for the
salvation of souls’ be the natural consequence of your fraternal charity.
During these days of work at
the Chapter, you have expanded your vision and hearts to envelope the expanse
of the world. May this fraternal experience of prayer, confrontation, and
communitarian discernment be a stimulus for a new missionary drive – a
point-of-departure for new horizons – to reach new poor people and bring them
together with you to encounter Christ the Redeemer. Adequate, evangelical, and
courageous responses to the questioning of the men and women of our time must
be sought. For this reason, look to the past with gratitude, live the present
with passion, and embrace the future with hope, without becoming discouraged by
the difficulties you encounter in the mission but rather be strengthened by
faithfulness to your religious and missionary vocation.
As your religious Family
enters its third century of life, may the Lord allow you to write new and
evangelically fruitful pages, like those of your brothers who throughout these
200 years have testified – at times with blood – to a great love of Christ and
the Church. You are Oblates of Mary Immaculate. May this name, defined by St.
Eugene as ‘a passport to Heaven’, be for you a constant commitment to the
mission. May Our Lady sustain your steps, especially in moments of trial. I ask
you, please, to pray to her also for me. May my Blessing, which I
wholeheartedly impart upon you and your entire Congregation, accompany your
path.
(Devin Sean Watkins)
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