In the history of salvation, Eugene de Mazenod emerges as a person who allowed himself to be docilely led by the Holy Spirit and become the Holy Spirit’s instrument to raise up in the Church a new way for charism of evangelizing the poor to be present.
 
THE ORIGINS OF OBLATE CHARISM
The origin of Oblate charism is Eugene de Mazenod. Born in 1782 in Aix-en-Province sprang from a noble and thoroughly royal family. Due to the French Revolution he had to go into exile in Italy with his family in 1791. He returned to France again in 1802. In his hometown Aix, he received a special grace, an “outside impulse” as he called it. He felt and understood in his depths the merciful love of God in Christ crucified, and Savior. This Good Friday experience converted him totally to Christ. The following year he entered the seminary.  He wrote to his mother saying: “God is calling me to the ecclesiastical state. I want to be an ecclesiastic and I want to be that very much.  And please note I do not want to be an ecclesiastic only for a week, six months, a year, even ten years; I want to be one for my whole life.” Eugene was ordained a priest in 1811.
 
Immediately after ordination he put himself at the service of the poor and the youth in Aix. In 1815 another strong “outside impulse” prompted him to join with some companions in setting up a small community of missionary preachers to the poor.  That became the foundation of the Missionaries of Provence in Aix’s former Carmelite monastery.  With papal approval in 1826 his little community became the Congregation of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
 
When the Founder was promoted to the see of Marseilles in 1837, the congregation opened up toward the foreign mission field: America, Asia, Africa… It was now committed to a worldwide expansion.
 
On May 20, 1861, the eve before his death, Father de Mazenod left his religious family this spiritual testament: “Among yourselves always practice charity… charity… charity; and outside, zeal for the salvation of souls.”
 
FOUNDER’S LOVE FOR CHURCH
Father de Mazenod loved the Church passionately because in his own life he has encountered Christ and had come to know experientially the value of Christ’s blood. The very first words of the Preface to the Oblate Constitutions already put us on the track: “The Church, the glorious inheritance which Christ the Saviour purchased at the cost of his own blood.”
 
That blood – the full cost of that blood – was something he had come to know in his own life at the period of his conversion. “Can I ever forget the bitter tears which the sight of the cross caused me to be shed on Good Friday?” he wrote “Oh! they were tears from my heart! Nothing could stop them”
 
Many times in his life he repeated the idea of the Church redeemed by the precious Blood of Jesus. “The church is the prize won by the blood of Jesus Christ… To love the Church is to love Jesus Christ and vice versa,“ he affirmed as bishop of Marseille.
 
FOUNDER’S LOVE FOR THE POOR
The religious situation of people of Fr. de Mazenod’s time cried out for help. What were needed, in France especially, were missions for the people and retreats for the clergy. Acknowledging that the work was too much for one man and wanting to succeed therein, he decided to bring together a group of companions and unite them in a Society.
 
HIS COMPANIONS
Whom did he take as companions? Fervent priests, prepared to give their all without reserve, priests who were “zealous for the glory of God, men with ardent love for the Church… men filled with zeal, ready to give their lives if needed be, for the salvation of souls…, in a word, apostolic men.”
 
In the Constitutions of the Oblates from 1818 we read: “Their founder is Jesus Christ, the very Son of God; their first fathers are the Apostles. They are called to be the Saviour’s co-workers, the co-redeemers of mankind…”
 
NATURE OF THE OBLATE CHARISM
It is a vision of love and faith filled view of the world and of the Church, a view that let us see things that others miss and to hear appeals to which others are oblivious.
 
As Priests and Brothers, Missionaries and Religious we are called to reflect on the vision of the Founder, live his charism and return to it, to love Christ and his Church and do our best for the coming of God’s Kingdom in us and through us. We are called to evangelize the most abandoned and no ministry is foreign to us.

prepared by Fr. Miroslaw Olszewski, OMI