Introduction

Eugene de Mazenod still remains a living person with whom we have a personal relationship... To this day he continues to relate to us and we to him through the communion of saints. So, remembering him is not enough. We must develop a personal and always more intimate rapport with him (Marcello Zago, Renewing Ourselves in the Oblate Charism..., OMI Documentation #202, February 1995, p.4).

1. He continues to relate to us

a. Eugene de Mazenod’s paternity

Eugene de Mazenod was always a "man of heart" and deep sensitivity. On his arrival at St. Sulpice, he wrote an account of his life for his director, M. Duclaux, and said: "Given the portrait of myself I have just painted, how sensitive a heart I have, overly so in fact" (OW 14,67). This capacity for loving which he recognized having from his youth blossomed during his adult life in a paternal and tender love for his Oblate sons.
It is not surprising, then, that his love for his Oblate disciples, who followed in his footsteps by his charism, was transformed into paternal affection.
On the one hand, he claims the name of father. To Father Baret he writes, "I greet you affectionately as a good father (OW 11,115); "(I) rejoice in his holy presence at being the father of such children" (OW 11,203). To Father Mouchette he says "I intended to embrace them (the scholastics) tenderly like the good and aged father that I am" (OW 1,215).
On the other, the Founder considers his Oblates as his sons. In the early days of the foundation he considers his Oblates as his friends, his brothers. But some twenty years after the foundation, that is to say, during the year 1835 (OW 8: p. 142; p. 197; p.202; p.203), his calling them sons and children appears in his letters, so that expressions like my loving son (OW 12,130), my dear son (OW 12,116,128), my dear sons (12,100), my dear and very good son (12, 90) are often repeated, especially in his letters from 1852 to 1861. His paternal feelings seemed to have reached their peak during these years.
It is evident that the Founder became gradually aware of his paternity from the fact that he had founded a new religious family within the Church of Christ. At the beginning of the foundation, the Founder speaks of community (OW 6,24) and of Society (OW 6,25). But later on during his life, family is the word that flows from his pen. In a letter of congratulations to some newly professed, he wrote: You (are) "among the number of those whom the Lord has given me as sons in a family which is soldiering in the Church under the banner of Mary" (OW 12,100).
This father-son relationship was for Eugene a characteristic and distinctive mark of the Congregation. In a letter to Father Mouchette on 2 December 1854, with warmth and tenderness he expresses above all the family spirit that he wants to see prevail among his sons. "I would want all the scholastic brothers to be imbued with the family spirit which ought to exist among us... this cordial affinity of the members for their head which establishes between them a relationship springing from the heart and which forms true family ties between us - father to son, son to father - this I have not come across anywhere else" (OW 11, 253).
This love that the Founder feels for his sons is in several instances compared to the love that God the Father has for his creatures. Continuing his letter to Father Mouchette, the Founder writes: "I have always thanked God for it as a particular gift which he has deigned to grant me; for it is the
temper of heart that he has given me, this expansive love which is my own gift and which pours itself out on each one of them without taking anything from the others, just like, I make bold to say, God’s love for men" (OW 11, 254). Four months later, in April 1854, he writes again to Father Mouchette: "I love my sons immeasurably more than my human person could love them. That is a gift that I have received from God, for which I do not cease to thank him, because I have reason to believe that he may perhaps not have granted it to anyone else in the same proportion as he has to me" (OW 11, 266). He feels this expansion of love that is his, "just like, I make bold to say, God’s love" (OW 11, 254).
Paternal love can be expressed in several ways. It can be authoritarian, permissive, demanding; but the Founder never stops repeating that his love for his Oblate children is marked by tenderness. To Father Vincens, he says, "My life is to follow my heart" (OW 11, 175). And to Father Baret he writes, "With affection I greet you with all the tenderness of my fatherly heart" (OW 11, 195). To Father Dassy he says that "there is not on this earth a creature to whom God has accorded the favour of loving so tenderly, so strongly, so constantly so great a number of persons" (OW 11, 69).

b. Deepening

In Holy Scripture
In the Old Testament Elisha called Elijah My father, my fat her! (2 Kings 2:12). At the time one could find groups more or less numerous that gathered around prophets of renown. The prophet was for them the much venerated master, the father full of concern for this family of perfect members.
In his Epistle to the Galatians, Saint Paul does not hesitate to call them "my children! I must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you" (Gal 4:19). He tells the Corinthians, "It was I who begot you in Christ Jesus by preaching the Good News" (1 Cor 4:15}. And to the Thessalonians, "as a father treats his children, teaching you what was right" (1 Thes2:11).He calls Philemon "a child of mine whose father I became while wearing these chains" (Phil 10).

Saint Paul makes use of these expressions to recall especially the mystery of the transmission of faith life. The Christians of his Churches are born to a new life and become his sons. He gave them this new life, the life of Christ crucified, through the preaching of the Gospel.
Paternity is the characteristic of a person who serves as intermediary between God and child in the transmission of life. A man becomes father by cooperating with the Creator to give existence to a new human being.
This name is attributed to those who transmit human, corporal life. But Saint Paul alludes to another expression of paternity when he writes: "Kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name" (Eph 3:14). God the Father chose to manifest himself through human mediations. Consequently, every new birth in the Church demands the ministry of a man, mandated to that effect.

In Monastic Life
From the start of monasticism, the title of Abba spread very rapidly among the monks. They considered progress in the way of virtue to be like a new birth, so paternity relied on spiritual direction. The Abba was a man of experience who had reached perfection in his monastic state and hence could serve, in the hands of the Spirit, as a guide to others. Throughout the centuries of monastic and religious life, this theme of paternity persisted. Reflection has brought out the theological foundations. Several ways have been discovered; two of them have been particularly retained - that of the generation of new spiritual life by way of profession, and the other, the birth of an Order, through the Founder’s fatherhood.
Our Founder does not seem to justify his paternity principally on this basis of religious consecration as a second baptism.
But the main reason why Eugene de Mazenod calls himself the father of his sons is found in the fact that he gave birth to a new religious family in our Mother the Church. The institution of religious Congregations and Orders has its source in divine inspiration.
Saint John of the Cross, in his work Bright Flame, when speaking of the perfect love that transforms a soul "into a great fire of love", adds that few souls arrive at this state; "however, a few have reached it and principally the souls of those whose virtue and spirit should spread in the succession of their children, God giving wealth and excellence... to the heads according to the greater or smaller succession which their doctrine and spirit should have" (str. II, V.2). In this text John of the Cross seems to indicate that God gives Founders of Orders a capacity of loving their disciples in proportion to the number of those who will follow in their footsteps.
When studying founders, one is impressed by noticing the awareness they had of being instruments of the Spirit, caught, inspired and led on a new and unknown path. Since Vatican II, the Church has recognized the divine origin of the foundation of religious institutes. The document Perfectae Caritatis speaks of these persons who, "under the influence of the Holy Spirit"... founded families of religious (foreword). Evangelica Testificatio adds that "the charism of religious life... is the fruit of the Holy Spirit who is always at work within the Church" (#11). Finally, the document Religious and Human Advancement mentions "the dynamic fidelity to the purpose for which the Spirit brought about their institute in the Church" (#8). Speaking of Founders, the Fathers of the Council recalled that "under the influence of the Holy Spirit... they founded families of religious" (PC 1). Religious families are not born of flesh and blood but of the will of God.
The charism of the Founder, received from the Holy Spirit, presents the Church with a new life, a new way of living the Gospel. By his charism and founding of the Institute, the Founder gives birth to a unique and original expression of progressing toward the imitation of Christ. Like a human couple that finds itself at the origin of a new expression of human family life, the Founder of a Congregation is at the source of religious life which henceforth will be lived during all its existence by all its members. Just as every human family possesses its "genetic code" and lives its dynamic relations between members in a unique and personal way, so each religious family in the Church is called to live a special and unique facet of the mystery of Christ.
Through religious profession, the newly professed is begotten into the community and becomes with full rights a unique and precious member in the religious family that receives him. It is above all at the profession of vows that the Founder communicates his spirit to his newborn son, who at this moment is inserted in a stable way into the community created to continue in time and space the Founder’s charism in all its purity.
As in baptism the newly baptized becomes a member of the Church and thus participates in the life of Christ its Founder, so by profession the religious becomes member of a religious family and hence participates in the charism of the Founder who is a new incarnation of the life of Christ in this world.
It is therefore right to attribute to the Founder the name of father. A founder, by his typical vocation, has a generating capacity for transmitting what he himself has received. The experience of a founder is such that it should by its nature be communicated and transmitted. All founders are conscious of being the instruments in a work that belongs to God. They gave birth to religious families that were new expressions and incarnations of Christ on our earth. That is the reason why a large number of founders claim the name of father or mother.

2.... and we continue to relate to him...
Novices (and all Oblates as well) "come to contemplate God at work in the life and mission of the Founder..." (C 56).
To live this filiation rapport with the Founder means to imitate him, to follow, listen, heed, love and invoke him... (cf. Marcello Zago, Renewing Ourselves in the Oblate Charism).
It means above all to live with fidelity the charm that he transmitted to us. It is his will that this charism be lived by each of us and be transmitted in all its integrity.
After a canonical visit to the house of Notre-Dame du Laus, the Founder wrote in a letter to Father Mille: "I no longer recognize my spirit in the houses I have just visited, and indeed how could it be found when no one bothers any longer to consult me?"(OW 8, 241). And he adds: "Your major defect has been to follow your own ideas, instead of taking your lead from what has been the practice prior to your arrival" (Ibid,). He accuses the community of "not following in our footsteps" (Ibid.). The Founder understood that his charism should be transmitted in all its integrity and lived by his sons in an authentic way.
We should be able to repeat with Father Tempier: "May the good God be blessed to have inspired you to prepare for the poor, the inhabitants of our countrysides, for those who most need to be instructed in religion, a house of missionaries who will go proclaim the truths of salvation. I can wholly share your views... By the grace of God I feel within me this desire, or if I do not have it, companion, I greatly desire it, and with you, everything will become easier. So, you can wholly count on me."
Another way of responding to his paternal love is to live among ourselves the bonds of fraternity which have their origin in this paternity. The fraternity which must bring us together in a community that has "but one heart and soul" (Acts 4:32) exist only if it recognizes the paternity of the one who was its human instrument in the hands of God.

Questions for reflection / sharing
- How do I relate to Eugene de Mazenod? As a father, brother, friend, master, intercessor?
- What can I do concretely to know him better so as to love him more and grow in a personal relationship always more intimate with him?
- Are we linked among us by an authentic fraternal life? How can we live today within our community and the Province that supernatural yet profoundly human charity which Eugene de Mazenod saw as the characteristic of his religious family and somewhat a participation of his love?

Prayer  (Oblate Prayer, Italian edition, p. 121)
O Saint Eugene, gift of God the Father to the world of today, living image of Christ the Saviour and authentic witness of the Holy Spirit, give us a deep experience of Jesus Crucified so that we may reveal to contemporaneous generations the marvels of your love.
You who loved the Church in an unconditional way, revive in us the missionary desire and zeal for the salvation of souls.
You who experienced family difficulties, grant to our families the gifts of unity, harmony and peace.
Help your Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate to be faithful collaborators of the Saviour and co-redeemers of the human family.
May the Immaculate Virgin help us always, she whom you loved with a tender and filial love, and who welcomed you to present you to her Jesus, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen