A year ago, our last General Chapter concluded in an atmosphere of joy
and brotherhood because of the work accomplished, the new Superior General, his
Council, and the positive outlook of the Congregation as it looked to its
future.
What’s left of this experience a year later?
The key word that guided the chapter itself and which the whole Oblate
family worked on is surely the word conversion.
It is the first document from a Chapter that has a single word as its title! It
is a word that perhaps we struggle with a bit in order to find focus as
Oblates, but gradually it draws us together and unites us, a word that
continues to speak to us and inspire us, inviting us to go deeper in order to
understand the challenges that our life and our mission today present us.
The biblical image of the Chapter’s final letter continues to accompany
us: that of the disciples of Emmaus who are walking the road alone, discouraged
and disappointed because their world is shattered. Two disciples who are joined
by a traveler, a pilgrim like themselves, who by his words relights a fire in
their hearts until the moment when they recognize him; he disappears, but they
find themselves filled with fresh courage, so as to go back to their lives with
a new way of looking at things, with new hope and new energy.
“This General Chapter,” we read in the last paragraph of the
letter, “has been an Emmaus walk. We have
examined our crucified worlds, met the resurrected Christ on the road, and
leave here with our hearts burning with new vision, new hope, and new energy.”
This, in brief, is the message and the hope that the Chapter wanted to offer
the whole Congregation.
Conversion. To translate this word into a realistic and feasible
call, the Chapter proposed five areas in which it asked us to go deeper,
starting with our commitment as disciples of Christ, determined to follow him
and to form a community around him.
What is the heart of the Oblate community?
With this question, as old as the Congregation but always new, we are offered a
first area for work and conversion. The second is that of our mission, centered on the person of
Christ, and aimed at bringing the Gospel to the poor; today, this mission is
facing one of the most important challenges of our time: to overcome the
various barriers that continue to arise between individuals, between peoples,
and between cultures. The service of
authority is an area of conversion that involves every Oblate, within and beyond
the limits of the community to which he belongs; we are called to live this
service with courage and joy, keeping in mind the changes happening in our
family today. Formation too, first
and ongoing, is another area for conversion, one calling for a new excellence. Profoundly
rooted in Christ and animated by the Oblate charism, it will be open to the
needs of the community and of the mission. According to Constitution 47,
formation involves us in a continual conversion to the Gospel and requires us
to be ready to learn and to change in order to respond to new challenges.
Gathered around the teaching of the apostles and the breaking of bread,
the first Christian community was of one heart and one mind. This ideal of life
fascinated Saint Eugene and he wanted to pass it on to his Oblates, right from
the beginning. The communion of goods
in our family is an essential prerequisite for the communion of minds and
hearts. Even regarding our worldly goods, we are called to be faithful and
humble stewards and this requires a change of mentality that can lead us
gradually from independence to interdependence and finally, to communion.
Conversion. One year after the Chapter, we find ourselves on the
way to continue to live this message and this call. All Oblate Units have
engaged, in different ways and according to their concrete situations, to
respond to this call of the Spirit. This will make us grow and will keep us
united, despite the fragmentation that we experience in our world at various
levels. In the Central Government, at the end of our third plenary session, we
have the impression that the Spirit is truly at work in each person and in the
whole family. We hope to continue to let ourselves be guided.
