- Projects from 1826 to 1841
- The Missions Accepted and Refused from 1841 to 1861
- Legislation, the Missionary Spirit
In drawing up the Rules of the Missionaries of Provence in 1818, Father de Mazenod set a very specific goal for his institute: to preach the word of God to the poor of Provence, especially through the means of parish missions, retreats, catechetical instruction and other spiritual exercises. Other ends to be adopted in the future were not excluded. The Nota bene of chapter one gave full expression to this idea: “They are called to be co-operators with the Saviour, co-redeemers of the human race; and in spite of the fact that they are presently small in number and the most pressing needs of the people who surround them, they must, for the moment, limit their zeal to the poor of our rural areas, and so on, their ambition should embrace in its holy desires, the immense breadth of the whole earth.” This paragraph, which, without saying it in so many words, makes allusion to the foreign missions, was left out in the Preface of the Rules approved by Rome in 1826. But the preface retained this universal character of the apostolate of the Oblates in more than one place, as for example, in the following paragraph: “Wherefore, while pledging themselves to all the works of zeal which priestly charity can inspire…”
Even if he chose to begin with his co-workers to preach the word of God in Provence. following the advice Leo XII had given a short time before to Forbin-Janson to go maxime ad domesticos fidei (especially to those of the household of the faith), Father de Mazenod’s interest and even his calling to the foreign missions persisted. At Venice, he had read: The edifying letters on the missions of China and Japan. Did he not confide this to Father Tamburini in an October 25, 1855 letter? “I had not yet attained twelve years of age when God caused to be born in my heart the first and very effective desires of dedicating myself to the missions.” At the seminary in Saint-Sulpice, Eugene was a member of Forbin-Janson’s mission circle of those who wanted to go to China.
This interest and this calling existed as well among a few of the first co-workers of the Founder. They had set as their goal “to go beyond the confines of the Kingdom” before the realm dictated that they had to stay in their own country (Letter to the Minister of Public Worship, July 31, 1817) When, in Rome, they suggested that the Congregation was to be approved for France alone, he wrote to Cardinal Pedicini on January 2, 1826: “that one of the main reasons that brought us to ask for the approbation of the Holy See was precisely the desire that we have to bear to every corner of the world the benefits of the ministry to which the members of our institute are dedicating themselves.” He added that he is in touch with the bishop of Nice with regard to a foundation in his diocese, that he is planning to go into the diocese of Savoy and that several members of the institute “would readily preach the Gospel to the infidels. When they will be more numerous, it is possible that the superior would send them to America. From all of this, His Eminence can draw the conclusion that the approval requested should extend to the whole Church.”
Projects from 1826 to 1841
If previous to 1817, some of the first Missionaries of Provence wanted “to go beyond the confines of the Kingdom” a similar desire surfaced yet again among others after the approbation of the Rule. Towards the end of 1826, for example, after a successful parish mission at Fuveau, Father Dominic Albini wrote to the Founder: “I thank you for the kindness you have shown me in making available to me the means of gaining a few souls for Jesus Christ. I expressed to you the thought which has been dogging me for a long time to go to foreign countries for the same reason. From the time when you told me that this is not opportune right now, I put it aside with a lively faith that, if God is truly calling me to this kind of an endeavour, with time, he will inspire you with that desire.”
In 1830 and in the course of the following years, the desire to go to the foreign missions became more pressing. From the time when the French forces captured Algiers on July 9, 1830, while the Founder was absent, Bishop Fortuné de Mazenod wrote to the grand chaplain of the king to offer a few Oblates as missionaries to Algeria. Father Tempier, Honorat, Touche and Brother Pascal Ricard immediately asked the Founder to be a part of “the first group going overseas.” At the beginning of the month of August, Father de Mazenod learned that the Revolution of July 27-29 had driven out King Charles X. It was no longer feasible at that time to send priests to Algeria.
The July Revolution, very anticlerical in its initial stages, put a stop to the preaching of parish missions in France. The desire for foreign missions resurfaced among the Oblates and the General Chapter of 1831 seriously committed itself to going in that direction. In the acts of the Chapter, on September 29, we read: “A project was discussed whose tenor was that the Chapter should present to the Most Reverend Father General the wish expressed by the members of the society that some of our members should be sent to the foreign missions as soon as he judged the time was suitable. Taking cognisance of the inclination of a large number of the members of the society who yearned for the moment when the opportunity would be given them to carry afar the knowledge and the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Chapter felt obliged to adopt their holy idea and to become the spokesman of their thinking, all the more so since it considers the object of this suggestion as being very important for the glory of God and the good of the society. Consequently, the suggestion was unanimously adopted and the request it contains thus being expressed to the Very Reverend Father General, he saw fit to respond in full session that he accepted it and would give it his stamp of approval.”
Pressure was subsequently put upon the Founder to move in that direction, especially from the part of Father Hippolyte Guibert, the superior of Notre-Dame du Laus. He wanted to send Oblates and priests from the diocese of Gap to America. “If our mission in Africa fails,” he wrote to the Founder in 1832, “we beg you, Most Reverend Father, to think of the missions in Asia or America. It is a genuine need of our times. A congregation which is in the first stages of development needs an element of zeal. Remaining stagnant for us would be a mortal blow.”
Father de Mazenod tried in vain to make a foundation in Sardegna and in Valais [a canton in the southern part of Switzerland] in 1831. On the occasion of his trip to Rome in 1832-1833, he also approached the Congregation of the Propaganda, and still without success, to send Oblates to Rome, to Algeria and to America. (See Oblate Writings I, vol. 8, passim.) Father de Mazenod accepted these refusals with resignation. On November 21, 1833, he wrote to Father Tempier: “Let’s not push too hard, [let us wait on] Providence… It really is madness to want to have children before one is ready for marriage. First you establish the hive, then you send out the swarm.” (Oblate Writings I, vol. 8, no. 477, p. 117)
The Missions Accepted and Refused from 1841 to 1861
The hour of Providence arrived in 1841 and the requests subsequently flowed in. The Congregation accepted the missions of Canada and England in 1841, of Ceylon and Oregon in 1847, of Texas and Algeria in 1849, and of South Africa in 1850-1851. For lack of personnel, it refused to go to Australia in 1845 and to several dioceses of the United States, to Bengal in 1849, to Malaysia and the Pacific Islands in 1850, Malabar and the Seychelles in 1851, the territory of Senegal and Gambia in 1854, etc. Father Albert Perbal, in an article listing the missions accepted and refused by Bishop de Mazenod, wrote this concluding paragraph: At the death of the Founder, “the Oblates of Mary Immaculate were already scattered over four continents. They could be found from ocean to ocean the length and breadth of Canada. In the United States, they were preparing an apostolic expansion which would prove to be ever more fruitful. In Texas, they had tried to go into Mexico and they would stubbornly return there after each expulsion. They would put down roots in Ceylon to pump new life into an anemic Christianity and to create a lively church with a flourishing Ceylonese clergy. In South Africa, they had been offered more than two thirds of the country and it remains to their credit that they prepared and laid the foundations of a rich harvest of dioceses…”
The missionary expansion of the Congregation continued after the death of Bishop de Mazenod. According to the statistics published in the work, Le missioni cattoliche in 1950, the Oblates held fifth place among the institutes that worked in the territories under the Congregation of the Propaganda. In 1979, Father Jetté wrote: “We presently dedicate a considerable number of our members to the mission ad gentes, about 2000 members, that is, one third. Which puts us in the fifth or sixth rank among men’s congregations who send personnel to the missions.” Today, the Congregation is present in more than seventy countries.
Legislation, the Missionary Spirit
The General Chapters of 1843 and 1850, the first after the sending of missionaries to Canada and to England, discussed foreign missions, but did not propose any modifications to the Rules in this regard. Nevertheless, in the second edition of the Rules published in 1853, Bishop de Mazenod added an appendix entitled: Instructio de exteris missionibus. In the 1910 edition of the Rules, we find for the first time a paragraph on the foreign missions.
It was the same vocation that inspired the Oblates to follow in the footsteps of the Apostles in long established Christianity “to reawaken sinners” and in the countries of the infidel “to proclaim and make known Jesus Christ.” But after 1841, the Founder often wrote that it is in a fuller and more powerful way that, among other forms of apostolate, the foreign missions carry out this common end to make Jesus Christ known and loved.
Yvon Beaudoin, o.m.i.
