ST EUGENE: PILGRIM OF HOPE IN GENEROUS SELF-GIVING (OBLATION)

Eugene’s sixth “road sign” for the pilgrim

Looking at the Cross on Good Friday, Eugene was overwhelmed the love of God who gave everything for him. The response of this young man was oblation: giving everything to God in response.

What more glorious occupation than to act in everything and for everything only for God, to love him above all else, to love him all the more as one who has loved him too late. Ah! this is to begin already here below the blessed life of heaven. That is the true way to glorify him as he wants.

(Eugene’s Retreat Journal, December 1814, EO XV n.130)

Oblation became the central characteristic of his life as a person, as priest, as founder, as Superior General and as Bishop. It is this spirit that members of the Mazenodian Family are called to absorb and assimilate.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has left to us the task of continuing the great work of the redemption of mankind.
It is towards this unique end that all our efforts must tend; as long as we will not have spent our whole life and given all our blood to achieve this, we having nothing to say; especially when as yet we have given only a few drops of sweat and a few spells of fatigue.

(Eugene’s letter to Henri Tempier, 22 August 1817, O.W. VI n. 21)

THE WORD OF GOD

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)

For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:37-38)

 

PRAYER

God our Father,
by the grace of the Holy Spirit,
you called St. Eugene de Mazenod
to gather a missionary family
to announce the Gospel
especially among the poor and most abandoned.

May we live by the spirit of his oblation
to act in everything and for everything only for you to love you above all else.

Through St Eugene’s intercession may we receive
the particular graces we ask for as pilgrims of hope.