Oblate Charism.pdf

Oblate Charism In his lecture on Oblate Charism, renowned spiritual author Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI defined Oblate Charism to be structured along five essential components: Being Missionary; an Option for the Poor; the Cross as Central; Apostolic Community as an Ideal; and Mary as Patroness. T...

Oblate Charism In his lecture on Oblate Charism, renowned spiritual author Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI defined Oblate Charism to be structured along five essential components: Being Missionary; an Option for the Poor; the Cross as Central; Apostolic Community as an Ideal; and Mary as Patroness. The following is an abridged of that 2018 lecture. (1) Being Missionary In his farewell discourse in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus gives his disciples this mandate: “Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to all creation.” (Mark 16:15) Jesus sends his disciples out as missionaries. Eugene de Mazenod took those words to heart and founded his congregation precisely to be missionary. How is this to be understood? What makes someone a missionary? A missionary might be characterized by two interpenetrating elements: The word missionary can be contrasted to the word maintenance: A missionary is someone who goes out from established centers of faith, establishes new communities of faith, sets up the resources to sustain them, and then moves on to where new communities need to be established. Second, a missionary is a risk‐taker, that is, someone who rolls the dice on the truth of the Gospel. This is the challenge that the Gospels give us in the story where Jesus asks the disciples to feed a crowd of five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. The story which is recounted with some variations in all four Gospels has this at its heart: Jesus had been preaching to a large crowd in a deserted place and they have been together for a long time. The crowd was hungry. The disciples come to Jesus and ask him where they can get food to feed so many people, asking him (in one version of the story) whether they should go into the neighboring towns and buy food for the crowd. Jesus tells them instead that they should feed the people themselves. The disciples protest: “We have only five small loaves and two fish – and how can that be adequate to feed five thousand people!” Jesus, for his part, blesses the five loaves and two fish and asks the disciples to set them out for the people. The people all eat as much as they want and afterwards the disciples gathered up the scraps and filled twelve baskets. The disciples had come up to Jesus and asked him whether they should go into the surrounding villages and farms to buy food to feed the crowd. What’s ironic about this? The Gospels want us to pick up a huge irony here: The disciples are with the Bread of Life – and they’re asking where they might go to buy bread! Yet their question is legitimate. They have only five loaves and two fish with which to feed a crowd of five thousand. That’s a hopeless equation – a tiny bit of food and thousands to feed. But, and this is the key to the story, they are with the Bread of Life and when you are with the Bread of Life you lack for nothing. All the resources you need are there and there will be baskets of extras left over. It’s with this in mind that Saint Eugene coined the challenge which has become a virtual motto for the Oblates: Leave nothing undared for the Gospel. The Gospel works if you work it! And he himself modeled that. When he had very few men in the ranks, against common prudence and the advice of others, he sent missionaries to both Canada and Sri Lanka, believing that if he trusted the Gospel and took a risk on it, the Gospel would prove worthy of that trust. It did. A missionary is someone who can roll the dice and risk real life on the truth and fecundity of the Gospel. But this comes at a cost. To be someone who founds churches rather than maintains them means perennially moving away from comfort and from the familiar into the new and unfamiliar. To be a missionary is to be forever having to move on, leaving loved ones and satisfying achievements behind. Like Jesus, he will sometimes feel that he does not have a rock upon which to lay his head. A missionary is essentially homeless, though the grace in that is that eventually every place becomes home. (2) The Option for the Poor As Jesus begins his ministry in Luke’s Gospel, he begins them with these words: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” (Luke 4:18) This, in essence, is Jesus’ mission statement and it is clear enough: Our preaching is meant to be good news to the poor and any proclamation of the Gospel that is not good news for the poor is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our founder took those words literally and he took them to heart. They ground the Oblate charism and are constitutive of its essence. We are called to minister to the poor. After his ordination, Saint Eugene returned to his diocese in Aix‐en‐Provence and began to work with the poor – servants, domestics, fish‐cleaners, and others who were not being ministered to by the structures of the church that existed then in Aix. He even learned their language, a patois dialect that was spoken mostly only among the poor. The poor became the focus of his ministry. In that, he mirrored the great Jewish prophets who affirmed unequivocally that God favors the poor. Moreover he also mirrored Jesus who affirmed that not only does God favor the poor, but God is in the poor, so that whatever you do to the poor you do to God. (Matthew 25). Since the Oblate charism has an option for the poor at its very heart, it is important to ask the question: Who are the poor? Is it primarily the economically disadvantaged? Immigrants? The unborn? The elderly? Looking at the founder’s option for the poor within his particular historical context – Southern France in the late 19th century – we might draw this conclusion (which is in essence how the Gospels also define the poor): The poor are the “excluded ones.” As Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of Liberation Theology, puts it, “The poor are those who don’t have the right to have rights,” of whom society is saying today (echoing the words that Caiaphas, the High Priest, said of Jesus before the crucifixion): “It is better that one man should die for the people.” Of whom is this being said today? The unborn? The refugees? The persecuted? The economic and socially disadvantaged? The victims of prejudice? The sick? The mentally ill? Victims of suicide? Those on the edges rather than at the center? It is being said about all of them. They are the excluded ones; they are the ones in whom the cross of Christ is being lived out today. They are the poor; and moreover they are also where the Kingdom is being built: “The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.” (Psalm 118:22) And they are also where the Oblates have been found ministering through the two hundred years of their history and where many Oblates are found ministering today. The Oblates today can be proud of the fact that, in so many places, they are found on the margins of society… (3) The Cross as Central As Jesus is trying to explain his mission to his disciples, he tells them: “To you has been given the [deep] secret of God's Kingdom; but to those who are outside everything comes in parables.” (Mark 4:11) What is the “deep secret” which is the key to understanding Jesus and his message? The Gospels tell us that, in following Jesus, we can be either “in” or “out,” depending upon whether or not we understand a certain secret. Those who “get it” are genuine disciples and those who “don't get it” remain on the edges, outside. But what is it that they, the disciples, and we, need to “get”? What's the secret we need to grasp? In essence, it is the cross. We need to grasp the wisdom of the cross, the brokenness of Jesus on the cross; and we need to accept the invitation that is inherent inside the cross and be willing to live that invitation out. The Gospels contain the idea that if you understand the cross then you will understand everything else as well – you will know the deep secret. Conversely, if you do not understand the cross, you will not understand the Gospels at all. The cross is the key that unlocks the understanding of everything else. If you understand it, you are “in”; and if you do not understand it, you are “out”. Moreover, you are never forever “in” or “out”; you can step in and out on this. For example, when Peter betrays Jesus, the Gospels tell us that “he went outside.” They are speaking of much more than him stepping outside the door of a house. In betraying Jesus, Peter, at moment, went “outside” the understanding of the Gospels. Eugene de Mazenod clearly grasped “the secret.” The cross was central to his personal spirituality and he made it central to the Oblate charism. In his diaries, he writes of a foundational religious experience that left a brand on his soul forever. Praying before a crucifix one Good Friday, he was touched to the depth of his soul by the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross and what that death meant in terms of forgiveness both in his personal life and in the life of the world itself. After that experience, like Saint Paul who had a similar experience, he too could say: I preach nothing but Christ crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) This now lies at the very center of the Oblate charism and ethos and is the very antithesis of any prosperity gospel; namely, spiritualities and preaching which imply that if we follow Christ we will be specially rewarded with good fortune in this life. The cross offers us a share in Christ’s life, ministry, and suffering – not special favors in this life. The cross of Christ, like Jesus’ other saying about the disciple having to endure all that the master endures, suggests, as Daniel Berrigan so poignantly puts it: “Before you get serious about God, first consider carefully how good you are going to look on wood.” Of course, there is a cost to this, beyond what sharing the cross of Christ means in one’s personal life. An emphasis on the cross, on the cost of Christian discipleship, on accepting pain and humiliation in this world, draws a sparse audience in most affluent circles. It is radically anti‐ cultural in most places within our world and can, as a consequence, leave the Oblates culturally marginalized. (4) Community as an Ideal “The congregation of believers was one in heart and soul. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they owned.” (Acts 4:32) Scripture scholars today agree that this text expresses the “ideal” of the early Christian community as opposed to its actual reality. The first followers of Jesus struggled, just as we do today, to live this out. But what this text expresses, and what we see in Jesus who, when he began his ministry, immediately started forming a community with others, is the necessity of community for effective ministry and, indeed, the necessity of community as a very constitutive part of Christian discipleship. Christianity is something you do with others! You are not a disciple of Jesus by yourself. Saint Eugene recognized the vital place of community within both Christian discipleship and within ministry. Partly he learned this through experience rather than in his seminary training. After being ordained as a diocesan priest, having studied under the priests of Saint Sulpice, he returned to his home diocese, Aix‐en‐Provence, and began to work with the poor. He was so dedicated to serving the poor that eventually his health gave out. Working through this illness, which almost took him in death, he came to the realization that, had he died then, his work would have ended. He realized then what Jesus realized immediately in his ministry: that to be more effective in his work and to ensure that his work would thrive outside of his own personal efforts and continue long after he died, he needed to gather a community around this ideal. He did. One by one, he persuaded some of his priest‐colleagues to join him in this work, and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate were born – out of the idealism and commitment of a group of diocesan priests. Hence it is no accident that central to the Oblate charism is the vital place of community. The 1992 General Chapter of the Oblates took up a line from the Dutch theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx, and made the line its own ever since: “What you dream alone remains a dream, but what you dream together can become a reality.” The Oblate charism is predicated on the fact that, in the end, compassion must be collective to be effective. Alone, no one can change the world; only a community can do that… (5) Mary as Patroness “Standing near the cross were Jesus' mother, and his mother's sister, Mary (the wife of Clopas), and Mary Magdalene.” (John 19:25). Karl Rahner once made this comment on the various Marian apparitions that have taken place in history. Looking at all the apparitions of Mary that the church has deemed credible, be that in Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe or elsewhere, one sees this common denominator: Mary has always appeared to a poor person and never appeared to a pope, a wealthy businessman, or to a theologian in his study. She has appeared to small children, a poor peasant, and to a young woman of no status. Mary, as she so eloquently states in the Magnificat, favors the poor and is the patroness of the poor. Much of the piety and devotion that surrounds her might aptly be termed “the mysticism of the poor.” Our founder, when he was searching for a patron under which to put the congregation, was initially intending to name the congregation, the Oblates of Saint Charles, after Saint Charles Borromeo whom he much revered. However, as he was reflecting on this, he came to realize that since this is a congregation founded to serve the poor, the most appropriate person to have as a patron would be Mary, since she is pre‐eminently the patroness of the poor. But how is this to be conceived? Beneath the crust of piety, healthy and unhealthy, that surrounds Mary, what inside of her life and inside of her person most makes her the patroness of the poor? What ultimately endears her to the poor is not her singular dignity as being the mother of Jesus. Not that. What, at the end of the day, endears her to the poor and makes her their worthy patron is her poverty and her helplessness – qualities with which the poor identify. But even this should be carefully understood. In John’s Gospel, as Jesus is dying on the cross, Mary is standing under the cross. What is contained in that image? This is a mystical image and it is anything but pious. What is Mary doing while standing under the cross? On the surface it appears that she is not doing anything at all. She does not speak, does not try to stop the crucifixion, and does not even protest its unfairness or plead Jesus' innocence. She is mute, seemingly passive, overtly not doing anything. But at a deeper level she is doing all that can be done when one is standing helpless, under the weight of the cross: she is holding and carrying the tension, standing in strength, refusing to give back in kind, and resisting in a deep way. How so?  Sometimes well‐intentioned artists have painted Mary as prostrate under the cross, the wounded mother, helplessly distraught, paralyzed by grief, an object for sympathy. But that does not honor what happened there nor teach its lesson. Prostration, in this situation, is weakness, collapse, hysteria, resignation. In the Gospels, “standing” is a position of strength. Mary “stood” under the cross. She was strong there. Still, why the silence and why her seeming unwillingness to act or protest? In essence, what Mary was doing under the cross was this: Her silence and strength were speaking these words: “Today I can’t stop the crucifixion, nobody can. Sometimes darkness will have its hour. But I can stop some of the hatred, bitterness, jealousy, and heartlessness that caused it – by refusing to give it back in kind, by transforming negativity rather than retransmitting it, by swallowing hard, in silence, and eating the bitterness rather than giving it back in kind.” Had Mary, in emotional and moral outrage, begun to scream hysterically, shout angrily at those crucifying Jesus, or physically tried to attack someone as he was driving the nails into Jesus' hands, she would have been caught up in the same kind of energy as everyone else, replicating the very anger and bitterness that caused the crucifixion. What Mary was doing under the cross, her silence and seeming unwillingness to protest notwithstanding, was radiating all that is antithetical to crucifixion: gentleness, understanding, forgiveness, peace, light, courage, and not least a helplessness that draws upon faith and hope, the helplessness of the poor who are being crucified everywhere. The poor understand this because they experience it in their lives. There are times when all they can do is to stand helpless under the cross, that is, absorb poverty and injustice. And in those moments, they recognize their patroness, Mary, the exemplar of how faith stands inside of helplessness. The Oblate charism, under this aspect, invites us to stand with Mary, with the poor and helpless, trusting that God will eventually “lift up the lowly.” But there is a second aspect as well to honoring Mary as the Patroness of the poor and the Oblate congregation. Mary is also the voice of the poor. In John’s Gospel, Mary’s name is never mentioned; she is always referred to as “the mother of Jesus.” This is significant because in John’s Gospel, unlike the Synoptic Gospels where Mary is portrayed as the exemplar of faith, Mary is presented as the mother of all humanity, as Eve. As well, in John’s Gospel, Jesus is always portrayed in his divinity, never in his humanity. Hence, in John’s Gospel, conversations between Jesus and Mary always have a double dimension, namely, they aren’t just talking to each other as mother and son; they are also talking to each other as “Eve” to “God.” Thus, when we look at the famous story of the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2:1‐11) we see that it is a story that is as much about Mary as it is about Jesus. Note the initial words of the story: “There was a wedding feast at Cana and the mother of Jesus was there and Jesus and his disciples were also there.” As we know, at a key part of this story Mary goes to Jesus and says: “They have no wine!” At one level this speaks simply of Mary’s sensitivity, her wanting to spare her hosts some embarrassment. However, in John’s Gospel, since this is also a conversation between “Eve” (the mother of all humanity) and “God,” we see that Mary’s role here is that of giving voice to human finitude, as she does in the Synoptic Gospels in the Magnificat. Indeed, that wonderfully expresses what ministry to the poor and the Oblate charism are meant to do: Help give voice to human finitude…