For the Founder, the letters he
sent to his men and the letters he received were the very lifeline of the congregation,
the bonds of love that kept the society together.
In them, he pours out his heart, his pride in his men, his anxiety for
their welfare, his stern rebuke for their lack of zeal. To hear the voice of Mazenod in
his letters is to be invited into a special intimacy with this holy man in a way that a
biography can never achieve. As we begin this year with Bishop De Mazenod, let us listen
to these lifelines and make them into signs of life for our own ministry.
May 21st 1849
You would be the only one, my dear Father Vincens, to whom I would not write? That just
won't happen,even though you would deserve it a little, for if I am not mistaken, you
haven't given me any sign of life for a long time.
(Vol. 10, p.67)
May 22nd 1849
In the sorrow which overwhelmed me,my dear son, was I wrong to
reveal the cause of it to you? My God, I fear so, seeing the state into which you were
thrown by the frightful news. But could I leave you ignorant...? If you had been at my
side, we could have discussed it...In any event your sorrow adds to mine all the weight of
the love I bear you. To feel you are saddened and not be able to console you by taking
from your pain all I can bear of it. I wanted to write to you immediately. I felt the need
to give this sign of my tender friendship...(Vol. 3 p.38)
We do not know exactly what bad news brought so much pain to the Founder,
but we do not need to. The letter expresses the depth of his own compassion for the
sufferings and anxieties of his men, expressed so openly and tenderly. We pray in our
daily Oblate prayers to "carry one another's burdens with charity unfeigned" and
it is this kind of letter that demonstrates what that meant for Bishop De Mazenod.
May 23rd 1841
I think it would be less tiring for my mother if she had herself
driven by carriage up to the bottom of the ascent on the side of Avancon where you would
have three horses available, since my mother is accompanied by my sister and niece. Ask
the horseman to be especially careful with my mother. Because of her advanced age of 80
years, she is no longer agile; my sister is not too good a rider, and my niece has not yet
made a trial ride.(Vol. 9 p.171)
We all recognize our families and our ties to them. This is especially so
when our parents are aged or sick. It is touching to see here the care that the Founder
expresses for his frail mother and his concern that his sister and niece's horsemanship
was a little suspect. Zeal for the Kingdom might mean leaving the ties of family, but it
can never be used as an excuse for neglecting them. After all, our vocations grew there.
May 25th 1838
Dear and good son, your last letter consoled me, but I am not yet
convinced that you are as well as you say you are. One does not go thus from a state such
as you had fallen, into perfect health. So my dear man, do not take it amiss that I let
this precious interdict continue to weigh heavily on your zeal. Its value lies in that you
have not become useless for the rest of your life, which would have infallibly happened
had I allowed you to go to Veynes.(Vol. 9 p.91)
The old missionaries used to boast that they were going to wear out and
not rust out. Oftentimes, a spirit of competition arises amongst us to prove that after
any sickness or setback, we can soon pick ourselves up and carry on as if nothing had
happened. But here the Founder is strongly on the side of health and common sense. He
cautions against a zeal that can be as dangerous by its extreme, its lack of balance for
the matters of health and proper rest.
May 26th 1843
I can excuse child's play at a boarding school; but not at all in
the novitiate,especially a novitiate that lasts only a year. Are you being too good, too
easy and letting their roguish tricks pass by? I would like them to be more serious, and
their boisterousness during recreation should not be heard as far as the village. Light
faults must be lightly punished; I must not suppose that more serious ones exist.(Vol.
10 p.12)
Oh for the memories of our own novitiates, and of our novice masters. How
often they become the legends of the Province. And memories of our own
boisterousness, how often are these the ones we treasure? And we were also serious
and earnest candidates too, what the Founder obviously expected from the regime of his
novice master. It feels comforting to know that even the Founder and his men,
way back then, found it difficult sometimes to cope with the energies and enthusiasms of
youth. What must the villagers have thought about all the ruckus?
May 27th 1839
There is another duty that is being too much neglected despite my
repeated requests,namely; writing down everything that is to be known on the life and
virtue of our brothers who have lived in our midst and are now in heaven. We don't possess
complete information on so many predestined men who have honored and edified our family.
This is intolerable. This is why I am determined to order all the members of the
congregation that,within the period of three months, they send me detailed
statements on each one of our deceased fathers. They will write little or much according
to ...the knowledge they have of the individual. I shall put one Father or other in
charge of editing the biographical sketch which will constitute the most edifying part of
our history. (Vol. 9 p.124)
When one of our Oblate brothers die, a history too often dies with
him. Mazenod understands more than we seem to appreciate today, the value of that
history for the Oblates of the future. It is a way of both preserving and celebrating the
spirit of the Congregation and being able to learn how the Spirit expresses our charisma
in a new day, in a new son of Mazenod.
May 28th 1843
I want to tell you something in confidence. I have been assured that
you do not feed your community well enough, that you are giving your people such small
quantities of meat that there is not enough to furnish adequate portions, that while your
men do not complain aloud, they are indeed suffering, especially since they have been able
to make a comparison with what is done in other communities...Examine this point
attentively because even if there should not be profusion, it is indispensable that there
should be enough. (Vol. 10 p. 13)
Maybe Mazenod learnt from Napoleon that an army marches on its stomach. It
is revealing to discover the Founder's concern over matters that some might consider so
mundane and menial. Sometimes our picture of saints is all about their preaching the glory
of God's kingdom and the need for the bread of heaven. But no one can do much without the
proper amount of the bread of this earth.
May 29th 1855
You no doubt already know of the desperate situation of our
establishment in Buffalo whose superior has not been able to find the means to make the
payment in the month of May. In this cruel extremity, we hope nevertheless that he will
have been able to sustain a legally valid opposition to compulsory expropriation.
(Vol2 p. 96)
The burden of administration always weighs heavily on the missionary. So
often when he feels that he should be out visiting the sick or preaching the Gospel, he is
in his office paying the bills, sorting through accounts,balancing the budget. The Founder
carried the same anxiety for the first overseas missions. They began showing a profit in
enthusiasm and faith and a deficit in resources. Mazenod had enormous faith, but he also
made sure that the legal system gave the Buffalo mission some breathing space, to allow
God time to find the funds. The Bishop shows us that to be a person of faith does not mean
that one can dispense with being a person of the world.
May 30th 1832
Nothing could be more legitimate than to make one's desires known,
but there is also the aspect that is proper to put one's confidence in the wisdom and
lights that the good God gives to superiors. It would be a a grave disorder to cherish so
exclusive a love for one kind of ministry that one could not be placed elsewhere,even for
a short period, without getting upset about it...It will go hard with anyone who turns up
his nose at the least important tasks because he believes himself suitable for more lofty
ones. (Vol. 8 p.62)
We like to quote the Pope's epithet about the Oblates,"specialists in
difficult missions" but sometimes that can turn out to be "difficult specialists
in their special missions."It is human enough to become attached to our work,our
people,our parish.To not become attached seems a lack of
commitment. However, as every Oblate knows, the cost of such attachment comes when he is
asked to move. We take moving for granted, and yet, for many of us, it is the greatest
cross of our lives. Yet, to move is saying something important about our lives, that we
are dispensable, that we are not building a kingdom by ourselves, that we are team
builders of God's kingdom and we are shift workers. The work never belongs to us. The
Founder wanted apostles open to a new call,never to presume that this God of Abraham and
Moses would want us to settle down.
May 31st 1826
Besides is it fitting that the Bishops appear to join together to
overwhelm with the weight of their authority a priest who employs all the moments of his
life to defend religion,who alone attacks impiety with immortal writings. Can one call
this priest writing on theological matters a man without a mission? St.Jerome did not have
anyone but himself. He has sometimes an opinion contrary to that of St. Augustine. I am
not aware that this holy bishop accused him of being a man without a mission. Such are
some reasons which would have prevented me from subscribing to this declaration, whatever
those who had the idea to write it think to the contrary, and I do not consider myself any
less a good Frenchman than they, and whoever else besides.
(Vol. 7 p.108)
The priest who is the subject of this letter is Jean Marie Lamennais, who
was a famous French priest who angered the Bishops of his time by insisting that the
Church should be separate from the State, and that liberalism was not inimical to the
church. The bishops wanted to silence him, and the Founder expresses his own independent
opinion of the matter. He is not going to condemn a man who he believes has the Gospel at
heart. When we think of the political complexities of our day, the anguish over issues
like abortion and welfare reform, we can take heart that though Mazenod lived through some
of the greatest political upheavals in French history, he did not disengage. He kept
a vision of what the gospel demanded and tried to steer his course from that. He tried to
live the adage, "In what is essential, unity, in all else, diversity, and in all
things, charity."
February 17th 1826
You have let the Society down;your defection has not only been a
scandal,you have hurt her substantially by the bad impression your fault must have made on
the feeble souls who are not ready for such blows;and in quite another manner,you have let
God down by trifling with what is sacred amongst men since in scorn of your engagement,you
have taken counsel only with your exalted imagination...Your letter forsooth had to dampen
my rightful joy with a bitter sorrow that you certainly ought to have spared me. (p.
36 Vol. 7 Letters "To Bro. Nicholas Riccardi Feb 17 1826)
Lest we think that the Founder,on the very day that the Church approved
his Congregation's Rule,basked in the glory of the achievement, we read this stinging
rebuke to an Oblate novice who had deserted the community with the excuse to care for his
ailing mother. Mazenod is a man of stormy passions as is evident here,excoriating the poor
novice for every possible offense that the Founder can think of. We can identify easily
enough with the hurt when other Oblates, often close friends,have walked away from us for
whatever reason. On the day Oblates rightly celebrate their foundation, Mazenod's rage
might remind us that there is much in our hearts that needs healing, and that
righteous rage can too easily destroy our sense of gratitude and inner peace. Anger
doesn't make for much of a celebration.
February 18th 1826
He whom God has used to draw them (the rules) up disappears;it is
certain today that he was merely the mechanical instrument which the Spirit of God put
into play in order to show the path he wanted to be followed by those whom he had
predestined and preordained for the work of his mercy, in calling them to form and
maintain our poor little and modest Society. Somewhat puny as we are, being weak and few
in number, we nonetheless have an existence in the Church no less than that of the most
celebrated bodies, the most holy societies. It is thus we are constituted. Just now I can
say quietly what I will say to you out loud when the brief is delivered;know your
dignity...In the name of God,let us be saints.
(1826 To Father Tempier Vol. 7 page 40)
Those who remember the famous Mazenod sermon to the poor in the Madeleine
church in Aix will remember that same call "Know your dignity." Only this time,
the Founder is clearly aware that the poor he wants to call forth is his own small band of
missionaries that the Pope has just approved as a Society in the Church. This puny,weak,
few in numbers group, this group that has suffered defections and set backs, is now given
the seal of papal grace. For Mazenod it means that it has a dignity and a calling
that is never a function of numbers, but always a function of being faithful. He dreams of
a time when numbers will increase, but the Oblates were not founded because they were a
great success. They were founded as a small,hardly important group in the church
that was given a destiny to grow into by the Church's call. In times of testing,
especially when we celebrate our foundation, our initial poverty and insignificance
is a reality check against feeling our lack of numbers or lamenting that we are not like
we once were. This is what we once were: puny, weak, few, a saint's dream, and little
else.
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