Daring to Love Like Eugene

We never know how our ability to love and bless can affect others around us.

Recently, as I was being evacuated out of Yellowknife after a workshop in Deliné, NWT, I found myself halted on the bridge boarding the plane, right behind a father, mother and their tall, athletic son. I observed the son gently reach forward to straighten out the collar on his dad’s shirt. The father turned and gazed at his son with a look that I could only interpret as a mixture of love, gratitude and admiration. Then the son stepped back, put an arm around his mother, and said in her ear, “You are the best mom, you are the best cook.” I could not resist piping up behind them, “And I bet he is the best son.” The mother immediately exclaimed loudly, “He is!”

I wanted to tell them I would share this incident with others, but the line suddenly started again, and the family disappeared into the plane. I was left with a feeling of warmth, energy and gratitude at seeing familial love lived out before my eyes.

Children have three deep human needs as they grow up – to be loved, to belong, and to be valued. I am sure these parents blessed their son with a love that met these needs, and now, he could bless his parents with the same love that he experienced.

During my Aix experience and deeper exposure to the founder’s life and legacy years ago, I was struck by his unique ability to express his love and affection for his parents, and mother especially, as well as his Oblates, the poor, and in the end, all of humanity. That impression was deepened by recently reading the volume “Nihil linquendum inausum” – An Oblate Breviary edited by Fr. Fabio Ciardi OMI. Over and over again, Eugene’s writings, and that of others, reveal that he had a heart as big as the world, and was not afraid to show and share it.

Between our knowledge of Eugene’s love for us, and our experience of the unconditional love of Jesus for us, hopefully we can all move to that place where we are so secure in the Father’s love, that we can also bless those around us with the same love that we have received, and make the world a better place, one incident, like the one above, at a time.

Were every child in this world loved as they need to be loved in their early years, most of our problems with addiction, crime and depression, would largely disappear.

Perhaps for us, St. Eugene’s famous challenge about “leaving nothing undared” could also be rendered “daring to love like Eugene.”

By +Bishop Sylvain Lavoie, OMI