Leaving Nothing Undared:
What the CCRR Awakens in Me as an Oblate Associate

For over thirty years, my husband, Deacon Brad, and I have held the title “Oblate Associate” — a title that, on paper, describes a formal commitment to a religious congregation’s charism. In lived experience, those two words embody many of the values I have carried into my diocesan ministry and a sense of belonging that continues to challenge my faith journey. What draws me back, year after year, to the Constitutions and Rules (CCRR) of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate is not that it was written with me in mind — it wasn’t. It was written for vowed men bound by poverty, chastity, obedience, and perseverance. And yet, in its pages, I hear a call to a way of life that reflects my desire to be an intentional disciple and my passion for sharing the Gospel.

The Preface in today’s edition of the CCRR, as in all previous editions, is the one written by St. Eugene de Mazenod more than two hundred years ago. Here I have encountered the heart of the founder, in his concern for those who would join him in mission and his passion for those they were called to serve. For St. Eugene, the two reasons the whole Oblate way of life exists are the sanctification of his companions and the salvation of souls. Those two aims — to become holy and to spend that holiness for others — distil the whole of the Christian life. As an Associate, I am bound by the same call: to grow in love of God and to let that love empty itself out toward the poor and the most abandoned.

What inspires me most concretely is the founder’s summary of that second aim, his motto: “Among yourselves, charity — charity — charity, and outside, zeal for the salvation of souls.” I hear in that sequence a corrective to a temptation I recognize in myself — the temptation to perform zeal outwardly, in public ministry, while neglecting charity inwardly, in my own household and community. St. Eugene insists on the order: charity first, among us, and only then zeal, poured out. My marriage, my Oblate community, my diocesan colleagues — these are where charity must be real before zeal means anything. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1, NRSV).

I also find myself returning to the CCRR’s insistence that the Oblate life unites “head, heart, hands, and feet” in service to the poor. That phrase has become, for me, a kind of examination of conscience. It isn’t enough to think rightly about the poor or to feel compassion for them without letting that conviction move my hands to act and my feet onto the road. The CCRR does not let me stop at good intentions.

None of this was written for a laywoman working in diocesan ministry in Saskatchewan. Yet thirty years later, I no longer read the CCRR as a document about someone else’s vocation. I read it as a mirror, showing me what it looks like to leave nothing undared for the Kingdom — St. Eugene’s phrase, now, by belonging, mine as well.

Leaving nothing undared for the Kingdom,

— Dr. Christine Taylor, Oblate Associate, OMI Lacombe Province