Father Dehon, A Man of Oblation through Love

When I offered to write this article, I did so because, of the various topics suggested, this one, in my estimation, gets at the heart of Leo John Dehon. He is pre-eminently a man of oblation out of love. I want to reflect on the idea of oblation as being central in Fr. Dehon's spirituality. For him a life of oblation flows from his conviction that he is/we are infinitely loved by God. This love calls for a return of love. In the fundamental dispositions of Jesus and Mary Fr. Dehon finds the model for responding to this call to return love by a life of oblation. A life of oblation for Fr. Dehon is to be lived not so much to restore justice because our God has been offended, but more so because God is so lovable and deserves all the love of our hearts. Furthermore, any genuine life of oblation lived out of love for God must entail a loving service of God's people, our brothers and sisters.

The paragraph above is really an outline of this paper and what follows will, I hope, put flesh on those bones.

The concept of oblation is central to the life and spirituality of Fr. Dehon. I thoroughly enjoyed Fr. Ledure's expression of that fact in his book Prier 15 Jours avec Leon Dehon. On page 89 he says „L'oblation a porte la vie spirituelle du fondateur.” („Oblation carried the spiritual life of the founder” - emphasis added.) We know how significant it was for him from the fact that the name he first gave to the congregation he founded was „Oblates of the Sacred Heart.” When the congregation was suppressed and shortly afterwards resurrected, he was told not to use the title „Oblates.” Fr. Dehon obeyed but the title remained close to his heart. We read in his diary entry for June 11, 1892: „(I had asked permission of the Holy Office to go back to the name of Oblates. Cardinal Monaco sent a response to the bishop, in very harsh terms, that the regulations laid down in 1884 concerning the name and regarding contacts with the sisters were still in force)” (N.Q. V, 111v). We know that he had to settle for the title „Priests” of the Sacred Heart, but for him it was all the same. In his diary entry of February 16, 1886 he writes: „Priest of the Sacred Heart—priest victim, true priest: it's all the same. This is what we must be.” Victim is not an acceptable word among us in our time, but it carried the concept Fr. Dehon espoused. He even said that in Marseille they could have gotten away with being called „victims” but not where he was. Whatever word is used, what Fr. Dehon wanted to do and what he wanted his followers to do was to offer themselves to the Father in union with Jesus out of love and to be at the Father's disposition. Therefore we read in our Constitutions # 26: „As Priests of the Sacred Heart, we live the heritage of Father Dehon…. In following him…we are called in the Church to seek and lead as the one thing necessary, a life of union with the oblation of Christ” (Emphasis added).

Fr. Dehon is a man who is completely taken with the fact that God loves him/us tremendously. We all know at some level of awareness and believe that God loves us, but the grace which Fr. Dehon received was the deep, personal conviction that God loves him and each of us with a love that is beyond our ability to grasp. Instead, what we need to do is surrender and let ourselves be held in this love. Only someone blessed with the realization of God's deep love for him could have Jesus speak to us as Fr. Dehon did in his book of meditations The Life of Love: „My Passion derives all its value, all its merit, not so much from my external sufferings, but from my Heart, from the love which inspired my sacrifice. I wished to endure these extraordinary sufferings in order to prove my love and to spare nothing in order to gain your love in return. Since I committed myself to my Father to suffer everything for you, I fulfilled a vow of love in all the circumstances of my Passion” (OSP, II, 41, cf. P.J McGuire, S.C.J., How Father Dehon Read the Passion of Christ, pg. 10).

In another place Fr. Dehon writes: „Jesus Christ is really, in the mysteries of His Passion, the book written on the outside and on the inside, and which are the letters that are written in this book? Only these: Love: the whips, the thorns, the nails have written them in letters of blood on his divine flesh; but we can not content ourselves with reading and admiring this divine writing from the outside; let us penetrate to the heart and we will see an even greater marvel: it is the always being poured out and never exhausted love which counts as nothing all which it suffers and all which is given without tiring” (OSP II, 305) .

Jesus-Christ est reellement, dans les mysteres de sa Passion, le livre ecrit a l'exterieur et a l'interieur, et quelles sont les letters que nous voyons tracees dans ce livre? Celles-la seules: Amour. Les fouets, les epines, les clous les ont ecrites en caracteres de sang sur sa chair divine; mais ne nous contentons pas de lire et d'admirer cette ecriture divine a l'exterieur; penetrons jusqu'au coeur, et nous verrons une merveille bien plus grande: c'est l'amour inepuisable et inepuise qui compte pour rien tout ce qu'il souffre et qui se donne sans se lasser (OSP II, 305 cf. Ledure, « Prier 15 Jours avec Leon Dehon », pg. 91).

Moved by the realization of this tremendous love of God for us incarnate in Jesus and symbolized by His pierced Heart, Fr. Dehon was impelled by God's grace to love in return. „He saw the refusal of the love of Christ as the deepest cause of human misery” (Constitutions, # 4), and so he wanted to dedicate himself to returning love for that love which is always given first.

In the apostle Paul's letter to the Philippians chapter 2 verse 4 we read his exhortation to „have that mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus”. These words certainly entered into Fr. Dehon's reflection and he was guided by the way of life they suggest. As Fr. Dehon sought for a model and for words that would pull together what he felt called to by God's grace in returning love for love, Fr. Dehon embraced the words „Ecce Venio” (Behold I come). These words come from Psalm 40 and are placed in the mouth of Jesus by the author of the letter to the Hebrews when he seeks to name the disposition that the Son of God exhibited upon coming into this world: „Behold, I come to do your will”. The Son in loving obedience to the Father becomes human to teach us how much we are loved by God and how to live so that we can love God and one another in return. To do that perfectly the Son places Himself at the complete disposition of the Father out of love. That is what Fr. Dehon seized upon as being at the heart of the incarnation and the gospel of Jesus. That became the driving force and the goal of his entire life: to live the spirit of the „Ecce Venio,” to live a life of total offering of self (oblation) out of love to the Father in imitation of and in union with the Son.

Another passage from Sacred Scripture that is close to Fr. Dehon's heart as an expression of his commitment to a life of oblation is the phrase that Luke the evangelist places in Mary's mouth as a response to the Father's invitation to be the Mother of the Son of God. She says: „Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word.” The Latin words for this phrase „Ecce ancilla…” are often found in Fr. Dehon's writings joined to those ascribed to Jesus „Ecce venio.” In a way, Mary's response must precede that of the Son. Without Mary's act of oblation the incarnation would not come to pass, at least not as we know it. And so for Fr. Dehon these two expressions, the Ecce ancilla of Mary and the Ecce venio of Jesus give voice to the vocation he believed he received from God and they indicate for him a way of life. In his Spiritual Directory I, 3 Fr. Dehon writes: „our whole vocation, our purpose, our duty, our promises, are found in these words: Ecce Venio…, Ecce Ancilla….” (Cf. Constitutions # 6). It has always struck me that these two phrases carry the masculine and feminine aspects of the life of oblation. The Ecce Venio indicates an agent who undertakes an activity in loving availability to the will of God. The Ecce Ancilla indicates the loving disposition in a person to be the willing recipient of the action of God. The feminine and masculine aspects of oblation were certainly present in the life of Fr. Dehon in the activities which he undertook and in the things which he endured.

It is important to remember that what made it possible for Fr. Dehon to live a life of oblation as he did was the fact that he was completely convinced of and totally overwhelmed by the realization of God's infinite love for him. Because he was grounded in the certainty of that love of God for him, he had complete and utter trust in God and that enabled him to surrender himself to be at the disposition of God to do or to bear whatever God asked of him. P.J. McGuire expresses this beautifully: „The passive moment of being loved is a necessary condition for the active moment of loving” (Cf. Charism and Mission, pg. 34).

What dominated Fr. Dehon in his desire to live the life of oblation was the dynamic grace and power of love: God's love for him, for us and his love for God and God's people. Fr. Dehon is a man of oblation through love. He often refers to the centrality of love in his faith life. In the introduction to his book of meditations The Priestly Heart of Jesus he says: „Devotion to the Sacred Heart is connected with every mystery and every phase of Our Lord's life. It explains everything in the one word: 'Love.'” At the end of his retreat in August, 1886 he makes various resolutions and love is the key. He writes: „My resolution is to live and to die as a true victim of the Heart of Jesus. To do this I will maintain complete abandonment of my entire self to the Heart of Jesus. I will have a filial confidence in him, giving myself over to his will and his good pleasure in all things. I will do everything by love, in the spirit of reparation” (NQ III, 51). This resolution clearly shows his desire to be an oblate, a victim, for Fr. Dehon it is the same thing and that out of the motive of love. More succinctly he writes on May 5, 1888: „Pure love and immolation that is my life and my only path.” (NQ IV, 39r) He explains the coat of arms which he has chosen for the congregation which emphasizes again Fr. Dehon's constant themes of love and immolation. His diary entry for May 23, 1886 reads: „For our coat of arms I have chosen the Sacred Heart on the cross. Is not our purpose immolation by love offered to his loving immolated Heart?” (NQ III, 26).

I believe it is significant to note that when Fr. Dehon speaks of immolation it must be understood as flowing from and being the price of living a life of oblation. Fr. Dehon is not one who encourages extraordinary penances that one undertakes on his or her own. Fidelity to being at God's disposition to carry out God's will for us and accepting the sufferings that come into our lives because of that fidelity will bring the cross into our lives under God's mastery and not because of what we plan. That, I believe is what Fr. Dehon was getting at in his often quoted saying: „Let God swing the whip” (Cf. P.J. McGuire, Father Dehon: Three Letters and a Note, pg. 9).

When other authors find words to express what is central to his spirituality he incorporates their work and integrates it with his own. On October 14, 1886 he writes: „Reading the life of Bishop Pie, I came across a beautiful synthesis of religion: religion is summed up in the reciprocal love of Jesus Christ and humanity. Christ loved us (Eph. 5:2), this is the whole of dogma. You shall love, this is the whole of morality. God is love—To believe in love, this is the whole of our faith: We have believed in love (1 John 4: 16). To perform acts of love, this is the fulfillment of the commandments: Whoever loved has fulfilled the law (Rom. 13: 8). Under this dual title, the Heart of Jesus is the summation of all religion. The Heart of Jesus: the basis of love and the object of love” (NQ III, 60). Later on in March, 1888 he quotes Joubert: „I love this thought of Joubert: 'To love God and to win his love, to love our fellow man and to win their love, that is morality and religion; in one and the other, love is everything: the goal, the principle, the means.'”

However, Fr. Dehon had a mind of his own about what he wanted to share as the core of his spirituality. As he felt free to incorporate and integrate the statements of others which named well his own convictions, he had the moral courage to disagree with or differ from those pillars of spirituality whose path diverged from his. One of the more notable persons with whom he differed was St. Ignatius of Loyola. Fr. Dehon writes: „I have a profound attraction for the Exercises and I have never ceased to love them. However, they contain something that doesn't go along with my temperament or my grace, that is, they make us wait several days before speaking to us about the love of God. Saint Ignatius said, 'Man was created to praise, honor and serve God and, in this way, save his soul.' I would not want to start there, and my heart tells me then that man was created above all to love God” (NHV, IV, 125; St.D. 25.2, 64 Cf. P.J. McGuire, S.C.J., Foundation and Re-foundation (1877-1888), pg. 53-54). Love is everything for Fr. Dehon and he consistently insists upon it.

Perhaps the closest Fr. Dehon comes to calling himself (and the members of his congregation) a man of oblation through love is in a brief note he wrote in April of the last year of his life. He contrasts the victim of justice and the victim of love and unequivocally claims that we like Saint Therese of the Child Jesus are to be motivated by love. He writes: „Victim of Justice and Victim of Love. A soul, moved by the Passion of our Lord and by the sight of the sins of the world, can offer itself to God as a victim of justice, to be united to the Passion of our Lord, to make reparation for the outrages committed against God, and to save souls by making amends for their faults. Providence permits these souls to undergo some reparative sufferings. Such is, I believe, the offering which some congregations of victim souls make, like those at Marseilles and Namur.

The way of Sister Therese of the Child Jesus is somewhat different. She does not offer herself as a victim of justice, she offers herself as a victim or holocaust to the merciful love of Jesus. This is abandonment to the will of Jesus in the spirit of love and immolation. Should it please Jesus to ask this soul for some reparative suffering, she is fully ready to carry the cross for the love of Jesus and for souls. Even love itself has sufferings. The loving soul suffers from its own imperfections, it suffers to see Jesus loved so little and offended so often. Its love grows to the martyrdom of love. Our own spirit is the 'Life of love and immolation' (Constitutions, Chapter Two). The immolation of love is the dominant characteristic here, though it is partly reparative immolation. We are born of the spirit of Margaret Mary while we are close to that of Sister Therese. Let us follow the call that grace inspires in us.” (NQ. XLV, 53-57; Dehoniana 20 [September, 1975]: 146-147. Cf. P.J. McGuire, S.C.J., Father Dehon: Three Letters and a Note, pgs. 15-16).

I have quoted many words of Fr. Dehon to indicate that he truly was/is a man of oblation through love. He himself expresses his total commitment to God with all its intensity in a very short sentence: „Lord, I want to serve you out of love, every day, every hour” (NQ. IV, 102v) [February 22-23, 1890].

The last point I want to make in this article is that Fr. Dehon's being a man of oblation out of love did not close him in on himself, lost in a solitary contemplation of God's love. His love for God drove him to serve lovingly his brothers and sisters, especially the poor. This entailed a true conversion in Fr. Dehon who came from a rather well to do family. As Jesus was not able to limit himself to one commandment when He was asked which was the greatest, so Fr. Dehon could not separate a call to love God from an impassioned dedication to serving God's people. A clear indication of that is the title he gave to the magazine he initiated: „The Reign of the Sacred Heart in Souls and in Societies.”

Fr. Dehon learned from the French School of Spirituality the so called „prayer of affection.” Its purpose was to try to be in touch with the feelings, the emotions which were in Jesus in the various situations He encountered and to reflect prayerfully upon them and to imitate them. In his meditations and prayers Fr. Dehon very often speaks as it were for Jesus, putting in Jesus' mouth words which express what he believes were the sentiments of Jesus so that we might learn from them and put them into practice. I found a particular place where Fr. Dehon beautifully connects love for Jesus with service of God's people. Fr. Dehon places these words on the lips of Jesus: „The apostles and disciples answered my call…. Now I turn to you. See, my children are hungry for the word of God and the sacraments. Do you not have pity on them? The works of the apostolate and of teaching require people of good will…. Look at the discord in society. Who will stand between the rich and the poor, to preach to both of them their duties of justice and charity? You see that the abuses of one side provoke the revolt of the other; you hear threatening demands of envy. More apostles of justice and peace are needed…. Do you not want to lend your hand to the work of salvation? Will you remain deaf to my call? If you love me, feed my lambs” (Emphasis added) [OSP I, 197-198].

Our Constitutions express this commitment to a life of oblation, a life of union with our loving God, that is to be lived out as it was by Fr. Dehon in „ministry to the lowly and the humble, the workers and the poor (Cf. Souvenirs XV)” (Constitutions # 31). We also read there: „This union with Christ (Fr. Dehon's), which sprang from the depths of his heart, had to be actualized in his whole life, above all in his apostolate. This apostolate was characterized by the greatest care for people, particularly the most deprived, and by concern about actively remedying the pastoral inadequacies of the Church of his time” (Constitutions #5). „In following Him (Jesus) we must live in real solidarity with people” (Constitutions # 29).

As we celebrate the occasion of the beatification of Father Leo John Dehon - this man of oblation out of love - we thank God for the gift he was and is to the Church and to us as members of his Congregation, the Priests of the Sacred Heart. We pray that we might fulfill the hope expressed for us by Pope Leo XIII in the decree of praise for the Congregation issued February 25, 1888 and quoted by Fr. Dehon in his spiritual testament to his religious: „This institution will be like a bouquet of flowers for the Heart of Jesus, if its members are united and entirely devoted to the Sacred Heart, and if they establish the reign of His love in themselves and among the people whom they will evangelize” (Spiritual Directory, pg. 293).

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End note: I want to express my gratitude to P.J. McGuire, S.C.J. whose translations for various Dehonian texts I used in this article. The two places where I have included the original French text are occasions where I translated the text into English myself and I would want readers to be able to refer to the original text for themselves. I also want to thank Fathers Manzoni, Ledure and McGuire for all the research and study which they have done on the life of Fr. Dehon. I personally owe them a great debt of gratitude, as do all the members of our Congregation.