"We live in an age of inventions. We need no longer climb laboriously up flights of stairs; in well-to-do houses there are lifts. And I was determined to find a lift to carry me to Jesus, for I was far too small to climb the steep stairs of perfection. So I sought in holy Scripture some idea of what this life I wanted would be, and I read these words: 'Whosoever is a little one, come to me.' It is your arms, Jesus, that are the lift to carry me to heaven. And so there is no need for me to grow up: I must stay little and become less and less."
Mary is the first altar, and therefore the first sanctuary, where we have been ransomed. We venerate this altar, this sanctuary, the place of our first salvation, and the wonderful temple in which Jesus, for nine months, fulfilled His law of love and devotion to God. Already in the womb of Mary, Jesus offered Himself to His Eternal Father in a spirit of adoration, in a spirit of obedience to His will, in a spirit of love for the Father and for the humanity He came to ransom. He offered himself in a spirit of self-giving, ready to accomplish all that the Father might ask of Him, and ready to give of Himself to poor humanity that they might dispose of Him according to their needs.
At the core of each Oblate’s form of oblation is the Cross, for it is the greatest possible demonstration of the gratuitous, infinite live of the Father and Jesus for us. As St. Paul did, Oblates draw from the Cross the strength to live and be bearers of the love and hope of Christ through their apostolic donation, their will to participate in the immolative life of the Master, and, for the consecrated Oblates, their vows lived in their true spirit.
