09/06/2026
Homily of Fr. Luis Ignacio Rois Alonso, OMI Superior General on the appointment of Fr. Hipólito OLEA TINOCO, O.M.I.
Dear brothers and sisters,
We celebrate in this simple ceremony a new step for this beloved Oblate community of Aix-en-Provence, the community of the mother house whose superior has the privilege and also the responsibility of being the successor of Saint Eugene de Mazenod, our Founder. Aix is the only community of which Saint Eugene was local superior before becoming the superior general. After him, many have served as superiors in this house, and many times they have done so in the midst of trials that were difficult to manage. They teach us that we must rid ourselves of everything that slows down our following of Christ. They also teach us that we must persevere and run toward the goal with our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. The Founder wanted to reproduce in our Oblate communities the first apostolic community, in which everyone fixed their gaze on Jesus, allowing themselves to be transformed by Him in order to bear witness to God's love to the most abandoned. This is the model that we, too, are called to reproduce.
I would now like to express my gratitude. Thank you to Father Paolo, who has served as superior for the last three years. Thank you for all the effort and dedication with which you have given a part of your life. Thank you also to each and every one of the Oblates of the community who have collaborated with him, trying to live, according to our Constitutions and Rules, the mission that the Congregation has entrusted to you. Thank you to all of you, friends of the community, who have contributed your grain of sand to this task of illuminating Aix with the light of the Gospel from our beloved Church of the Mission.
Thank you also to Father Hipolito, who has accepted this new mission. Your task will be to care for the brothers to help them live their mission and their Oblate religious and community life with happiness and joy. If the first reading invited us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, in the Gospel, Jesus invites us to trust in the Holy Spirit. Many times we do not know how to respond to the urgencies of the mission. In those moments, we must all open ourselves to discernment and walk together, synodally, to understand what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us. It is the Spirit who reminds us that Jesus is walking with us. It is the Spirit who helps us to offer our lives in oblation to collaborate with Jesus in his mission of announcing the Gospel to the poorest.
Hipolito, the mission of the superior is to make the peace of Christ reign in the hearts of the brothers. A peace that is not the peace of the world, in which someone always imposes themselves over another, someone emerges victorious and the other humiliated. Neither is it the absence of conflicts nor the peace of the graveyard. Peace is a gift and an art to be welcomed and learned from the Risen Lord. It is the peace that overcomes our fears and our weaknesses with humility and trust in God. It is a peace—as Pope Francis* likes to say—that is disarmed, because it learns to remove from our hearts every violent response, every hurtful word, every presumption of always being right. It is disarming because it humbly places itself at the service of the other, because it does not see in the other an enemy or an adversary, but someone to love and serve. The mission of the local superior is to be a sign of that peace which recognizes the presence of the Risen Lord among us. His mission is to help all his brothers to be, like Christ, peacemakers.
We are celebrating 200 years of our Constitutions and Rules. Let yourself be inspired by them. Let yourself be shaped by them in prayer and with the help of the brothers. The CC and RR will help you evaluate your response to the mission of service that we entrust to you today. May the CC and RR be what helps you find evangelical ways to live fraternity. For the good of the poor whom we serve, for the good of the Congregation and of all the members of the Oblate family, for the good of the Church, try to embody the ideal that our first fathers lived. May everyone who passes through Aix be able to breathe and touch our charism in your way of living it.
I ask you to walk together to make the dream of the Founder and his first companions a reality. They wanted to be humble and holy missionaries of the poor, living charity and a passionate love for the mission of announcing Jesus Christ to the most abandoned. Let us learn from Mary, who knew how to be a mother and a disciple, a superior and a humble servant, weak and strong at the foot of the cross, mother of the praying community and a woman of joyful and attentive service, always faithful to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit to receive Christ and give Him to the world as our only hope. As Mother of our entire charismatic family, she continues to accompany us. We ask her for her prayer for us so that, like Saint Eugene and our blessed Oblates, we may be the joyful and holy missionaries of the poor. May she make our community a school and an enclosure of the peace of the Risen Lord. Thank you, and a blessed mission to everyone.
Praised be Jesus Christ and Mary Immaculate.
Luis Ignacio Rois Alonso, OMI Superior General
