An Oblate, which means who?

The word Oblate is a term that many find difficult to understand when they first meet the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Missionaries? Of course, we know what that means... to work in the foreign missions. And this missionary identity of the oblates accompanies them wherever they serve. See for yourself who we are and what we do in the Assumption Province of Missionary Oblates in Canada.

“We will devote our talents, our activity, our very lives, to our apostolic mission in the Church” (Constitution 26).

Another Oblate missionary serving in Assumption Province for 33 years is Fr. Adam Filas OMI. As it turns out, Canada is not the dream of everyone who comes here.

"I never thought about Canada, even during my formation. I thought and dreamed about Madagascar. When I was a deacon I was told by the Superior that I had no chance to go on foreign missions because the superiors saw me as a mission preacher in Poland. It happened then that Fr. Johnson, then provincial of the Grandin Province in Canada, came to Poland and brought a message from the Superior General that he wanted to send two young missionaries to Hudson Bay. Of course I listened to this but it absolutely did not occur to me to be a volunteer. My very good confrere and friend, at that time Deacon Wiesław Krótki urged me for a long time to go with him. Finally I agreed and together we arrived in Canada."

It turns out that first impressions can sometimes be decisive. Asked how he met the oblates, Fr. Adam said: "I met the Oblates while I was still in elementary school, I was in the sixth grade at the time. Our parish priest from Raba Wyżna near Nowy Targ invited the Oblates to preach a parish mission. The way they conducted them appealed to me so much that even then, as an altar server, thinking about the priesthood, I thought that if I were to become a priest it would only be an Oblate."

As I mentioned at the beginning, Fr. Adam has been ministering in Canada for more than 30 years. What has this ministry been like over the years? "I flew to Canada with the idea that I would be a missionary in the far north. After six months of preparation in Winnipeg, Wiesław and I traveled north, where we began to learn the Inuktitut language, not yet knowing English very well. After a year and a half, I had to leave the north for health reasons. When I got better, my superiors sent me to minister at three English Parishes and among the Native Americans in Saskatchewan. After a few years I became a pastor in Mississauga where the idea of building a Millennium project of the Canadian Polish community, which is the parish of St. Eugene in Brampton, began to be born. After 16 years in parish ministry at St. Eugene’s and the completion of the Brampton project, in 2015 I became the Director of the Missionary Association of Mary Immaculate in our Province."

It can be said that history likes to repeat itself, and Fr. Adam has returned to a strictly missionary ministry. What does it look like from the perspective of the Missionary Association?

"I have to admit that it is a pretty difficult ministry. For the reason that when we minister in a parish we rather expect that it is the people who come to us. However, when it comes to my ministry I have to keep looking for these people, thinking how to reach them, to inspire them with the charism of St. Eugene and invite them to cooperate in the work of evangelization. This is difficult, because it requires a constant effort to seek and attract people to cooperate in this work. I have always wanted to be a missionary, and I am glad that after these years of pastoral work in various parishes, I can now devote myself to the cause of missions, because with the missions is my heart. I'm happy that I can contribute to helping more people get to know the charism of our Congregation through our formation programs for Friends of the Oblate Missions. I am happy that we already have more than a thousand Friends of the Oblate Mission in the Assumption Province from Vancouver to Ottawa, and that we have many benefactors supporting our missionary work. This is like building an extended Oblate family in a situation when there are fewer and fewer vocations to the priesthood, when we have to rely more on the laity, who by their baptism are also missionaries, although we have to constantly remind them of this and inspire them with this missionary spirit."

(TJ/DJ; photos private album of Fr. Adam)