Ad Honorem Immaculatae Conceptionis Mariae Oblatio

13 Pious Schools, which was to him “more dear than life”; he does not conceal the enormous suffering caused by the departure from the much loved Pia- rist community. This period of his life, already associated with the “vision imprinted upon my soul” of the new institute (FDR 6), he describes in very dramatic words: “Furthermore enormous confusions, scruples, doubts, an- guishes, fears distressed me and nearly tortured me. For who would have so lax a conscience, that he would pass without them from the state of vows, even simple, to a mere secular [state]?” (FDR 3). In this context, the holy Marian Founder includes the Oblatio in the FDR as yet another ex- pression of his experience both mystical, community-founding, and char- ismatic: mystical, because he made the act of the Oblatio out of a divine inspiration (“Divine Majesty suggested to me, that while I was going to be released from these, in the same act I would bind myself freely to God by other vows, which I did by offering myself ”, FDR 3); community-founding, because by this act of Offering himself he initiated the Congregation; and charismatic, because the gift that he received from the Holy Spirit was for the good of the Church. The place of the creation, the time and the purpose of the Oblatio We do not know the exact time when St. Stanislaus Papczyński wrote the Oblatio . The place of its creation is similarly unknown. The date and place provided at the end of the document (Kazimierz near Krakow, in the Residence of the Poor Fathers of Our Lady of the Order of the Pious Schools, [...] on December 11, 1670) refer only to the time and place of the text’s [public] reading. One thing is certain: the Oblatio was created prior to Fr. Stanislaus’s receiving the indult of departure and it was prepared so carefully as to include all of the essential elements of a religious profession. The author himself testifies to this, writing in the FDR that he recited the formula [of the vows] at the time of receiving the indult of departure, in the presence of the Piarist Vicar Provincial, Fr. Michael Kraus and other people who were in attendance. The Oblatio is the profession of religious vows in the new Marian com- munity, used not only by St. Stanislaus on December 11, 1670, but also by candidates who joined the Marian Congregation later. The Founder clearly writes about it in FDR, as he reports the religious vows of the first candi- date and also provides the same formula of the profession: “as the above