One of the conditions of the Missionaries taking on the shrine of ND du Laus as a permanent mission was that when the cold weather put an end to the pilgrimages, the Missionaries would spend the winter months preaching parish missions in the surrounding villages.
Thus Fathers Tempier, Mye and Maunier preached a mission in in the village of Rognac, from14 November to 5 December 1819. It was a difficult mission because the parish was divided and the mission had been imposed on the parish by the Archbishop and the people were badly prepared for the mission. Henri Tempier wrote to Eugene:
I hope that you will be pleased with our apostolic life; …. you will know that we made our trip on foot in beautiful weather, in spite of our fears. Upon arriving at Rognac, we went to adore the Blessed Sacrament, then we had a light lunch at the Mayor’s home, and from there we went to visit two other homes which were recommended to us; in the evening, after a frugal meal that we had in the parish rectory, we found beds exactly like we wanted, three bad straw mattresses, that they obtained for the three missionaries only after having scoured the countryside, three chairs and three poor blankets.
This town is very divided, but I hope that we will do some good here, more by our life of poverty, which strives to be in line to the utmost possible degree with that of our good Master, than we will by our sermons.
Letter from Henri Tempier to Eugene de Mazenod, 14 November 1819,
Oblate Writings II.2, n. 19
Eugene responded enthusiastically:
God be praised, my dear friends and true apostles! My heart is afflicted by your situation but rejoices at the same time to see you sharing the fate of our first fathers, disciples of the Cross.
Letter to Henri Tempier, 16 November 1819, O.W. VI n.47
Even during the worst hardships, when the other things in our lives seem to fall apart, we can still find peace in the eternal love of God. Armstrong Williams
I detect a wonderful sense of humor in Henri – at least I hope that’s what it was. I love his honesty, particularly when he mentions travelling ‘in spite of our fears’. I always seem to picture Henri Tempier as a small, quiet man specially compared to Eugene who seems always to be ‘larger than life’. And yet in reading this I sense great determination and strength in his very gentleness and very much his version of giving ‘his all’ for God.
To have something imposed upon us is sometimes so hard to work through, accept and live with – there is a grace in there. And just on the face of it, looking at agents of that imposition (in this case the three young missionaries) to accept the little that was given and to preach and work with a divided group, to give their all to the mission – that requires also incredible strength and courage as well as a good deal of grace.
Many years ago I used to do a lot of public speaking. My job was to motivate my listeners to take part in helping others, be it with money, by volunteering or even by simply reconizing the same issues in their lives and and doing something about it. It was a lot easier speaking to ‘the converted’ (those who you could see ‘buying into it all’) than it was to those who refused to be touched in any way and who remained closed to a particular part of life. At the end of my talk I would thank God for getting me through my part of it and for giving me the needed words. But the faces that remained in my mind (even now many years later) were those who were there because they had to be and who could not let go of their fears or whatever it was holding them back.
I look at Eugene’s response and the quote from Armstrong Williams and agree. Especially in the midst of hardships I think that it sometimes takes hard work and practice to be able to look, find and accept that peace in the arms of Love, or to be able to rejoice in sharing the fate of the disciples of the Cross. It takes community and daily reminding and supporting, it takes a willingness to experience a total mind-shift. Funny I see it more readily in others than myself (I still hesitate at looking and finding that goodness in myself).