The young Missionaries had zealously committed themselves to preaching a parish mission at very short notice in Allauch, a market town in the vicinity of Marseille
Can one allow oneself to be so thoughtless as to commit oneself to a mission at a week’s notice? Do you think you can go on mission as one goes to say Mass? Don’t you think that one should have taken a little time, both to prepare oneself and to put order in the affairs that one leaves behind? So it is impossible to have the mission begin on Sunday.
So Eugene stalled them so as to avoid the problems that they had encountered through proper lack of preparation in another town. By putting it off for a week he was able to organize four Oblates from November 21 to mid-December.
Now it remains to know exactly what the population is so that I may make the number of missionaries proportionate to the need. In a mixed country, I cannot risk a second version of Ventabren! If three missionaries suffice, I will send Fathers Suzanne, Jeancard and Marcou. If there must be four, Father Albini could join them, if only to help with confessions.
Letter to Hippolyte Courtès, 9 November 1824, EO VI n 157
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” Winston Churchill
I must admit that I do not think of Eugene as a “planning” type of man – and yet it would make sense because he was very deliberate in what he did and how he did it. I think of some of the things that I have been responsible for in my life – not anything so vital as the souls of others, just regular things like projects at work, bringing people together for a specific purpose, with there being a specific goal in mind. I did not always give it my best in that I mighty of been too hasty and so did not plan it out properly – because my attitude going in might not have been the best or because I just “wanted to get it done”. I can remember a teacher I had who used to say there was no use in doing things half way. She was right. Everything and everyone deserves no less than our best efforts.
There is a difference between planning and controlling. Of course there is but I wonder if I always remember that, do I plan and then allow the spirit to move as the spirit will or do I plan so as to try to control the outcome. Perhaps both.
I have spent the past little while here reflecting on how I myself approach things – not always, but often, open to other ways and results that are not exactly what I might have planned. There is such a joy to see the open of a flower and the beauty that it takes on as it grows, the same with people, to see them dawning and becoming who they are, opening to that light within. I look and see the planning as sort of the same thing as food, nourishment for that flower. The stem, the branch moves from being bent over, and closed (the bud) to standing tall and bloom fully open to the sun and life, it’s god-given beauty there for all the world to see and give thanks for. A person, a group of people, closed and inward looking and then with again light and love the opening up and the blinding radiance of their becoming, of their beings, there again for all the world to see and to give thanks for that grace.
That planning- a little bit of formation, teaching, guiding, nourishment for a person, a group. Not exactly where I started out this morning, but I kind of like where I have ended up at.