WE NEED TO HAVE SOME COURAGE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD WHO SHOWS US THE ROAD AND WILL NOT ABANDON US WHEN WE ACT IN HIS NAME AND FOR HIS GLORY

Reviewing the situation in Canada with the new Oblate superior, Eugene is torn between all the invitations coming to the Oblates to minister in different dioceses of Canada – so great was the need for priests – and the small number of Oblates available. The abandoned territory of Red River had just been offered to them, opening up a ministry in the area of Western Canada up to Hudson Bay and many indigenous groups.

You can well believe my heart bleeds when I hear you speak of all the good that is in prospect and which you cannot undertake because of lack of personnel…

We are a very small family which has exhausted itself by pitching its tents in America. Everything suffers in Europe and I am accused daily of having been too generous in making sacrifices so great in number and quality. I am not inclined to repent of this although I feel our impoverishment strongly.

Despite the lack of personnel, Eugene sees this invitation to minister to the “most abandoned” as providential:

Providence will come to our help where you are…  I’ll go further: judging the importance of the mission proposed by the Bishop of Juliopolis and by what you tell me about the representations of this Prelate, and mindful of the obligations we have towards him, my decision is that you ought to undertake it with the means you have in your power. It will not be a proper establishment at first and instead of three persons, you will only send him two for part of the year if you cannot do otherwise, but you cannot risk the great setback that you fear of seeing this mission taken away from you and of losing the opportunity, as you argue very well and rightly, of evangelizing the whole of North America by serving in the diocese of Quebec, Montreal, Kingston and Red River.

Believing that this invitation was from God, Eugene expressed his constant experience that God always showed the way ahead to the missionaries.

We need to have some courage and confidence in God who shows us the road and will not abandon us when we act in his name and for his glory. Everywhere we have established ourselves we have made a feeble start. The time has not yet come to do otherwise. So, I repeat, without hesitation, respond to the wish of the Bishop of Juliopolis and begin this work even with only two Oblates while awaiting others from the goodness of God.

Letter to Fr Eugene Guigues in Canada, 5 December 1844, EO I n 50