“We fulfill our mission in and through the community to which we belong” (Oblate Rule of Life, Constitution 37).
While one part of the community was out evangelizing, the other part was supporting the mission through prayer and unity of spirit. The letter below shows how the newly-born Missionaries lived this in 1816: while Eugene and the others were doing the parish mission in Grans, Tempier was in Aix supporting their mission – and being supported by them in what he was doing.
… [We remain] quite united to our dear and good brother Tempier, despite the sacrifice that we make in putting off for eight days our leaving to rejoin him…
If you do not pray for us, we are in a bad fix …
Eugene continues by sharing the news of the progress of the mission in Grans. We see here something that happened fairly regularly in their mission preaching. It was the practice of extending the length of the mission so as to ensure that everyone had the opportunity for confession. Sometimes all the missionaries were able to stay on (as is the case in Grans) or else one stayed behind.
… in conscience, we cannot leave our work undone. Enormous would have been the number of men we would have left in the lurch, if we had finished on the intended day. It is for the sake of these men that we are prolonging our work until the third Sunday of Lent.
The good work proceeds; blasphemy has been banished from this place. The inhabitants do not know how this prodigy has happened for there had been no other place where it had been more frequent…
As for us, we never stop hearing confessions. We take in every variety…
Letter to Henri Tempier, 11 March 1816, O.W. VI n. 11