While the expenses of the Missionaries were looked after by the parishes that invited them for a mission, they depended on the generosity of people to be able to live and minister in the house and Church of the Mission in Aix. We still have a number of letters of Eugene which show this relationship with their benefactors.
To one who had been particularly generous, Eugene wrote:
to express my gratitude to you in the name of the holy work that the Lord has charged me with despite my great unworthiness.
He points out to her that she is directly helping the very people whom the Missionaries served. In other words, she was missionary just like they were.
By contributing, as you propose to do, to the education and upkeep of members who devote themselves to the work of the missions, you are acting more admirably than you may think, for this material charity has a direct relationship with the spiritual help which is given to the most abandoned souls: without it they would have remained in their state of sinfulness in which they probably would have died miserably.
Letter to Madame de Servan, 20 August 1818, O.W. XIII n. 15.
“I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.” Mark 9:41