Having expressed his annoyance at the interpretation that the gossips gave to his vocation, Eugene now explains the real reasons to his father. The break of communications caused by the war had made it impossible for Eugene to tell his father about his vocation before this.
I devoted myself to the Church because she was suffering persecution, was abandoned, because, after 25 years, she could no longer confide the divine ministry, which before had been sought after by the highest in the land, to any but poor workers, wretched peasants, because, seeing us heading pell-mell towards a schism that I believed was inevitable, I feared it would find but few generous souls with the capacity to sacrifice their comfort and even their lives to preserve the integrity of the faith, and because it seemed to me that God would give me strength enough to dare to brave all these dangers.
I was so persuaded that it would not be long before we experienced a cruel persecution, that on leaving for the Paris seminary I packed a complete set of lay clothes with the idea that I would have to use them as a priest. Here you have the motives that moved me, there are no others, no others can even be conceivable given the character God has been pleased to favour me with…
… However, as I said, I entered the clerical state only to try to make reparation for my sins by doing a little good, working for the salvation of souls. If I had sought honours, I would not have looked for them in the Church especially at a time its only prospect was the scaffold.
Letter to his father Charles Antoine de Mazenod, 7 December 1814, O.W. XV n. 129
President de Mazenod replied on February 22, 1815:
“And since I have spoken of your ministry I think that this is the place to reply to what you indicated to me concerning your vocation. I can truthfully say that when I learned indirectly that you had embraced the clerical state, I did not feel regrets over either the satisfaction of seeing you reproduce our race, or the advantages that I would have derived from a brilliant marriage you could have aspired to and would undoubtedly have obtained. But on the one hand I was annoyed that you had not consulted me on such an important topic, and on the other hand the state of conflict in which France was placed at that time made me very fearful. Even so, I did not reveal any of this to you, and placing all my trust in God’s infinite goodness, I never ceased to thank him for the resolution he had inspired you with and I renew this even more especially since you have disclosed to me the sublime motives for your decision. I hope this explanation will suffice to calm your bad temper over certain hasty words that slipped out in my private memoir for the countess.”
Bibliothèque Méjanes, Ms. 2078(1944) (1-2)