The all-important first day of community life for the Missionaries was obviously a story often repeated in all its details. In his Memoires, Father Tempier, described it as: “This memorable day that I will never forget for as long as I live.”
Here Eugene is writing to the novices and scholastics who were in Billens, Switzerland, to escape the dangers of the anti-religious persecution by the government of Louis Philippe. He narrates the story of the beginning of their religious family, and draws a conclusion linked with the vow of poverty and the call to simplicity.
Tomorrow I celebrate the anniversary of the day, sixteen years ago, I left my mother’s house to go and set up house at the Mission. Father Tempier had taken possession of it some days before. Our lodging had none of the splendour of the mansion at Billens, and whatever deprivations you may be subject to, ours were greater still. My camp-bed was placed in the small passageway which leads to the library: it was then a large room used as a bedroom for Father Tempier and for one other whose name we no longer mention amongst us. It was also our community room. One lamp was all our lighting and, when it was time for bed, it was placed in the doorway to give light to all three of us.
The table that adorned our refectory was one plank laid alongside another, on top of two old barrels. We have never enjoyed the blessing of such poverty since the time we took the vow. Without question, it was a foreshadowing of the state of perfection that we now live so imperfectly. I highlight this wholly voluntary deprivation deliberately (it would have been easy to put a stop to it and to have everything that was needed brought from my mother’s house) so as to draw the lesson that God in his goodness was directing us even then, and really without us having yet given it a thought, towards the evangelical counsels which we were to profess later on. It is through experiencing them that we learnt their value.
I assure you we lost none of our merriment; on the contrary, as this new way of life was in quite striking contrast with that we had just left, we often found ourselves having a hearty laugh over it. I owed this tribute to the memory of our first day of common life. How happy I would be to live it now with you!
Letter to Jean-Baptiste Mille and the novices and scholastics,
24 January 1831, O.W. VIII n.383
Frank you are doing a great job. I just found about this website yesterday and spread a news to others. By the way what is the name of priest Eugene doesn’t want to mention?
Take care, Wojtek
“It is through experiencing them that we learnt their value.”
Once again, the text fills my heart with images and illusion. Yes images and illusion. They are like the cool mist over the warmer rivers water at this time of the year. But they will disappear as the light of a new day dawns. So the key is not to hold on to the illusion or image but enter into the experience. And here it is the EXPERIENCE of God’s Providence guiding and supporting the community. Have you “experienced” that. I did when with our brothers at Aanmodaya Ashram in the Province of India. God’s Providence and “How happy I would be to live it now with you!”
And it is interesting the secretes we try to hide. But that is another story. Fraternally, Jack,OMI