With deepest sorrow I inform you of the death of our good and saintly Father Mie.
Letter to Jean Baptiste Mille, 11 March 1841, EO IX n 726
Once Napoleon came to power in 1799, Father Mie was able to be openly in charge of a parish, without danger of persecution. For the following 14 years he was in parish ministry, hospital chaplain, and preacher of parish missions.
Yvon Beaudoin narrates:
In the spring of 1814, he gave a mission at Saint-Paul-lès-Durance with Father Tempier who had been ordained priest a short while before.
In the fall of 1815, Father de Mazenod invited him to join his missionary band. Father Mie readily responded to this invitation for it was in line with the desire to preach missions which the Lord had planted in his heart. He gave his adherence to the Missionaries of Provence in October 1815, but entered the community in a definitive way only during the annual retreat and General Chapter of 1818. Together with his confreres, he pronounced his vows on November 1, 1818. He had also been elected fourth assistant general; in fact, he was appointed assistant general by each General Chapter until his death in 1841.
He was not a gifted orator, but was able to transmit what he had in his heart in such a way that “his audience was gently filled with God’s Spirit as it listened to him.”
Father Mie was tireless as a missionary. He took an active part in all the missions that were given from 1816-1819. For many years thereafter he spent half the year evangelizing the parishes of the south-east of France. His usual calm and placidity gave the impression of apathy. Thus, he was no orator in the pulpit but rather a good catechist. His word was calm, his gestures rare, his appearance not very lively. And yet, as Jacques Jeancard writes, he communicated a certain conviction and feeling which transmitted what he himself believed in his heart. His audience was gently filled with God’s Spirit as it listened to him. Few possessed, to the degree that he did, the art of giving a solid religious instruction the unlearned classes. He explained the Church’s teachings, both dogma and morality, with simplicity, clarity, precision of expression, bringing out the various elements and their mutual unity in such a way that unlearned and even unlearned minds could understand all he was saying.
https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/mie-pierre-nolasque/
Again this morning the word “tenderness” comes to mind as I read about Fr. Mie whom I really only met yesterday.
Many years ago an Oblate was sent to our parish, an older man, quiet and unassuming but solid. He was unlike some of the previous pastors that we’d had; he was not a great orator and in fact many of the people in parish complained that he was not a skilled homilist and why couldn’t they (the Oblates) send us someone better? He knew that he was not the greatest of speakers; as he confided to me one day – he did the best that he could. I often felt sad when I would listen to some complaints about him – obviously they could not see his heart that was strong and true, beautiful and tender. Looking back I realize that he was courageous and strong to be able to be obedient in a place where he was not always welcomed. Perseverance. And there they are – the four vows.
I quite liked him and was sad when he died. In my eyes he may not have been the greatest homilist but he had so many other wonderful qualities and I was glad that I’d had the opportunity to get to know him.
Perhaps Fr. Mie might have been similar to my friend and the tenderness that I seem to associate with both is simply the response of my heart when meeting them; they both had similar qualities that somehow elicited the tenderness from within me.
Obviously Eugene de Mazenod and his founding community were not blind to Fr. Mie’s qualities and strength because they chose him again and again to be one of the Assistant Generals at their General Chapter – until he died. He was in his own way an ongoing “light to his brothers’ feet”. Both Mie and my friend knew what it was to serve the Church and their Mazenodian family with his quiet and steadfast love and giving of self. The words sacrifice and oblation come together in my mind.
It seems to me that often in the midst of the thundering of the drums and the sound of the trumpets we can easily miss the quiet voice singing words that reach out to touch our hearts.