PARISH MISSIONS: EUGENE REMEMBERS SOME OF THE FRUITS OF THEIR FIRST MISSION

Reminiscing, some forty years later, Eugene recalls the first mission preached in Grans:

If, in order not to leave anything out, I had to write an account of that first mission given in Grans I fear that I would diminish the wonders worked there by God’s grace. I believe it is now almost forty years ago (I am writing this on September 5, 1857) since that mission took place. The good God wanted to encourage us.
Some details, however insufficient, are to be found in correspondence of the time. We were so overburdened with work that I had no time to write. Let it be sufficient for me to say that the most inveterate and obstinate sinners, even those who cursed us with one thousand blasphemies on our arrival, became lambs and were all converted. There were men who would not have waited five minutes for Mass on Easter Sunday, who waited for twelve hours to receive absolution…
Ardent in their conversion and sincere in their religion, the inhabitants of Grans made it known to the wagon drivers of Salon that they should take another road if they were not prepared to give up swearing, and they stuck to their word. A poor woman from Saint-Chamas who came to sell fish, received an enormous slap from a woman in Grans because she took the liberty of pronouncing a word insulting God.

Diary of 5 September 1857, O.W. XXII

In the Marignane mission narrative we find Eugene noting similar comments:

Visit to a person living in concubinage, his promise to go to confession and get married…
A man who had not set foot in the church for twenty-two years, coming back with admirable sentiments…
Expressions of fervor on the part of a number of women and girls. Admirable patience shown every day in waiting one’s turn at the confessional, from morning to evening…

Visit to a ninety-year old to bring him to confession. It is claimed it is well over half-a-century since the last time…

Diary of the Marignane Mission, O.W. XVI

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