I embrace our dear novices and pray God that he will grant that they imitate your virtues.
Letter addressed to “To our dear brothers, the missionaries at Aix”,
July 1816, O.W. VI n.12
Eugene was convinced that it was the virtues and lifestyle of the missionaries that would attract others to imitate them by joining them. It was this that happened in Fuveau when the 17 year-old Marius Suzanne came into contact with the missionaries in action.
Yvon Beaudoin takes up the story of this young man who was to play an important role in the life of Eugene.
Marie-Jacques Antoine Suzanne was born in Aix-en-Provence, February 2, 1799. He was the eldest of nine children born to Jean-Baptiste Bienvenu Suzanne and Christine Michèle Vitalis, well-to-do property owners from Fuveau, diocese of Aix, who developed the coal deposits of the area.
Marius, for this was what he was usually called, attended elementary school in the village of Fuveau and received his first lessons in Latin from his parish priest, Jean Flayol, an individual who gave pubic witness to his Catholic faith during the French Revolution and who went on to become Bishop Fortuné de Mazenod’s vicar general. It was at the minor seminary of Aix that he made his First Holy Communion and it was here that he studied from fifth form to first form…
In the autumn of 1816, Marius was expected to begin his philosophy at the major seminary. He extended his vacation time in Fuveau in order to participate in a mission being preached in his parish from September 1 to September 29 by the priests Eugène de Mazenod, Henry Tempier, Pierre-Nolasque Mie and Sébastien Deblieu. He already knew the first two mentioned. They gave him the task of teaching catechism to the men, to visit those who refused to attend the exercises of the mission, to be in charge of the singing and of the decoration for the main ceremonies. Marius subsequently formed a bond with the Missionaries of Provence and determined to follow them.
«Suzanne, Marius» in Oblate Historical Dictionary, Volume 1.
Two weeks after the end of the mission we find him coming to live with the community in Aix on 14 October 1816. Three months later he entered the novitiate.