The small band of Missionaries concluded their first year of existence with a third mission at the end of 1816 – it was in Marignane, and I have made ample use above of the Diary that Eugene kept during this mission. The requests for parish missions kept coming in. Here we have one reply of Eugene to a parish priest who had hasked for a mission in 1816.
It is very hard for me, who have consecrated myself to preaching missions only for the purpose of coming to the aid of good pastors who wish to bring their people back to the religion that 25 years of revolution have caused them to abandon, not to be able to reply to their requests addressed to me except with good wishes and vague promises.
It is a heartbreaking experience of every day, but what can we do who are only four poor missionaries and you are the twenty-second parish priest who has called on us. My entire ambition would be to unite enough missionaries to combat hell on every point at once, but that is a pious dream which will never come true. But if we were at least able to form two rolling balls of fire, that is, if we could be two bands of which one would rest while the other was active, we would them be able, with God’s help, to do a great deal of work.
God willing, we will come to that but it will be when the Lord has inspired in a few men the necessary zeal and disinterestedness to worthily carry out our holy ministry and in ecclesiastical superiors enough courage to allow them to follow their vocation.
While waiting I am reduced to being unable to satisfy a quarter of the requests made to me and that is possibly of all the sufferings and annoyances I am experiencing the one I feel most deeply.
However I do not despair of one day being able to go to support your zeal and share in your pastoral solicitude but that cannot be this year which is completely taken up.
Letter to M. Arquier, Parish priest of Saint-Remy, 25 December 1816, O.W. XIII n 4