Concern for missionaries and lost letters

"I am very sorry to learn that you have not had a letter from me since October last year: I do not know who to blame apart from the devil of Guinea who wants to torment us in different ways, make us lose patience and destroy the charity that unites us. I have written you so many letters. I have never left a letter unanswered or put aside the questions asked. I have written to you at least three or four times since last April. The only letter of yours that I have not yet answered is the one that arrived less than ten days ago. The loss of these letters makes me fear that those I wrote to the confrères have suffered the same fate. I have replied to all of them, except those whose letters have just arrived at the end of summer. Please let them know and express my deep regrets for the trick the devil has played on us.

Mission of Guinea, a work of God

Holiness of the missionary

In difficult times, trust in God alone

"The further we go, the more we must realise that this dear mission of Guinea is a work of patience, self-denial, gentleness and complete abandon to God. If ever missionaries needed to be saints it is us, more than anybody else. If the missionaries of Guinea are not saints, they will become the plaything of the devil who is doing everything to thwart us, to torment us in all possible ways. I can see more than ever before that our lives must be a total sacrifice: we need to forget ourselves to such an extent, in small things as well as in large, that we will not be upset whatever happens. We must be ready for all kinds of suffering, privations and difficulties of every sort, so that God will always finds us still on our feet in a peaceful and gentle confidence in his mercy. We must not allow ourselves to get depressed, nor must we start boasting about successes; let our joy be moderate when things go right and our sorrows accepted with patience when things go wrong. Let us always be clam, as men who put their whole trust in God, without seeking any satisfaction for themselves. If we rejoice, it will be in God and for God because he has fulfilled his plans: if we do not succeed, if we are brought to a halt, our attitude will be the same.

Spreading Word of God

"I am saying all this not to reproach you but to unburden my heart to you. You would not believe what effect the work of the enemy has on me, when I see him putting obstacles in the way of the Word of God and the pouring out of his grace, when he tries to mix together the faults and imperfections of our dear missionaries with their zeal and generosity.

God wants us to be humble and trusting

Blessing of our works and our sanctification

"I often think about what has happened to us since we started this mission; it is evident that God wants us to be humble, submitting in all things to his plans and completely abandoned to him. For our work to be blessed, the missionaries must take their own sanctification seriously. It is only then that God will bless us. I think this is why he has brought us to a halt; he wants to diminish the strength of our desires and the impulse of our actions so that our hearts do not puff up with pride. He tries us with pain, sufferings and contradictions of all sorts to test the genuineness of our humility and then sanctifies us by patience, gentleness and the practices of religious life.

Difficult to understand the ways of God

"What has struck me more than anything else is how God has given us this mission of Guinea, filled us all with an ardent desire to convert the country, yet at the same time has stopped us in our tracks by taking away those very people who seemed the most capable of assisting your efforts and mine. Of those whom God has pleased to call to himself over the last nine years, eight or nine could have become excellent superiors of houses or perhaps even of missions. He has left us with the less capable men. What are we to make of the way God has behaved? Well, eventually he will show us what he has in mind; but meanwhile, I believe that God in his goodness wants to cut us down to size, to let us know how we should regard our work and ourselves.

His merciful plans for us and for the poor

The road to follow: lead a simple life amongst these people

"I assure you, Monsignor, that I would not dare to let myself get depressed by these misfortunes and the troubles that have come from them, because I am convinced that it is all part of the merciful plans of God for us and these people whom we have been asked to evangelise. From time to time I have been strongly impressed by this thought: that if God has seen fit to treat us harshly, it is in order to punish us for our sins. He evidently wants to save this country not so much by our zeal as by our personal sanctification. By this I mean that the will of God is for us to live a saintly life amongst these people, concentrating particularly on the virtues of priestly and religious life, humility, obedience, charity, kindness, simplicity, genuine prayer, self-denial etc. This should be our first concern and it will no way take away from our enthusiasm for the apostolate but rather perfect it and give it more consistency. This was the approach adopted by the holy religious who converted England and Germany and it is the one that God wishes us to take. I fear that some of our dear confrères have turned away from this path. Full of generosity and zeal, they allowed themselves to be carried away by their enthusiasm. This enthusiasm led them to focus on external things, distracting them from interior exercises and the virtues of religious apostolic life. The influence of the climate, which can be very disturbing, found them too externalised and so became another instrument in the hands of the devil to turn them away from the life of perfection.