Brebeuf's Ideal Missionary
Brebeuf was alone again after the departure of his companions. He knew it would not be for long. Other harvesters were soon to come into the field. Indeed, it was a matter of constant solicitude among the missionaries to have assistants, and in due time successors, who would come fully aware of what was ahead of them, and yet fully prepared not only to meet every privation and hardship, but to labor and to encounter danger of every sort in order to make the natives Christians.
This no doubt was in Brebeuf's mind when he wrote his famous instruction for those who were to come to the Huron mission. It sets forth so plainly the trials of a missionary's life, and it appeals so eloquently for volunteers, not because of novelty, or of adventure or of consoling ministerial occupation and results, but solely because of the life of heroic devotion to Christ, that it is well worth giving here as a revelation of the spirit of the apostle himself and of those who would come with their eyes wide open to the prospect before them. Such souls could evidently be satisfied with nothing short of heroism. It is contained in the "Relation" of 1636.
How it reminds one of St. Francis Xavier! There is a genius, and there is also a race also, of sanctity.
"When you reach the Hurons, you will indeed find hearts full of charity; we shall receive you with open arms as an angel of paradise, we shall have all the inclination in the world to do you good; but we are so situated that we can do very little. We shall receive you in a hut, so mean that I have scarcely found in France one wretched enough to compare it with; that is how you will be lodged. Harassed and fatigued as you will be, we shall be able to give you nothing but a poor mat, or at most a skin, to serve you as a bed; and, besides, you will arrive at a season when miserable little insects that we call here taouhac, and, in good French, pulces [fleas], will keep you awake almost all night, for in these countries they are incomparably more troublesome than in France; the dust of the cabin nourishes them, the savages bring them to us, we get them in their houses; and this petty martyrdom, not to speak of mosquitoes, sandflies, and other like vermin, lasts usually not less than three or four months of the summer.
"Instead of being a great master and great theologian as in France, you must reckon on being here a humble scholar, and then, good God! with what masters! — women, little children, and all the savages — and exposed to their laughter. The Huron language will be your Saint Thomas and your Aristotle; and clever man as you are, and speaking glibly among learned and capable persons, you must make up your mind to be for a long time mute among the barbarians. You will have accomplished much, if, at the end of a considerable time, you begin to stammer a little.
"And then how do you think you would pass the winter with us? After having heard all that must be endured in wintering among the Montagnets savages, I may say that that is almost the life we lead here among the Hurons. I say it without exaggeration, and five and six months of winter are spent in almost continual discomforts,— excessive cold, smoke, and the annoyance of the savages; we have a cabin built of simple bark, but so well jointed that we have to send some one outside to learn what kind of weather it is; the smoke is very often so thick, so annoying, and so obstinate that, for five or six days at a time, if you are not entirely proof against it, it is all you can do to make out a few lines in your Breviary. Besides, from morning until evening our fireplace is almost always surrounded by savages,— above all, they seldom fail to be there at mealtimes. If you happen to have anything more than usual, let it be ever so little, you must reckon on most of these gentlemen as your guests; if you do not share with them, you will be considered mean. As regards the food, it is not so bad, although we usually content ourselves with a little corn, or a morsel of dry smoked fish, or some fruits, of which I shall speak further on.
"For the rest, thus far we have had only roses; henceforth, as we have Christians in almost every village, we must count upon making rounds through them at all seasons of the year, and of remaining there, according to necessity, for two or three whole weeks, amid annoyances that cannot be described. Add to all this, that our lives depend upon a single thread; and if, wherever we are in the world, we are to expect death every, hour, and to be prepared for it, this is particularly the case here. For not to mention that your cabin is only, as it were, chaff, and that it might be burned at any moment, despite all your care to prevent accidents, the malice of the savages gives especial cause for almost perpetual fear; a malcontent may burn you down, or cleave your head open in some lonely spot. And then you are responsible for the sterility or fecundity of the earth, under penalty of your life; you are the cause of droughts; if you cannot make rain, they speak of nothing less than making away with you. I have only to mention, in addition, the danger there is from our enemies; it is enough to say that, on the thirteenth of this month of June, they killed twelve of our Hurons near the village of Contarrea, which is only a day's journey from us; that a short time before, at four leagues from our village, some Iroquois were discovered in the fields in ambuscade, only waiting to strike a blow at the expense of the life of some passer-by. This nation is very timid,— they take no precautions against surprise, they are not careful to prepare arms or to inclose their villages with palisades; their usual recourse, especially when the enemy is powerful, is flight. Amid these alarms, which affect the whole country, I leave you to imagine if we have any grounds for a feeling of safety.
"After all, if we had here the exterior attractions of piety, as they exist in France, all this might pass. In France the great multitude and the good example of Christians, the solemnity of the feasts, the majesty of the churches so magnificently adorned, preach piety to you; and in the houses of our Order the fervor of our brethren, their modesty, and all the noble virtues which shine forth in all their actions, are so many powerful voices which cry to you without ceasing, 'Behold, and do likewise'. You have the consolation of celebrating every day the holy Mass; in a word, you are almost beyond the danger of falling,— at least, the falls are insignificant, and you have help immediately at hand. Here we have nothing, it seems, which incites towards good; we are among peoples who are astonished when you speak to them of God, and who often have only horrible blasphemies in their mouths. Often you are compelled to deprive yourself of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; and, when you have the opportunity to say it, a little corner of your cabin will serve you for a chapel, which the smoke, the snow, or the rain hinders you from ornamenting and embellishing, even if you had the means. I pass over the small chance of seclusion there is among barbarians, who scarcely ever leave you, who hardly know what it is to speak in a low tone. Especially I would not dare to speak of the danger there is of ruining oneself among their impurities, in the case of any one whose heart is not sufficiently full of God to firmly resist this poison. But enough of this; the rest can only be known by experience.
" 'But is that all?' some one will exclaim. 'Do you think by your arguments to throw water on the fire that consumes me, and lessen ever so little the zeal I have for the conversion of these peoples? I declare that these things have served only to confirm me the more in my vocation; that I feel myself more carried away than ever by my affection for New France, and that I bear a holy jealousy towards those who are already enduring all these sufferings; all these labors seem to me nothing, in comparison with what I am willing to endure for God; if I knew a place under heaven where there was yet more to be suffered, I would go there.' Ah! whoever you are to whom God gives these sentiments and this light, come, come, my dear Brother, it is workmen such as you that we ask for here; it is to souls like yours that God has appointed the conquest of so many other souls whom the Devil holds yet in his power; apprehend no difficulties,— there will be none for you, since it is your whole consolation to see yourself crucified with the Son of God; silence will be sweet to you, since you have learned to commune with God, and to converse in the heavens with saints and angels; the victuals would be very insipid if the gall endured by Our Lord did not render them sweeter and more savory to you than the most delicious viands of the world. What a satisfaction to pass these rapids, and to climb these rocks, to him who has before his eyes that loving Savior, harassed by His tormentors and ascending Calvary laden with His Cross; the discomfort of the canoe is very easy to bear, to him who considers the Crucified One. What a consolation! — for I must use such terms, as otherwise I could not give you pleasure — what a consolation, then, to see oneself even abandoned on the road by the savages, languishing with sickness, or even dying with hunger in the woods, and of being able to say to God, 'My God, it is to do Your Holy Will that I am reduced to the state in which You see me,'—considering above all that God-Man who expires upon the Cross and cries to His Father, 'My God! My God! Oh; why hast Thou abandoned me? If God among all these hardships preserve you in health, no doubt you will arrive pleasantly in the Huron country with these holy thoughts. 'Favorably sails he whom God's grace urgeth on'.
"And now, as regards a place of abode, food, and beds,— shall I dare to say to a heart so generous, and that mocks at all that of which I have already spoken, that truly, even though we have hardly more of those necessities than the savages have, still, I know not how, the Divine Goodness renders every difficult thing easy; and all and every one of us find everything almost as comfortable as life is in France. The sleep we get lying on our mats seems to us as sweet as if we were in a good bed; the food of the country does not disgust us, although there is scarcely any other seasoning than that which God has put into it; and, notwithstanding the cold of a winter six months long, passed in the shelter of a bark cabin open to the daylight, we have still to experience its evil effects; no one complains of his head or his stomach; we do not know what diarrhoea, colds, or catarrh are. This leads me to say that delicate persons do not know, in France, how to protect themselves from the cold; those rooms so well carpeted, those doors so well fitted, and those windows closed with so much care, serve only to make its effects more keenly felt; it is an enemy from whom one wins almost more by holding out one's hands to him than by waging a cruel war upon him. As to our food, I shall say this further, that God has shown His Providence very clearly to our eyes; we have obtained in eight days our provision of corn for a whole year, without making a single step beyond our cabin. They have brought us dried fish in such quantities that we are constrained to refuse some of it, and to say that we have sufficient; you might say that God, seeing we are here only for His service, in order that all our work may be for Him, wishes to act Himself as our provider. This same Goodness takes care to give us from time to time a change of provisions in the shape of fresh fish. We live on the shore of a great lake, which affords as good fish as I have ever seen or eaten in France; true, as I have said, we do not ordinarily procure them, and still less do we get meat, which is even more rarely seen here. Fruits even, according to the season, provided the year be somewhat favorable, are not lacking to us; strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are to be found in almost incredible quantities. We gather plenty of grapes, which are fairly good; the squashes last sometimes four and five months, and are so abundant that they are to be had almost for nothing, and so good that, on being cooked in the ashes, they are eaten as apples are in France. Consequently, to tell the truth, as regards provisions, the change from France is not very great; the only grain of the country is a sufficient nourishment, when one is somewhat accustomed to it. The savages prepare it in more than twenty ways and yet employ only fire and water; it is true that the best sauce is that which it carries with it.
"As for the dangers of the soul, to speak frankly, there are none for him who brings to the country of the Hurons the fear and love of God; on the contrary, I find unparalleled advantages for acquiring perfection. Is it not a great deal to have, in one's food, clothing, and sleep, no other attraction than bare necessity? Is it not a glorious opportunity to unite oneself with God, when there is no creature whatsoever that gives you reason to spend your affection upon it"? When the exercises you practice constrain you without force to inward meditation? Besides your spiritual exercises, you have no other employment than the study of the language, and conversation with the savages. Ah! how much pleasure there is for a heart devoted to God to make itself the little scholar of a savage and of a little child, thereby to gain them for God, and to render them disciples of Our Lord! How willingly and liberally God communicates Himself to a soul which practises from love to Him these heroic acts of humility! The words he learns are so many treasures he amasses, so many spoils he carries off from the common enemy of the human race; so that he has reason to say a hundred times a day, 'I will rejoice in thy words as one that hath found great spoil'. Viewed in this light, the visits of the savages, however frequent, cannot be annoying to him. God teaches him the beautiful lesson He taught formerly to Saint Catherine of Sienna, to make of his heart a room or temple for Him, where he will never fail to find Him, as often as he withdraws into it; that, if he encounters savages there, they do not interfere with his prayers, they serve only to make them more fervent; from this he takes occasion to present these poor wretches to this Sovereign Goodness, and to entreat Him warmly for their conversion.
"Certainly we have not here that exterior solemnity which awakens and sustains devotion. Only what is essential to our religion is visible, the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, to the marvels of which we must open the eyes of our faith without being aided by any sensible mark of its grandeur, any more than the Magi were in the stable. But it seems that God, supplying what we lack,— and as a recompense of grace that he has given us in transporting it, so to speak, beyond so many seas, and in finding a place for it in these poor cabins,— wishes to crown us with the same blessings, in the midst of these infidel peoples, with which he is accustomed to favor persecuted Catholics in the countries of heretics. These good people scarcely ever see either church or altar; but the little they see is worth double what they would see in full liberty. What consolation would there be, in your opinion, in prostrating ourselves at times before a cross in the midst of this barbarism! to turn our eyes toward, and to enter, in the midst of our petty domestic duties, even into the room which the Son of God has been pleased to take in our little dwelling! Is it not to be in paradise day and night, that we are not separated from this Well-Beloved of the Nations except by some bark or the branch of a tree? 'Behold he stands at our window. I sat under his shadow whom I desired'.
See what we have within. If we go outside our cabin, heaven is open to us; and those great buildings which lift their heads to the clouds, in large cities, do not conceal it from our view; so that we can say our prayers in full liberty before the noble oratory that Saint Francis Xavier loved better than any other. If the question is of the fundamental virtues, I will glory not in myself, but in the share which has fallen to me; or, if I must, acknowledge it humbly beside the cross which Our Lord in his grace gives us to bear after him. Certain it is that this country, or our work here, is much more fitted to feed the soul with the fruits of heaven than with the fruits of earth. I may be deceiving myself, but I imagine that here is a grand means of increasing the soul in faith, in hope, and in charity. Should we scatter the seeds of the Faith without ourselves profiting by them? Could we put our confidence anywhere but in God in a region where, as far as man is concerned, everything is lacking to us? Could we wish a nobler opportunity to exercise charity than amid the roughness and discomfort of a New World, where no human art or industry has yet provided any conveniences'? and to live here that we may bring back to God men who are so unlike men that we must live in daily expectation of dying by their hand, should the fancy take them, should a dream suggest it to them, or should we fail to open or close the heavens to them at discretion, giving them rain or fine weather at command. Do they not make us responsible for the state of the weather? And if God does not inspire us, or if we cannot work miracles by faith, are we not continually in danger, as they have threatened us, of seeing them fall upon those who have done no wrong? Indeed, if He who is the Truth itself had not declared that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life, verily and once for all, for one's friends, I should conceive it a thing equally noble, or even more so, to do what the Apostle said to the Corinthians, 'Daily I die, I protest by your glory, brethren, whom I have in Christ Jesus Our Lord', than to drag out a life full of misery, amid the frequent and ordinary dangers of an unforeseen death, which those whom you hope to save will procure for you. I call to mind occasionally when Saint Francis Xavier once wrote to Father Simon, and wish that it may please God to so act that at least the same thing may be said or written one day even of us, although we may not be worthy of it. Here are the words: 'The best of news comes from Molucca, that John Beira and his companions are constantly in trial and in danger of life, with much progress for the Christian Religion'.