Girard0298

8 December 1843. — Letter from Jean-Baptiste Petit-Jean to Claude Girard, Auckland

From the copy, APM Z 208.

Folded leaf forming four written pages.

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New Zealand

Auckland, 8 December 1843

Conception of Mary

To the Very Reverend Father

Girard

My very Reverend Father,

[1]

The circumstance of the day is for me a good omen that this poor little letter will be favorably received by you.

[2]

I had even intended to address a few words to your dear novitiate, but alas, for want of that sacred flame which should always consume the heart of the missionary, my words will be cold. After all, when I reflect that we must fight to right and left, speak, so to say, at the right time and out of season - a rash translation of Saint Paul’s opportune et importune - is it not better to try to express a few sentiments than to remain in apathy? And will my indulgent brothers not forgive me my inadequacy rather than my forgetfulness and coldness?

[3]

May I be permitted to say it: you are happy, my very Reverend Father. The worthy office that you fulfil seems to me the most meritorious, and makes you perfectly like Jesus Christ, who placed his glory less in preaching himself than in forming preachers in the person of the apostles. Ah! I glimpse it a little now: the first and indispensable quality of an apostolic man is not to have a great ardour for the battles of the Gospel, for running to announce the good news to distant islands; it is not precisely to be ready to shed one’s blood for the incomparable cause of Jesus Christ. Rather, this precious quality consists in that holy indifference by which one is disposed to occupy any post whatever, to preach to Whites or to Māori, in a word, continually to conform one’s will to that of God and that of the superiors. An army composed of officers and soldiers who understand and act in this way goes to certain victory.

[4]

To leave one’s homeland, one’s parents, etc., is only one sacrifice, and therefore a small thing; but to leave oneself every day, that is the great sacrifice, the perpetual holocaust.

[5]

May God have mercy on me. I need to cut and prune much in my miserable heart, fertile in disordered affections. I thought I could not be consoled for the loss of my dear New Zealanders, and now my heart has taken root among the Europeans. O God, I feel that it would cost me to leave Auckland. I am fond of my flock; the little children of my school are my delights; the Irish delight me by the experience of their singular faith. True, crosses are not lacking, but one loves them, or at least suffers them patiently, because one flatters oneself with triumphing over them. To what does my poor heart not attach itself?

[6]

Who would dare say it? Miserable objects still come to distract this narrow heart. A garden, two goats and two little kids, and, since everything must be named, my hens, my dog, my cat, are so many creatures that wage war against me, because they share my attention. Note that at this moment I lack a Brother, and that my solicitude, which never rests, is obliged to make up for the imperfect care of a little neighbour assigned to my service. Oh, how great is my happiness to be freed from the true miseries that are luxury and riches. Funes ceciderunt mihi in praeclaris.

[7]

And when death comes, what will it contest with me? A few books, worn cassocks, an old greasy hat, a pallet bed: that is almost all. I shall therefore get off cheaply with it. O Domine, tu es qui restitues haereditatem meam mihi. Ah! may Mary be willing to keep all her children every day in profound humility. Humility is that guarantee of success, if success is in the designs of God. I was reading a great lesson recently given by a layman. O’Connell in Ireland, in a solemn assembly, proclaimed himself a humble instrument of Providence to deliver his homeland. He said that in his noble cause, the more active a part one took in it, the more one should approach it with sentiments of profound humility, and that as for himself he would make no difficulty of being the sweeper, that is, of taking a broom and cleaning the hall. Now, if such is the favourite maxim of a wise politician in the midst of the world, what should be the way of thinking and acting of a Christian, of a man who is in the sanctuary, in religious life, and in such a religious life; of a man who is beginning his apprenticeship in all the virtues, who consequently lays the low and solid foundation, or of one who runs the apostolic course? Here are many reflections whose evidence is obvious, but in practice how skilful self-love is at obscuring the clearest principles and preventing their immediate consequences. For my part, I acknowledge that very often, under the pretext of maintaining my honour, my ministry, etc., I have gone astray; or else, if the action itself was not a deviation from virtue, the intention, the satisfaction of self-love, spoiled everything. Foolish is the traveller who stops for every insult he receives on his road, and a thousand times more senseless still is the one who, being pressed to arrive in his homeland after a long absence, would still amuse himself by seeking quarrels with passers-by. He walks wisely who walks simply, with the least encumbrance, avoiding difficulties, eluding a hundred encounters and obstacles, and applying himself wholly to his end and to the means that lead to it. More serene days seem to be dawning over New Zealand because she is visited by the night of tribulation. Such is the general distress that even opulence is astonished to feel it. Misery, poverty - no one wants to hear them spoken of, and yet this is the real evil of society, an evil that the Lord has raised up in our time, an evil that will be changed into good, and whose first result will be to overthrow the pride of Protestantism in the proudest of nations. How heartbreaking it is to see here a starving European population, while Māori are tolerably at ease; a starving population - that is the word - idle, without work, in the presence of a country that offers resources for cultivation. Know that here lands are not given away; they are sold, and part of the price is the ransom of the poor for their transport from Great Britain to her colonies. Up to now the aristocracy and its greed have been little enticed to come to New Zealand, where perhaps there is not much speculation to be made. The government also pleads poverty and gives no work. Credo vitam aeternam. Without doubt, one would be wrong to hold both the government and the great responsible for the present distress; it is the fault of several generations, and of several, even of all ranks.

[8]

Excuse me; I put only my signature. Jean-Baptiste Petit-Jean, Marist priest, apostolic missionary.

[9]

Pray for me. A Scottish lady, who left England with the conviction that the Pope was the Antichrist, was undeceived on her journey; she made her abjuration here.

Textual Notes

• §6: The edition notes a correction from “miserable” to “narrow.”
• §7: The sentence “I shall therefore get off cheaply with it” was inserted above the line.