“……Make sure that your missionary call is
not motivated by just enthusiasm or some other reason. You must be moved by
pure love of God and by the desire for your own sanctification. During your
novitiate, prove that you can find the satisfactions which your heart has a
right to and without which you cannot be happy in a life of withdrawal, in
prayer, in mortification, in ministry and in the prescribed exercises.
Believe me, my dear friends, the missionary has only the spirit of faith to
support and protect him against all sorts of natural repugnance, repulsion
or boredom, which overwhelms his soul so frequently. Therefore, it is
necessary that he possesses the spirit of faith and that he strengthens this
during the novitiate. Any error regarding this point would be fatal and
almost irreparable.”
<<Advice of Founder Verbist to the novices in Scheut, written from China on
October 20, 1867>>
