Father Paolo Manna

The Missionary

It was a man sent by God (John. I, 6).

Have you never asked yourself what the Apostle is? P. Didon says: The apostle is more than a child, more than a friend, more than a faithful servant, more than an envoy and of an agent, more than a worker, more than a subject, more than a believer or a priest; he has some lines of all the above, I would say that he is everything I mentioned; rather, more than all this.

He is a man equal to you and to me, nothing more than you and me. A mountaineer, perhaps a simple farmer, that the Church has blessed, and who goes toward the Chinese, the Japanese, the Tibetans, the Mancesis, the Mongolis: for him there are not blacks neither yellows, neither white; he goes to bring the name of Christ to every creature.

It is not with the words of the persuasion and human wisdom that the apostle completes his mission: his science is that of his Teacher, his strength it is that of his Teacher. He knows Christ and Crucified Christ. He is perhaps, time by time, a scholar, an orator, a diplomat, a rich influential; but science, eloquence, ability, wealth, all this doesn't count anything for him. The apostle - doesn't live more; it is Christ that lives in him - (Galati II, 20).

The deprivations are its glory. His Teacher has told him: - I give the Spirit to you, the Spirit will be enough you, He will inspire you what you will have to say: Go, do not fear of anything.

Here is the apostle of Christ: look for him, it is not of importance in what philosophical school, is not of importance in which religion, nation or race; you won't find this sublime type cut from Christ in the human conscience, where only God can enter, and where, when He likes to enter, He puts a new genius that constitutes a new stock, unfailing, the stock of the apostles.

Nothing is so much simple and great as the footstep of a youth, that, moved from alive zeal for the glory of God, goes to throw to the feet of his Bishop, and asks to him the grace to leave as Missionary. Once got it, he doesn't inhale more to anything else other than to bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ. All his thoughts will be, from this moment, turned on to the work of the Missions, to the conversion of the infidels.

We follow him in the period of the preparation on the field of his job and we contemplate him in the death.

The Spirit Saint has got a youth, He inspires him high ambitions, transfigures his heart with a flame so ardent, that communicates such untiring vigor to his arm, it gives such abundant fertility to his activity, that any man of good faith cannot stay without admiration in front of the performance of his life.

The superiority of a man is measured from sacrifices of which he is capable.

The missionary now lavishes what he has and gives himself without exhausting the treasure of his heart.

In the middle of jealous people which takes anything it has received, in a generation that, for love of the proper comfort, of its fortune, of its calm leaves that the cause of God and justice perishes, the missionary appears like a protest and a strong sentence.

In the period of the immediate preparation that passes between in the Institute that has welcomed him between its members, his life it is essentially study and prayer. As the Apostles, obedient to the divine precept: hold back in the city, so that you are invested of virtue from the High (Luca XXIV, 49), they met for the Last supper, waiting in the prayer and in concentration the arrival of the promised Paracleto, so the youth aspirant to the Missions even if he is priest, spends a certain period of time in concentration in a house of preparation, to be tried and fully grown to the spirit of the institute that has received him. There he forms habits for life, there he forms himself as man; because very soon, when he will be alone without the exhortations and the overseeing of the superior, he must be constant in his intentions, man of method, of prayer, of study, of zeal for the souls, of mortification; in other word, he will be one of those men that bring the tenor of the law written in their hearts (Romans II, 15), not with the ink, but with the spirit of the alive God (II Corinti III, 2).

In the Seminar of the Missions, he, besides the study of some theological subjects, is trained in the languages; and, knowing how the Providence, for the conversion of people, utilizes also the skill of the Missionary in the purely human sciences he applies moderately also to the acquisition of other information, with the permission of the Superior. He so studies natural sciences or music, architecture or practical medicine, following his disposition; he is then happy when he can consecrate some time to the reading of the Annalses of the Apostolate or the lives of that illustrious men that preceded in the same vocation; in them his heart finds a pleasant pasture and all it is ignited of desire and of emulation.

It also comes finally for him the desired day, in which he is informed on his destination; the day of the departure comes, when generously he leaves the country and the relatives, and he entrusts to the ship, that must conduct him on that place that will be the field of its sweats and its worths.

He is soon in front of his assignment.

Goodbye poetry of distant views, goodbye illusions and dreams of the first fervors of the vocation! The reality is now in front of him with all the obstacles of the practical life. And he faces difficulties of any kind: difficulty to learn the language of people that must evangelize; difficulty in the uses and customs of people in contact of which he must live; difficulty in the inclemency of the climate; difficulty of material life, even if today the conditions of the existence of the Missionary are improved... We have to add to the above the sadness that comes from the loneliness, from the isolation, from the distance of the brothers, in the heart of them he would be happy to be able to pour the flood of the proper heart! And the painful memory of the country and the family just left! And the struggle against the discouragement! Ah! also before he tries his strengths in the apostolate, the Missionary brings already on the shoulders a burden that would seem superhuman.

However he is not of those, who, having put hand to the plow, they are looking back with regrets and doubts. A voice waves in him, the voice of grace, the voice of the vocation, that shouts to him: - To the work, oh man sent by God: to the work, oh Missionary of Christ! The field of the Father of family is here, it is necessary here to till it, here are the sheep without shepherd, it is necessary to assemble them and to form the flock! Have you not come that for this? To the work therefore!.

I won't try to say you how much energy, how much charity, the Missionary is distributing during the years of his apostleship.

Note: P. Manna narrates: I was in Leiktò in the season of the rains of 1896. Water, damp, odor of mold everywhere: in the residence, old wood hut, life is uncomfortable, we have in any case a roof; but out, in the thick of those forests... it goes worse a great deal. It rains from over a month almost uninterruptedly and we live like in the clouds, that remove the sight of the miserable village. A few travels in that season. Water from the trees, water from the tall grassy between which we must open the passage, water in the insidious puddles, rivers to ford, without saying anything on the steep and slippery paths of the leeches and of the other dangers that hide that mountains of Burma.

But here is a man to come to invite the missionary for a patient. He comes from a distant village: four or five hours of road. In residence there is Mons. Tornatore, intent to mend an old umbrella. He listens kindly to the embassy, it is turned to the Brother Genovesi because for the hosts and wine for the holy Mass, puts something in a pannier, that covers with a waxed cloth, and goes out preceded by the man that will be carrier and guide. Me, new missionary, I don't know how to say even two words, I look admired from the porch the old bishop that goes down hilarious for the slant of the mountain, holding up with a hand the umbrella and with the other one throwing the mount, that seems moving unwillingly... I look and I reflect and I hold to my mind - still today as if I was there - the example of that man, to whom the sacrifice had become a habit and it seemed that he did not notice (P. Manna, Apostolic Virtues. P.I.M.E., pag. 200).

He goes from village to village, from a Christianity to the other; he preaches the true God to those poor souls, catechizes them and baptizes them. Tireless sower, throws, during the day, the good wheat in the arid earths of his apostolic dominion, and, at the evening, he rests, invoking with ardent prayers the dew of grace that fertilizes the seed and the sun of God to mature the harvest

Its ardent faith doesn't make him transpor move the mountains, but it makes for him them to collapse, at the price of thousand works and thousand dangers. The words of S. Paolo literally apply to the Missionary: - Often in trips. . Always in motion he faces all the dangers: dangers on the sea, dangers in the rivers, dangers in the middle of the deserts, dangers from the pagans, dangers from the false brothers that are intervened in the flock (II Corinti XI, 27)

This way the Missionary spends the whole life, till when he will fall exhausted on the furrow that hehas dug in the field of the Lord, will fall martyr of the apostleship, martyr of a devotion of himself in all the instants, and that has worn-out his body; martyr of the fevers that have consumed him, that have burnt him at slow fire; martyr of all the deprivations, of all the sacrifices of which a human existence can be able, and, perhaps, martyr in the literal sense of the word, martyr up to the effusion of blood.

This way, with rush of true eloquence, the Jesuit Fr. Coubè describes the death of the Missionary: The death of the Missionary is always particularly sweet or glorious. Sweet, also when he dies abandoned by everybody, away from the brothers as Francis Xaver under a roofing of leaves in the island of Sanciano. Sweet, because the Holy Friend is not distant, He is present, if not under the sacramental kinds, at least in an invisible manner that the Missionary feels and understands. He is there, and his puff passes on the emaciated face... He is there, and the slim sound of His voice comes to the ear of the dying one with an endless sweetness... He is there, and to the voice of Jesus others voices are mixed, the voices of the angels of the unfaithful nations that come to thank him. -be blessed, oh brother, be blessed you that have lent your words and your hands to us; your words to sow truth, your more august and more powerful hands of our wings, to bring the souls toward God... -

And there is also the voice of the souls that he has saved and that, from the tall sky they are leaned out shaking palms and crowns, and they tell him: Come, come, our father and our benefactor: come to share the glory that we owe to you. -

And to all these voices of sky, with the face lighted by that divine vision, that seems to begin, the Missionary answers with smiles and with actions of love, and his soul, free, withbig hits of wings, goes toward the country that he will never leave.

Our Missionary has died. He died away from his country, where perhaps no one thinks to him, except his old father and his old mother.

He has died, and his death is more brave and sublime of that of the soldiers and of our sailors, that succumb distant for the country, because he is sacrificed for a highest idea.

He has died, and no friendly hand will throw flowers on his bare. I am wrong, he won't miss the flowers: the Churches will bloom, Christianity will bloom, all the virtues will bloom on the earth where he lies, and the whole Church will be embalmed by the perfume of these flowerings that will bud from his grave.

But death sometimes becomes glorious redeeming. Here is a people that has a preference for the darkness, and rejects the light that the Church offers to it. It is necessary a big hit, is necessary that the blood of the Missionaries jets up to its eyes to open them. Here is the battle and the athlete. This man great in his life will become even more great in his death. He is condemned, mocked, insulted by a tyrant; but he is greater than this tyrant. He is tortured by the executioner; but the executioner frightens by his majesty and patience.

In the middle of the tortures he sings the victory of his big God on the death and on the hell. The pagans have hastened to contemplate his torture, and they are taken of horror and of admiration. Yesterday his sermons annoyed them; today each of his sore is an eloquent mouth that shouts the truth. And the pagans listen to him; the executioners and the persecutors listen to him, and go beating their breast like the centurion, saying: This man was really the envoy from God! He is too great! He is greater than the humanity!

Dear young people, damp if you want, the radiant colors of these bright descriptions; the Missionary (we speak, naturally, of the true Missionary) is always a superior man, great, unusual; to become Missionary it is always such thing, that more great any human mind illuminated by the faith cannot desire. The Missionary is really the man sent by God: its country is the world, all the languages of the earth are his languages, every man is his brother; as he is wide of faith and of views, so he is wide of heart and, if it would be possible, he would like to participate that truth and that love for Jesus Christ, of Whom he has the spirit full, to all the men.

The Missionary was called with the most beautiful and emphatic names: he was said hero, true benefactor of the humanity, herald of the Gospel, God's rider, the most sublime imitator of Jesus Christ, and all these names are worthwhile for him, because he, the man sent by God, walks between the men without having their affairs and their material aspirations; he walks between the men as angel of God, illuminating, comforting, dignifying, doing some good to everybody. He is worthy to not only excite in your generous hearts admiration, but also senses of practice emulation.

Note: Fr. Manna had always admired and envied the death of the missionary in particularly tragic circumstances as that of our martyrs Fr. Vergara and Fr. Galastri and that of the Fr. Deledda, all of his mission of Burma. He didn't hide this admiration with his students and young Fathers. In a man like him, all positiveness, all concreteness, this poetic and romantic tract of hiss psychology still appeared worthier of admiration, because isolated, rather unique. It was a romanticism coming from the vivacity of his missionary vocation, in which and for which everything was lit up of transparencies of sky. The Lord granted his vote and took him, in sudden way, with a missionary death without disturbing anybody. (P. G. B. Tragella: A soul of fire P.I.M.E. pag. 339).

All Missionaries!

Between the offices that tie us above all to God and to the Church this must be remembered: devoting to propagate Christian truths with as much zeal is possible to everyone (Leo XIII, Enc. Sapientiae christianae).

Now a word to those, and they are the greatest number, which will read these notes and cannot follow my invitation to go in the missions. Also to you I address: if you can not go to the Missions, remember that you have however the duty of apply your zeal and to promote all the work, that are directed to help and to increase the missions.

In Italy there is lack of interest for the Missions; people speaks too little about them. Only a few persons in Italy read something related to the Missions. Some also fear that our interest or our charity for the missions will jeopardize the situation in our country. How many are so distant from the generous feelings of Mons. Le Coq, who wrote: Afar from us the small calculations. Give to the poor man, give to the churches, give for the schools and for the orphanages, give for the offering of S. Peter; but first of all give for your Missionaries and for the work of the Propagation of the Faith.

Can not you be Missionary? You are able on the contrary to promote the work that is essential to the maintenance and to the development of the Missions.

The zeal also between the Catholics often bumps against unusual preventions. Many are not distant from thinking it as a sort of luxury, exclusively reserved for the souls chosen by the Providence. Deplorable error, deep illusion! Whoever has grace to know the Gospel, to believe in Jesus Christ and to love Him, I underline intentionally, must take an interest on the propagation of the Faith in the world.

If all the faithful men must promote the propagation of the Gospel, what about the priests? Revered priests, you that are not able to become Missionary, the conversion of the souls is also your job. Very much you can with your zeal, with your charity; even remaining in your country, it must be clear that, without your work, without your interest, without your prayers, the Missionaries can do very little. Oh! if all the priests of Italy and those of the world take really in their heart the conversion of the infidels and they make everything to promote it, how much every man would see sooner the salvation of God! (Luca III, 6.). And what priest can take no interest of this work, and to not promote it with all his power, as one of his peculiar duties?

What sense then will have on his lip those desires of the psalmist, to see all the people to the feet of Jesus Christ, as he repeats every day:

To You give praise oh God, all the people: to You give all people praise!.

Praise the Lord oh people, praise Him all the people!.

And they will be prostrated to him all the kings of the earth and all the people will serve Him.

From the east to the west will be praised the name of the Lord!

The Saints were all Missionaries of desire, they had all high in their heart the conversion of the infidels, and not being able to promote personally the conversion, they implored some grace with prayers and with penitences. I give here some remarkable examples, picked up by Mons. James Scurati, second director of the Institute of the Foreign Missions in Milan, to exhort all those that have their India here, to not forget the distant India, and to want help, with every mean at their disposition, the health of those poor souls.

A contemplative Saint, privileged from God of celestial feelings since her first childhood, Teresa of Jesus, of which the Church sings:

Announcer of the supreme King,

You leave the fatherly house,

To Barbaric earths, Teresa,

Ready to give Christ or the Blood,

brought back to the fatherly house, and after claustral religious, she had always in her heart the souls of the infidels that are lost, and she invoked the conversion from its Bridegroom Jesus. The Church considers the people to be converted as entrusted to her and invokes her:

Or victim of charity!

inflame our hearts,

And people that have been entrusted to you

Free from the fire of the Averno.

To withstand to the damages that the heresy brought to the Church, preventing the perversion of the souls and giving light to the heretics, she founded the monastery of S. Joseph of Avila, with an unparalleled rigor. " In this time - she writes - came to me the news of the damages of France, the slaughter made by the Lutherans, and how much this sect was increasing. This tormented me greatly and I cried in front of God and I begged Him to eliminate such evil. It seemed to me that I would have given thousand lives to save a single soul! But seeing me woman and miserable, in the impossibility to increase the conversions, I determined to do for this what was possible for me to the service of the Lord according to my desires, and to follow the evangelical suggestions with the whole perfection that I was able, and to get that these few religious here with me did the same."

Behind this she instructed and exhorted her daughters to pray, to make penitences, to present themselves to God through the rigorous observance of the evangelical suggestions, also to get lights, holiness and plentiful fruit of their works to the preachers that defended the true Faith. "My sisters, what we must ask to God is that in this city (the true Church), in which many are the good Christians, no one will abandon it; and that He grants a lot of advancement in its streets to the captains of this city, that are the preachers and the theologians... We must do that our prayers are worth to help these servants of God, which have become stronger in the letters with so much work, in good life, in the job, to sustain the cause of the Lord."

St. Teresa speaks, with insistence, on such matter: "This, she says to them, is your vocation, these must be your worries, these your desires, to this must go your tears, these your questions"; and she goes up to the point of exhorting them to not fear to be in purgatorial up to the day of the judgement, if this will be caused by less prayers for themselves, provided that they implore for the salvation of the souls.

And Gregorio XV, in her Canonization Bolla, so spoke of this saint his zeal, of saving unfaithfuls and sinners: With how much perpetual charity she loved the neighbour, it was manifested by a lot of proofs, but mainly from the ardent desire with which she looked for the health of the souls. She cried with perpetual tears the darkness of the infidels and the heretics, and, for their illumination she not only handed continuous prayers to God, but also offered fasts, scourging and other macerations of the body.

Another Saint of the same Order, favored by the Lord of inimitable thanks, Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, didn't feed different feelings.

This unusual soul had a zeal so ardent for other's health, that overcame any human thought. Having once God shown a soul in grace, she remained so much entusiastic, that always wanted to conduct everyone to God. Therefore she had an ardent greed that God granted a lot of souls to her, and in such fervor of spirit she said: Oh! if it could be possible to go to India, or between the Turks! I would take those small sons and with so much affection and I would teach them the things of our law, that any uneasiness, that I would suffer, would be for me of big comfort. Maddalena was covetous of the conversion of the infidels: the reading of the triumphs of the Church in India and in Japan, the big work of Xavier, made her exulting and they turned on her of vehement desire to help the evangelical workers, of which she had big respect.

"Oh! if I could, she said in a day of ecstasy, I would convert all (the infidels) and I would conduct them in the womb of the holy Church. Here I would like that the Church with his breath purge them from all the unfaithfulness and regenerate them... Oh! if I could be able, I would do it so gladly!"

In the life of S. Veronica Giuliani, capuchin, we read: She would have liked to preach faith to all the idolatrous people. Being Fr. Crivelli the extraordinary confessor of the monastery, Veronica begged him a day to do to the community a sermon of invitation to all the idolaters, Turkish, heretical, schismatic, to come to the Holy Faith...

From the life of S. Francis of Geronimo, written by the P. Longaro degli Oddi, we can see from what ardent zeal for the conversion of the Infidels this saint was animated; therefore, as soon he had news of some hope to reopen Japan to the offices of the gospel, started to push the superior in Rome asking the grace to be sent there to bring the light of the Holy Faith to those people. He did not desist from this application, till God, spoke to him from mouth of his superior saying that his India and Japan had to be the kingdom of Naples.

S. Alphonse M. de Liguori was induced from his missionary spirit to retire in the Congregation of the Chinese Fathers founded in Naples from the Fr. Matteo Ripa, craving to go to China to scatter the light of the Gospel in the hope to give his life for the Faith. Only obedience to his superior dissuaded him from becoming missionary.

In the Life of S. Phillip Neri of Bacci it is told that, reading the letters that came from India to the Fathers of the Company of Jesus, and considering how much great it would be harvest in those countries, and how few were the workers, he deliberated to want to go in those parts to sow the Holy Faith and to scatter, when needed, his blood for love of Christ. Only the divine wish of God, through the holy cistercian Fr. Agostino Ghettini, to whom he addressed, was able to convince him to not go. This saint monk in fact made him to know that Rome had to be his India.

And, for the propagation of the Faith; what he could not do in India he tried to do in Rome, where he did everything possible to convert the Hebrews.

There are known to everyone the big aspirations of St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, the Patron of the Missions as St. Francis Xavier. " I feel the courage of a crusader, I would like to die on the battleground to defend the Church... With how much love, oh Jesus, I would take You in my hands, every time that my voice would call You from the sky! With how much love I would know how to give you to the souls... I would like to illuminate the souls... I would like to cross the earth, preaching your Name and planting on the unfaithful ground your glorious cross... I would Like to Be Missionary! (Autobiography XI).

I now say to those who can not go as Missionaries: if your India is here, the Lord blesses you! However you must mind that you have also duties for the real India, and in general for all the countries of the infidels. You are not able to go there? But at least do not try to ward off from their generous intention the young people that want to go! You are not able to go there? Then get with every mean, and especially with the prayer and with the alms, to facilitate to the Missionaries their assignment to convert the infidels.

What could be done? Allow me to suggest some ideas.

It would be rightful and of maximum necessity to give a new and big impulse to the providential work of the Propagation of the Faith, of the Saint Infancy, and of S. Peter Apostle for the formation of the Native Clergy, extending them where they are already founded and introducing them where they do not exist yet. No Parish should exist in Italy, where this work would not be helped, were their feasts would not be celebrated with particular pomp at least yearly.

It would be good thing to have in any Diocese an association of priests, with the purpose to promote all the work in favor of the diffusion of the Gospel between the unfaithful, and to give brightening and encouragements for the establishment of the aforesaid work in the parishes; to go to preach in the various parishes to better appreciate from the believers the excellence and importance of this; to promote the vocations to the Missions, not only between the clergymen, but also between the girls called to the religious state; and to spread the missionary magazines...!

It would be an holy thought to promote between the clergymen of all the Seminars a league of prayer "pro conversione infidelium" and to assault Jesus's Heart, for the advent of that day, and also to educate the young clergy to the duty of caring of those poor souls, and to plan an effective action in the exercise of their office.

The prayer is even more important than the alm, in a very spiritual matter as the conversion of the souls. I repeat to you, reverend clergymen and priests, what the martyr of Oceania, S. Pietro Luigi Maria Chanel, recommended before departing for his Mission, to the Nuns of the Good Rest, where he had a worthy sister: "In the impotence in which you are, dear sisters, to go to preach the Faith between the unfaithfuls at the extremity of the earth you are missionary in your blessed loneliness. The apostolate of the prayer is not less effective than that of the priesthood."

And since I have entered in the field of the proposals, allow me to express some vote.

If any ecclesiastical province, in sign of gratitude toward Christ to have been called to the true Faith in preference of other people, would assumed the appointment to provide of subjects and of means of evangelization some province of unfaithful country, how much soon the day in which all the men will be around the Cross! Oh! if every region of Italy and other countries could have its Seminar of Foreign Missions, its small army of colonial Clergy!

Then every diocese would have a regular and opportune expedient to pay the proper tribute for the diffusion of the universal Church and its supreme Head would find in this active cooperation of the Bishops to the propagation of the Faith a help, besides what they offer Him the Orders and the religious Congregations; and this help would come from those that are with Him, for divine institution, more directly entrusted to continue the work of the Apostles to instruct in the Faith People.

In this way it would be established a tie of charity between our Churches and those that the zeal of our Missionaries, blessed by God, have started in the unfaithful populations, and it would result from there a sweet and saint appointment from our dioceses to protect and making progress for those dawning Churches, which will be linked to us with the sweet titles of a spiritual relation. Were not been founded in this way the first Churches? The Church of Antiochia didn't certainly abound of ministers; yet while they attended to the cult of the Lord and they fasted, the Spirit Saint said them: "Segregate to me Saul and Barnaba for the work to which I have destined them. And, after having fasted and prayed, they imposed the hands to them, and they dismissed them. They, therefore sent from the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed toward Cyprus. Arrived in Salamina, they announced the word of God. (Acts XIIIs, 2-5)"

It is not in a century like ours that is permissible, especially to the Cleric, to sleep; the Protestants don't sleep; it is necessary to also oppose to their vast and intense propaganda a more ample and intense action from our side. "Don't want to be won by the evil, but win with the good the evil (Romans XIIs, 21.)".

We need Missionaries in great number, we need prayers and material helps, and to get this it is necessary from all the true lovers of Jesus Christ a greater involvement.