SIMEON
LOURDEL was of the sturdy old yeoman stock that has furnished
not a few saints and heroes to France. He grew up on his father's
small farm, tall and strong, abounding in life and spirits. The
resolution to be a priest and a missionary had come to him in early
childhood, but his career at the Petit Séminaire at Arras,
where he and his elder brother Ernest spent several years together,
gave the good Fathers serious doubts as to his vocation. For Simeon's
exuberant vitality found an outlet in countless pranks, the college
rules were more often honoured in the breach than in the observance,
and studies—which Simeon loathed—were systematically neglected.
In the summer of 1871, when he went home for the holidays he found
his father trying to run the farm single-handed. His brother Ernest
had been ordained two years before, and the two remaining sons had
been called up to join the army, the Franco—German war was
nearing, its disastrous end. With a joyous farewell to his books,
Simeon stepped into the breach, putting the strength of his seventeen
years into the open-air work that he loved. It was not until two
months after the beginning of the scholastic year that the return
of his younger brother Valery made it expedient that he should take
up his studies once more. Mightily refreshed by his prolonged vacation
on the farm, Simeon presented himself cheerfully at the Seminary—to
be forthwith dismissed. The rules were strict, and Simeon's previous
career had not furnished matter for indulgence.
It was a sudden and quite unexpected blow. For the moment the bottom
of the boy's universe seemed to have fallen out. Then the dogged
determination that was latent in his seemingly careless nature asserted
itself. "I shall be a priest all the same," he declared
to his mother. “They say I have no vocation ; we shall see."
By dint of a good deal of pinching, his father managed to send him
to another college, and there Simeon entered on the campaign of
self-conquest that was to end in victory. It was up-hill work, and
more than once the boy was found with his books flung right and
left and his head buried in, his hands, groaning "I cannot
do it."
But he did it. In the October of 1872, he was able—much to
their surprise—to rejoin his old schoolfellows at the Grand
Séminaire of Arras and began his preliminary retreat. That
retreat was the finishing stroke of grace.
A few months later, one of the White Fathers of the African Missions
came to the speak to the students of the harvest that was waiting
for reapers in that far-off mission-field. The soul of Simeon Lourdel
kindled into flame. To Africa he would go.
It was a changed Simeon who lived through the year that followed.
From his first day at the Grand Séminaire he had disciplined
himself to the perfect keeping of the rule. To fit himself for the
life he had chosen he now embraced every hardship. "His mortifications
made me shudder" said one of his companions. "All his
energy, all his ardour, all his determination seemed set on one
thing, to conquer himself for Christ. There was always something
of the knight about him." Yet there was nothing morose about
his self-discipline, his cheery gaiety was the life of the house,
and he was a general favourite.
In the December of 1873, Simeon Lourdel wrote to the Superior of
the White Fathers, asking to be admitted to their noviceship at
Algiers. He was accepted for the beginning of February.
It was no youthful enthusiasm that had prompted Simeon's request;
he had deliberately counted the cost. He knew a good deal about
the African Missions, for he had made it his business to find out.
There was a fair chance of martyrdom and failing that, an almost
practical certainty of disease and premature death. "You will
probably be killed or die of fever before you have time to begin
your mission," said a pessimistic relation.
"Well, what of that?" replied Simeon Lourdel, "if
it please our Lord to have it so, that is His affair. And even if
I succeed in beginning my mission work, I don't expect to have more
than about ten years of life at the most."
When, in 1868, Cardinal Lavigerie founded the Society of White Fathers
for the evangelization of Africa, he wrote a letter to the seminaries
of France asking for young men to fill his noviceship. "Send
me men of an apostolic spirit," he wrote, “courageous,
unselfish, full of faith. I have nothing to offer them but poverty
and suffering, all the risks of an almost undiscovered country,
and perhaps a martyr's death."
There is an echo of this in a letter written by Simeon Lourdel as
a novice, to a young college friend who had thoughts of joining
him. "The lot of a missionary stripped of all illusion, is
this: To live for the love of God a humble, hidden life in a hut
or tent tending foul sores and diseases, to work on, perhaps for
years, without effecting a single conversion, fighting all the time
against the temptation to discouragement at the sight of all the
good that you might be doing, and are not. This is what it means.
Yet, if, by the grace of God, you feel the call to it, come to us,
for you will be a true apostle."
The Maison Carée, Algiers — The White Fathers' Novitiate
(Click here for an update on Maison Carée
by Pat McHale)
The Maison Carrée, house of Noviceship of the White Fathers
at Algiers, stands, white and foursquare, in a garden set with vines
and orange trees, on a hill overlooking the sea. After the retreat,
during which the hardships of the missionary life were placed very
clearly before him, Simeon Lourdel was clothed with the white habit
of the Society and began the necessary, but arduous study of Arabic.
"It is hard enough to read," he groans in a letter to a
friend, "but harder still to pronounce. Patience, prayer, and
the grace of God will, I hope, bring me through." At the end
of his first year of noviceship he writes that he is able to speak
Arabic a little, but quite unable to discuss points of doctrine. Yet,
this is necessary.
"The language must and shall be mastered," he asserts with
characteristic determination, "pray that God may quicken my dull
brain." Whenever the novices go out, he adds, he tries to get
into conversation with the natives, but finds their reserve discouraging.
He had better luck one day, when, after passing through an Arab village—which
turned out en masse to stare at them—the novices came upon an
encampment of Arabs, playing cards and drinking coffee. "Come,
marabouts, come," cried the one who seemed to be the chief of
the little party, and the novices had no choice but to accept the
invitation. "As the others became suddenly dumb," wrote
Simeon Lourdel, "the burden of the conversation fell on me. I
sat down cross-legged with an almost miraculous facility—as a
rule I find it most difficult—and brought out all the compliments
I could think of." But the conversation soon flagged, and the
novices were all the more convinced of the necessity of mastering
the language.
On the feast of the Purification, 1875, Simeon Lourdel made his profession
in the chapel of the Maison Carrée, and two years later was
ordained. These two years were occupied in theological studies, and
in the mastering of Kabyli—not so difficult, Simeon avers, as
Arabic. Here again, sheer determination triumphed over mediocre ability.
The first little band of missionaries who had set out during Simeon's
stay at the Maison Carrée had been betrayed by their guides
and massacred. Nothing had been heard of the three priests who had
left the oasis of Metlili in the Sahara desert, until several months
afterwards, when the news of their martyrdom reached Algiers. A few
years later their charred bones were found and brought to the White
Fathers.
It was with a thrill of joy that Simeon Lourdel heard that his destination
was Metlili. In the, following autumn he set off with two other young
priests for the Sahara. "We hired four camels” he wrote
to his family, "and started at two o'clock in the morning. The
journey took five days. We walked till ten, and then rode on camel-back
till five. This method of travelling is rather tiring. We slept in
the open air, wrapped in our burnous."
At Metlili the missioners took up their quarters in a native house
of which Simeon gives a lively description :
“Metlili consists of a collection of mud huts, traversed by filthy
little streets bordered by ruins. We are living in an Arab house;
the door consists of palm branches. You open it, go in, and are assailed
by an acrid smell of smoke. You find yourself in a spacious inner
court twelve feet by six, lighted by a square hole through which you
can contemplate the African sky. Round this court are several 'rooms,'
the pharmacy, the store room, and the apartment of one of the inmates.
The last two together occupy a space of twelve feet by four and a
half.
"But this is only the ground floor; there is an upper story.
You reach it by a staircase which you must needs climb with hands
as well as feet. Then you bend double, for a humble posture is necessary
if you want to visit the rest of the house. To the right you will
find an old plaster oven: we have turned it into a kitchen. To the
left is my own room; there is a door, though you may not notice it
at first. You go in on all fours—you will soon get used to it—but
don't stand up suddenly, or quite straight, for if you do, your head
will go through the ceiling. It will be best to make your observations
sitting on the floor. Furniture? We have none. Beds? Don't you see
some blankets in that corner? Knees make a very good table; my wardrobe
consists of two nails. I consider myself very well off. But the best
room you have not yet seen. It is about eight feet by five in size,
and a little less than six in height. The walls are plastered, and
at one end on a block of stone covered with clean white cloths you
will see two candlesticks and a crucifix. It is our chapel, where
every day our Lord and Master comes to strengthen and comfort us amidst
the troubles of our apostolate in this unhappy country."
It was indeed up-hill work. From motives of prudence they were not
allowed to preach. "The conversions which delight the heart of
the missionary," writes Father Lourdel, "are not for us;
our successors will one day reap where we have sown. Ours is the rough
work of preparing the soil. We have to teach by example, not by word,
to strive by charity and holiness of life to overcome prejudice against
Christianity, of which there is much—chiefly born of ignorance.
Example is eloquent in a country where people judge of everything
from without." When they have learnt to associate charity, chastity,
and devotedness with the Christian life, the first step will have
been made towards the truth.
The chief—and almost the only—way of getting into touch
with the natives was through schools and medical treatment; the care
of the sick fell to Father Lourdel. At first he terrified the Arabs.
His great size and strength, his rugged features, and above all, a
certain resemblance to one of the priests who had started forth from
Metlili not so long before to meet a martyr's death, filled them with
forebodings. He was the brother of the murdered priest, they whispered,
come to avenge his death, and it took weeks of patient charity and
devotedness to overcome their fears. In the end he did overcome them,
and his skill with the sick won him respect and admiration.
The little band had been three months at work when the inauguration
of the mission to Central Africa made it necessary to give up the
stations in the Sahara—Metlili among them. The proposal that
Father Lourdel should join the first caravan that was about to set
out for the Great Lakes, filled him with joy.
"Hurry, hurry," was his constant exhortation, as the three
priests made their way back to Algiers, "we will be too late,
and they will set out without us."
|
