This article is concerned with the spiritual life of a mission, and. not with the spiritual life of a missionary. That is a different matter. A man may be a saint but yet unsuited to missionary work, as a good concert singer may be unsuited to opera. If the missionary can be both saint and missionary, well and good, but the essential thing is that he be a good missionary, understanding the technique of the work.

What is the root purpose of missionary work? The answer is simple: it is not merely to convert a number of people, to build a school, to teach the children to sing hymns—and wear European clothes?—but to plant the Church. The spiritual life of a mission means the spiritual life of the mystical body, lived by the people there. It means the Church as she is in herself, as the popes have written about her in encyclicals, as the great ages of the Church have known her, and as history has revealed her.