In 1892 he left Lebanon and served as a teacher of Arabic at the Christian Brothers' College of Saint Mark's in Alexandria in Egypt from 1892 to 1893 where he felt a strong call to the religious life.[1][2] The negative example of a priest stationed there struck him while the tale of the death of a Capuchin friar moved him.[3] He returned home in 1893 to inform his father of his decision to enter the order to which his father opposed but later accepted as his son's will and that of God's. He entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in Khashbau at Saint Anthony's on 25 August 1893 and received his religious name in honor of Saint James of the Marches; he professed his perpetual vows in 1898.