15 November 1987
To Each Confrere

My dear Confrere,

May the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with us forever!

On a few occasions over the past three years I have given some thought to writing to tell you about the work of restoration that is being carried out in the Chapel of the Mother House in Paris. The response of the Confreres to the appeal which I made for financial help in 1984 was most generous, and it can only be interpreted as an expression of the love you have for St. Vincent and for what he means to all of us. Some of you on the occasion of a visit to Paris will have seen what has been so far achieved. The work is essentially one of restoration. There have been some adaptations made in the Chapel to reconcile its original design with the ideal of facilitating fuller participation of the laity in the liturgy, in accordance with the wishes of Vatican Council II. The work has been slow, painstaking and costly, and it will be a little while yet before it is completed. Meantime, thought is being given to how the Chapel can be made more attractive as a center of devotion to St. Vincent, with special prominence being given to the apostolate of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Can our Congregation ever forget that it owes its origin in a sense to St. Vincent's own experience of reconciling one poor peasant with God in the year 1617?

The seasons of Advent and Christmas each year serve to focus our minds afresh on the mysterious and historical coming of God into our world of human experience of suffering, joy and love. The Incarnation is God's great work of restoration. As a work of restoration it has, from God's point of view, been costly, slow and painstaking. Its cost is not to be reckoned in the currency of silver or gold but "with the precious Blood of Christ." (1 Pt 1:18). The work of restoration of humankind has been slow: almost twenty centuries after the Word of God came to dwell among us, less than 20% of the world's present population acknowledges Jesus Christ to be the Divine Artist that we know Him to be. The first to acknowledge and to welcome Him into the world was the Virgin Mary of Nazareth. She became, and still is, God's primary partner in the work of the restoration of humanity, but all of us who have become through baptism adopted sons of God are called to share in the delicate work of restoring to every human being, already marred and smudged by original sin, the image and likeness of Christ, Who is for all humanity the second Adam. (cf. 1 Cor 15:45).

As a Community in the Church and as individuals in St. Vincent's Congregation, we have been commissioned by the Spirit of God to devote our energies to restoring those most damaged parts of the Body of Christ, namely, the deprived, the poor, the neglected, those who are most in need of being convinced that they have been specially created to beautify with their individual lives the temple of the living God.

At a time when so much thought is being given to defining the diversity of roles in the Church, we would do well not to lose sight of the great overall design of God, which is "to restore all things in Christ." (Eph 1:10). Our Lord Himself began the work of restoration by taking the form of a servant, enclosing Himself in the womb of the Virgin Mary and becoming obedient unto death, even to death on a cross. (cf. Phil 2:6-8). The beginning and the end of Christ's life on earth are enveloped in the profound mystery of humility and obedience. The ongoing work of God's restoration must then continually return to those central theological facts, be the frequent subject of our reflections in prayer and be accepted as conditions, if our own personal contributions to restoring all things in Christ are to have meaning and value. "The only wisdom we can hope to acquire," wrote a modern Christian poet, "is the wisdom of humility." (T.S. Eliot).

The work of restoring all things in Christ is a highly delicate one. Each of us is called to be an artist of the supernatural for the people to whom by the Providence of God the Community sends us. We can only be artists of the supernatural if, to quote St. Vincent, "Our Lord imprints His mark and character on us and gives us, so to speak, the sap of His Spirit and grace...being united to Him as the branches are united to the vine." (Coste XI, Fr. ed., p. 344). In working to restore all things in Christ we are not alone. God is with us: Emmanuel. His poor also are close to us. May we never forget that the ultimate source of hope and joy for the poor lies in our sharing with them our own deep personal conviction, born of prayer, that with the birth of Christ the Kingdom of God has come; that it is, like the mustard seed, growing; and that it is a kingdom of justice, of love and of peace. May your celebration of Christmas be a joyful one, and may you "be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may discern what is the Will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect." (Rom 12:2).