11 October 1985
San Francisco de Macoris, Santo Domingo

My dear Friends in Jesus Christ,

It will be just a year ago tomorrow since the Pope set foot here in your country and spoke to a vast crowd in the Olympic Stadium. One of the nine years of the novena that leads up to the five hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Christianity in the continent of Latin America has passed. I imagine you can still hear the Pope expressing his hope that the new Latin America will be, to quote his own words, "free and fraternal, just and peaceful, loyal to Christ and to Latin American man." You will recall, too, how the Pope quoted the prayer which Columbus' seamen recited at dawn: "Blessed be the light and the holy true cross and the Lord of truth and the Holy Trinity. Blessed be the dawn and the Lord who sends it to us. Blessed be the day and the Lord who sends it to us."

It is a year ago tomorrow since the Pope was with you. Let me recall another anniversary which we are celebrating today. If you were in Rome on this day twenty-three years ago, standing in the great square in front of St. Peter's, you would have seen filing past you an immense procession of Bishops, about two thousand of them. At the end of the procession came the Pope of that time, John XXIII, and they were all making their way into the huge basilica of St. Peter's to celebrate Mass and to begin Vatican Council II. In the hearts and minds of those Bishops on the 11 October 1962 were the sentiments of Columbus' seamen: "Blessed be the day and the Lord who sends it to us."

We never know at the beginning of a day what the Lord is going to send to us. We do not know what the day will bring us. So, too, the Pope and the Bishops of the world on this day twenty-three years ago did not know what the Lord would bring to them during their long meeting. The Pope and the Bishops, who commenced the work of Vatican Council II, were a little like explorers. They did not know what continents of new theology they would discover during their reflections and discussions. Or, to express it in another way, they invoked the Spirit of God on the 11 October 1962, but they did not know where the Spirit of God would lead them. This should not surprise us, because Our Lord said of the Holy Spirit that He is like the wind. "The wind blows where it wills," said Our Lord, "and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (Jn 3:8).

At Vatican Council II the Bishops were led by the Holy Spirit into new discoveries about the Church. It was not that they made new theology. Rather they discovered new truths which lie hidden in the Creed. Before Latin America was discovered by Columbus and his men, it existed. Latin America is as old as Europe, but the people in Europe knew nothing about it until Columbus brought back the news that it was there. It is a little like that with theology. The truths which Jesus Christ gave to His Apostles are like a rich mine. It is only gradually that the wealth of the mine can be brought to the surface. Our Lord told His Apostles many things about the Church, and He promised, when He was about to leave them, that "when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth." (Jn 16:13). The work of a General Council and of the years that follow it is to discover new riches in the mine of the truth which Our Lord has left to His Church.

Since Vatican Council II, the Spirit of God has continued to reveal truths to the Pope and the Bishops of the Church. Next month once again the Pope will surround himself, not with all the Bishops of the Church but with a representative group of them, so that together they can listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and see more deeply into the truths which the Spirit of God communicated to the Bishops of Vatican Council II twenty years ago.

One of the messages which the Church received from the Spirit of God at Vatican Council II was that it should do more for the poor of the world. Over the past twenty years the Church has increased her interest in the poor. Not only has the Church tried to lighten the sufferings of the poor, but she has tried also to be more efficient in bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ and His Church to the poor. When the Pope was here with you last year, he made many important statements. One of them has impressed me greatly. The Pope said to you here in Santo Domingo: "He who lacks material resources may be poor, but he who does not know the way which God marks out for him is even poorer."

Perhaps the reason why this statement of the Pope impressed me so much is that it expresses in one sentence the ideal by which St. Vincent de Paul lived. St. Vincent was interested in feeding the hungry, visiting prisoners, caring for the sick, educating the poor, and he founded Communities and groups to continue his work. But he was also intensely interested in helping people, particularly the poor, to be reconciled with God, to cherish their faith, and to be loyal to the Church. In one word, St. Vincent de Paul was not interested only in the bodies of the poor, but in their souls also. There are some people who are only interested in improving the material conditions of the poor. That is important, certainly. Without any doubt it is important to keep searching for peaceful ways of securing greater justice for the poor. However, that is only half the work. Every poor person has a soul. Every poor person has a responsibility to save his soul. Every poor person has need of help in that task. It was St. Vincent de Paul's great achievement that he worked to save both the bodies and souls of the poor. He worked to save the whole person. "What does it profit a man," asks Our Lord, "if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his soul?" (Mk 8:36). What, my dear friends, will it profit us if we gain the whole world for the poor, but do not help them to find the way which will lead them to God and the happiness of heaven?