Renewal
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9 August 1982 Dublin, Ireland

When Sister Pauline asked me some months ago to speak at this meeting, I was happy to accept her invitation. At the time the subject matter of the talks was left undetermined and still is, but that is no fault of Sister Pauline's. Months ago the date for the party was fixed, but the menu left undecided. We knew who the guests were going to be--yourselves. I am not too sure that St. Vincent would approve of my looking at it this way, that Sister Pauline and I were to be the hosts and you the guests. For it is a remarkable feature of those conferences, which were held in the presence of St. Louise in the Mother House, how much St. Vincent gained from the reflections, the observations and the spiritual enlightenment which he elicited by questioning, from those first members of the Company.

The conferences are punctuated by exclamations of praise and thanksgiving to God for the light which the Spirit of God had given to those simple and, for the most part, uneducated Daughters of Charity. There is no doubt that St. Vincent used the conference as a means of instructing the first Daughters of Charity. But we must believe that he himself was also edified, built up, in his faith by the replies that the Sisters made when he asked them for their thoughts on the given subject of the Conference. The conferences were conferences, not just a monologue such as I have embarked upon now! Indeed, it could be a much more enriching experience for all of us here today, if, after some brief introductory remarks, I began to say like St. Vincent: "And you, my Daughter, what do you think?" and interrogated a number of you at random.

If I understood Sister Pauline rightly when she asked me to speak to you, I think she suggested that I might say something that would encourage you in your vocation and give the Province a new sense of hope. Not indeed that she or I have reason to think that the Province is flagging in its spirit. No! For my part, I am always happy when asked by Sisters of other Provinces in what parts of the world the Company is growing in numbers, to be able to cite the region of Nigeria as one among a number of countries where there are unmistakable signs of numerical growth. It is always gratifying to be able to observe that twenty years ago there were no Daughters of Charity working in Nigeria and that today there are fifty-five, among them thirty-five Nigerian Sisters. The growth of the Nigerian Region could only have taken place because of the healthy condition of the roots and trunk of that tree which so shortly will be celebrating the fiftieth year of its planting.

Whenever St. Vincent in his last years looked back on his life, or more particularly on the life of his Communities, his reaction was always predictable. He would protest that he had not planned the planting of the Company, or had anything to do with its expansion. All the planting, all the planning had been done by God. That, for St. Vincent, was "something understood."

"Something understood" at the end of his life was the real service of Christ in the poor. He had only come to understand that reality slowly, but when he had grasped it, it became like one of those immense turbo-prop jets that lifted him off the flat earth of mediocrity and thrust him upwards and forwards so that he had a panoramic view of the needs of the poor, while all time "bearing healing in his wings."

"Something understood" was that such healing that he or the Company could bring to the hemorrhaging world of the poor could only come from Jesus Christ. Hence the importance of real personal contact with Jesus Christ through faith, through the Sacraments, through personal and community prayer. For St. Vincent, "virtue went out of Jesus" as it had done when He walked the roads of Galilee. Today, as then, it is necessary to touch Him if, like the woman in the Gospel, we are to experience His virtue, His strength in our lives.

"Something understood" by St. Vincent in his mature years was the importance in all apostolic work of not standing in God's light. He grew more and more convinced of the importance that his own life and the lives of those whom he directed in his two Communities should have a transparency about them, a transparency that enabled God to pass through, on his way to reaching His poor, and a transparency that also enabled the poor to see and come to God. It was St. Vincent's conviction of the importance of such transparency in our lives that led him to stress so much for us those sister virtues of simplicity and humility.

Apropos of these two virtues which so distinguish the Company throughout the world, allow me speak of a recent experience which for me has been "something understood." A fortnight ago I was visiting a number of houses of the Company in the north of Morocco. It is a mission which belongs to the Spanish Province of Granada. In most of the houses in which I visited or stayed, the Sisters were working among an almost entirely Mohammedan population. One of the hospitals suffers acutely during the summer season from a chronic shortage of water, although a tourist hotel in a more wealthy part of the town is never without an abundant supply. Two other hospitals administered by our Sisters labor under similar difficulties. While walking around each of these hospitals and noting how clean the Sisters managed to keep them, despite the lack or scarcity of such an elemental necessity as water, and noting at the same time that the patients were all poor and all Mohammedans, I found myself impatiently saying to myself, "Why does the Company stay here?" The following day we called to see three Sisters living in a three-room flat in a town of four thousand where there is not a single Christian. The Sisters have a tiny oratory where once a week they have the privilege of a Mass. They run a dispensary and also try to instruct women, not in the faith, for that is strictly forbidden, but in some elementary domestic and feminine skills. Again I found myself asking almost impatiently, "Why stay here?" Yet in all these communities there was a particular fragrance of joy among the Sisters. I am quite sure that there were hidden community tensions, as there always must be in this imperfect world, but there was a transparent joy among them nonetheless, that was not affected, a joy that was of the Lord.

The question, "Why does the Company stay here?", became less persistent in my mind as the visit progressed. Certainly the poor were there and that was a reason why they should remain. But an equally powerful reason for remaining was the transparency of the lives of the Sisters. In a hundred different ways the tender mercy of God was breaking in on the lives of these Mohammedan people like the dawn from on high. The people could see the beauty of that dawn because of the transparency in the lives of the Sisters. In their simplicity the Sisters looked up to God, to Him Who is the Light of the World, and through their humility they drew down grace and truth upon these people, because they themselves were trying to put up no resistance through pride or self-seeking. "God resists the proud and gives His grace to the humble." (Jas 4:6).

Through such transparent lives, suffering was being alleviated, ignorance dispelled, the poor were being served. More than that, only God could tell us. What deep stirrings of His saving grace were silently taking place in the inner depths of the souls of those people who gazed through the transparent lives of the Sisters on the loving kindness of our God, on the grace and truth that comes from Jesus Christ, is God's secret. Some of these poor will get no further than articulating a word of gratitude. The rest is silence and must remain so until "the secrets of all hearts will be revealed" (1 Cor 14:25), when the Son of Man will come again in glory to render to each man according to his works.

Do I hear one of you say, "Father, you are in Ireland now, not in Morocco"? And so I am. Geographically there is an important difference between Ireland and Morocco, as there is between Nigeria and Morocco. Spiritually and within our Community, there is none. In suggesting to you that the virtues of simplicity and humility give a transparency to your lives, I am suggesting to you the qualities that give a particular distinction to you as Daughters of Charity in your service of the poor. Perhaps it might help you to think of your lives and vocations as rich stained-glass windows which, in the words of the song, are letting in "God's heavenly light." Any great stained-glass window is made up of myriad pieces of different colors, all combining to proclaim the message of God's word, the message of the faith. The great white light of the sun outside is transformed by the glass into rich reds and blues and golds. So it is with our lives as individuals and as a Community in God's Church. Within our Communities, each of us is unique. We are by nature and by grace of a certain hue and color through which the bright sun of God's goodness is shining and delighting the building which is the Church, which is the Body of Christ. As individuals we are part of our Community which has a message for the Church of God, and not only a message but a service for the poor, the handicapped, the brokenhearted.

As rich stained-glass windows in God's Church, stained by the Blood of Christ, we can as individuals and as Communities become smeared and smudged by the grime and dust of man's city, and that almost imperceptibly so. Thanks be to God Who has inspired you to be deeply devoted to that purifying process which is the annual retreat, the annual renovation of vows, to the monthly retreat and to seeking greater purity of heart in the regular experience of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

One window is not the entire cathedral. It is part of an harmonious whole. The window, if it could think for itself, would have a sense of its proportion. It is indeed the architect's sense of proportion that gives beauty to a building. As windows in God's great building, which is the Church, we need to keep our sense of proportion. Certainly God, the architect, has a sense of proportion. It is we who at times lose our sense of proportion when we try to be or become something that He does not intend us to be or become. I have sometimes wondered if future historians of the Church will judge those first ten years after Vatican Council II as years when individuals and Communities within the Church tended to lose their sense of proportion.

We were invited by the Spirit of God to renew ourselves as Communities, to adapt ourselves and our apostolates to the needs of the modern world. Nearly all tried to respond. The trouble came when some, instead of being content to clean the windows, decided to dismantle them or enlarge or diminish them according to their taste. Let me say at once--and I think St. Vincent and St. Louise would not object to this--that by and large the Company throughout the world has, by the grace of God, kept its sense of proportion. Under the grace of God I attribute that not only to the intercession of St. Vincent and St. Louise and our large Community in heaven, but also to the eminently practical character of the spirituality which St. Vincent and St. Louise inculcated into your predecessors, the first Daughters of Charity. "Give yourselves to God in order that you shall speak in the humble spirit of Jesus Christ confessing that your doctrine is not yours, but from the Gospel. And be particularly careful to imitate Our Lord in the simplicity of language He used and of the comparisons He drew when speaking to the people. (Coste XI, Fr. ed., p. 346).

Whatever is simple and humble, keep these things, pursue these things. In so doing, you will be following the path of Vincent de Paul, for his spirituality is impregnated with simplicity and humility. "Simplicity," he observed one day during a conference, "is my Gospel." His humility has been put forward by at least one profound student of his works as one of the two great dynamic forces that lay behind all that he achieved in his lifetime.

In praying that we will, as a Company and as individuals, keep our sense of proportion, we are asking something big of God, for proportion affects all aspects of our lives. We need proportion in allocating time for work and time for formal prayer; time for study and time for leisure; time for God and time for my community; time for my friends and time for the poor; time for reading and time for reflection. We need a sense of proportion even in evaluating our own personal difficulties and problems. Dr. Johnson, the writer and critic, used to say to his anxious and often troubled friend, Boswell, agonizing over some difficulty: "Sir, consider its importance fifteen years hence...." That is a very wise thing to do. St. Peter's advice to "bow down under the mighty Hand of God,"(1 Pt 5:6) and "to cast your cares upon Him" (Ibid., v.7)--which is more difficult to do than we realize--would do much to help us keep our sense of proportion in the face of difficulties which at the present moment may loom large in our lives and in our thinking.

Proportion affects even our serving of the poor. The cares of the poor have become more insistent in our day. We have been urged to respond to them, and we have been trying--not without pain and sacrifice--to orient our works to where the needs of the poor of our society are greatest. If we do not have a sense of proportion, we may feel unconsciously that we must help all the poor. Then, when we cannot, a certain frustration and annoyance is born within us, a dissatisfaction with our particular community and the Province, which in turn breeds discontent with our vocation. That is why I say it is important that we keep a sense of proportion even in our service of the poor. This sense of proportion is touched upon by St. Vincent in his remark: "The works of God have their moment; His Providence arranges that they take place then and not sooner or later. The Son of God saw the loss of souls, and nevertheless He did not anticipate the hour ordained for His coming." (Coste V, Fr. ed., p. 596).

I imagine that St. Vincent would alert us to the danger of excessive zeal. "It is true," he wrote, "that zeal is the soul of the virtues, but most certainly, Monsieur, it must be according to knowledge, as St. Paul says; that means according to the knowledge of experience. And because young people ordinarily do not possess this experiential knowledge, their zeal goes to excess, especially in those who have a natural asperity." (Coste II, Eng. ed., ltr. 460, p. 84).

Hopefully our Community and Provincial Plans will preserve our sense of proportion and save us from that excessive zeal which St. Vincent was realist enough to fear. Our Community and Provincial Plans are not green or white papers, nor are they merely results of human reason and human experience, ratified by the sum of the members who contributed to their production. They are rather the fruit of prayerful reflection on the part of the whole Community which humbly seeks the light of God so that it can marry its limited human and spiritual resources with the needs of the poor among whom it lives. "Send forth Your light and Your truth. Let these be my guide." (Ps 43:3)."Something understood." That hints that there are many things which we don't understand. We have certain great securities in our lives, our faith which is as imperishable as gold, even when it is tried by the fire of doubt and depression. Even with our faith, we can see now only in a dark manner. The darkness somehow seems to keep deepening about us: the Ireland of the Eucharistic Congress of 1932 seems to have been a brighter country than the Ireland of 1982. Let us not delay too long in making comparisons. What is important for us privileged people--privileged by reason of our vocation in Christ Jesus--is that we should not go like Dylan Thomas, raging into the darkness of the night, but rather following the advice of St. Peter, advance into it with the flickering light of faith, secure in the knowledge that the light which we carry has been caught from Christ, the Light of the World, that this light shines in the darkness, and that the darkness, however deep it may seem to us, has not and will not overcome it.

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