9 August 1982
Dublin, Ireland

My dear Sisters,

Perhaps l should have begun this morning by saying something about the title of these two sets of reflections which I am putting before you today, "something understood." They are the two last words in a poem by the sixteenth century English poet, George Herbert. The poem is one on prayer, and he uses a number of short, pithy phrases to describe the experience of prayer. The final one is that simple expression, "something understood." It is not the most accurate nor the most attractive definition one could find of prayer, for it focuses rather on one of the results of prayer than on the heart of the experience itself. It is, however, true enough: it does suggest that God communicates something to us in prayer.

When we adore God at the beginning of prayer and allow ourselves to fall with our minds and hearts and wills into the depth upon depth of His power and wisdom and love, we do come to understand a little more clearly the meaning of some of those phrases which all too lightly we say with our lips: All-powerful, ever-living God; All-wise, ever-loving God. When in prayer we allow the glance of Christ to rest on our weaknesses and betrayals of Him, as it rested for a moment on Peter, we come to know more of the selfishness and immaturity of all sin and the silent, undeviating lovingness of God. Or again when in that childlike way, which Christ so much commended to us, we unfold the desires of our heart to Him in petition, we come to know ourselves better and at the same time know in a more experimental way the meaning of the Fatherhood of God. So, too, with thanksgiving. It is thanksgiving in our lives that helps us to understand something of the open-handed generosity of our Father in heaven, Who makes the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike. It is thanksgiving, too, that teaches us something about the meaning of generosity in our own lives and leads us to an appreciation of it in the lives of others.

So it is true that every lifting up of our souls to God in prayer does result in something being understood--about God, about ourselves, about our places and our apostolates in His world.

Let us turn our minds away from ourselves and towards St. Vincent, who certainly came to understand much through prayer. His first biographer, Bishop Abelly, remarked that St. Vincent in his humility tended to be reticent about his personal prayer. But the primacy of prayer in his own life and in the lives of the members of his Communities is plain for all to see. When reading the conferences and letters of St. Vincent, allow yourself to be distracted sometimes by the vividness of his imagination. In instructing people, he followed the example of Our Lord and used simple but very picturesque language to convey his convictions. Much of his teaching on prayer centers specifically on mental prayer. Here is a random selection of the images which St. Vincent uses, in instructing others on the centrality and importance of mental prayer in our lives, uses. For St. Vincent mental prayer is the food of the soul: it is for the soul what air is for man or water is for fishes: it is a fountain of rejuvenation: it is an ornament of the soul: it is as the looking-glass by which we come to know ourselves.

What St. Vincent came to understand in prayer is expressed, at least partially, in his works. Our own Communities must be seen certainly as the work of the Spirit of God, but also as "something understood" personally by St. Vincent in and through his prayer. By the very nature of things and also because of his own humble reticence, much of what he did come to understand in prayer is known only to God. Very likely, too, he would tell us that he came to understand the things of God only slowly; that he was a slow-learner. For that reason, he needed much time to learn the grammar of God first and then to acquire the ability to read the purposes of God which more and more he discovered to be very loving ones, particularly for those to whom the Son of God had come to preach and to help in a special way, the poor. St. Vincent believed that the deep things of God were learned only slowly. Perhaps that was the reason why, with so much fidelity over so many years, he gave the first hour of his day to mental prayer, and encouraged his priests and brothers to do likewise.

We can only penetrate a short distance into the inner courts of St. Vincent's castle of prayer. We might, however, learn something of what he himself came to understand in and through prayer by listing some of those words which were most frequently on his lips. Sometime in the future, I imagine, some enterprising Daughter of Charity or Confrere will feed the fourteen volumes, or fifteen with the discoveries made since the 1920s, of Coste's edition of St. Vincent's Correspondence, Conferences and writings into a computer, and the computer will give us back all sorts of interesting information about St. Vincent's use of language and the most frequently occurring concepts and ideas of his mind. I was going to say, "meantime, allow me to present you with a provisional list of such words," but that would be far too presumptuous on my part, for I have not studied deeply even the official index volume of Father Coste, a volume which, valuable as it is, is far from being an exhaustive index to the ideas and spiritual ideals which circulated so freely in St. Vincent's mind. What I have done is jotted down at random, and I invite you to do the same, just some of the words which I imagine were most frequently on St. Vincent's lips and which consequently may be an indication of "something understood" by him in prayer.

Those who watched St. Vincent die in the early morning of 27 September 1660, tell us that the last word which they saw shaping on his lips was Jesus. That Name had come to mean everything to him over the years. Of course, it would have been taught to him in his home at Dax by his mother some eighty years earlier, but it must have taken on a much richer significance for him when, in his late thirties or early forties, he had come to know Christ Jesus, not just with the mind of a theologian, but with the heart of a priest who had recognized Jesus as the Good Samaritan, Who had come into this world to lift up the poor and broken forms of sinful humanity, which were lying on the roads of this world half-dead. Something of the intensity with which St. Vincent loved and breathed the Spirit of Jesus Christ is to be caught in that celebrated quotation from a letter written to Father Portail: "Remember, Monsieur, we live in Jesus Christ through the death of Jesus Christ, and we must die in Jesus Christ through the life of Jesus Christ, and our life must be hidden in Jesus Christ and filled with Jesus Christ, and in order to die as Jesus Christ, we must live as Jesus Christ." (Coste I, Eng. ed. ltr 197, p. 276).

As St. Vincent matured in years, Jesus Christ became for him, to quote his own phrase, "life of my life," and from that experience there sprang very frequently to his lips not only the name of Jesus Christ, but much more importantly, appeals to himself and to others to conform their way of acting to that of the mind of Jesus Christ. Not once, but several times in his conferences and letters, he counseled this to his confreres: "Ask yourself how Jesus Christ would act in these circumstances. How would He preach to this people? How would He comfort this poor creature?" The same ideal was put before the Sisters. You will never read many lines in any of St. Vincent's writings before he introduces you to the Person of Jesus Christ. It is that which distinguishes him from the purely social reformer and steers him away from all human ideologies. For St. Vincent, to quote his own phrase, "All human action becomes the act of God when done in Jesus Christ and through Him."

Jesus Christ was sent into this world by His Father. He had a mission from His Father in heaven. Mission is one of the central words in the New Testament. It is not surprising that for one like St. Vincent, who had impregnated himself into the mind of Jesus Christ and who would have us priests read a chapter of the New Testament each day, the word mission should be central in his life and in his spirituality. When it came to baptizing the Community of priests and brothers which he had founded, the name that came to his lips was mission. For St. Vincent, the Sisters who came to him for a blessing before going to Nantes or to Calais were going on mission. For St. Vincent, such departures were occasions, not so much of farewell, for imparting some practical advice or bestowing a blessing, but a fresh enactment of that missioning of Christ, Who had said after His Resurrection, "As the Father has sent Me, so also I send you." (Jn 20:21).

For St. Vincent, such mission was a matter of urgency. He lived with the conviction that if people had not explicit knowledge of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for them to be saved. That understanding or particular interpretation of theology gave a burning urgency to his concept of mission. He saw his two Communities as continuing the mission of Christ, Who had come to save that which was lost.

Mission, then, must always remain a central concept in Vincentian thinking. The Community itself receives its mission from the Church, and each of us as individuals from the Community. That is why an ordinary appointment within the Community has a much greater significance than we often realize. Our vision is sometimes so short that we cannot see an appointment other than an administrative act which will facilitate the smooth running of the Province. It is much more. All appointments are a sending forth. Hence, the importance of being more passive than active when it comes to accepting an appointment. I am not saying that we should not enter fully into the consultative process that precedes the making of an appointment. St. Vincent would encourage us to make known in all simplicity the difficulties and the repugnances we may feel, while at the same time he would strongly urge us after that to accept the decision of our superiors as the manifest Will of God. When the consultative process is completed, it is important that then we should be more passive than active in order that we, through the Company and through the Church, can hear and accept what Christ is still saying, "As the Father has sent Me, so also I send you." (Ibid.).

Speaking to you as Daughters of Charity, I must single out a favorite word of St. Vincent's which he liked to employ when he was giving a conference to your predecessors. That word was Providence. In the volume of Conferences to the Daughters, you will find that he uses the word at least seventy times. On one occasion, he remarked to the Sisters that if they had not been called Daughters of Charity, they would be called Daughters of Providence. For St. Vincent, the Providence of God was "something understood." It was the central personal devotion of his life. In all that concerned his Communities, his great fear was that he or any of us would "cut the heel, or tread on the heel of God's Providence." We must keep a respectful distance behind the loving Wisdom of God. We do not rush in where angels feared to tread. But with equal conviction, St. Vincent would stress that when the loving Providence of God did indicate whither we should direct our steps, then we must not hang back; we must not drag our feet. Writing to one of his priests on the topic of an unfortunate accident which had happened, St. Vincent remarked: "How will we react to that except by willing what Divine Providence wishes and not willing what Providence does not want. This morning during my very poor prayer, I experienced a great desire to will all that happens in the world, be it good or evil...because God wills it, because God sends it....Let us study to have this disposition of will in regard to the Will of God, and among the very great blessings which will come from it, not the least will be tranquillity of soul." (Abelly, Vol. II, Book III, p. 182: ed. 1843).

Writing in 1644, he said: "Grace has its moments. Let us abandon ourselves to the Providence of God and be on our guard against anticipating it. If Our Lord is pleased to give me any consolation in our vocation, it is this: I think it seems to me that we have tried to follow Divine Providence in all things and to put our feet only in the place It has marked out for us. (Coste II, Eng. ed., ltr. 704, p. 499).

High in the order of words most frequently upon his lips was that of the poor, and one would say almost in the same breath, the word charity which should be shown to them; not any kind of charity, but the charity of Jesus Christ. Apropos of the charity of St. Vincent towards the poor, one hears nowadays an occasional voice raised about St. Vincent's concept of social justice. Did he have, it is asked, a sense of social justice? A critic has asked, through his charity did he retard the evolution of social justice in society? There is at least one reference in his correspondence to the need of putting justice before charity. What is remarkable in his writings and conferences is that, not withstanding his clear vision of the unequal distribution of wealth, never once does he denounce the rich and their possessions in bitter terms. He certainly worked in a practical way to make the rich distribute some of their wealth to the poor and in that way level, in however small a degree, the inequality that existed between the rich and the poor in the society of his time. I like to think of his refusal to criticize bitterly the rich for their unconcern of the plight of the poor because of his deep respect for the dignity of the individual person. It should not be forgotten that such respect for the dignity of any person is the first claim that justice makes upon us.

I have been digressing somewhat from those two words, the poor and charity, which must have been almost hourly upon St. Vincent's lips. The poor of Jesus Christ and the charity of Jesus Christ were two of the great realities that preoccupied his thinking, his praying, and his planning during the last twenty years of his life. "It is certain that charity, when it dwells in a soul, completely occupies all its powers. There is no rest: it is a fire which is unceasingly active, keeping the person it inflames always keyed up and always in action." (Coste XI, Fr. ed., p. 215). That was a phrase St. Vincent used during a conference. You could almost say it was a pen-portrait of himself.

We could go on adding to this list of St. Vincent's favorite words. I have not mentioned prayer; how often exhortations such as this fell from his lips, "And, therefore, Sisters, pray, because prayer is a most powerful means of obtaining from God that His work shall be accomplished according to His Holy Will." (Conf. Eng. ed., 29 July 1655, p. 706). Nor have I mentioned faith, confidence, simplicity, humility, Holy Communion, the Blessed Virgin, words which must have been dear to him. What he himself once said of the ceremonies of the Mass could be applied to any one of St. Vincent's favorite words: "They are only shadows, but they are shadows of great realities." These favorite words of St. Vincent are shadows, but for him they were shadows of the great realities which he himself treasured, and which in his generosity he would share with others, and today with us.

I have spoken about some words which St. Vincent used very often in his daily conversation. Let me end with citing a word which I think appealed greatly to him, though he never said so. It is just a guess on my part. It is the word, little. His Congregation was the Little Company: the method which he advised us to use when preaching was the Little Method and his illnesses were his little fever. Little was a word which he liked to use

to qualify his own and the collective talent of his Company: "to the best of our little ability...." He liked the word, and he used it with affection. There is something at once both appealing and revealing in St. Vincent's fondness for the word, little. Appealing: this man surrounded by works of gigantic proportions with a heart that had room for human poverty of every kind, liked, in the intimacy of his heart and in the presence of His God, to think of what was closest to himself as little. Had he, like Julian of Norwich, seen a tiny acorn representing all things that are, resting in the palm of God's Hand? His fondness for the use of the word little is also revealing, for it suggests that virtue which appealed so much to him--humility.