1 January 1983
Paris, France

Mother Rogé, Father Lloret and my dear Sisters,

In the early days of the New Year 1657, St. Louise wrote a letter to the Sister Servant at Angers:

My very dear Sister,

I imagine that it must have grieved you to go so long without receiving a letter from us. I have so little time because of my ailments and the sister who assists me has also been unwell. This has caused part of the delay. However, I was also waiting for the first conference of the year, so I could participate in the drawing for the holy pictures, in your place, after our Most Honored Father had blessed them. Enclosed are the ones that Providence has chosen for you. We wanted to allow each of you the consolation of drawing her own when they are distributed.

The subject of the conference was the obligation we have of striving after our own perfection this year, even more intensely than we have in the past. The first point gave the reasons why we must strive to reach perfection; the second, the means at our disposition to attain it; the third, the obstacles that we might encounter as we seek perfection.

If Monsieur l'abbé could spare you a little time, and if all our sisters were animated by a sincere desire to reach personal perfection, I think that you would profit considerably by a little conference on this subject. Believe me, Sister, it is more harmful to our sanctification than good to seek our own satisfaction by speaking privately first to one person then to another. However, the advice given to all, assembled in the name of Our Lord, which each one receives as coming from the hand of God and intended for her personally, is much more profitable.

But allow me to tell you what often prevents us from being better and more faithful despite all the instructions which are so charitably given us. It occurs when we do not reflect that it is God who is speaking to us, or when we say that such and such a thing is said for us personally because we are held in low repute. It also happens when, instead of being convinced that we need all that is being taught us, we are bold enough to say that it is being addressed to this sister or that one, or that another sister has indeed been told off.

Am I not mean to think this way? But do not believe, my dear Sisters that I think such things of you. I point them out because I have observed such conduct in some sisters here, and each of us is capable of committing all the faults that others commit. I, therefore, allow myself to bring these obstacles to your attention while begging God to preserve you from them and urging you, during this new year, to renew your first fervor for the service of God, so as to obtain from His goodness the grace of fidelity and perseverance in fulfilling His holy will. If you realized how fortunate you are to be in a place where everything contributes to your sanctification, you would praise God continually for having chosen you for this work.

(Spiritual Writings of Louise de Marillac, p. 531, ltr. 505).

These few paragraphs from one of St. Louise's letters reveal quite a lot about her. Her sensitivity towards others: letters unanswered can cause people pain. Her concern for the unity of spirit and of direction in the Company: the main points of M. Vincent's New Year conference are to be pondered upon by all the Sisters. Her insight into the workings of the human mind and of its weaknesses: the tendency to apply what one hears in conferences to others and not to oneself. Again her sensitivity to her correspondents: "no, I'm not thinking of you." Lastly, her concern that the New Year would bring to the Company two of those graces which she so often asked God for: fidelity and perseverance in fulfilling His Will. But what of that New Year conference which St. Vincent gave on the 5 January 1657? The subject was Striving After Perfection. Perhaps your first reaction is that the title needs to be modernized. When you read the conference, you might feel tempted to say that it is negative in tone, for almost throughout the conference, St. Vincent speaks of the importance of mortification.

It is true that conditions of life, as we know them, have changed from those of the seventeenth century. To that extent, the words of our Founders call for some interpretation, and that interpretation we will find, for the most part, in our Rules and Constitutions. What I think all of us have to be on our guard against is being too selective in the way we read writings of St. Vincent and St. Louise. Some of us tend to be like children who pick the currants out of a cake and leave the rest uneaten, and that is not very complimentary to the cook!

We do not use the phrase, "striving after perfection," quite as much nowadays as we did before. That, however, should not distract us from the truth of the fundamental reality, that the good we will do for the poor will be proportionate to the efforts we are making to acquire, in all things and at all times, the mind and outlook of Jesus Christ. It is rather significant that in the conference of the 5 January 1657, St. Vincent mentions the poor only once. At the very end of the conference, he asked God for the grace of striving after perfection so that the Company may be preserved "for the good of the poor." It is clear that St. Vincent believed that the source of a Sister's dynamism in her work for the poor came from her sincerity in seeking her personal perfection according to the Gospel; in seeking, as St. Vincent so often said, to conform her will in all things to that of God.

St. Vincent and St. Louise realized that the acquisition of what St. Paul calls the mind of Christ, the "sensus Christi," was not achieved through a broad, general resolution to act and react as Christ would do. Not only was much reflection and prayer necessary, but one had to learn to say no many times to oneself in order to say yes to the deeper and higher call of Jesus Christ. In the New Year conference of 1657, St. Vincent touches on the importance of saying no to our senses, our will and our judgment, in order that we may respond more fully to God. It is clear that St. Vincent put a high premium on mortification, if our service of the poor was going to be according to the mind of Christ. What he was saying to the Sisters on that January day, 1657, was: look to your own spiritual perfection, look to the quality of your personal union with Christ, look to the mortification of your exterior and interior senses before you set out to help the poor. And if we are not just to pick the currants from the cake, we must accept, not only what St. Vincent said about the importance of serving the poor, but also what he said about the importance of striving after evangelical perfection in our personal lives and accept, too, the importance of mortification of senses, will and judgment in realizing that ideal. I have little doubt but that he and St Louise would say the same to us on this New Year's Day, 1983. St. Louise, for her part, would express the hope, as she did in her letter to the Sister Servant at Angers, that the beginning of this New Year would recapture for us all the first fervor of our vocation in the Community. Today, being a feast of Our Lady, she might recall for us the fact that at the end of her letter to the Sister Servant of Angers she asked her to tell one of the Sisters that she would pray to Our Lady for the intention which the Sister had confidently entrusted to the Mother of God.