2 October 1983
San Salvador, El Salvador

My dear Sisters,

If this were not a Sunday, we would be celebrating in the liturgy the feast of our Guardian Angels. Because our faith is based on the Resurrection of Christ--has not St. Paul reminded us that, "if Christ be not risen, our faith is in vain." (1 Cor 15-17)--the Church always likes to celebrate Sunday as a little Easter day. It is for that reason that this year no explicit mention is made in today's liturgy of our Guardian Angels. That does not mean, however, that we should not salute them today and other days throughout the year. St. Vincent had a profound devotion to the Guardian Angels and recommended to Sisters that, before they entered a city, they should salute the angel that God had assigned to protect it. Living as you are amidst many dangers here in El Salvador, you probably call upon the protection of your Guardian Angels more frequently than if you were living in circumstances that were altogether safe. Perhaps when we were young, one of the earliest prayers we were taught was a prayer to our Guardian Angel, and after we have died, when the Church is saying an official goodbye to us before our bodies are taken to the grave, she will pray: "And may the chorus of angels come to greet you." So today we breathe a prayer of thanks to those messengers of God who accompany us day and night, as we try to strengthen, help and console the poor who cross our paths.

Speaking about prayers, I imagine you must have no difficulty in making your own that prayer in the opening lines of the first reading in today's Mass: "How long, O Lord, I cry for help but you do not listen. I cry out to you,`Violence!' but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin? Why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me. There is strife and clamorous discord." (Hb 1:2-3). From your experience each of you could comment on the misery and violence and ruin and strife and discord that meet you daily in your lives. To your protests which you make to God about the violence you see, there comes, as there came to Habakkuk, only a partial answer. Have you remarked upon the answer which Habakkuk received? "Then the Lord answered me and said: Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets." (Hb 2:2). The Lord's answer to violence was vision. We can say that His answer to the problem of violence in society today is still vision. Not the vision of any kind, not the vision that springs from the heart of man for, as the prophet Jeremiah remarks: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt. Who can understand it." (Jer 17:9). The vision which God offers us is the vision that springs from faith, and faith is a created participation in the knowledge that God has of Himself and of all that He has created. Faith is an authentic vision of God even if, as St. Paul remarks, "We see now only in a dark manner." (I Cor 13:12). We can, however, improve the quality of our vision and of our faith. Like the Apostles, we must ask of God an increase of faith, for faith is a gift of God. More than this, we can improve the quality of our faith by purifying our heart, as far as possible, of its corruption. "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." (Mt 5:8).

I sometimes think that the emphasis which St. Vincent put on the importance of the virtue of simplicity has much to do with purity of heart. For St. Vincent, acting with simplicity meant acting with God alone in view.

Simplicity or purity of intention in carrying out the tasks of our daily lives, may seem a very small thing to us in a world where we feel so powerless in the face of so much violence and misery. Yet it has been said that a stone can change the surface of the ocean. Be confident in that goodness which comes from simplicity, from trying to act always with God alone in view and out of love for Him. Through your simplicity, God is using you--often unknown to yourselves--to bring down from their thrones those who are working against the coming of His Kingdom. Take heart from the words with which St. Paul addresses us today in the second reading: "God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and love and self-control." (2 Tim 1:7). Take heart from the thought that in the midst of so many dangers you are not alone. Your Guardian Angel is "bearing you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone." (Mt 4:6).