16 October 1983
Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland

Your Excellency, The Nuncio, My Lord Bishops, Reverend Fathers, Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

There is a little phrase in the second reading of today's Mass which captures, I think, the spirit of what all of us are experiencing here today. The phrase is a short, pithy piece of advice which the aging St. Paul wrote to the young Timothy: "Remember who your teachers were." (2 Tim 3:14). All of us can remember who our teachers were and, when we have long forgotten many of the details of grammar, science or whatever else they imparted to us, we can remember what manner of people they were. It is that, I imagine, which St. Paul is evoking for Timothy. In as many words, St. Paul is saying to him what he said to others on different occasions: "Become imitators of us and of the Lord." (1 Thes 1:6).

The particular teachers whom we are evoking today are two. They are separated from each other by two hundred years or so and, although they shared the same nationality, they came from very different backgrounds: one from the land, as we might say, and the other from the professional or business world. One was to die young, leaving a wife and a child; the other was to live into old age as a priest, until the end an active mediator of God's love for the world. The contrasts between St. Vincent de Paul and Frederic Ozanam are many, but what is more striking still is the depth and intensity of the vision both men shared. To each of them was given a penetrating insight into the mystery of Christ and His presence in the persons of the poor.

"We must not consider," wrote St. Vincent de Paul, "a poor agricultural worker or a poor woman according to their external appearance, nor according to their apparent intellectual abilities....Turn the medal and you will see by the light of faith that the Son of God, Who wished to be poor, is presented to us through these poor people." (Coste XI, Fr. ed., p. 32). The life and work of Frederic Ozanam was an endorsement of that reflection of St. Vincent de Paul.

"Remember who your teachers were." Neither of our teachers could be described as a "remote, intellectual don," for even if Frederic Ozanam held with great distinction a professorial chair in the Sorbonne University of Paris, he still could find time, along with the other founding members of the Society, to climb the stairs of high tenements in Paris to visit, talk with and assist the poor families who eked out their existence in them.

Not only the poor of Paris, but of other European cities as well, touched the heart of Frederic Ozanam. In 1851 he was persuaded to visit the great exhibition which was being held in the Crystal Palace in London. It was during his visit to the Crystal Palace that Frederic Ozanam became quite distracted, not by what he saw there, but by the poverty of the Irish immigrants who were to be found, some fourteen to a room, in buildings only five minutes' walk from Regent Street. It was not the exciting discoveries of the scientific world of the time that riveted the attention of the brilliant professor from the Sorbonne, but the sufferings of the poor of Christ in the heart of the British capital. What captured the admiration of Ozanam in the London of 1851 was the work of some English members of the Society, who were able, as Ozanam expressed it, to "rise above the prejudices of their birth" and come to the help of some poor Sicilians and Irish people, who were showing so clearly the effects of poverty in their bodies, and which, to a man of Ozanam's spiritual insight, was a revelation of the features of the suffering Christ.

Of our other teacher, St. Vincent de Paul, and his concern for the poor of this country three hundred years ago, we know more. Into the dioceses of Limerick, Cashel and Emly, he sent priests of his Community at a time when to be a priest in Ireland was to live dangerously. Because of that danger, many Irish priests had become refugees in the city of Paris, and we know for certain that St. Vincent de Paul commissioned one of his Community to seek them out and to offer them some financial help in order to save them the embarrassment of having to beg their bread in the streets of the capital.

"Remember who your teachers were." The memory of Timothy's teachers is evoked by St. Paul, not in any nostalgic way, but rather as a stimulus to become, as St. Paul himself expresses it in the final phrase of today's second reading, "fully equipped and ready for any good work." (2 Tim 3:17). In evoking our teachers, St. Vincent de Paul and Frederic Ozanam, we do so, not only to allow our wonder to grow as we reflect on their monumental lives, but also that in some small way we may be able to go and do likewise.

These two teachers of ours will not object if at this point we recall with gratitude some of those other teachers which the Society of St. Vincent de Paul has known since its foundation some one hundred fifty years ago in Paris. There is the illustrious line of International Presidents that culminates for us today in the person of M. Amin de Terrazzi, men who have inspired the Society and have given its members a sense of unity throughout the world in their work of lifting up some of the broken forms of humanity that are lying on life's road. Besides the International Presidents, each of us here today would like to honor the memory of the Irish National Presidents of the Society, predecessors of Don Mahony. Perhaps they, as well as many other members of the Society, would lay no claim to being teachers. However, their devotion to the Society and to the poor of Ireland is a demonstration lesson to us on the meaning of the two great commandments of the law, on which in the evening time of our lives we will be examined. "At evening time, I will examine thee in love." By the grace of God, they have made themselves, in St. Paul's phrase, "fully equipped and ready for any good work" (Ibid.) that would lighten the burden of those whom St. Vincent liked to call "our lords and masters," the poor.

Yes, we have had many teachers in the Society whose memory we treasure today, and whose work is a stimulus for us not only to seek out the poor (did somebody say that 25% of Ireland's population could be classified as poor at the present time?), but also to engage the interest, or I should say, the love of the young to work in the Society for the poor, who are always with us. In this large classroom where this afternoon so many pupils or disciples of St. Vincent de Paul and Frederic Ozanam are gathered, what would our teachers say to us today?

Would Frederic Ozanam find us so engrossed in the great exhibition of affluence, that we have become a somewhat depersonalized society? Perhaps he would marvel at the phenomenon that while the five continents of the world can become present to us in the intimacy of our homes through a television set, loneliness and depression in our society has reached almost epidemic proportions. Would he, picking up the title of a present-day film, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, have a pertinent word for us on the importance of giving generously of our time to those who are the long-distance runners on life's road, the aged in our society? Frederic Ozanam might remind us that the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is rooted and founded in the experience of the Eternal Word of God, Who came, in St. John's phrase, "and pitched His tent" among us and visited His people, especially the poor, in person. In person--yes, what has characterized the Society from its beginnings, and must continue to do so, is its determination to be more than an agency of relief. Its members are called to be not only dispensers of food and fuel and clothing to the poor--both obvious and not so obvious--but dispensers, too, of the love and compassion of Christ, which has been poured into their own hearts by the Spirit of God. The Society recognizes that if

"The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire."

then personal contact, patient listening, a profound acceptance of the individual will be a very effective therapy in healing the wounds which poverty or injustice has left in the hearts of so many today.

"The hint half-guessed
The gift half-understood
Is Incarnation."

Perhaps St. Vincent de Paul in addressing us might begin by protesting at the publicity which the Society has given to his name, for he would vigorously assert that he was not the founder of it. However, he would pardon the Society for the publicity, if he could be persuaded that it was done so entirely in the interests of God and His poor. With a smile and a little touch of irony, he might add: "At least in the matter of publicity, the two Communities which I did found have been much more successful in respecting my wishes to be unknown." Of St. Vincent de Paul, it could be said that he had a hard head and a soft heart. I say he had a hard head, for at a time when there was no organized government social assistance, he succeeded in providing it, principally through the Ladies of Charity and the Daughters of Charity whom he founded, along with a network of other organizations which he set up to make the basic necessities of life available to the poor. He was not a politician, but he had no fear of going to the rich, influential people of his day to obtain help with his projects for the poor, and in doing so, sensitizing their consciences to their social obligations. For such planning and courage, a man needs a hard head. He had, however, a soft heart and, in his approach to those who held authority or enjoyed prestige, there was nothing shrill or aggressive. His respect for the individual person was too deep to allow him to adopt tactics that were faintly menacing or remotely violent. The sufferings of refugees, one-parent families, dropouts, victims of violence, hostages and prisoners, all tore his heart out, because in their cries of pain, he could hear only the voice of Jesus Christ on His cross.

"Remember who your teachers were." Perhaps we should, on this occasion when we are celebrating here in Ireland the one hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, leave the last word to our two distinguished teachers. In 1651 St. Vincent de Paul addressed a letter to a city council in France that had shown an unusual degree of sensitivity to the needs of the poor in its society. The Council members had written to St. Vincent, expressing the hope that he might be able to assist them in the work of alleviating distress. Characteristically, the Saint replied that he would do what he could, and then added a few words of encouragement (did he think that State agencies, such as they were at that time, needed encouragement as much as goading if they were to be more just and generous to those whom we today rather clumsily call the "underprivileged"?). For St. Vincent de Paul, the poor were not names in a register or, had he been living nowadays, cards to be fed into a computer. For him, the poor were the open and raw nerves of the suffering Body of Christ. So he wrote to the city council: "Gentlemen, how pleased Our Lord is with your concern for the relief of His suffering members! I ask Him to be your reward for this, to bless you and your government, to give peace to the kingdom, and to deliver His people from the evil they are enduring...and I am, in the love of Our Lord, Your most humble and obedient servant, Vincent de Paul, unworthy priest of the Mission." (Coste IV, Eng. ed., ltr. 1360, p. 202).