14 November 1983
To Each Confrere

My dear Confreres,

May the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with us forever!

Some of you who will read this letter, will have had the grace and the joy of having visited the Church that has been built over the spot where, according to tradition, Christ was born. You will remember that the entrance to the Basilica of Bethlehem was very low. In fact you had to stoop to enter it. It would seem that the low entrance dates back to the Middle Ages and was constructed in order to prevent horsemen from galloping up to the entrance and riding right into the interior of the Basilica. The low entrance is a curious relic of earlier centuries, but for all that, it is a permanent reminder that the mystery of the Incarnation is essentially one of stooping. He "through Whom all things were made..." (Jn 1:3) emptied Himself and stooped so low that He was to be found in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Even when the Word of God made flesh had grown to full physical stature, must not His experience have been one of stooping, for "who is able to build Him a house since heaven, even the highest heaven, cannot contain Him?" (2 Chr 2:5).

The mystery of God's stooping is at the heart of the Incarnation and very central, too, to St. Vincent's vision of the Congregation, which must always remain "humble and hidden in the Lord." (CR XII, 10). Perhaps we find it difficult to reconcile the call to be "humble and hidden in the Lord" with the appeal that comes to us from so many quarters, to speak up and take action for the poor who are stooped because of social or political oppression. Only by prolonged and prayerful reflection on the mind of Christ will we resolve the difficulty, for Jesus Christ preached the Gospel to the poor and liberation to the captives out of a heart which He Himself assured us was gentle and humble. (cf. Mt 11:29).

The justifiable emphasis which our age has been putting on the importance of human rights must not allow us to overlook the importance of sharing with Christ His experience of stooping. His experience of stooping did not end with his entrance into the womb of the Virgin Mary. It was a lifelong one, living and working as He did within the limitations of time and place, and accepting patiently the human limitations of those with whom He worked and to whom He preached. And all for what? To lift up mankind to the height of becoming adopted sons of God, "who are born not of flesh nor of the will of man but of God." (Jn 1:13).

We who are called to continue the mission of Christ can take no other way than that which He took. There is no bypass. If we wish to lift up the poor for Christ, we must share in His experience of stooping. We must be ready to accept such limitations as working within an imperfect Community, of foregoing personal preferences in the interests of the Community and be ready, too, to cauterize the many personal sensitivities that make us at times stand on our dignity and thus prevent us from stooping, as Christ did when He washed the feet of His disciples. This humility is the foundation of all evangelical perfection and the essential thing in the spiritual life. "If a person has this humility everything good will come along with it." (CR II,p. 7) In a word, can we ever lose sight of the fact that when God chose to come into this world, He did so by entering it under our feet?

Allow me to use this occasion to propose something to you on which I've been reflecting now for quite some time. Christmas is the feast of the home. If St. Vincent can be said to have an earthly home, it is where his mortal remains are resting. The Chapel of the Mother House in Paris belongs in a certain sense to us all. It is in need of some restoration at the present time. When last January in Bogota, I mooted the idea to the Visitors of making an appeal to the Provinces and to individual Confreres to contribute to the project, I received much encouragement. So, for that reason I now invite Provinces and Confreres, who may wish to do so, to send me here in Rome contributions towards the work of beautifying this Chapel which houses, not only the body of St. Vincent but the mortal remains of our Blessed, John Gabriel Perboyre and Francis Regis Clet. The Province of Paris has undertaken to contribute as much as it can to the fund, but the cost of the restoration will be in excess of that figure. Should there be any surplus money available when the work is finished, it will be distributed to the poor.

In restoring our Chapel in the rue de Sèvres, I would hope that it would become more attractive as a place of spiritual pilgrimage and reconciliation with God for all who love what St. Vincent loved and who are trying to put into practice what he taught.

Let me end by citing what St. Vincent himself said one day to his community apropos of the reception of the relics of some saints into the Church of St. Lazare: "We will so dispose ourselves to receive these precious relics as if we were receiving the honor of a visit from the saints themselves. In this way we will honor God in His saints. We will ask Him to make us sharers in the graces which He so abundantly poured into their souls." (Coste XI, Fr. ed., 49-50).