1 January 1987
Paris, France

Mother Duzan, Father Lloret and my dear Sisters,

New Year's Day is like the opening of a new volume in a series of books in which we are writing the story of our lives. How many volumes we will write is not known to us. On average, says the psalmist, there will be seventy or eighty. "Our life is over like a sigh. Our span is seventy years, or eighty for those who are strong. (Ps 90:9-10)

We do not know if the volume we are commencing today will be the final one in the series. We know that the contents of volume 1987 are already known to God. "Before ever a word is on my tongue," exclaimed the psalmist, "You know it, O Lord, through and through." (Ps 139:4). Before us this morning there lies a volume of 365 blank pages, on which God invites us to write with Him the continuing story of our lives.

The story of each of our lives is altogether unique and God, even more than we, wants that story to be a success story. In the fairy tales that were told to us when we were young, there was always a happy ending. The prince and princess always "lived happily ever after." We know for certain that God wishes that the end of our life's story will be but the beginning of a life in which we will be happy with Him ever after.

The latest volume of our lives, which we have just completed, that of 1986, is a volume which contains many pages which have brought joy to the heart of God. It is a volume that tells the story of many intimate contacts with Jesus Christ in the Sacraments, of kindness done to members of our Community, of sacrifices generously made to serve the poor. Volume 1986, like indeed previous volumes of our life's story, has been illuminated by the conviction that our lives are lived in partnership with Christ. For did not Jesus Christ say: "I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." (Jn 15:5).

In volume 1986 there are pages that have been stained by personal sin. These read as so many episodes when we took the pen from God's hand and decided we would write our own story--alone. It has been so from the time when Adam and Eve decided that they would take things fully into their own hands and so brought upon humanity that calamity, the consequences of which we are all aware, and from which we are delivered only by the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. "Who will deliver me from this body of death?" cried St. Paul. Then he immediately answered: "Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord." (Rom 7:24-25).

The story of our lives must then be continually coauthored with Jesus Christ, Who is in love with us and wishes us to be in love with Him. Of two people genuinely in love, it is said that they do not so much live their lives looking into each others eyes, as looking in the same direction. So it must be for us in our relationship with Jesus Christ. Because we are in love with Him, and He with us, we will not begrudge Him time to be with Him in prayer, so that we can both look in the same direction. For the Daughter of Charity, that direction is clear. The eyes of Jesus Christ look towards the poor, those people whose lives, at least humanly, are stories of tragedy, with pages moist with tears shed in the bitterness and pain caused by injustice and poverty. As we look with Jesus Christ towards the world of the poor, the appeal which the Pope made during the Assembly of 1985 is still in our ears: "My Sisters, do the impossible to go to the poorest."

As we look at volume 1987 of our lives, the first page of which lies open before us, perfumed by the feast of the gentle and tender presence of the Mother of God, some days in this new year already begin to stand out. For us of St. Vincent's Communities, 1987 will be significant in that we will commemorate the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the canonization of St. Vincent. It was on Sunday, 15 June 1737, the feast of the Blessed Trinity, that Pope Clement XII in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome declared St. Vincent de Paul to be a saint. In this year when we will be reflecting on his sanctity, the observation of Henri Bremond on St. Vincent is very apposite: "It is not his love of mankind," wrote Bremond,"which led him to sanctity. It is rather that sanctity made him truly and efficaciously charitable. It is not the poor who gave him to God, but God Who gave him to the poor." (H. Bremond, Histoire du Sentiment Religieux en France, Vol. 3, p. 219).

The holiness of St. Vincent and of each one of us is in the last analysis a gift of God. Each time we pray the second Eucharistic prayer, we are reminded that God is the fountain of all holiness. The holiness of a saint is a sharing in the holiness of God Himself, and we recognize holiness when we see the fruits of the Spirit in the life of a person. "The fruit of the Spirit," writes St. Paul, "is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." (Gal 5:22). The love and goodness that appears in the life of a saint is but the flower of a root that reaches into the life of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. "Your life is hidden with Christ in God." (Col 3:3). To judge from the writings of our Founders, the mystery of the Trinity was very much in the forefront of their minds. St. Vincent's desire to preach the Gospel to the poor was fueled greatly by his conviction that knowledge of the mystery of the Trinity was necessary for salvation, while in the writings of St. Louise it is clear that she proposed to the Sisters the life of the Trinity as the ideal of union within the Community.

For us today who live rushed lives, we could profitably devote more time in our prayer and in moments of recollection to recalling the stupendous fact that the eternal and omnipotent God has loved us with an everlasting love and is living within us. "If anyone keeps My word, My Father will love him and we will come and make our home in him." (Jn 14:23). God took flesh of the Virgin Mary and dwelt among us. That was the first act in the drama whose second and third acts would be His dwelling in the Eucharist and in the souls of those who hear the word of God and keep it.

On this New Year's Day and throughout the year, when we will reflect on the holiness of St. Vincent, I invite you to journey often inward into the depths where reside within you the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Such pilgrimages will strengthen you all the more to serve the Poor, for the first gift you bring to the poor is God Himself. "It is," wrote St. Paul, "no longer I but Christ who lives in me." (Gal 2:20). What the poor experience in our service of them is the life of God pulsating within us. Perhaps the poor will never express it in that way to us, but it is the reality, and we for our part must try to live our lives in an awareness of the three Divine Persons Who have made their home in the depths of our beings.

For us who live our lives in apostolic Communities, there exists always the risk of neglecting the contemplative dimension of our vocation. In doing so we risk living our lives on the surface of things. The journey outward to the poor can only be made with security, after we have made the journey inward to God Who lives within us. "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Cor 3:17). Making that inward journey often will throw light, not only on the meaning of your vows, but will also bring you a new awareness of the presence and activity of God in your lives. It will bring you to a new awareness of the God Who has shared all things with us, even His beloved Son, and Who wishes daily to share the experience of our lives and the writing of its story.