26 February 1992
Managua, Nicaragua

Dear Friends in Jesus Christ,

First of all, I thank you from my heart for coming here this morning to greet me and to tell me a little about the works which, by the grace of God and through the generosity of your hearts, you are doing. The variety of the works are like the flowers of your country, varied and rich in color. My hope is that you will attract others, especially the young, to work with you for the glory of God, for the good of the Church and for the well-being of the needy, the sick, the elderly and the poor.

On occasions like this, when I speak to a group of people who have a common interest in St. Vincent de Paul, I find myself wondering what St. Vincent's reactions would be, if he were to join us physically and to speak to us. Knowing a little about his character, I feel his first reaction would be one of wonder and exclamation. Even during his lifetime, expressions of wonder and exclamation at what God was doing through him were often on his lips. The two Communities which he founded were not very large at the time of his death, but the fact that they existed at all was, for St. Vincent, a wonder in itself. To the first Daughters of Charity he often said: "I never thought of founding the Company, neither did Mademoiselle Le Gras nor Father Portail." And he expressed similar sentiments to his group of missioners.

It is not difficult to imagine that, on coming here this afternoon, he would marvel at the fact that his Communities were to be found in the five continents of the world; that there were about 200,000 Ladies of Charity, that his own name was being used by a Society of lay men and women who worked to alleviate the sufferings of the poor in countless parishes all over the world. He would be lost in admiration, too, that Mary, the Mother of God, had chosen to appear to a Daughter of Charity in the rue du Bac, Paris, and to entrust her with the mission of promoting devotion to her Immaculate Conception through the Miraculous Medal; from that sprang other groups of Christians, young and old, who were devoting themselves to living a deeper Christian life and who had special interest in serving the poor. "Serving, yes," he might say, "that is what Our Lord Jesus Christ did when He was on earth. He served the poor, He served the sick when He healed them. He served the hungry crowd in the desert by miraculously providing bread for them. He served rich and poor alike by telling them about the coming of God's Kingdom and the life of the world to come.

"Service of, or serving the poor," St. Vincent might continue, "is a more delicate task than we sometimes imagine. To be a servant one has to be humble, for a servant has to think all the time of the needs of those whom he serves. When I was a young priest and lived in the great house of the De Gondi family at Folleville in France, I used to watch the servants in the dining room. During the meal the servants at table hardly spoke at all. They observed the guests and offered them just the portions of food which they (the guests) chose. Their attention was given fully to those whom they were serving. They had to forget themselves. And that is what humility is about. So, for that reason, I say that to be a servant of the poor, one has to be humble, one has to forget oneself. That is what Jesus Christ, Who was truly God, did when He was on earth. Did He not say that He had come on earth, not to be served but to serve?

"The world in which you are living has changed greatly since my time. There are millions more poor people on the face of the earth than there were three centuries ago. It is a grace of God that you have not allowed yourselves to become discouraged by the sheer numbers of poor who need help, millions more than in my time. Political systems seem so much more complex now than they did in the Europe I knew. My attempts to mediate between politicians of my time were not successful. When we have done everything in our power to mediate between people, we should preserve our tranquillity and peace, whether we are successful or not. It is only when we have emptied ourselves of self that God will fill us with Himself. Do not give up in the face of difficulty. 'The doctrine of Christ,' I remember writing two years before I died, 'can never deceive, while that of the world is ever deceitful.' (CR 2:1). Do not lose your nerve, but make sure that you refer all your projects, great or small, to Jesus Christ and to the Will of His Father. Don't forget that it is the earth which revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. Christ is the center, not we, however dazzling our projects may appear. Christ is the light of the world. We must allow that light to penetrate the crevices of our minds so that we may at all times do, as He did, the things that are pleasing to His Father in heaven."

As you have been listening to my imagining how St. Vincent might speak to us were he with us today, you may be saying that it is too spiritual, that you would prefer practical suggestions about what you should do for the poor today. Yes, you are right to ask that St. Vincent would suggest some practical programs of action for the poor, for he was a man of action. He was not a mere theorist. His thirty years in the countryside marked him for life. St. Vincent de Paul was a man of the earth. For that reason he might ask us today: what are your roots? Or let me put the question in another way. Listening to our discussions and keeping at the same time one ear open to what the politicians of our day are saying, he might make this observation: "The politicians of your day seem to be greatly concerned about the poor. Thank God for that. I spent much of my life trying to convince politicians of my day of the existence of the poor. The politicians of your day seem happiest when they are denouncing the inequalities in your society. What then, I ask, is the difference between a politician today and a member of one of the groups that claims me as Patron?" I do not propose to answer that question, but simply to offer it to you as a point of further discussion and reflection. You may find the beginnings of an answer in a few phrases which I came across in a modern biography of Frederic Ozanam: "A Patron Saint should not be a mere signboard to a Society, like St. Dennis or St. Nicholas over the door of a tavern. A Patron Saint should be regarded as a type on which we should try to pattern ourselves, as he patterned himself on the divine type which is Jesus Christ." (J.P. Derum, Apostle in a Top Hat, p. 112).

To that profound thought of a great layman who loved St. Vincent de Paul, let me add some words from the document of Puebla: "The required change in unjust social, political and economic structures will not be authentic and complete, if it is not accompanied by a change in our personal and collective outlook regarding the idea of a dignified, happy human life. This in turn disposes us to undergo conversion." (Puebla p1155).