3 April 1989
Paris, France

Mother Duzan, Father Lloret and my dear Sisters,

On Good Friday evening Italian Television presented a program on the topic of suffering. In the studio there was a panel of serious-minded Christians, a bishop, two priests and a few prominent Catholic lay people. A cloistered nun was also a participant in the discussion, but from her convent where a TV camera had been set up. Viewers were invited to phone in questions on the topic of suffering and, as you could well imagine, there was a wide variety of questions on a subject which is as complex as it is mysterious. The panel of speakers did not resolve the question of human suffering, but, as it was Good Friday, there were frequent references to the experience which Jesus Christ had of suffering, as He passed through the gates of death on the Cross. Perhaps the most refreshing and touching of the questions which the viewers presented was one from a little child, eight years of age, who picked up his parents' phone and asked the distinguished panel how Jesus Christ was able to bear such great sufferings on the Cross.

The child's question was clear and transparent, but I am not so sure that the reply of the adults was as full and adequate as it might have been. I have no way of knowing if the child was satisfied with the reply of the learned grown-ups. The particular speaker who answered the child's question seemed to stress very much the fact that Jesus Christ was not only man, but He was also God, and as God was capable of enduring the excruciating pain that is experienced in death by crucifixion.

That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. The child's mind had been focused on the experience of Jesus Christ and particularly on the physical sufferings of Jesus Christ crucified. Perhaps the child had not been told that many other men have suffered the pain of crucifixion and lived for two or three days hanging on a cross. What was not unfolded for the child was the mental outlook, the vision which Jesus Christ had as He gave Himself over to the leaders of the people, to Pilate and to the rough hands of the soldiers who executed Him.

Had St. Paul been a member of the TV panel, he would surely have interrupted and said: "Excuse me, but I would just like to say that Jesus Christ was able to endure so much suffering, not so much because He was God (though He was), nor for that matter because He was a particularly strong man (though He was), but because of something that was burning within Him. You are eight years of age, so you know what obedience is, and because presumably you have good, kind parents, you know what love is. There lies the secret of Jesus Christ's strength to sustain so much suffering."

What the Company on each continent of the world is celebrating today is the call that each Sister has received to enter into that mysterious world of love and obedience to His Father which was the life experience of Jesus Christ on earth. In reflecting on and contemplating the person of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul does not dwell on the historical details of Jesus' life in his writings. He alludes to the crucifixion and death of Jesus. What seems rather to fascinate St. Paul is the intensity and depth of the love and obedience of Jesus Christ. "He loved me and delivered Himself up for me." (Gal 2:20). "He was obedient unto death, even death on the Cross." (Phil 2:8). All else in the life of Jesus Christ--the healing of the sick, the feeding of the hungry, the hours spent teaching by the Lake of Galilee, the concern for children, the interest in and respect for the marginalized people of society--was an expression of those two deep, inner attitudes in the mind of Jesus Christ. Just as the atmosphere of the earth breaks up the pure white rays of the sun into myriads of colors which delight our eye, so did the love and obedience of Jesus Christ flower in a profusion of gestures that enlightened the spirits and comforted and healed the bodies of those who discovered that virtue went out from him. (cf. Lk 8:46).

The day of Renovation in the Company is the day when new virtue, new strength, bursts forth from the Daughters of Charity the world over. That virtue and that strength is the virtue and strength of the Risen Christ. It is the strength of the loving and obedient Christ. The essence and foundation of your four vows are the two attitudes of love and obedience. Without love your lives will be, to quote St. Paul, like "a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." (1 Cor 13:1). Without obedience you will wander, imperceptibly perhaps at first, into a desert and lose live contact with Him Who is your Way, your Truth and your Life. (cf. Jn 14:6).

The love that impels us to give ourselves to the service of the poor has its origin in the love that we have for the living person of Christ. In devoting ourselves to the poor, we live with the conviction that we are giving back to Jesus Christ a morsel of that love which He has shown and continues to show to us as the days of our lives unfold. More difficult than loving the poor is the living of obedience. Often we can accept the poor more easily than we can accept our Superiors or those in the Community with whom our Superiors ask us to live. Yet the Christ Who was sent to preach good news to the poor and Who loved them in word and in action is the Christ Who was obedient unto death, even death on the Cross. We cannot divorce the loving Christ from the obedient Christ. It is love and obedience that underpins not only your service of the poor, but your practice of evangelical poverty and chastity.

The obedience of Jesus Christ was a total surrender of Himself to His Father and to His Father's permissive Will. It was a loving surrender, not a calculated adaptation. We can adapt to situations in Community and persuade ourselves that we are obedient. Adaptation, however, does not always express obedience, for to be obedient is to allow oneself to be vulnerable, as Jesus Christ allowed Himself to be vulnerable. Jesus Christ did more than adapt Himself to the Will of His Father. He fully accepted that Will, even in Gethsemani. It is through obedience, and not through mere adaptation, that we are sanctified. The author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that "when Christ came into the world, He said...`I have come to do Thy Will'...and by that Will we have been sanctified through the suffering of the Body of Jesus Christ." (Heb 10:5,9,10). Our sanctification, a modern Anglican has remarked, is achieved through "an intense desire not to have one's own way."

Yes, the Renovation centers on recasting our criteria of judgment and our standards of values which are inconsistent with the Constitutions and Statutes and hence inconsistent with "the Word of God and the plan of salvation."