2 March 1992
Panama

My dear Friends of Jesus Christ,

First, let me say how happy I am to have this opportunity of speaking to you who have taken St. Vincent de Paul to be your patron and inspiration. You are not alone among the laity of the world who find in St. Vincent de Paul an example of what it means to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ, of what it means to take to heart, day after day, the command of Jesus Christ to love God with one's whole heart and soul, and to love one's neighbor as oneself. It is to you lay people that Pope John Paul addresses this appeal in the special exhortation he wrote to the laity of the world three years ago: ".... The Church cannot withdraw from her ongoing mission of bringing the Gospel to the multitudes...who as yet do not know Christ the Redeemer of humanity.... The activity of the lay faithful...is revealed in these days as increasingly necessary and valuable." (Christifideles Laici, p36).

Today, as lay Vincentians, your witness and your fidelity to the Church and to the Pope are of supreme value. Here in the countries of Central and South America many are leaving the Church and becoming members of small sects. That is sad, because the Catholic Church has the fullness of the truth that Jesus Christ preached. To abandon the Catholic Church is to leave a house and a home and to act like a child who lives in a comfortable home, but who, because he has a difference of opinion with his parents, walks out into the darkness, attracted by some lights he sees on the street. To be a Catholic in the world today is to be a privileged person. To abandon the Catholic Church is to throw away an inheritance of inestimable value.

I invite you now to meet the young man in today's Gospel a few hours after he had talked with Jesus Christ. You find him sitting in the comfort of his home, "for he had great possessions." (Mk 10:22). The expression on his face is a little sad. A few hours earlier he had come away from Jesus Christ, as the evangelist remarks, "sorrowful." Let us imagine asking the young man why he is sad and the reply he would give to our question.

Well, he might begin: "I had heard a lot about Jesus of Nazareth, and not only heard about Him, but I had listened to Him and had seen the love and compassion He had for people, particularly the poor, the blind and the lame. I admired, too, His strength of character, His wisdom and His tenderness. In one word, I recognized Him as a man of holiness, a man who was close to God. I seized my opportunity today and I ran up to Him and posed the question: 'What must I do to inherit eternal life?' (Mk 10:17). He replied, as good teachers often do, by putting a question to me: 'Why do you call Me good?' (Mk 10:8). Before I had time to answer His question, He remarked: 'No one is good but God alone.' (Mk 10:18). He then referred to a few of the commandments, and I was able to say truthfully that I had kept them all. He believed me fully and I will never forget the depth of love that was in His expression when He said: 'You lack one thing. Go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me.' (Mk 10:21). I felt He was absolutely right, but I could not part with my money. I could not give up the comfort of this home to follow Him, for He seems to have nothing and His closest friends are in the same condition.... I cannot forget Him, and yet I cannot follow Him. It is not that He is a hard man, this Jesus of Nazareth. I cannot say that He asked the impossible of me, but I could not rise to His invitation. That is why I feel sad since I went away and left Him."

We cannot pass any final judgment on this rich young man because we cannot enter into the mysterious world of God's grace. Perhaps we could ask the question: Did the young man tend to rely too much on negative goodness? He had not broken the commandments, but how much good had he done for others? Was Our Lord saying to Him: "With all your possessions, with your wealth, with all that you could give away, what positive good have you done to others? Have you gone out of your way to help and comfort and strengthen others as you might have done?" Perhaps Our Lord was saying to him: "Stop looking at goodness as consisting in not doing things. Take yourself; take all that you have and spend yourself and your possessions on others. Then you will find true happiness in time and in eternity."

To be a close friend of Jesus Christ one has to be poor. That is clear from this morning's Gospel. St. Vincent grasped that message clearly. Each one of us has to live according to the vocation which we have received from God. We are asked to think often of the style of life which Jesus Christ adopted on coming into the world, and above all, as St. Paul suggests, to be always "mindful of the poor." (Gal 2:10).