6 July 1987
Paris, France

My dear Confreres,

The personality of the liturgical week is Jacob. It is he who dominates the first reading in the Masses throughout this week. For the Israelites Jacob was one of the great heroes of their race. Along with Abraham and Isaac they numbered him among the immortals of their nation. Jacob was a founder whose dream or vision is recounted in the first reading of today's Mass. He was a founder to whom was given a promise for the future. His descendants would be numerous. They would spread out to all the points of the compass and they would bring with them a blessing for all the nations of the earth. Jacob, too, was assured that God would be with him. "I will protect you wherever you go and bring you back to this land." (Gn 28:15).

The lines of a great spiritual founder are to be found in the story of Jacob, even if some of his actions in the acquisition of property would lead us to believe that he held rather broad views on the subject of what moral theologians call occult compensation. Because Jacob was a great spiritual founder, we will find some of the lines of his history traced out also in St. Vincent. St. Vincent may not have had a dream such as Jacob had, but he was nonetheless a man of vision. Great promises about the future of his two Communities were not made to him, as far as we know, but St. Vincent's spiritual descendants are to be found today on the five continents of the world. The descendants of spiritual founders will always come back to their place of origin. "I will bring you back to this land," (Ibid.) God tells Jacob. In this era more than ever, the spiritual descendants of St. Vincent come in pilgrimage to the places in France which were the theaters of his birth, growth and apostolic action. That is a healthy sign, for it reveals a desire in the hearts of Confreres "to seek after," to quote Pope Paul VI, "a genuine understanding of the original spirit, so that it can be preserved faithfully when deciding about adaptations." (Ecclesiae Sanctae, p. 15.3).

Whatever faults of character Jacob had, he was gifted with a refined sense of the transcendent. In today's reading Jacob's sense of the transcendent is very forcefully presented. "Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said: `Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.' And he was afraid and said: `How awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven.'" (Gn 28:16-17).

Were Jacob living in our world today, he might very well take us to task for allowing our sense of the transcendent to become weak. A loss of the sense of the transcendent has been one of the casualties of the years since the end of Vatican Council II. Reflecting upon the twenty-five years since the opening of Vatican II, the Synod of 1985 brought that loss to our attention. At the same time the Synod remarked on what it called "the new hunger and thirst for the transcendent and the divine." (Synod Report A. 1).

Our God is at once transcendent and immanent. We put much emphasis on the importance of finding God in the neighbor, in the poor, in the events of human history. We do well. At times, however, we tend to forget that He is the Lord of history, the Lord of the poor, the God Who is to be adored in His immensity, in His truth, in His goodness, in His beauty, in His love, and in His compassion. We must seek God in His transcendence and in His immanence.

When St. Vincent in our Common Rules wrote about the importance of our missions and of the work of forming the clergy, he reminded us to attend to the one without neglecting the other. That is a principle which could be applied to our reflections on the immanence and on the transcendence of God. We need to reflect in our prayer on the transcendence of God, while not neglecting reflection on the Incarnation and on the truth that what we do to one of the least of our brethren, we do to Christ, the Incarnate Word of God. The two readings of today's Mass present us with a very balanced picture. The first reading portrays the awe and the reverence of Jacob in the presence of the mystery of God, and the Gospel the nearness of the compassion of God, as He gives back life to a young girl and joy to her grieving parents.

If we fail to cultivate in ourselves the sense of transcendence in our worship, our concern with the pressing needs of our human contemporaries will be doomed to frustration. We can become so involved with human welfare that the basic justification for this involvement can fall out of view. For the Christian, radical action must always begin with radical contemplation.