24 January 1988 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

It is the way of old men to look back and to muse on the significant events of their lives, and St. Vincent was no exception. It was only in the last decade or less of his life that we find the most frequent references to the event of the 25 January 1617.

Unlike old men, however, who often look back on the past with nostalgia, St. Vincent looked back at Folleville, not with nostalgia but with wonder and gratitude for what the grace of God had done on that particular day. Being a man who loved to share with others, St. Vincent wished that his Community would share in his wonder and his gratitude by celebrating in a special way each year the 25 January, the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. So it is that when the 25 January comes round, we find ourselves in the Community dividing our attention between St. Paul falling off his horse on the road to Damascus and St. Vincent mounting the steps of the pulpit in the little chapel at Folleville.

It is a very significant fact that on the 17 May 1658, when he distributed to his Confreres the only work he had printed in his lifetime, the Common Rules, he spoke during the conference that evening of the experience which he had on the 25 January 1617. The 25 January was to be, above all, a day of special thanksgiving for the mercy which God had shown to him over his lifetime and also to the members of his Community.

St. Vincent's concern that this day would be a day of thanksgiving tells us much about St. Vincent's character. It is a very healthy sign of anybody's spirituality that he or she is always disposed and always wants to say thanks, to give thanks to God. So it was with her whom we salute as "full of grace and conceived without sin." Her Magnificat is essentially a song of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving itself is an expression of that fundamental virtue of humility. I think the measure of our gratitude to God is the measure of our humility.

This evening throughout your Province you are deepening the dimension of thanksgiving as you celebrate the Centenary of the foundation of your Province. Eternity will not be long enough to express adequately the gratitude your Province owes to God for the great deeds He has wrought through the Confreres who have gone before you, marked with the sign of faith, and for what you yourselves are now, by the grace of God, accomplishing for the building up of His Kingdom. The formation of the clergy, the mission in China and presently in Panama, the preaching of popular missions, the deepening of people's devotion to the Mother of God through the propagation of the theology of the Miraculous Medal, the pastoral care of people in parishes, your Universities which touch the lives of so many young people, what a variety of apostolates with which God has gifted your Province. As we list each one, we can only respond with the refrain of the psalmist: "His love endures forever." (Ps 136:1).

Centenary celebrations, however, must not be limited to casting a backward glance on the hundred years that have passed. They must give us new impetus for the future. While we are aware of St. Vincent's conviction that we must not anticipate the Providence of God or, to use his own phrase, we must not "cut the heel of God's Providence," at the same time we must be equally convinced that the Providence of God is actively appealing to us now to keep moving. For are we not part of a pilgrim Church? Pilgrims do not settle down permanently in the places through which they pass. They keep moving. So must we. New highways are being opened up for us, in order to lead the people, particularly the poor, to that city whose maker and builder is God. The Province as a pilgrim group is being invited to use them. The highway toll may at first sight seem high, but if it is God Who calls us to new forms of the apostolate, will He not strengthen us with His grace and direct our steps into the way of His justice and His peace?

This evening's celebration recalls the conversion of St. Paul and the foundation of our Congregation. The first reading is the story of how one man heard God's call. God is continuing to call young men to the Province, not in the dramatic way that He did Saul of Tarsus. He is calling young men to be priests and Brothers of the Province through us. As a Province and as individuals, allow me to make this suggestion to you, that each Confrere in the Province during this Centenary year would try to leave behind him a successor in the Province, a resolution that will be backed up by daily prayer for vocations to the Community and supported, too, by the example of a life that is authentically Vincentian.

I feel sure this evening that St. Vincent would like to repeat to us what he said about the Folleville sermon to the community of St. Lazare on the 6 December 1658: "See, I beg you, the many reasons we have for praising God...and the reasons, too, for kindling in our hearts love for the work of helping the poor and of doing that work wisely and well because their needs are great and God is counting on us." (Coste XII, Fr. ed., p. 82).