27 December 1981
Naples, Italy

My dear Sisters and Confreres,

A little over two weeks ago the Pope published a rich pastoral exhortation on the role of the Christian family in the modern world. The exhortation is the fruit, not only of the Pope's own reflection on the Christian family, but also, as he reminds us, of the deliberations and discussions which the Synod of Bishops held on the topic for a month in Rome during October of last year.

Today we are reflecting on the Holy Family of Nazareth, which was an altogether unique family. Mary and Joseph were truly married, but their child, Jesus, as our faith teaches us, was conceived by the Spirit of God. Their life as a family together must also have been unique because Jesus and Mary were sinless. That, too, is a defined fact of our faith, and we cannot imagine that God would have entrusted the care of both Jesus and Mary to St. Joseph if he was not a man who would respect to the highest degree the sanctity of the persons for whom he was to provide, in St. Vincent's phrase, "...with the strength of his arm and the sweat of his brow" for a span of years that the Gospels do not reveal to us.

The family of Nazareth was a family altogether different from other human families, from the family into which we ourselves were born. There came a point in our own lives when we left our human families and joined what we called the Vincentian family, one of the two Communities founded by St. Vincent de Paul. Later still, through our Vows of consecrated celibacy or virginity, we decided to forego being direct constructors of human families, but undertook instead to be indirect builders of Christian families through the intensity of the dedication of ourselves to the Person of Jesus Christ and to His interests through our Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience in the Community.

I said that we are indirect builders of the Christian family in the world. It is important for us to reflect from time to time on the fact that the value of our consecration and its usefulness to the Christian family comes from Jesus Christ Himself. It is He Who uses us to strengthen Christian families in the world. For that reason, we should have confidence in the goodness of our own lives. What I mean is this: all of us have met married couples whose fidelity to each other or to their marriage promises has been a source of strength to us in the living of our own lives. Perhaps we do not realize it sufficiently enough--that married couples in their turn are strengthened in their fidelity by the witness of our consecrated lives. In the words of the Pope's recent exhortation: "Virginity or celibacy keeps alive in the Church a consciousness of the mystery of marriage and defends it from any reduction and impoverishment." (Familiaris Consortio, p. 16).

On this Feast of the Holy Family there is something else I would like to share with you. We speak of our Community in a broad sense as being a family. To our parents we owe an enormous debt of gratitude, as we do also to the other members of our family with whom we were brought up. So many of the good qualities we have, and let us not with false humility deny them, have come to us from God through the home into which we were born. But after our natural family, I feel it is our Community that has given us much more than anybody else in this world. It is the Community that has given us the spirit of St. Vincent and St. Louise. It is the Community that has helped us to form our spirituality. It is the Community that offers us an opportunity of working for the poor. It is the Community that has supported us in that work. It is the Community which in the end will support us in our old age, if we live that long. It is the Community which after our deaths will go on pleading to God for His mercy for us. Cultivate, my dear Sisters and Confreres, a sense of gratitude to our Community, whatever its failings may be, because all of us have received much from it and will continue to receive much from this family of St. Vincent into which, by God's Providence, we have been led. On occasions in our lives we may feel resentful, angry and impatient with authorities in the Community. My prayer for us is that such moods may not blind us permanently to the goodness and kindness of God which He is showing us daily through the family of St. Vincent.

What I have been trying to say has been expressed marvelously by St. Vincent himself in a paragraph which he wrote in the Rules for the Missionaries just two years before his death: "...we should think of other Congregations as being far worthier than our own, though we should have greater affection for ours, just as a well brought up child will have far greater love for his own mother, poor and unattractive as she may be, than for any others, even if they are outstanding for wealth and beauty." (CR XII,10).