22 March 1986
Paris, France

Mother Duzan, Father Lloret and my dear Sisters,

This year the shadow of the cross falls across the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord. This year Jerusalem is allowed to displace Nazareth in our meditations on the 25 March. This year the first joyful mystery of the rosary, which we celebrate traditionally on the 25 March, is displaced by the five sorrowful mysteries. For us such a displacement is not a great inconvenience, but there are millions in the world at the present moment who live daily and indeed hourly with an experience of displacement which cuts like a sword painfully into the very heart of their lives. One of the many forms of new poverty today is the rising number of displaced persons in our world. Immigrants, legal and illegal, in increasing numbers have been forced to leave their countries because of political or social pressures, and it is only those who work among them who can tell us something of the depths of the hidden suffering and anxiety which lie beneath the surface of their lives. There are other groups of displaced persons in our societies, the children who have been abandoned, husbands or wives deserted, workers displaced from their employment, the homeless in search of a home.

Jesus Christ knew what it was to be a displaced person. St. John, meditating upon the experience of the Word made flesh, reflected sadly that "the Word was in the world and the world was made by Him and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own and His own received Him not." (Jn 1:10-11). Jesus Christ was displaced at His birth. There was no room for Him in the inn (cf. Lk 2:7), and He was displaced at His death, for He was crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem. The experience of being a displaced person at His birth and at His death, and often throughout His life, was shared by His Mother, Mary. She could not but have read, as so many did, the words which were written in three languages above His head on the cross: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. From the sixth to the ninth hour on Good Friday as she watched Him die, the word, Nazareth, must have brought back many memories to her. Her mind would have gone back to the day when the Angel Gabriel greeted her with the words, "Hail, full of grace; the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women." (Lk 1:28), and of that dialogue which ended with her own words, "Be it done unto me according to your word." (Ibid., 38). It was as a displaced person that she was forced to flee with the Infant in her arms to Egypt. She would have witnessed, too, the crowd in Nazareth who, when they listened to her Son preaching, decided not only to displace Him from their town, but to kill Him. Now her Son was dying on the cross, displaced from Nazareth, displaced from Jerusalem, and in the minds of those who plotted His death, displaced from the world and from the memory of His people. Was it, one might ask, to alleviate the pain of being a displaced person that Jesus asked St. John to give a place in his home to His Mother, Mary?

Happily there are many Sisters in our Company who are serving Jesus Christ in the displaced persons of our society and who today through the renovation of their vows are, like St. John, making a home for them in their hearts. When you come to reflect on it, however, every Daughter of Charity chooses to share the experience of those who are displaced. In living our vows we enter into the experience of being in a certain way displaced persons. To live the vow of Obedience is to be ready at any moment to move from one apostolate to another, from one house to another, from one office to another, when those in authority ask us to do so. Our vow of Poverty keeps reminding us that, when Jesus of Nazareth died as a displaced person on the cross, He had nothing. His very clothes became a prize in a lottery among those who crucified Him. Our vow of Chastity recognizes that, as displaced persons, we experience what the Constitutions call "a certain loneliness of heart" (C 2.6). In living our vow of Chastity we are enabled by the grace of God to transcend that loneliness, so that our hearts become free to assume "the dimensions of the heart of Jesus Christ." (Ibid.).

Our choice to live with Jesus and Mary as displaced persons is a deliberate one. We do so for the same reason which moved the Word of God to take flesh in the womb of Mary and to live among us. With Him we try to bring His good news to the poor. With Him we try to heal hearts that are broken. With Him we try to bring freedom to those who suffer and groan under any form of captivity. To express these ideas in the succinct words of the Constitutions:  "The Sisters' primary concern is to make God known to the poor, to proclaim Jesus Christ as their only hope and to tell them that the kingdom of heaven is at hand and that it is for them." (C 1.7).

The renewal of your vows this morning is a proclamation to the world of your willingness to bring the strength and the joy of Christ to the poor and the displaced of the world. The renewal of your vows this morning is a proclamation to the world that you are intent on keeping close to Jesus Christ crucified and risen. The renewal of your vows this morning is a response, to quote the words of the final report of the recent Synod, to "an invitation to a profound conversion of heart, to a share in the life of God, one and trinity, something that signifies and surpasses the fulfillment of all man's desires." (1,4).