25 July 1991
Kediri, Indonesia

My dear Sisters,

Perhaps the most touching of all the parables which Our Lord told is that of the prodigal son. It is the parable that speaks most loudly of the mercy of God. It is the parable, too, that tells us most about the meaning of conversion. The details of that conversion are very familiar to us. One person who reflected and prayed upon this parable remarked that the whole story of the conversion of the prodigal son is to be found in two verbs. The request the younger son makes to his father is this: "Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me." (Lk 15:12). Toward the end of the parable, when the younger son returns home, the request he makes of his father is this: "Father...make me as one of your hired servants." (Ibid., v. 19). Between the "give me" of the beginning of the parable and the "make me" at the end lies the story of the conversion. There is an altogether different attitude of mind expressed in the "give me my money" and "make me one of your hired servants." In the story of any conversion you will find that the starting point is a selfish demand, and the finishing point is a readiness to be a servant.

The parable of the prodigal son came to my mind when reflecting on the Gospel to which we have just listened. It is not a story of a conversion, but rather the foretelling of a conversion that would take place. St. James wants Our Lord to give him one of the principal places in His kingdom and Our Lord foretells that he will be treated as Jesus Himself would be treated. He would drink from the same cup as Christ, the suffering servant, would drink from. To make the point clearer, Our Lord underlines how important it is that His disciples would have the attitude of a humble servant. "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant...even as the Son of Man came, not to be served but to serve." (Mt 20:26,28).

When Paul VI wrote the document, Evangelii Nuntiandi, he made the point that the first person to be evangelized was the evangelizer himself. How much evangelization of myself has yet to be done can come home to me when I reflect on how far I am from having the mind and the attitude of a servant in all that I do. There is a very big difference between offering service and being a servant. There are millions of people who offer service of one kind or another, but the number of people who have the deeply Christian attitude of being a servant is much fewer. In our Communities we speak of devoting our lives to the service of the poor. That is a laudable ideal. It will not, however, be realized in depth unless we are really servants. St. Vincent was very enlightened when he called the poor "our lords and masters." We cannot be true servants of the poor, either as priests or as Daughters of Charity, unless we are first servants of Our Lord. That opens up the whole dimension of the quality of obedience which we offer to God through our Community. When Mary was asked by the Angel Gabriel to become the Mother of God, she gave her consent by saying: "I am the servant of the Lord." (Lk 1:38). She did not say: "I place myself in the service of the Lord." In fact, the word she used was slave. "I am the slave of the Lord."

If we are to devote ourselves to the service of the poor, we must become their servants. We cannot become servants of the poor unless we are slaves of the Lord. It is a difficult ideal to live, but all things are possible by the grace of God. Our growth in holiness will have much to do with the development in ourselves of this attitude of being servants and slaves of the Lord. "Have this mind among you which was in Christ Jesus," (Phil 2:5) and the mind which was in Christ Jesus was that of a servant. Today's Gospel makes it very plain to us. "Whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came, not to be served but to serve." (Mt 20:27-28). If St. Vincent gave so much importance to the virtue of humility when speaking to his two Communities, I think that the reason was that in our preaching or in our work for the poor, we would have the mind of Christ Jesus, the mind of a servant.