15 August 1991
Paris, France

Mother Elizondo, Father Lloret and my dear Sisters,

Almost two months have passed since the General Assembly finished its work and the Visitatrixes and Delegates returned to their Provinces. During the intervening weeks there have been meetings in the Provinces during which the decisions of the Assembly have been explained to the Sisters. It is not difficult to imagine the scene in the Provincial Houses or in centers throughout the Provinces; Visitatrixes and Delegates being plied with questions: "What was the Assembly like? Were all the Provinces represented? What of the Provinces that have been emerging from oppression? What decisions were taken? What matters were most discussed? How do you see the Inter-Assembly Document?" and so on.

Yet, however urgent some of these questions may seem to us, they are not the most important. There is one question which should precede all other questions in our post-Assembly discussions and sessions. It is a question posed by Our Lord Himself and recorded in St. John's Gospel. The question, as recorded in the fourth Gospel, comprises the first words to fall from the lips of Christ. John the Baptist has just pointed out the Messiah to the assembled crowds. Jesus seems to walk away. Andrew and John are inspired to follow Him, and then the Evangelist notes: "When Jesus turned and saw them following, He said to them: 'What are you seeking?'" (Jn 1:38).

That question of Jesus Christ has echoed down through the centuries. In one form or another it has been put by the great Founders of monasticism to those who presented themselves as candidates at the doors of their monasteries. If our Founders did not formulate the question in the words of Jesus Christ, they did so by the emphasis both of them gave to the virtue of simplicity, which has held such a prominent place in Vincentian spirituality. To act always with God alone in view is to attempt to answer Christ's question: "What are you seeking?"

The question of Jesus Christ to Andrew and John has a depth to it much greater than Jacob's Well, and hence not so easily answered. Young students the world over will often deflect a teacher's question, which they cannot easily answer, by immediately asking one themselves. The ruse was known to Andrew and John, for instead of answering Our Lord's penetrating question, they put a question to Him themselves: "They said to Him: 'Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are you staying?'" (Ibid.).

The answer to the question, "What are you seeking?" may seem to lie on the surface of the well. "Why, it is clear. I want to give myself to God for the service of the poor in today's world." Yet perhaps I need to hear the voice of the Samaritan woman, reminding me that "the well is deep." (Jn 4:11). Not as deep as the human heart, however, which has an ingenious capacity for concealing from our minds the real object of our search, "The heart," wrote the Prophet Jeremiah, "is more devious than any other thing, perverse too: who can pierce its secrets?" (Jer 17:9).

What our hearts are seeking will condition our interpretation of the Inter-Assembly Document, and of all else that took place during the Assembly. We could learn something about the well of our hearts if we monitored some of the reactions that the Assembly has called forth from us, and also some of the questions we are now posing to Visitatrixes and Delegates. Draw up some water from the well. How does it taste? Cool and refreshing? Good. That will call forth gratitude, and gratitude is always a sign of a healthy spiritual heart, as the opening lines of Mary's Magnificat testify. Or does the water seem tepid and flat? That could be a reflection of our own spiritual condition, calling for greater self-discipline and less self-gratification. Or does the water taste somewhat bitter? St. Vincent's terse comment would be that which he wrote in a letter to one of his Confreres: "Bitterness has never served any purpose but to embitter." (Coste I, Eng. ed., ltr. 368, p. 526).

How the water tastes will, whether we realize it or not, color our service of the poor. How can a heart that is brimming over with gratitude not bring light, joy and hope into the lives of the poor? And how can a heart that is weakened by worldliness or wounded by resentment conceal its condition from the poor? "I beseech Our Lord Jesus Christ," prayed St. Vincent one day in the presence of the Sisters, "Who came on earth to destroy it (spirit of the world), to make known to each one of you all the circumstances in which it will be necessary for you to fight it, to replenish you with His own divine spirit, which is a great spirit of charity, humility and poverty, contrary to the spirit of pride, covetousness and avarice, and that He may give it to the Company in general and to each one in particular!" (Coste IX, Fr. ed., p. 449).

To the question, 'What are you seeking?', Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, alone among us humans could reply at any moment of her existence and with utter sincerity and truth: "the loving Will of God, my Saviour." That was her reply to the Angel Gabriel. It was the seeking and the perfect accomplishment of the Will of God, her Saviour, that made her great in and for the world of her day, even if her greatness was, like a frail flower of the field, "born to blush unseen." It is on her preservation from original sin, on her Motherhood of God and her personal fulfillment of God's Will at each moment of her existence, that her bodily Assumption into heaven can be said to rest.

Mary's Immaculate Conception and her Assumption into heaven are two unique graces, proper to Mary alone. She draws closest to us when she gently challenges us to seek and carry out "amidst the pots and the pans," to quote the phrase of St. Teresa of Avila, the loving Will of God in our lowly lives. Let us be on our guard, in this age of free expression of opinion, against exalting our private judgment beyond its limits and mistakenly dignifying it by calling it God's Will.

Let us not be so corralled into the world of today that we lose sight of what we and the poor we serve are called to be in the tomorrow of God's eternity. To us who are so preoccupied with adapting to change today, Mary's Assumption into heaven opens for us a window that looks inward to the unchanging and eternal God.

Our God, however, is a God of life whose Son entered time and lived among us. Through Him we possess within us a particle of divine life that struggles to grow into beauty and to be a joy forever. "To be dead is to stop believing in the masterpieces we will begin tomorrow," writes P. Kavanagh, a modern Christian poet. Our faith assures us that Mary, the Virgin of Nazareth, is a unique masterpiece of God's creation. If God has revealed so much to us about her greatness, even beyond this earthly life, it can only be to encourage us to believe in the masterpieces we are called to begin tomorrow. As individuals and as a Community in the Church, whatever be our limitations, whatever ridicule a secularist age may pour upon us, we are not dead as long as we are humbly and obediently striving, after the manner of Mary, to fulfill the Will of God in our lives and thus become masterpieces of His grace.