1 January 1985
Paris, France

Mother Rogé, Father Lloret and my dear Sisters,

Every New Year that dawns in our lives comes in with a large question: "What is this year going to hold for me?" In trying to answer this question, we spend time in guessing and hoping and fearing. In the end we have to leave the question largely unanswered. It is well, perhaps, that it should be so, for our very inability to answer the question throws us again into the arms of Him to Whom all time and ages belong. It is yet another invitation, as St. Vincent might express it, to surrender ourselves trustingly into the arms of God's loving Providence, knowing that for those who love Him, "all things work together unto good." (Rom 8:28).

Each New Year's question, "What is this new year going to hold for me?" can only be answered by God. Instead of raising questions ourselves, we would do well to allow God to raise some questions which only we can answer. His questions are of a different order from ours. They are addressed to our hearts, for it is into the locked citadel of our hearts that He wishes to enter, and it is only we who have the key in our hands.

The Gospels offer us many of God's questions. When Jesus Christ met His first disciples, He put the simple question to them: "What do you seek?" (Jn 1:38). That question is as relevant and fresh today for me as it was for the first disciples. My reply: Why, of course, I wish to serve You in the poor and through the Community. Allow Christ to repeat the question. "What do you seek?" Considering it a second time, I might feel inclined to use modern terminology and say: I seek self-fulfillment in my vocation. Reflecting on that second reply, I must admit that my terminology is not fully evangelical, for nowhere in the Gospel does Our Lord, speaking of His own mission, think of it as self-fulfillment. Rather is it the opposite. In Gethsemane He prayed that His Will would not be done but that of His Father, and earlier He had stressed for His disciples the importance of denying oneself and of losing one's life. So that first question of Jesus Christ, "What do you seek?" needs more reflection on my part before I answer it. My motivation needs the x-ray of the light of Christ, if only to prove to me that it is not as healthy as it might exteriorly appear. To use the terminology of St. Vincent and St. Louise: Is my seeking of Christ in the poor distinguished by that simplicity which at all times makes me act with God alone in view?

Let us allow Jesus Christ to put to us another of His questions on this New Year's Day. "What were you discussing on the way home?" (Mk 9:33). The day Jesus put that question to the twelve, they were unable to answer it, or rather, they were ashamed to answer it. They could only hang their heads and be silent because they had been discussing on the way which of them would be the greatest. It was on that occasion that Our Lord used a visual aid to impress upon the twelve the importance of being humble. Setting a child amongst them, He said: "Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." (Mt 18:3-4). Our love of Jesus Christ and the supernatural value of our service of the poor is directly related to the humility of our hearts and minds, for, to quote St. Vincent: "Humility is the source of all the good that we do." (Conf. Eng. ed., 15 Mar. 1654, p. 599).

Maybe on this New Year's Day we are conscious of the fact that time is running out for us, and that we have little to show for the years we have spent in Community. Across the years, as across the waters to the disciples in the darkness of the night, comes His question, addressed to Peter: "O man of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Mt 14:31). The greatest tragedy that could befall us in this new year is that we would lose confidence in Jesus Christ and in His power to save us from ourselves as He saved the disciples on the lake on that stormy night. He is close to us in the Eucharist and in the Sacrament of Penance. To our doubting hearts He addresses the question which He put to the Apostles on the evening of His Resurrection: "Why are you troubled and why do questionings rise in your hearts?" (Lk 24:38).

Perhaps the answers we can give to these questions of Jesus Christ may not be particularly flattering to ourselves. That does not matter too much. What matters is that the answers we try to give be true and, above all, that they be simple and humble. "Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood," prayed the poet (T.S.Eliot). It is only when we are not mocking ourselves with spurious reasons for dispensing ourselves from accepting the demands of being simple and humble and loving, both inside and outside the Community, that we can begin to answer that supreme question that Our Lord addressed to St. Peter and which He will address to us at the moment of our deaths: "Do you love Me?" (Jn 21: 16). May it be given to us at the end of our years on earth to reply: "Yes, Lord, You know that I love You." (Jn 21:16). At the beginning of the last year of her life St. Louise wrote to St. Vincent: "Permit me to greet your Charity very humbly at the beginning of this new year, and at the same time, to ask for your blessing to help me to be faithful to God for as long as it pleases His goodness to leave me on earth." (Spiritual Writings of Louise de Marillac, ltr. 649, p. 670).