25 January 1989
Lisbon, Portugal

My dear Confreres,

Let me begin by addressing a word of welcome to the laity who are present here this morning. In welcoming them I would like to explain to them that the 25 January is a special day for us priests and Brothers of the Congregation of the Mission. It is the day on which we celebrate the foundation of our Congregation. It was on the 25 January 1617 that St. Vincent preached a sermon in a little country church in the north of France, a sermon that moved many of the people present to change their lives through sincerely confessing their sins in the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation.

Eight years would pass before St. Vincent would formally establish his Congregation. When he preached his sermon on the 25 January, he had not the slightest idea of founding a Congregation. That would come eight years later. Decades later he would consider that in reality his Congregation owed its origin to that sermon preached in the little country church at Folleville, France, on 25 January 1617.

It is the way of old men to look back and muse on the significant events of their lives, and St. Vincent was no exception. It is in the last decade or less of his life that we find the most frequent references to the event of 25 January 1617.

Unlike old men who often look back on the past with nostalgia, St. Vincent looked back at Folleville, not with nostalgia, but with wonder and gratitude for what the grace of God had done. Being a man who loved to share with others, St. Vincent wished that his Community would share in his wonder and his gratitude by celebrating in a special way each year the 25 January, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. So it is that when the 25 January comes around, we find ourselves dividing our attention between St. Paul on the road to Damascus, and St. Vincent mounting the steps of the pulpit in the little chapel at Folleville.

It was only in later years that both saints would see the full significance of these events in their lives. Years were to separate Damascus from Antioch, Jerusalem, Corinth and Rome. Years, too, were to separate Folleville from Algiers, Madagascar, Scotland and Poland. What was given to both saints in later years was the perception that the fall from the horse or the mounting the steps of a pulpit in a country church were no chance happenings.

On this anniversary of the Foundation of the Congregation, we Vincentian priests and Brothers feel particularly grateful to our Community. 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 our good qualities--and let us not with false humility deny them--have come to us from God through the home into which we were born. 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. It is the Community that has helped us to form our spirituality. It is the Community that has supported us in our 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. All of us have received much from the Community 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 all of 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 of our Common Rules: "...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).

To us today St. Vincent would like to repeat what he said of the Folleville sermon to the community of St. Lazare on 6 December, 1658: "See, I beg you, the many reasons we have for praising God, for having sent us to remedy this evil; and reasons, too, for kindling in our hearts love for the work of helping the poor and of doing that work wisely and well, because their needs are great and God is counting on us." (Dodin: Entretiens, p. 498).