15 November 1985
To Each Confrere

My dear Confrere,

May the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with us forever!

Visiting our Provinces during the past five years, I have often found myself in almost breathless admiration of the natural beauties of the countries I have seen from a plane or journeying with you in a car from one community to another. Mountains and oceans, forests and great plains, all speak of the grandeur and beauty of their Maker. Often my reflections have been brought to an abrupt end on entering the periphery of one of our great cities. Miserable and crowded housing: poor people on pavements with anxious expressions speak of man's greed and selfishness, contrasting sharply with the generosity and love and goodness of God.

That same contrast is to be found in the Christmas mystery as it is presented to us in the Gospels. The tenderness of the newborn Infant and His Mother Mary, the simplicity of the shepherds, the humble searching of the Magi, are in strong contrast to the indifference of the people to Mary's condition and to the duplicity and cruelty of Herod.

The Bethlehem of Christmas night is still with us and it could be said that our vocation is to live and work in the awareness of the contrast between the depths of God's love, beauty and generosity that lie at the heart of the Incarnation, and the sufferings of the poor that result from the selfishness, ugliness and injustice of humankind.

Our vocation is to move from the City of God to the City of Man with a lived message that will speak to the poor, not only of "justice and mercy and faith" (Mt 23:23), but also of one that will bring a measure of joy into their lives. Sometimes I have wondered if the poor, listening to us preaching the Good News, hear it as such. After all, good news always brings joy to people's hearts and it is the joy that is in the heart of Christ that those who listen to us preach seek so often to experience. Through us Jesus Christ wishes to say to the poor: "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be full." (Jn 15:11). His words are a good test of the value of any program of evangelization, any homily, any argument we may use to convince another of the truths of our faith.

We live at once in the City of God and in the City of Man. Even in the City of Man there is much beauty, if we have eyes to see it, for the features of Christ are to be seen in the faces of all whom we meet, particularly of those who suffer through poverty. If we are to bring to the inhabitants of Man's City the Good News that Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man, is closer to them than they are to themselves, then we ourselves must be profoundly convinced of the goodness and the love of God towards just and unjust alike. Reading a number of St. Vincent's letters recently, I noticed how fond he was of the little phrase, the Divine Goodness, and how often he used it. Clearly St. Vincent did not limit the horizons of his thought and action to the sufferings of the poor and how they could be alleviated, but in his prayer and reflection moved into the immensity of that Divine Goodness, which gave us the Word made flesh and Who still dwells among us "full of grace and truth." (Jn 1:14).