25 February 1982
To Each Confrere

My dear Confrere,

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

When I wrote to you in Advent, I promised that I would do so again in January, and I intimated to the Visitors that the subject of my next letter would be Stability. Perhaps it tells you something of the stability of my own resolutions that this letter is only being written now at the beginning of Lent. I had hoped to have made a deeper study of this topic along with the Council, but for a variety of reasons we were unable to find sufficient time to discuss the topic at length. So, rather than delay this letter further, I am setting down some reflections which I hope, by the grace of God, may strengthen you in your vocation in the Little Company.

During the final days of Lent we find a phrase in the liturgy which keeps recurring again and again. It is that of St. Paul, "Christus factus est obediens usque ad mortem--Christ became obedient unto death." (Phil 2:8). When Jesus Christ on the eve of His death was looking beyond that event, St. Peter in his admiration of His Master exclaimed: "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death." (Lk 22:33). Just how far St. Peter was prepared to go, at least on that celebrated occasion, all of us know. On that night when Jesus was betrayed, Peter was anything but ready to go "usque ad mortem--unto death" for Christ. Events proved that a few challenging words from a portress at the gate were sufficient to show that Peter belied his name. He was anything but a rock of stability in his dedication to Christ.

All of us who have taken vows in the Congregation have, like Peter, made an "usque ad mortem--unto death" promise to Jesus Christ. Both in the traditional as well as in the more recent vow formulations, we will find the phrase, "toto vitae tempore--for the duration of my life." When we pronounced our vows, we promised that we would observe poverty, chastity and obedience according to our Constitutions, and that through our vow of stability, we would dedicate ourselves to the evangelization of the poor "toto vitae tempore," or if you prefer the Pauline and Petrine expressions, "usque ad mortem--unto death."

For St. Vincent, stability was synonymous with fidelity to a vocation one had personally received from God. On the 16 October 1658, St. Vincent wrote to two Confreres living in the community at Troyes, both of whom had intimated to him that their stability in the Congregation was under strain. The letters, which St. Vincent wrote to each of them, merit reading and reflection, because they blend in an exquisite manner sympathy with encouragement and understanding with firmness. If I quote a few sentences from each of these letters, it is only to entice you to read both of them in their entirety: "When we think about another state of life, we picture for ourselves only what is pleasant in it, but when we are actually there, we experience only what is troublesome in it and what runs contrary to nature. Remain in peace, Father, and continue your voyage to heaven in the boat in which God has placed you. That is what I hope from His goodness and from the desire which you have to do His Will. (Coste VII, Fr. ed., pp. 292-93). "If you have succeeded in remaining for twenty years in the Company, you will remain yet another twenty or thirty years in it, since things will not be more difficult in the future than they were in the past. In binding yourself to God exactly as the others do, not only will you edify them, but Our Lord will bind Himself more closely than ever to you, and He will be your strength in your weakness; He will be your joy in your sorrow; and He will be your stability in your wavering. (Ibid. p. 294).

If St. Vincent would think of the Congregation as a boat on a voyage to heaven, then we, as its crew members, have our responsibilities to keep it on a stable course. To keep a ship on a stable course does not mean to leave it stationary or static. In this context I feel that it is important that provinces keep themselves open to the appeals which the Spirit of God is now making to us through our new Constitutions and Statutes. He is inviting us to new apostolates for the poor; to new forms of sharing with one another in Community; to a new simplicity of life; to the adoption of new techniques for reaching the heart and mind of man. For that reason, it is important that communities be familiar with the content of our new Constitutions and Statutes. I feel that a revival in a new form and in a regular way of our Community spiritual conferences, based on our Constitutions and Statutes could do much to strengthen us in the living of our vow of stability.

In the boat of St. Vincent's Congregation, we are responsible for one another's safety and survival. More than we realize, it is not only our personal dedication to God through the Community, but our interest in one another's apostolates which can support Confreres in their living of the vow of stability. All of us in the Congregation are in a special way "our brothers' keepers."

Let me return once more to St. Peter and his crisis of stability. By the grace and graciousness of Our Lord, he surmounted that crisis. After the Resurrection, he was able to accept from the lips of the Risen Christ the forecast that his future would be a difficult one as leader and a member of the Christian Community. From the lips of Jesus Christ also, he was to learn not to be too preoccupied by what the future might hold for others, or what the pattern of their lives would be. "Lord, what about this man? Jesus said to him, `If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow Me.'" (Jn 21:21-22).

As with St. Peter, our stability will be tested. We may feel drawn to leave the Congregation; we may feel influenced by the decisions others have taken. To us all, however, Jesus Christ keeps saying with quiet insistence what He said to Peter: "Follow Me." (Ibid.). In those two simple words there lies an invitation to accept the mission which comes to us from Jesus Christ, through His Church, through the Congregation, through our Visitor. It is the acceptance of that mission which is at once the guarantee of our stability and the expression of the vow we made to serve Him in the Congregation "usque ad mortem--unto death."