1 January 1986
Paris, France

Mother Duzan, Father Lloret and my dear Sisters,

On this New Year's morning, made so fragrant for us by the celebration of a feast in honor of the Mother of God, let me introduce to you a man who in today's language might be described as one of society's dropouts. He was born in England and in his younger years thought of becoming a priest. He spent some time in a seminary, but then decided that instead of becoming a physician of souls, he would become a physician of bodies. So he commenced studies for the profession of medicine. A little later he abandoned these studies and for a time he made his living selling newspapers and matches on the streets of the capital. Then he turned his hand to writing and he tasted success, not financial success but a success that brought him a few kind and interested friends who cared about this rather lonely, sensitive Catholic poet. Almost eighty years ago he died, a lonely figure, in a London hospital at the age of forty-eight. His name was Francis Thompson.

In his poverty this poor man was compelled, as so many are today, to sleep under the arches of railway bridges in the city of London, close to the river Thames. In the shivering cold of the night the arches reminded him of Jacob's ladder and of what Our Lord had said about the angels of God descending upon the Son of Man. The nearby waters of the Thames reminded him of the lake of Genesareth and of Christ's walking upon it in the darkness of the night. From this poet's sensitive soul came these few lines:

Yea, in the night my soul, my daughter
cry: clinging Heaven by the hems:
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames. (In No Strange Land).

Amid all the failures and poverty of his life, to this poor man was given the grace of seeing the radiance of Christ in his surroundings. It was a grace not unlike that which is offered to a Daughter of Charity. To her is offered the grace of seeing the radiance of Christ, not so much in physical surroundings as in the features of the poor. To a Daughter of Charity, Jesus Christ lends His eyes, but first she must sit, like the beggar on the roadside, and humbly proclaim to the Son of David that she is blind and has need of the gift of sight. The gift of sharing with Christ His eyes is one of the most fundamental graces in the vocation of a Daughter of Charity, and that gift is sought and humbly found in prayer and contemplation. No matter how sharp our perception of the needs of the poor, no matter how penetrating our analysis of the social conditions of the poor may be, it is of little or no avail to us, if we are not sharing in the vision of Christ. That is a grace which only God can give. We cannot talk ourselves into seeing Christ in the poor. Like the dew that falls silently on the ground, the grace of sharing the eyes of Christ is a gift that our Father in Heaven drops into our hearts and minds when they are open to Him in the silence of humble prayer.

The poor London poet had almost nothing on which to live, but he could see the angels of God descending on the Son of Man, and Jesus Christ walking on the waters of the river Thames. That vision of Christ he could share with others. The poor we often say preach the Gospel to us. As we listen to the poor preaching the Gospel to us and reflect upon their condition, it is good to remind ourselves that our basic desire to live in solidarity with them must spring, not from the fact that they are poor but, as St. Vincent so often insisted, because such was the lifestyle which the Word of God chose to adopt on coming into this world. In all things Christ is the Rule of the Company.

We share the eyes of Jesus Christ and those eyes are the eyes of a poor man. "The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light." (Mt 6:22).

That observation was made by Our Lord, that our hearts will be where our treasures are. It may be that my heart is not free with the freedom of Christ's heart because it is cluttered up with vain and foolish desires. At the end of a day it is good to ask oneself: "What engaged my heart today?" God, the poor and the Community, yes; but what of all those desires that stole in or have been long squatting in my heart, taking more possession of it than perhaps I might be ready to admit? It would be salutary from time to time to allow the poor themselves to question the desires of my heart and some of the lines of action I take in order to be of service to them. We might be surprised to hear the poor describe our motives, or at least some of them, as masks for vanity and self interest. We might even hear them quote, without their knowing it, St. Vincent's words: "So there, my dear Sisters, is the enemy unmasked. I have shown him to you: be on your guard and make good resolutions now. If you are faithful to them, the Company will be the Company of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and you will become His spouses." (Conf. Eng. ed., 15 Mar. 1654, p. 604).