15 August 1980
Paris, France

Mother Rogé, a Happy Feast Day to you!

My dear Sisters,

In the Gospel which Father Lloret read for us this morning at Mass, we did not hear any word about the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady into heaven, but, of course, we believe that mystery with our hearts and minds because it is the teaching of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. While we did not learn from this morning's Gospel anything about the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady into heaven, we did learn a great deal about Our Lady's prayer. I am sure that many times you have reflected on how little Our Lady spoke. If you read carefully the first two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel, you will notice that in those two short chapters, St. Luke twice makes the point that Our Lady pondered in her heart all the events of those early years of Jesus Christ. He portrays Our Lady as a very thoughtful, reflective, meditative person.

On the last occasion when I was speaking to you here, I said that I had not had the opportunity of reading what Pope John Paul spoke about in the Chapel of this house. Since then I have done so and I am sure you have reflected on and prayed that beautiful prayer which he addressed to the Mother of God. The very last paragraph must mean a great deal to the Daughters of Charity all over the world, and especially to the Daughters of Charity in this house. Let me pray again that last sentence of his prayer: "We pray to You for those who dwell in this house and who welcome, in the heart of this feverish capital, pilgrims who know the price of silence and prayer."

The Pope points up the contrast between the feverish activity of a city like Paris, or any modern city, with the atmosphere of silence and prayer that he experiences at the heart of the rue du Bac. When I read his words and reflected on them, the thought came to my mind that Our Lady, when she appeared in that sanctuary where we celebrated Mass this morning, has by her presence left behind her in the rue du Bac an aroma of silence and prayer. Silence and prayer are very much part of the character of Our Blessed Lady as we know her from the Gospels. When the Pope said that pilgrims come to the rue du Bac to find silence and prayer, I would venture to say that he was relying on you, as a Community, to preserve those two values: silence and prayer. They are features of the character of Our Blessed Lady. They are features also of the character of St. Catherine Labouré.

During these last few years there has been a renewed interest among old and young people in prayer. Perhaps we need to remind ourselves in our Communities that if we are to pray deeply we need silence. In that classic book "The Imitation of Christ" there is a sentence that goes like this: "In silence the devout soul goes forward and learns the secrets of the scriptures." It was in silence that Our Blessed Lady learned the secrets of the scriptures. St. Luke seems to indicate that when he twice reminds us that Our Lady pondered all these things in her heart. You cannot ponder unless you do so in silence. It is very difficult for us, modern people in this age, to create silence. Yet I think it is very necessary for all of us to have an oasis of silence in the desert of sound and noise where we can ponder and reflect as Mary did. That does not mean that we keep silence all the time; it does not mean that we abandon contact with the poor. The point I am making is this, that for all of us in Community at the present time, it is a continuing challenge to ponder as Our Lady did, while not neglecting the care of her Son and His members, especially the poor.

Two nights ago, when I went to my new house in Rome, after having been carefully looked after for eight weeks by the Daughters in the Via Ezio, I sat down at my desk to prepare, and to think about, this conference which I was to address to you this morning. I said to myself: "I wonder did St. Vincent ever write a letter on the 15 August." So I took the eight volumes of Coste. No, I did not read them all, but I picked a few volumes and looked for the month of August. Quite quickly, in the third volume of Father Coste, I came upon a letter which St. Vincent wrote in 1646, and the heading of the letter was: "Paris, Vigil of the Assumption of Our Lady". The letter was addressed to St. Louise. St. Louise was not in Paris on the 15 August 1646; she was in Nantes. She had gone there to do business with some hospital administrators. St. Vincent was thinking about her and he begins his letter to St. Louise by remarking that he had not received any communication from her. He was just wondering how things were going, and so very early in the letter he had a little word of encouragement for St. Louise. In a paragraph of the letter he prayed: "I beg His Divine Mercy to give you for this purpose an ample share of His Spirit, so that you can communicate it to your dear daughters, and together with them diffuse in souls the fragrance of holy devotion!" (Coste III, Eng. ed., no. 833, p. 16).

Mother Rogé, on this your feast day, I cannot think of any better expression of a wish than to pray that prayer of St. Vincent for St. Louise which he prayed on the vigil of the Assumption in 1646.

However, as St. Vincent and St. Louise and Mother Rogé know so well, life is not all good wishes and just prayers with our lips. There are problems to be faced and many of them. In the next paragraph of the letter St. Vincent mentions a little problem that had arisen while Mother was away in Nantes. He writes: "I have been able to see your assistants here only one time. I am supposed to see them today, please God. Everything is going rather well, except for a little restlessness apparent in a few Sisters, but your presence will set everything right again, as will perhaps the conference I plan to give them next week." (Ibid.). I noticed that Father Coste remarks in a footnote that in fact St. Vincent did address the Sisters here in Paris while St. Louise was in Nantes. The conference is extant today. It is a rather long conference and I don't propose to read it in its entirety to you. The conference he gave was addressed to the Sisters four days later, l9 August, 1646, and it is entitled: "On meekness and the practice of mutual respect." Let the voice of St. Vincent, just for a few moments, be heard:

It was said in the first place that meekness and respect are most pleasing to God. Is not that true, my dear Daughters, and is there anything more pleasing to Him than the respect and meekness which are the virtues of the Son of God? As you have said very truly, He has taught us this Himself: `Learn of Me,' He said, `that I am meek and humble of heart.' That is to say, my dear Daughters: Learn of Me that I am meek and respectful because He interprets humility as respect, for respect proceeds from humility. Was there ever a man as meek and respectful as Jesus Christ? Oh no! He was meek and humble towards all.... You may be perfectly certain, my dear Daughters, that this is pleasing to God, and indeed most pleasing, and by this men will know you are really Daughters of Charity. For what is charity but love and gentleness? And if you do not possess this love and gentleness, you cannot be Daughters of Charity. And, as has been said, you would have no more than their name and habit, which would be a great misfortune. Oh! may God in His infinite mercy be pleased to avert it from your Company. Yes, my Daughters, you must know that a Daughter of Charity who is not on good terms with her sister, who saddens her, who vexes her and persists in that state without making any attempt to set things right by practicing these two virtues of respect and meekness, oh! from that moment she is no longer a Daughter of Charity. No, she no longer is. She should not be spoken of as such. It is all over as far as she is concerned. She has nothing now but the habit. Hold fast, therefore, to those two virtues, my Daughters. This will please God and will please Him so much that there will be scarcely anything else in the world more agreeable to Him." (Conf. Eng. ed. 19 Aug. 1646, pp. 237-8).

After St. Vincent in this letter, written on the Vigil of the Assumption, had told St. Louise that there had been a little bit of disturbance, as happens in all our communities, he had another little piece of news for her. It is about her son: "Your son is not feeling well..." (Ibid.). Then immediately to allay St. Louise's anxiety he tells her that the boy is staying in bed at the doctor's house. Then comes this delightful little sentence: "I offered him our house and anything we could do to make him feel better, or two Sisters to nurse him, in the event that he wanted to stay where he is. He preferred the help of the Sisters, who have been with him for several days now." Then "Monsieur Brin has just been to see him; he assures me that he is better and that there is nothing to fear." (Ibid.).

I think you will pardon me if I make a little diversion here. Father Brin was a fellow countryman of mine. When two nights ago, rather late, I looked at the index of Father Coste's works to find out about Father Brin (I knew a little about him already), I found a very brief resume of his life. In his final sentence on Father Brin, Father Coste remarks that he was the best Irishman that St. Vincent had in his Congregation. I must tell you immediately that there were some other Irishmen that St. Vincent had in his Congregation who, as Father Lloret knows well, caused St. Vincent some acute headaches! It was also a little matter of consolation to me in that when St. Vincent tried to spell correctly the name of this Irish priest, he had as much success as I have when trying to speak French! That was a little morsel of consolation I had late a few nights ago, that we both understood each other in this question of languages. After that St. Vincent passes on to something else.

There was another little anxiety on his mind. It was this, that he was in trouble with the Ladies of Charity at the Hotel Dieu. It seemed that the Ladies were very annoyed that St. Louise had left Paris for Nantes and some of them carried on what St. Vincent in his own words, and you will see it in the letter, referred to as une rude guerre, precisely because he had consented to St. Louise's going away. St. Vincent was unperturbed and he remarks to St. Louise: "If you return in good health, as I hope from God's goodness, peace will soon be made. So please take the best possible care of yourself. Take all the time you need so as not to rush anything or inconvenience yourself regarding your return. Our Lord will be pleased with this, since you will be doing it for love of Him." (Ibid.). The letter ends there. There is a little postscript in which he adds that the letter she had written had just arrived.

The letter to which I have been referring is not the most profound of St. Vincent's letters, but this thought came to me that the lives of St. Vincent and St. Louise were, for the most part, made up of little problems, little difficulties such as we in our lives experience today. Both of them accomplished magnificent work for the poor of Paris, of France and beyond France. The volume of the work which St. Vincent and St. Louise achieved can blind us to the meticulous attention which both of them gave to the small acts of consideration and charity of which, for the greater part, their lives, as ours, were made up.

That letter of St. Vincent written on the eve of the Assumption in 1646 does not mention Our Lady except at the heading of the letter, but it does breathe the spirit of the exquisite charity which we know to have been Our Lady's. That little word `exquisite' suggests detail. We speak of a tapestry, an embroidery; it is exquisite precisely because there is so much care and attention given to detail. Our lives become full of the love of God and of Jesus Christ and of His poor through our attention to the small acts of courtesy and mutual respect, first within our own communities. Our Lady, from what we know of her in the Gospel, showed such exquisite charity: her care of her Divine Son, her thoughtfulness in relieving the embarrassment of that bridal couple at Cana. This thought also struck me last night, her willingness and her generosity and her self-sacrifice, to be ready and willing to remain close to people who did not just irritate her and cause her annoyance, but who sapped the blood out of her life's work; who sapped the life blood out of Him Whom she knew so well to be the fruit of her loving womb, Jesus. For her there was no opting out of Community because of difficulties. One phrase in the Gospel of St. John, I think, speaks a lot to us of the strength of character of Our Blessed Lady: "She stood by the cross of Jesus." (Jn 19:25). There was no need for her to go to Golgotha but she went and witnessed with her own eyes the crucifixion of her Son. Our little difficulties of living together in communities pale into insignificance when we reflect on her strength of character to remain close to people who drove nails in the hands and feet of her Son, Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man.

Today we are not thinking and reflecting on her sufferings. Rather are we thinking of her glory. The Gospel this morning was one of thanksgiving, and I come back to what I said at the beginning of this talk: Mary spoke little, a lady of silence and prayer. But if you count up the words in the New Testament that Mary spoke, the Magnificat makes up the greater part of them and that is a hymn of thanksgiving. Today we are living in an age of protest, of violence. Every evening we sing or say that hymn of thanksgiving of Our Lady. My last thought to you is this, that in this age of protest, of marches, of violence, let thanksgiving be a prominent feature in your prayer as it was in Mary's prayer, and you'll find that through giving thanks to God from your heart and counting your blessings, you will come to know that serenity and peace which you find in St. Vincent's writing and which the grace of God communicated to him. I think thanksgiving is a flower of that humility which is the foundation stone of both our Communities. It is thanksgiving and humility which enabled the grace of God to accomplish great things in St. Vincent and St. Louise for those who are our portion, the poor.

Let me end again with the words of St. Vincent spoken on that August day in 1646: "May God in His goodness be pleased, my dear Daughters, to pour forth His Spirit on you in abundance, which is nothing but love, sweetness and charity, so that by the practice of these virtues you may do all things in the manner He wishes you should do them, for his glory, your own salvation and the edification of your neighbor. And I, although the most harsh and least mild of men, relying on the mercy of God, will not omit to pronounce the words of blessing, and I beseech with all my heart that as I utter them He may be pleased to replenish you with His holy graces. Benedictio Dei Patris...." (Conf. Eng. ed. 19 Aug. 1646, p. 248).