At 11:45 this morning, in Saint Peter's Square, the Holy Father, Pope Francis met with members of the Vincentian Family who are celebrating the 400th anniversary of their foundation - from 12 to 15 October 2017 in Rome.
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!
Thank you for your warm welcome, and thank you to your Superior General who has introduced our gathering.
I greet you and together with you, I thank the Lord for the four hundred years of your charism. Saint Vincent created a momentum of charity which has endured throughout the centuries: a gift that came from his heart. This is the reason why, today we have his relic with us: the heart of Saint Vincent. Today, I want to encourage you to continue your journey, by proposing three simple verbs that I believe are very important for the Vincentian spirit, but also for Christian life in general: adore, listen, go.
Adore. There are countless invitations offered by Saint Vincent to cultivate an interior life and to dedicate ourselves to prayer which purifies and opens the heart. For him, prayer is essential. It is our every-day compass, like a handbook for life and - as he wrote - the great book of the preacher: only prayer attracts from God the love that we pour into the world; only in prayer can we touch the hearts of people when we proclaim the gospel (cf Letter to A. Durand, 1658). But for Saint Vincent, prayer is not only a duty, and much less a set of formulas. Prayer is the act of stopping before God to spend time with Him, to simply dedicate ourselves to Him. This is the most pure form of prayer, the prayer that makes room for the Lord and for offering him praise, and nothing more: adoration.
Once it has been discovered, adoration becomes indispensable because it is pure intimacy with the Lord, who gives us peace and joy and melts away the sorrows of life. Therefore, to someone under particular pressure, Saint Vincent would advice them to spend time in prayer without any pressure, turning toward God with simple glances, without seeking to have his presence with sensitive efforts, but abandoning ourselves to Him (Letter to G. Pesnelle, 1659).
This is adoration: put yourself in front of the Lord, with respect, calmly and in silence, give Him the place of honour, trustingly abandon yourself. Then ask him to allow the Spirit to come to us and take our concerns to Him. Offer him those people who are in need, all our urgent problems, complicated and difficult situations. Place them before Him as you adore Him, do like Saint Vincent used to ask: adore in God, even the reasons that we have problems understanding and accepting (cf Letter to F. Get, 1659). Anyone who adores, anyone who comes to the living font of love can never remain, so to speak, contaminated. He or she will begin to behave toward others as the Lord behaves toward him or her: that person becomes more merciful, more sympathetic, more available, going beyond his own rigidity and opening himself or herself to others.
So we come to the second verb: listen. When we hear this word, we immediately think about something to do. But in reality, listening is a deeper disposition: not only does it require us to make room for someone, but to be a welcoming person, available, used to giving him or herself to others. Like God does for us, so we must give ourselves for others. Listening means to remeasure myself, to straighten my way of thinking, to understand that life is not my private property and that time does not belong to me. It is a slow process of detaching myself from everything that is mine: my time, my rest, my rights, my plans, my agenda. Anyone who welcomes renounces himself and enters into life both the you and the we.
A welcoming Christian is a true woman and man of the Church, because the Church is Mother and a mother welcomes life and accompanies it. A Christian is like a child who resembles his mother, bearing her traits; in the same way, Christians bear the traits of the Church. Therefore you are truly faithful sons and daughters of the Church if you welcome, if without complaining, you create concord and community and if with generosity you plant the seeds of peace, even if these sentiments are not reciprocated. Saint Vincent helps us to value this ecclesial DNA of welcome, of availability, of communion, so that in our lives all bitterness, anger, wrath, greed and malice along with every kind of evil may disappear (Eph 4:31).
The last verb is go. Love is dynamic, it goes out from itself. Someone who loves doesn't sit on a chair and watch, waiting for the arrival of a better world; instead, with enthusiasm and simplicity, he gets up and goes. Saint Vincent said it well: Our vocation is therefore to go, not in a parish and neither only in a diocese, but throughout the earth. To do what? To enflame the hearts of men, doing what the Son of God did, He who came to bring fire to the earth in order to set it ablaze with his love (Conference, 30 May 1959). This vocation is still valid for all of us. Ask yourself each of the following questions: Do I go out to meet others, as the Lord would want? Do I carry this flame of charity wherever I go or do I stay closed in on myself, warming myself in front of my own fireplace?
Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you for being in motion along the roadways of this world, like Saint Vincent would ask you today. I hope not to stop you, but that you may continue drawing every day from adoration a deeper sense of the love of God, and I hope that you will spread His love throughout the world by means of the good contagion of charity, availability and concord. I bless all of you and the poor that you encounter. And I ask you, please, the charity of not forgetting to pray for me.
Speech of His Holiness, Pope Francis
addressed to members of the
Vincentian Family
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!
Thank you for your warm welcome, and thank you to your Superior General who has introduced our gathering.
I greet you and together with you, I thank the Lord for the four hundred years of your charism. Saint Vincent created a momentum of charity which has endured throughout the centuries: a gift that came from his heart. This is the reason why, today we have his relic with us: the heart of Saint Vincent. Today, I want to encourage you to continue your journey, by proposing three simple verbs that I believe are very important for the Vincentian spirit, but also for Christian life in general: adore, listen, go.
Adore. There are countless invitations offered by Saint Vincent to cultivate an interior life and to dedicate ourselves to prayer which purifies and opens the heart. For him, prayer is essential. It is our every-day compass, like a handbook for life and - as he wrote - the great book of the preacher: only prayer attracts from God the love that we pour into the world; only in prayer can we touch the hearts of people when we proclaim the gospel (cf Letter to A. Durand, 1658). But for Saint Vincent, prayer is not only a duty, and much less a set of formulas. Prayer is the act of stopping before God to spend time with Him, to simply dedicate ourselves to Him. This is the most pure form of prayer, the prayer that makes room for the Lord and for offering him praise, and nothing more: adoration.
Once it has been discovered, adoration becomes indispensable because it is pure intimacy with the Lord, who gives us peace and joy and melts away the sorrows of life. Therefore, to someone under particular pressure, Saint Vincent would advice them to spend time in prayer without any pressure, turning toward God with simple glances, without seeking to have his presence with sensitive efforts, but abandoning ourselves to Him (Letter to G. Pesnelle, 1659).
This is adoration: put yourself in front of the Lord, with respect, calmly and in silence, give Him the place of honour, trustingly abandon yourself. Then ask him to allow the Spirit to come to us and take our concerns to Him. Offer him those people who are in need, all our urgent problems, complicated and difficult situations. Place them before Him as you adore Him, do like Saint Vincent used to ask: adore in God, even the reasons that we have problems understanding and accepting (cf Letter to F. Get, 1659). Anyone who adores, anyone who comes to the living font of love can never remain, so to speak, contaminated. He or she will begin to behave toward others as the Lord behaves toward him or her: that person becomes more merciful, more sympathetic, more available, going beyond his own rigidity and opening himself or herself to others.
So we come to the second verb: listen. When we hear this word, we immediately think about something to do. But in reality, listening is a deeper disposition: not only does it require us to make room for someone, but to be a welcoming person, available, used to giving him or herself to others. Like God does for us, so we must give ourselves for others. Listening means to remeasure myself, to straighten my way of thinking, to understand that life is not my private property and that time does not belong to me. It is a slow process of detaching myself from everything that is mine: my time, my rest, my rights, my plans, my agenda. Anyone who welcomes renounces himself and enters into life both the you and the we.
A welcoming Christian is a true woman and man of the Church, because the Church is Mother and a mother welcomes life and accompanies it. A Christian is like a child who resembles his mother, bearing her traits; in the same way, Christians bear the traits of the Church. Therefore you are truly faithful sons and daughters of the Church if you welcome, if without complaining, you create concord and community and if with generosity you plant the seeds of peace, even if these sentiments are not reciprocated. Saint Vincent helps us to value this ecclesial DNA of welcome, of availability, of communion, so that in our lives all bitterness, anger, wrath, greed and malice along with every kind of evil may disappear (Eph 4:31).
The last verb is go. Love is dynamic, it goes out from itself. Someone who loves doesn't sit on a chair and watch, waiting for the arrival of a better world; instead, with enthusiasm and simplicity, he gets up and goes. Saint Vincent said it well: Our vocation is therefore to go, not in a parish and neither only in a diocese, but throughout the earth. To do what? To enflame the hearts of men, doing what the Son of God did, He who came to bring fire to the earth in order to set it ablaze with his love (Conference, 30 May 1959). This vocation is still valid for all of us. Ask yourself each of the following questions: Do I go out to meet others, as the Lord would want? Do I carry this flame of charity wherever I go or do I stay closed in on myself, warming myself in front of my own fireplace?
Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you for being in motion along the roadways of this world, like Saint Vincent would ask you today. I hope not to stop you, but that you may continue drawing every day from adoration a deeper sense of the love of God, and I hope that you will spread His love throughout the world by means of the good contagion of charity, availability and concord. I bless all of you and the poor that you encounter. And I ask you, please, the charity of not forgetting to pray for me.
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