Circular Letter from the International President of the SVDP

The letter from  José Ramón Díaz-Torremocha  focuses on three things: A) What do you want of me Lord?; B): Open and in Defense of Christian Values and C): Systemic Change

Paris, June 30, 2008

CIRCULAR LETTER TO MY DEAR FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE CONFERENCES OF THE SOCIETY OF ST. VINCENT
DE PAUL IN THE WORLD.

Dear Friends and Fellow-Members:

Three subjects I want to offer for reflection to my worldwide fellow-members
in this intimate and fraternal communication, that I customarily have with
you each mid year.
“When he had received the wine, Jesus said:
It is finished.
With that he bowed his head
and gave up his spirit.”
(Gospel of John 19:30)

A): What do you want of me Lord?

The Gospel of St. John that our Holy Church offers on Good Friday, reminds
us year after year of these words – the final ones of Jesus – before giving up
his spirit. Truly all was finished. The Redeemer had come with a clear mission
to live among us and to bring the gift of God’s forgiveness, offering His life in
exchange for that gift. All was consummated after a few years of teaching:
from how to address ourselves to the Father, to how we should comprehend
our relationship with the rest of mankind, all through the introduction of the
new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John
13:34). All that remained was to give up His life and He did.

The Son of God, He who had become a man to live among us, arrived into
the world with one mission and He had completed it. That is: His birth, His
public life, the handing of Himself over to torture, His death and resurrection.
This was not just coincidence or an accident. No! It was the full assumption –
conscious and responsible – of a mission entrusted and accepted even to its
final consequence. And Jesus defeats the temptation to escape that
consequence, to avoid the torture that he knows of beforehand, and exclaims
to the One who had sent Him: “Not my will but Yours, be done” (Luke
22:42). It is the final act of a life completely offered for the mission.

Not only Jesus – even though in much less measure and fundamentally
without comparing ours to the grandeur of His mission – we also came into
the world entrusted with a mission. That is: When God contemplates the
birth of each one of us, He dreams of a life, a mission, an obligation that He
wishes us to discover and commit ourselves to, our contribution to better the
world and the very History of Salvation. Afterward, He follows with interest
how each of us makes use of the freedom that He has granted, and observes
– most of the time with sadness – how we utilize the seed He has deposited in
our soul. Or rather, how we do not utilize it in our hurry through vain
illusions that are bound to lead us away from that entrusted mission.

Each member of the Conferences of St. Vincent should meditate profoundly
on this passage of the Gospel of John and ask ourselves, What is my
mission that will allow me to say, at the moment of surrendering my
life, “all is completed” What does the Creator of the world ask of us and
what answer does He expect of each of us, in order to continue belonging to
Him.

It is not something that affects only others. Rather, it is a call that affects
each of us, each of the members of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul
and a call in which we often fail with equal intensity, just as the rest of
humanity does. Coming to meetings, lodging within the Conference,
remaining year after year amidst the members and partaking in the suffering
of the poorest, is not enough, if we do not achieve the discovery that this is
what the Lord expects of each of those who serve the Conferences, the place
to which we have been coming in search of our vocation of serving the
poorest of the poor.

Even the most humble among us has a mission of God, dreamt by Him for
each of us and of which we have the obligation to discover and commit
ourselves to.

For each member a process of discernment is necessary, the intimate
knowledge of its deepest values and also of its defects. A process of
discernment in which we shall find, without doubt, the assistance of those
around us, when we listen to them attentively, so that they consider us more
useful. And why should we be less? It is a process of discernment that we will
always find in the encounter with God through personal and community
prayer within the bosom of the Conference.

The question, “What do you want of me, Lord?,” could be and should be
a question for all of us. What does God expect of you, dear friend, who is
reading these lines, in your service to the Conferences, in your service
specifically to the one in which you serve? “What do you want of me,
Lord?” It is certain that you will find which particular and intimate mission
God has reserved for you and that it will be, undoubtedly, different from the
one that is entrusted to me as a goal or to any of the other members. “What
do you want of me, Lord?”

That process of discernment will obligate us to be permanently on guard as
to what happens around us. However, the Lord does not usually speak to us
directly, but frequently does through those who accompany us in life or who,
at any moment, cross our paths. Who has not felt questioned by the words of
a fellow member, words of a friend, about an act that by chance has occurred
in our midst?

Each Conference, in service to the poorest of the poor, and also to its
members, is nothing more than the sum of the wills of its components. That
is, its service will be directly influenced by the quality of each of its members
in their commitment to the community life of the Conference. Therefore, the
life of each Conference will be directly influenced by its capacity to serve, by
our capacity of having listened to what God expects of each of us and how
we will put it into service, listening then all together to what the Spirit of
Truth, the Lord and Giver of Life, expects of us as a Christian Community at
the service of the poor.i

What do you ask of me, Lord? ii, is a fundamental question for each one of
us that should illuminate our very life and enrich the life of the Conference
one is a member of. Studying in depth, indeed beyond individuality, is a
question that needs to be asked by each Conference in the world, each time
its service in favor of the poor is examined. Is it accurate then to say that we
are doing what God wants us to do and what the poor are in need of?

We are to suppose, dear fellow-members, what each of us shall be capable of
giving the world if we listen to the call, decode it, accept it and then apply it
to our way of life. We are to be conscious that we shall make a better world if
each one of us is capable of responding affirmatively to the mission God
entrusts to us. We are to understand that if we do not function in this way,
something will result that will not enrich the world because of our
carelessness and that this world will be a little less good because we were
not capable – or we did not desire it – of investigating or committing
ourselves to the mission that the Creator had entrusted to us.

These are questions, be they made individually or collectively, each of us
Vincentians should ask ourselves continually so that some day we can say,
imitating Our Lord: “All is completed.” These are questions that will make
us abandon the complacency in which many of us live and will draw us to the
authentic restlessness of whether we are truly responding to the expectations
that God, since the beginning of time, desired from each one of us.

There is a question that might seem incredible, inconceivable and bordering
on the disrespectful. But permit me to include it, in terminating the reflection
of this first part of my letter. What would become of each of us – indeed of all
humanity – if Jesus, in exercising His own freedom, had betrayed the will of
His Father? if he never would have been able to say “All is finished.” What
hope would we have today?

It will not have the same repercussion. Evidently! But for the continuity of
the History of Salvation, God desires to depend on the small contributions
that inspire each and every one of us alive today, each of the baptized. What
would we miss contributing to the world if we did not ask ourselves the
question: “What do you want of me, Lord?”, if afterwards we flee from
the chalice that He has entrusted to us?

It is a question that we all should ask ourselves continually, throughout all
our lives.

In the space of the twentieth century, two movements have powerfully
influenced the last 50 years. Both began in Europe during the 1960’s.

On the one hand, the Second Vatican Council arrives to update Christian
values – evangelical values – in the light of new knowledge and theological
advances and to the new lifestyles toward which the world is opening. But
without forgetting to what point those values are to influence Western
Civilization which has fully been presided over by them during the last fifteen
hundred years. Likewise, the Church is not conscious that the rhythms of
change have profoundly evolved. And we have not been conscious that if the
results of a Council, which before took centuries to take shape, but now with
modern methods of Communication and the frenetic life the world has
acquired over the current century, necessarily require a much more
aggressive campaign of normalization for the extension of that Conciliar
message among all those of good will.

The Holy Church has lost some very valuable years in conveying to all
humanity – into each ones bosom – much of the richness of the Council,
factors that continue being unknown absolutes to many and, what is more
dangerous, unknown to many Catholics. How many of us are familiar with
the Conciliar documents? How many of us are capable of explaining them – in
a simple manner – to others that live around us, so that they would fall in
love with them, as, without doubt would occur, if we were capable of doing
so? And these are not the only problems that present themselves to what the
Council has enacted. How many of us are capable of explaining thoroughly
and with simplicity, the fabulous Social Doctrine of the Church? A Doctrine
open to all and for all.

On the other hand, the opposing movement, the one that arises from and
has its “blind affection” in the name “May 1968,”* is presided over by a
fierce nihilism** and elevates counter values – as a counter culture – that
flow from its bosom toward a dominant ideology where the impulses of each
person are to be the only values that count; the truly important ones. They
destroy not only the majority of moral limits, which we had established for
ourselves in all fields of action since Greece and Rome – not only! – but
advance to be considered frustrators to all humans in their physical and
mental development. They are much smarter than the movement led by the
Church – the Council – and fundamentally more daring. They convince many
good people of their generation, that “old concepts have done, now do
and will continue to do harm to the development of human
preservation,” and they must be defeated. These concepts, absolutely
demonic, are accepted – just as in olden times – as truths of faith. All is in
movement, nothing is permanent. All is submitted for review. There are no
moral limits that indicate the difference between right and wrong. What’s
more, the concept of Rousseau, that evil does not exist, is accepted more
and more with conviction. Evil hides and wins in many souls, the battle of the
lie: of its nonexistence.

Today, this distancing from the values represented by the philosophy
inherited from the Greeks and Romans – and later enriched by Christianity –
that has permitted human beings to reach heights, imperfectly for sure, yet
unimaginable in the times of the Resurrection of the Savior, constitutes an
impoverishment of mankind that humanity will regret if we are not capable of
returning to live within the reasonable limits of the Christian message. That
is, if we are not capable of once again understanding that good and evil exist
and that only by wagering on the good can we continue building the “Civitas
Terrena” aspiring to the truly “Civitas Dei,” both defined by St. Augustine.
Otherwise it will be the moral impoverishment of the world that will reach
magnitudes possibly never before seen.

This battle, this war to recover morality: Should it be the arena of work for
the Conferences? I believe so, without a doubt. The loss of values – the
feeling to do good or evil, and of being conscious of it – implies a povertyiii
that moves, in the majority of occasions beyond other poverties that appear
more evident, or are easier to detect and less complicated and demanding, in
the struggle against them. If the Rule reminds us that “no work of charity
is foreign to the Societyiv,” I do not doubt that this new poverty of
mankind, since the beginning of this century – but most likely also continuing
in successive ones – should be addressed by our Conferences. It is one more
poverty that presents itself at our door and it challenges us to attend to it for
Love; for the Love of God.

We should all make an enormous effort – through our permanent formation
that allows us in simple ways, as mentioned above – to be able to explain by
our means, the position of the Magisterium of the Holy Church, the questions
that are currently debated in any of the settings in which we customarily
exercise our apostolate, and even in those others – family, profession,
friendships – where doubts may arise over concepts and values that we all
should clearly understand and know, so as to share them with knowledge
and seriousness with others. Persons of good will, who are, little by little,
being absorbed into the dominant philosophy, are not capable of or do not
desire confrontations with those who learned and shared the faith from
childhood.

Especially important is this mission to the youngest among us. With them –
our youngest members – we should spread all our knowledge so that they
will know and assume the values of good against evil, before some are
dragged into a counterculture that will doubtless make them unhappy,
sooner or later.

Formation, therefore, is an extremely important challenge for the Society in
general and for each member in particular. The organization, in this day and
time, does not have the capacity to work with each member on necessary
and permanent formation. But it does have the ability to encourage each
member toward that permanent formation that we must never abandon
during the entire life of our apostolate.

We shall not aspire to be masters of anyone; only to be bearers of some
necessary knowledge, but always in the simplicity of our actions.

C): Systemic Change

To conclude this Circular Letter, permit me dear fellow-members, to refer to
an issue that is being dealt with in the meetings of the Vincentian Family – at
an international level – over the past two years. It is about what has been
called “systemic change.”

Under this title, the Family that takes its inspiration from St. Vincent de Paul,
aims to remind us of the necessity of providing for the drastic changes in the
material existence of the poor whom we reach out to help.

That is, we are called today by the whole Family, to what so many times we
have heard in the Conferences, ever since their foundation: Without the
intention, whenever possible, of redemption of the situation in which they
find themselves, there is no truly charitable action; there is no true action of
Love.

It is important that each Conference engage all its resources in the
attainment of touching the one who suffers and whom we help, achieve the
defeat of that suffering so that the possibility of becoming self-sufficient and
living without our help, is restored. We should strive to have as our objective
that those brothers and sisters whom we give assistance to, achieve the
dignity of facing their needs on their own. We are to believe, in the
meantime, not only in the helping works that so often we are capable of
building, but also in going further and undertaking the task of the
advancement of all human beings.

And we are to carry this out wherever possible, in collaboration with that
formidable army of charity that comes together under the patronage of St.
Vincent de Paul. I have recalled on many other occasions, that today our
labors are a bit incomplete and diminished of strength, when we do not work
together with the rest of the Vincentian Family, in the places where we find
two or more of our organizations working toward the same fruits.

The Daughters of Charity, the Vincentian Fathers (CM), the Religious of St.
Vincent de Paul, the International Association of Charity (AIC), are
inestimable collaborators always for the benefit of the poorest. Let us unite
with them wherever we should meet. Let us not let one misunderstood
jealousy lead us to serve alone, when the poor would be better served if we
worked together.

With another year more, dear fellow-members – of having addressed you – I
do not want to conclude without also addressing Our Lady. She, who is
Mother of the Church, and who, with love, watches over all movements that
strive to follow the Way of Love revealed by her Son, will help us obtain,
each day, a better and more demanding service for those whom Christ
Himself wished to leave us as His representatives.

With my prayer and affection,

José Ramón Díaz-Torremocha
XIV Presidente General
(I.N.E.D.)

Conseil Général de la Confédération Internationale de la Société de Saint-Vincent de Paul
6, rue de Londres  75009 Paris (Françe)
STAY INFORMED WITH: NEWS, PROJECTS, BIOGRAPHIES, ETC. AT
http://www.ssvpglobal.org
I had referred to this extreme in the second part of my Circular
Letter of June 3, 2007, which is at the disposition of the reader at
www.ssvpglobal.org

ii
“The acceptance of the Plan of God, in each person, makes grow the
seeds of love, generosity, reconciliation and inner peace, for them,
their families and for all those with whom you have contact in your
lives. Vincentians have the privilege of encouraging these signs of the
presence of the Resurrected Christ in the poor and among themselves.”
(Rule of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Article 1.11, third
paragraph).
iii

Reference to this poverty was indicated in my Circular Letter of June
3, 2006. (www.ssvpglobal.org).

iv
“No act of charity is foreign to the Society,” includes any form of
help destined to alleviate suffering or privation and fosters human
dignity and integrity, in all their dimensions. (Rule of the Society,
Article 1.3.

* The May ’68 student demonstrations in Paris is considered to be the
watershed moment that saw the replacement of conservative morality
(religion, patriotism, respect for authority) with the liberal morality
(equality, sexual liberation, human rights) that dominates French
society today.

**
The rejection of religious and moral creed.

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Tags: Society of St. Vincent de Paul