I just received this copy of his Ash Wednesday letter to the Vincentian Family and am posting it immediately. (For those who saw the letter to the Congregation of the Mission on the cmglobal website you will find that this version of the letter has been written specifically with the wider family in mind.) You ight also be interested in his letter on Ongoing Formation.
To the Beloved Members of the Vincentian Family

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

      May the grace and peace of Our Lord Jesus Christ fill your hearts now and forever!

     Lent 2008 has come upon me quickly.  So much so that I fear that many of you in far distant communities will not receive this communication at the beginning of the Lenten season.

     What I would like to share with you this year comes from a dialog I had via the internet with a confrere who had a legitimate concern about the quality of the communal prayer in his local community.  In the back and forth comments, we each reflected on what we considered significant with regard to our communal prayer life.  At one point, because I liked the quality of his reflections, I asked if he might put together some thoughts that I could incorporate into my Lenten letter for 2008.  He agreed to that and I present to you here a combination of our reflections concerning common prayer.

     As we prepare to celebrate the gift of Lent, the word of God calls us to unite ourselves more deeply to the unselfish and obedient suffering and death of Jesus by a conversion of mind and heart and spirit.  Just under two weeks ago all of us were reflecting on the meaning of conversion as we celebrated the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.  Paul’s conversion had a great impact on the conversion of St. Vincent de Paul himself. This year for the foundational feast I was in Cameroon. There is always something wonderful about the Word of God that no matter how many times we might hear a particular text, it is so dynamic that something new can touch our hearts and deepen our reflection. 

     This year it struck me that the whole concept of conversion, using Paul’s as an example, is intimately bound up with mission. The first Saturday following Ash Wednesday we hear the call or conversion of the tax collector, Levi, known to be a notorious unjust sinner, and called so by the Pharisees.  But it is such as he that the Lord Jesus has come to call.  Levi became a disciple of Jesus responding to the invitation to “Follow me.”  I would hope that this Lenten season, as we are called both to personal and communal conversion, all of us might intimately link that with the desire to be more faithful in following Jesus Christ in the mission that he has given us: to evangelize and serve the poor.

     As always, God invites us to holiness in community.  We need to be careful, as we share the message of Lent with those we serve, that we always encourage Lent’s effectiveness in ourselves.  I would like to strongly recommend to you, my brothers and sisters, that this Lent we share a common effort to improve our prayer in common.  A number of years ago, Father Maloney called us to make our prayer more beautiful for God and attractive to the young.  He  meant that invitation to reshape all of our prayer every day, not just as an occasional experience. I am repeating that call to you, a call to improve the common prayer of your association.

     And I would like to add another note:  that we pray together so that the communion among us might be stronger. St. Vincent asked us to live as dear brothers and sisters. In the past fidelity was often measured by observance of a universally legislated rule with an order of day that was much the same throughout the world. Today, fidelity can be measured by a member’s observance of the covenant that he or she has made with the other members of the association.  The covenant, of course, embraces not only our common commitment to an apostolic mission, but also our pledge to support one another in prayer.¹ I ask you to deepen your commitment to and cooperation with the members of your association to pray together in a true spirit of communion as St. Vincent hoped.  It was Vincent who said to the members of the Congregation of the Mission:

“Give me a man of prayer and he will be capable of everything. He may say with the apostle, ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me.’  The Congregation will last as long as it faithfully carries out the practice of prayer, which is like an impregnable rampart shielding the missionaries from all manner of attack.”  (SV, XI, 83  Coste)

     All would agree that saying prayers does not necessarily guarantee that we are praying. We need to pray in a way that allows us to discover and share our inner selves, our faith and our doubts, our fears and our confidence, our stories of  effectiveness and our failures, our commitment to be truly Vincentian.  Prayer should help us to know and appreciate one another as individuals within the association, to support one another gently and faithfully, to foster tolerance and openness to the different gifts given by the Spirit to each of us. 

     I encourage you to talk together as dear brothers and sisters in your meetings and find ways to pray together meaningfully and fraternally.   Many of us have collected prayer forms from meetings, from books, from parishes and others situations. They can be simple prayers, with periods of silence, and time to share our hearts with one another.  Prayer ought to be spontaneous when we are together as brothers and sisters. Another helpful expression of communal prayer is Lectio Divina, a very common form used today. Take the day’s Scripture readings, or the readings of Sunday, and share what the selections mean to you personally.

     A few practical helps. Some might find recorded music helpful to support their singing, or as a background to their quiet prayer. The members of the association should openly and honestly discuss the time and place of their prayer to find the situation most conducive to good prayer. Let each member be involved in the preparation of prayer time, using whatever creativity and experience he or she has, each being humble enough to accept the choices made and enter into the prayer with a full heart. You who work with youth or who are young yourselves can offer helpful insights into making prayer attractive to youth. We need to find a working balance between patterns that make a familiar and comfortable space for our prayer and helpful variety that keeps us growing.

     There are many opportunities to make the life of our associations more prayerful. For example, on an occasion, you can include prayers to our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, the Rosary, added prayer time on special days, – all of these expressions allow us to deepen our sharing of prayer and fulfill our desire to live prayerfully within the living circle of our brothers and sisters. 

     Prayer forms can become less prayerful because of too much sameness. For example, in the manner we pray the Rosary, we might cease praying and just appear to be reciting words.

     There is another dimension of our prayer that involves priests most directly, but all of the faithful should take time to examine their participation in the celebrations of the Eucharist.  St. Vincent was a major force in the improvement of the Liturgy in his time.  (See Coste I, XIII to get a view of the background of the liturgy in Vincent’s time and his commitment to improving Liturgy among the clergy.)  The retreats for ordinands, the Tuesday conferences, the work with the ordained and the seminaries all included as part of their goals the improvement of Liturgical knowledge and practice.  Like Vincent, we live in a time when the Church is experiencing the changes that follow the new emphases of an ecumenical council. Some embrace these change, and some resist them. We should follow St. Vincent’s example of commitment to the teaching of the Church to be men and women who, in our own practice lead by example in ourselves and in our apostolates.

     I know I ask a lot, but what is more important to any of us than the Eucharist, the “source and summit” of our Christian life?  I would like you to take some time to examine yourselves to see how you live the celebration of the Eucharist. Workshops could be set up in order to deepen the sense of meeting with Christ in our brothers and sisters through the Eucharist.

     Concerned as we are to be united as Family, we should take special care to want to participate actively in the liturgy together.  You may be called upon to read at the Eucharist or be ministers of Christ’s Body and Blood.  The Eucharist in itself is a dialog between the minister of God and his people.  We are called to respond in a participative way and at times spontaneously in and through moments such as the Prayer of the Faithful. St. Vincent was always dedicated to encouraging all members of the Body of Christ to share the ministry of prayer and service. Therefore, we should not only prepare ourselves, but help to prepare the people that we serve so that they too might actively participate in the Eucharistic celebrations.

     The celebration of the institution of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday is a prime example of the relationship between common prayer (the Eucharist being the example par excellence of common prayer) and mission wherein Jesus intimately links charitable service with the sharing of Word and Sacrament.

     My brothers and sisters, what a blessing for the Church if each of us rededicated ourselves to a fuller participation in the Eucharist, joining voices with other brothers and sisters in prayer. To paraphrase St. Vincent de Paul, “Give me a family of prayer…”

     On a practical note, by way of conclusion, during moments of your common prayer I ask you to lift up your hearts and minds and voices to the Lord who hears the cry of the poor and pray particularly for our brothers and sisters in troubled places such as Kenya, Eritrea, the Middle East, Northern India and Colombia which presently are countries where our brothers and sisters of the Vincentian Family and the poor that they serve are suffering the most.

     “… if we come together before the Lord as the first Christians used to do, he will give himself in turn to us, and remain in us with his lights, and will himself accomplish in and through us the good we are bound to do in his Church.”  (Letter of St. Vincent, Jan 15, 1650)

Your brother in St. Vincent,

                        

G. Gregory Gay, C.M.

Superior General