Inside this issue:
Partners Against Poverty Receives Grant
Leadership Ministry Graduates Cohort
Corporate Letter to President Bush
Obituary: Rev. Francis A. Byrne, CM
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From the Provincial
"Safely Home"
James Swift, C.M.
Dear Friends,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Last month, on the day of the shuttle Columbia’s tragedy, President Bush addressed the nation, expressing our corporate sorrow and yet faith. He ended his remarks with a comment that struck me then and has remained with me these weeks. He concluded, "The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home."
Home. My thoughts have been on home in recent months. Last Christmas we children sold our family home, my mother having died earlier that year. Although I was glad to be rid of the financial burden of a house, I was surprised at how selling the home emotionally affected my siblings and me. It left me feeling I have no home. Now, when I "go home" to visit the family, I stay with my sister and brother-in-law and nephew. They are most gracious in welcoming me and making me part of their family, but it just is not quite the same. I suppose I should feel that my community residence with other Vincentians is my home. Yet, this present address is about the ninth or tenth place I have lived as a Vincentian and so does not quite feel like "home" either.
Perhaps that is why President Bush’s simple comment struck me. He reminded us that we do have a home – and not here; that, as St. Paul observes, our citizenship is not here; that, as the Funeral Liturgy of the Church remarks in speaking of those who die in the Lord, "When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven." Or as the old catechism said, "God made me to know, love and serve him in this life and to live with him forever in the next life in heaven."
Home. We do have a home. We were created for that home. We are oriented to that home. We all can pray that someday we will be "safely home."
Now, I believe everything I just wrote. It is my faith, but it is not the whole story of my faith. Having said that we are made for home, for our home in heaven, we have spoken the truth but not all the truth. There is more to be said, and not to say it can leave us with a kind of other-worldly spiritualism that misses the point of the Gospel, of Jesus.
The "more" to be said is imbedded in the first part of the quote from the old catechism: "God made me to know, love and serve him in this life..." And how are we to do that? What prayers are we to say? What penances are we to perform? What spiritual ecstasy are we to strive for?
Jesus’ answer remains as direct and simple and yet as startling and difficult today as when he first announced the Gospel two thousand years ago: "Whatever you [do] for one of these least brothers of mine, you [do] for me." Or, as St. John phrases it, "Whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen."
In other words, the surest route to arriving safely "home" someday is through loving and serving God now by loving and serving our neighbor, and especially our neighbor who is alienated, disenfranchised, poor, sick, loveless, in need.
What a mysterious paradox our Christian faith calls us to embrace: to keep our eyes on heaven, our heart on the cross, and our feet solidly planted on the ground, knowing and loving and serving our neighbor.
Dear friends, we have entered Lent. Perhaps like me, you approach Lent, hoping for great changes and yet all too conscious of how little we seem to really change from Lent to Lent each year. Perhaps like me, you have resolved to be more fervent in prayer and more than occasional in self-denial – all of which is good and right.
But perhaps we who follow the charism of St. Vincent de Paul would do well to meditate on the prophet Isaiah in which Yahweh says, "Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance? That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? This, rather, is the fasting I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on them." Perhaps we who follow the charism of St. Vincent de Paul can best observe Lent, first by regaining some needed perspective by remembering our destiny, our true home in heaven, and then by renewing and redoubling our loving service to the neighbor, especially the poor – convinced that this is our path to heaven.
Be assured of my gratitude to you and my prayers for you. May this Lent bring you a little closer to home. In all that we say and do, may Jesus Christ always be praised.
James Swift, C.M.
Vincentian is published bimonthly by the Midwest and Southern Provinces of the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentian Priests and Brothers, to promote the apostolic works of its members and those of the larger Vincentian Family.
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