FROM THE PROVINCIAL

“Fragile. Handle with care.”

Dear friends,

May Jesus Christ be praised!

At one time or another, most of us have received a package labeled, “Fragile. Handle with care.” In recent months, I have found myself thinking that this is really how God sends us into the world. He packages us and sends us with labels in large markings saying, “Fragile. Handle with care.” True, this is not the only characteristic of human life, but it certainly is one of life’s characteristics. The precious gift of human life, a direct outpouring of divine life, is a fragile gift, one which deserves to be handled with care from conception to natural death.

I just returned from a country where the contrasts are stark. Kenya, where, as you know, the Midwest Province has a growing and prospering mission, is a land of incredible beauty – natural beauty especially in the Rift Valley and at Mount Kenya, but also the beauty found in the faces of a young nation, a nation with so much promise. And yet, Kenya is also a land of incredible violence, fueled for the most part by the profound poverty which marks the land and its people, and leads to acts of despair and violence. In such a context, the taking of innocent life is almost commonplace.

I think of the murder of a missionary priest many of us knew in Nairobi.
His attackers simply wanted his car and killed him almost as an aside to get it. And this is not the kind of thing that happens rarely.

Closer to home, can any of us forget last spring’s horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech? Again, what strikes me about that sad story is that it is not a rare event. We, too, live in a society scarred by violence. And it’s not only the violence of murder. What of the violence of our television shows, the music we listen to, the video games
we play? …And the list goes on.

Human life is a fragile gift from God. We disciples of Jesus are committed to reverencing and defending this gift. We Vincentians, coming from a tradition that sees the face of Christ in the other, especially the poor, are even more challenged to guard and support this fragile gift. We do so in a hundred ways – by the way we relate to each person we meet, and especially those who are “different” (the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the unborn, those of a different ethnicity or religion or political conviction, and more ...).

We do so by our choices – from the choices we make when we vote, to the choices we make for entertainment.

We are a people who acknowledge that life is sacred and who act on that conviction. For us, life is something holy and fragile, something to be handled with care.

Earlier I mentioned our mission in Kenya and the daily challenges to life in this fast-growing and developing African nation. In this newsletter, as we complete the profiles we have been offering of our Vincentian parishes, we feature our two parishes in Kenya. They are half a world away and in a culture very different from ours, and yet they are Catholic parishes, no different in many ways from your own parish. In this issue, we also are proud to present this year’s silver and golden jubilarians – Vincentian priests who have given themselves to the Church’s ministry in fidelity and with zeal. I know you join me in giving thanks to God for these servants of the Good Shepherd.

I hope this newsletter finds you and your loved ones enjoying the summer. Thank you for all you do for the Church and Congregation. You are in my daily prayers.

Blessings.

James Swift, C.M.