The celebration of the feast of Saint Louise this year finds each of us staying in our houses, responsibly following the guidelines of protection and care in face of the crisis started by the coronavirus pandemic.

1.- Suffering that rattles us

The details that we are learning about the effects of the pandemic are overwhelming: thousands of people have died from this hitherto unknown virus; grief over the death of loved ones increases with the inability to bid them farewell and meet with family and friends; the celebration of funerals has been postponed and the mourning process is incomplete. We are shocked by the forecasts of job losses and economic recessions that will follow the health crisis. The pandemic and its effects are reaching the entire world and all sorts of people and will compromise the future of all peoples and the international order. Its effect on the poorest is growing exponentially more serious.

Saint Louise de Marillac and Saint Vincent de Paul knew in their time situations of pandemic, suffering and death. The chronic famine in which most of the population lived was linked with the almost uninterrupted wars in different regions of France, and the plague significantly reduced the number of inhabitants. Throughout the century in which the two saints lived, despite the high birth rate, the total population did not increase due to the mortality caused by the plague, hunger and wars: plague is the autumn fruit of bad harvests in spring; and this gives rise to the exodus of peasants towards the cities, propelling the rise of revolts and wars. Wars, in turn, hinder the production and distribution of food and that leads to famine.

On 24 July 1655, Saint Vincent de Paul communicated in the repetition of prayer his understanding of the suffering experienced by the victims of these recurring crises:

If, for the four months we’ve had war here, we’ve had so much misery in the heart of France, where food supplies are ample everywhere, what can those poor people in the border areas do, who have been in this sort of misery for twenty years? Yes, it’s been a good twenty years that there’s always been war there; if they sow their crops, they’re not sure they can gather them in; the armies arrive and pillage and carry everything off; and what the soldier hasn’t taken, the sergeants take and carry off. After that, what can be done? What will become of them? They will certainly die.

What to do? That is the emotional question that Vincent de Paul asked and it is also the question that all of us, members of the Vincentian Family in communion with the Christian communities of each place wonder about.

The experience of Saint Louise de Marillac, committed to serving the poor and always attentive to the sense of the Church, can help us find ways of committing ourselves to the persons, groups, and peoples who are suffering today and in the near future the consequences of the pandemic.

2.- A letter from yesterday that we can reread today

We find in the correspondence of Saint Louise de Marillac several letters addressed to Sister Barbara Angiboust. Among those she addressed to Brienne, where the sister had been sent to attend to the victims of wars, we find the one written on 11 June 1652, which I almost completely transcribe (C. 410):

… In the name of God, dear Sisters, do not be discouraged by your work or by thinking that you have no consolation other than that of God. Ah! if we but knew God’s hidden reasons when he puts us in such a state, we would see that this should be the time of our greatest consolations. Well now, you see a lot of misery that you cannot help; God sees them too…. Share their sorrows with them, do your best to help them in some way, and remain in peace.

It is possible that you also have your share of need, and that must be your consolation, because if you were in abundance, your hearts could not bear to see our (Lords) and Masters suffering so much…. If God’s goodness does not expose us to the most severe miseries, let us thank him for it and be convinced that it is by his mercy alone, without any other merit…. Monsieur Vincent, our Most Honored Father, and Monsieur Portail are, thank God, in good health, and all our dear sisters as well. Most of those in the outskirts of Paris have been forced to seek refuge, but, thanks to Our Lord, they have experienced no harm or difficulties until now.

… What God is currently asking of you, dear Sisters, is great union and mutual tolerance, and that you labor together in the work of God with great meekness and humility; that the difficulties that occur among you do not develop any further, so that they serve to edify everyone. I beg you, Sister Barbara, since you are old and exhausted, if you see that Sister Jeanne has too much work, and you are unable to relieve her, go look for help, because now we cannot send you any. We are forced to do the same in this city, where there are parishes where there are 5,000 poor people who are given soup. In our parish we feed two thousand, not counting the sick….

Reading this letter causes feelings to arise spontaneously in us that we in these recent weeks have personally uttered or heard and, if possible, we could now comment on in our group or community.

Let us note some of these expressions and try to discover in them suggestions for our devotion.

3.- Our commitment in light of the experience of Saint Louise

She writes “You see a lot of misery that you cannot help…. Share their sorrows with them, do your best to help them in some way.”

As the pope has reminded us and as many affirm who have written on the subject these days, the great extent of the effects of the pandemic exceeds the abilities of any one family, municipality, country, or even continent. It requires the participation and commitment of each and every one.

This is the favorable time of the Lord, who asks us not to settle or be content, let alone justify ourselves with substitute or palliative thing that prevent us from appreciating the impact and serious consequences of what we are experiencing. This is the proper time to encourage us to a new imagination of the possible with the realism that only the Gospel can provide. The Holy Spirit, who does not allow himself to be locked up or straitjacketed with fixed or expired plans, modalities, or structures, proposes that we join his movement capable of “making all things new” (Rev 21, 5) (Pope Francis, “Plan for Resurrection”).

I will try in these pages to formulate some proposals for our commitment as a Vincentian Family in light of the experience of Saint Louise de Marillac.

3.1.- To suffer and intercede

Saint Louise affirms: “You see a lot of miseries that you cannot help; God sees them too.” The members of the Vincentian Family know how important it is for all services to come to know the suffering of our sisters and brothers up close, with our own eyes. Not with the gaze of some sociological, economic, or demographic study, but with the gaze of the Good Samaritan, who could not continue his own journey without emotions.

Pope Francis has invited us on several occasions to fall to our knees before the sisters and brothers who suffer. Contemplating their suffering while we are on our knees offers us the adequate perspective to come to suffer with them, sym-pathize [suffer-with].

As believers, our compassion rises towards God, who also sees and knows suffering, and makes intercession. Intercession is the first service that we can render to those who suffer the consequences of the pandemic. And it is the service that we cannot stop providing, since it is within the reach of every believer, whatever their condition of health, age, place, or situation.

To suffer-with also implies, for the members of the Vincentian Family, to participate in some way in the suffering of the victims. Saint Louise affirms: “It is possible that you also have your share of need, and that must be your consolation.” Many of us share in the consequences of the pandemic within our own family or community, among our loved ones. But we must all ask for some shared participation with those who suffer directly from this crisis: renouncing not only the superfluous but also a portion of what is necessary to help those who have lost everything to find better living conditions. And it is that, as Saint Louise warns, it would not be right for us to live “in abundance and comfort seeing our (Lords) and Masters suffer so much….”

3.2.- Closeness, welcome, listening, tenderness

The complexity of the dimensions of the coronavirus crisis will require the adoption of large-scale measures, both internationally and locally. But it also requires small-scale closeness, the capacity for welcome and listening, and the balm of tenderness.

Saint Louise affirms that the time of great suffering can become ”the time of our greatest consolations.”

For the members of the Vincentian Family, closeness, welcome, listening, tenderness … are our traditional dispositions in serving the poor. The sufferings derived from the pandemic undoubtedly require an intensification of these attitudes, because the wounds to be healed are deeper and their pain more persistent.

Saint Louise de Marillac lived the closeness, the welcome, the listening, the tenderness with the people she met on her way: with her husband and her son in the first place; with young women and school girls; with the Daughters of Charity; and especially, with the poor whom she personally served in prison, in parishes, in the various forms of helplessness of her time.

3.3.- Practice of comprehensive care and attention toward each person

From the insights of Saints Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, persons and their integral care (corporal and spiritual, given in their language) occupy the center of the mission of each Christian, and specifically of the members of the Vincentian Family.

Today the phrase “the practice of pastoral care” is used to describe the set of care that the person requires: health, psychological, human, spiritual, family, sacramental…. The perspective of systemic change summarizes in the term “holistic” all the dimensions that must be contemplated in the promotion of peoples and individuals, and in the transformation of global reality for a just and equitable new world.

In his “Plan for Resurrection,” Pope Francis takes up the concept of the civilization of love:

The globalization of indifference will continue to threaten and tempt our journey…. May it find us with the necessary antibodies of justice, charity, and solidarity. Let us not fear to live the alternative of the civilization of love, which is a civilization of hope: against anguish and fear, sadness and discouragement, passivity and fatigue. The civilization of love is being built daily, without interruption. It involves the committed effort of everyone. Therefore, it involves a committed community of sisters and brothers.

Commitment of everyone and comprehensive attention to everyone guided the life of Saint Louise de Marillac.

In collaboration with Saint Vincent de Paul, she encouraged and accompanied various groups of people, especially women in rural and urban areas to involve themselves in the service of the poor. And both corporal and spiritual attention were present in all the works that she undertook and in her regulations for their operation.

3.4.- Collaboration with people, groups and institutions

Coping with the enormous consequences of the pandemic will be possible only through a collaboration of public and private institutions, various social groups and associations, and all people.

Today more than ever the collaboration of the groups within the Vincentian Family and the collaboration in the Church and as a Church with other groups and associations, and not the altruistic heroism of intrepid loners, will be able to make the signs of the Kingdom of God visible amid a world shaken by the pandemic.

The Vincentian tradition is full of good practices of collaboration at all levels. The Church invites us today to add our strengths and resources, each according to our possibilities. Saint Louise reminds the Sisters in Brienne: do your best to help them in some way, and remain in peace. And he asks Sister Barbara to seek help from other people, since work in service to the poor was beyond her strength.

3.5.- Hope is stronger than death

In his “Plan for Resurrection” Pope Francis addresses us on the crisis of hope that accompanies the crisis caused by the pandemic:

Like the first disciples who went to the tomb, we live surrounded by an atmosphere of pain and uncertainty that makes us wonder: “Who will remove the stone from the tomb for us?” (Mk 16, 3). How can we deal with this situation that is completely beyond us? The impact of everything that happens, the serious consequences that are already reported and glimpsed, and the pain and mourning for our loved ones disorient, distress, and paralyze us. It is the weight of the tombstone that imposes itself concerning the future and that in its realism threatens to bury all hope.

When Saint Louise de Marillac wrote to her Sisters, she gave them motives to overcome their weaknesses with the invitation to contemplate Jesus Christ, the Crucified Lord, who is also the Risen Lord, the Lord of Charity, who invites them to “learn from me” and also “come, blessed of my Father.”

Pope Francis adds:

“Whenever we participate in the Passion of the Lord, we accompany the passion of our brothers, even living our own passion. Our ears will hear the newness of the Resurrection: we are not alone, the Lord precedes us in our walk removing the paralyzing tombstones. This good news made those women retrace their steps to look for the apostles and the disciples who remained hidden to tell them: The life shredded, destroyed, and annihilated on the cross has awakened and thrives again. This is our hope, the one that cannot be stolen, silenced or contaminated.

As followers of Christ, the Risen Lord, we cannot resign ourselves to the situations of poverty or get used to them, much less justify them with fatalistic reflections (“there have always been poor people and always will be” … “the world is as it is” …). It behooves us to be instruments of hope: to promote life and the dignity of people, to provide reasons for overcoming, to open up paths for a new justice and fraternity.

As Pope Francis concludes:

“In this time of tribulation and mourning, it is my wish that, wherever you are, you can experience Jesus, who comes to meet you, greets you, and says: Rejoice. (Mt 28: 9) And may it be that greeting that mobilizes us to summon and amplify the good news of the Kingdom of God.”

Conclusion

In her letter to the Sisters in Brienne, Saint Louise reminds them that in the circumstances that they were living in with such much pain and suffering, the most important thing is to live your vocation authentically: “What God is currently asking of you, dear Sisters, is great union and mutual tolerance, and to labor together in the work of God, with great meekness and humility.”

As members of the Vincentian Family, each of us has embraced our own vocation in response to God’s call. Our vocation involves a way of life, with its own virtues and characteristics. We are aware of current situation of our mission in the service of the poor and the urgency of responding to those who suffer the effects of the pandemic. Let us live authentically what we are! Let us renew the radical character of our commitment to God in working with and for the poor, for those who today suffer the most!

“Louise de Marillac, committed woman, the transparency of God, very close to those who suffer: your traces still inspire us.”

(Hymn in her honor).

Corpus Juan Delgado, c.m.
Celebration of Saint Louise