Greetings:

As Fr Dehon celebrated his 56th birthday on March 14, 1899 and as the end of the 19th century approached, I am sure he mused on the great changes he had already witnessed. I'm equally sure he looked forward to what the 20th century would bring for the world, for the Church and for his beloved congregation. In only 21 years, his religious family had spread from northern France to other parts of Europe, to Latin America and to Africa. The congregations mission in the Congo, still in its infancy, had a promising future before it. Surely, Fr. Dehon approached the 20th century filled with hope in the future and the bright prospects for his world, his Church and his congregation.

What would Fr. Dehon think if he were alive today? How would he approach the 21st century and the new millennium? His beloved Church finds itself in unsure waters as it struggles to proclaim the Gospel to the post modern world. His beloved Congo - its people, the Church and his scjs - have suffered much, especially in the closing decades of our century. In some parts of the first world, his beloved congregation is slowly diminishing. How would he read the signs of our times at the beginning of our new millennium? Would he take a pessimistic or an optimistic view?

I believe he would take a realistic approach. Just as he encouraged his priests to "Get out of the sacristy and into the streets!" so he would advise us today to roll up our sleeves to tackle the challenges of the 21st century.

Please excuse me if I address most of these comments to my fellow scjs. Certainly by extension these can apply as well to our entire dehonian family, albeit it fellow religious, members of secular institutes or members of the laity.

One of the challenges of the 21st century will be the growth of our congregation and dehonian family. On this 14th of March, it is a theme well worth pondering. A proactive approach to vocation ministry is certainly an important element for our future. It is not an easy point to address when we find ourselves working in 36 countries and on five continents. Our world is extremely diverse. What may be true in some parts of our congregation, are not true in others. Having said that, I wish to offer for your prayerful consideration several elements that are crucial to promoting vocations in our congregation as we await the dawn of a new millennium.

The best way to attract others to join our life and ministry is both, by the example we give and by actively inviting others to join our religious family. A recent U.S. study indicated that many young men consider priesthood and religious life, but few feel encouraged by priests or religious to explore this choice. In another survey, only 33 percent of priests said they had actively encouraged boys to enter seminary. Do we actively invite the young and young adults to consider religious life, especially our scj life as priests or brothers? We need to encourage by word, by example and above all, by extending the same invitation we received from Jesus: "come follow me." Follow me in my life of poverty, follow me in my life of service, follow me in my life of prayer.

An Invitation to Gospel Poverty

"Jesus looked at him and loved him. 'One thing you lack.' he said, 'Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' "(Mk10:21).

Poverty is an essential element of our religious life. There is no way getting around the matter. As dehonians, we are called to live a life in which material goods should matter little. As dehonians, we are called to a life that rises above the din of the world of commerce, commercialism and consumerism. It is not easy to do, as we are all children of the world of mass media and global communications.

This theme is echoed in our own Rule of Life. Almost 14% of its text is devoted to poverty and its role in our lives. As dehonians, we should take time this March 14th to reflect on the section Called to profess the Beatitudes, especially number 44: "Christ made Himself poor to enrich us all out of His poverty..."

How well we live our vow of poverty will in some measure serve as a call and a challenge to others to do the same. It is a way for us by our personal example to continue the invitation of Jesus: "come follow me." Perhaps this is what Fr. Dehon had in mind when he wrote:

"If we wish to be true repairers, if we desire to console the Heart of Jesus and grow in love for Him, we must also love poverty. That is what led St. Francis of Assisi to such a high degree of love for our Lord. Let us observe all its precepts and ask our Lord for the grace to understand and experience its perfection. Let us at least be on our guard not to offend our Lord by some disordered attachment to material things or to their use. Let us do better still: let us always desire to practice the greatest poverty in order to grow in love for the Sacred Heart." (Circular Letter #2)

An Invitation to Gospel Service

Our call to live a life of poverty is not meant as the be all and end all. In fact it provides the framework by which we are called to a life of Gospel Service. For when Jesus issued the invitation to the rich young man to "come follow me" he was echoing an invitation he had already given to his apostles and disciples. To Peter and John he said: follow me and "you will become fishers of humanity."

Jesus was the perfect role model for this life of service from the beginning. At the start of his public ministry he put it within the context of Isaiah when at his own synagogue in Nazareth he said: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:18-19)

Two thousand years later the message is still the same. We are called to proclaim the GOOD NEWS! We do so by following in the footsteps of Jesus - using his words, his methods, and his example of service; i.e. a life of loving service. Fr. Dehon understood that well when he wrote:

"Do not lose sight of the models: Christ and his apostles. Christ reached out to people unceasingly and without respite. He selected some of them, he taught 12 apostles and the 72 disciples. They became his auxiliaries. He gave them a watchword: Go and teach.

They went and sought out listeners, in groups or as individuals. The word was their only weapon. They preached the doctrine and concerned themselves with works, with the needs of the people, and with social organization. St. Paul sought out, in all the wealthy cities of Greece, the resources needed by the Christian communities in Palestine.

Our mission is fully outlined for us by those models: to go to the people, especially to those who do not come to us, to talk to them, to gather them together and make use of that new form of the work, the newspaper, which St. Paul would not have failed to use, if it had been known in his time; and finally to concern ourselves with the economic and social interests of the people." (Methods of Social Work: Social Works, Vol. 1. p. 158)

Go to the People! Indeed that should be our hallmark. Go to the people, in the parishes in which we serve. Go to the people, in the hospitals, and prisons, and schools in which we work. Go to the people, as missionaries of the Gospel! Go to the people.

As scjs we know Fr. Dehon did not limit our work to one or two different types of apostolates, but rather framed it within the context of our scj spirituality. Ours is a Eucharistic centered spirituality that we often summarize in the slogan from Our Rule of Life: "We are called to be prophets of love and servants of reconciliation."

I firmly believe that if we consciously root our lifestyle, our prayer life and all our ministries within the framework of this spirituality, our way of life will be attractive to those who wish to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and the apostles. But, the example of our way of life will not be sufficient if we do not clearly extend the invitation to others to join in our life, in our prayer, in our service.

We need to promote our dehonian identity and way of life. When a visitor walks into one of our houses it should be abundantly clear this house is a dehonian house. Likewise when someone walks into a parish, school, social service office or other institution staffed by scjs it should be abundantly clear this is dehonian. On my travels throughout the congregation, I have been struck how some of our institutions clearly identify with our dehonian character not only in simple ways, such as with pictures, information on our community, etc., but by the very character and choices of program activity in which the life of that parish or institution is rooted.

If we pass on a sense of gospel service to children and young adults, we help to open up for them the possibility of a life of gospel service as a religious priest, brother or sister. I believe the call of Fr. Dehon to go to the people carries the same sense of excitement it carried a hundred years ago. I believe the call to go to the people will resonate with the youth of today no matter what their cultural, ethnic, or economic standing. I believe the call to go to the people is a modern day invitation to "come follow me!"

In talking to a group of men, Fr. Dehon described the priests of his day as being looked upon as funeral birds. Are we in danger of a similar epitaph as we end the 20th Century? His comments were made within the context of calling priests to get out of their sacristies and the laity to get out of the pew to carry the Christian message to the highways and byways of the world.

"Above all, whether priest [religious] or devout layman [laywomen], you must remind yourself that you were not made solely for the sacristy or the pew; that you are in your own right the salt of society and the light of social life...

Go to the living, go to the men [and women], go to the people and you will no longer be looked upon as the sad funeral bird. Our century thirsts for religious action. The acute malady of present-day society is the absence of religious life, and the absence of the priest." (Social Works Vol. I, pp. 157-158)

Fr. Dehon's exhortation is just as true today as when first spoken. Perhaps we still have not learned how to be salt of the earth, or how to be the light of the world. We often hide behind the walls of the church thinking our leaven is not strong enough to penetrate the dough of modern society. Our unwillingness to sprinkle that leaven will get us nowhere!

An Invitation to Gospel Prayer

At the heart of our lives as disciples of Jesus - indeed as prophets of love and servants of reconciliation - is a life of prayer. Just as Jesus models for us a gospel life of poverty and a gospel life of service so also he models for us a life of prayer. Fr. Dehon wrote in his Spiritual Directory:

"Our model in prayer is, first of all, Jesus - particularly in the Garden of Olives. He prays in solitude and recollection. He prays with reverence: Exauditus est pro sua reventia. He prays with ardor, with emotion, with tears: Pater me, non mea voluntas sed tua fiat. He prays with perseverance; He has recourse to pray three times in Gethsemane." (Spiritual Directory p. 133)

Without a doubt a true sense of prayer and life of prayer is at the core of our lives as scjs! When prayer weakens we weaken. When we stop praying we soon stop believing. Prayer is our life link to the Heart of Christ. We must never underestimate that, nor take it for granted. Our Rule of Life recognizes that when it states; "Without the spirit of prayer, personal prayer breaks downs; without community prayer, the community of faith weakens." (ORL # 79)

We are the Invitation

Just as Jesus invited the rich young man, his disciples and the apostles to come follow him in a life of gospel poverty, service and prayer so too that invitation continues to be made today. We stand in the footsteps of Jesus and his disciples offering the invitation to come follow me! We are the voice of Jesus today by the way we live out our individual Christian lives. A young convert to the Catholic faith put it this way:

"The first disciples teach us a great deal about what it means to be true Christians. To attract others to Jesus and to the kingdom of God, we ourselves must first have an authentic, personal relationship with the Lord. Only by being close to Jesus will we receive the grace to do all the things he calls us to do - things that fly in the face of our pride, our selfishness, and many other human weaknesses.

The reality is that we live in a world quick to discount the teachings of Jesus because of the testimony we his followers give by the way we conduct our lives. With the new millennium on the horizon, let us all strive in unity to become ever more faithful to our calling as Christians. And let us ask ourselves a little more often, What would Christ do in my place?" (Patricia Takeda in Living with Christ, January 1999, p. 111)

How true! We can send out thousands of posters and compose hundreds of eye catching books and leaflets, but if we do not personally invite others to Christ and to our life of service by our words and actions, then it's all in vain.

In Closing

I would be remiss if I failed to ask everyone to pray for this August's congregational vocation conference at Lavras, Brazil (August 1-20, 1999). I encourage every province, region and district to participate. The conference is being held as part of our strategy as spelled out in The Plan (#4 Vocations). I encourage you to review the various strategies we have set forth, as the Lavras conference for vocation personnel is but one.

I would like to conclude with an old Jewish fable which reminds us how limited our understanding of God's plan can be. A vocation is such a mystery, a mix of the divine and the human. We need both patience and faith for only then can we really begin to scratch the service at understanding the depth and mystery of God's Spirit hovering over our lives and over our world.

"Once there were two young brothers who had spent all their lives in the city, and had never even seen a field or pasture. So one day they decided to take a trip into the countryside. As they were walking along, they spied a farmer plowing, and were puzzled about what he was doing.

'What kind of behavior is this?' they asked themselves. 'This fellow marches back and forth all day, scarring the earth with long ditches. Why should anyone destroy such a pretty meadow like that?'

Later in the afternoon they passed the same place again, and this time they saw the farmer sowing grains of wheat in the furrows.

'Now what's he doing?' they asked themselves. 'He must be a madman. He's taking perfectly good wheat and tossing it into these ditches!'

'The country is no place for me,' said one of the brothers. 'The people here act as if they had no sense. I'm going home.' And he went back to the city.

But the second brother stayed in the country, and a few weeks later saw a wonderful change. Fresh green shoots began to cover the field with a lushness he had never imagined. He quickly wrote to his brother and told him to hurry back to see the miraculous growth.

So his brother returned from the city, and he too was amazed at the change. As the days passed they saw the green earth turn into a golden field of tall wheat. And now they understood the reason for the farmers work.

Then the wheat grew ripe, and the farmer came with his scythe and began to cut it down. The brother who had returned form the city couldn't believe it. 'What is this imbecile doing now?' he exclaimed. 'All summer long he worked so hard to grow this beautiful wheat, and now he's destroying it with his own hands! He is a madman after all! I've had enough. I'm going back to the city.'

But his brother had more patience. He stayed in the country and watched the farmer collect the wheat and take it to his granary. He saw how cleverly he separated the chaff, and how carefully he stored the rest. And he was filled with awe when he realized that by sowing a bag of seed, the farmer had harvested a whole field of grain. Only then did he truly understand that the farmer had a reason for everything he did.

'And this is how it is with God's works, too,' he said. 'We mortals see only the beginnings of His plan. We cannot understand the full purpose and end of His creation. We must have faith in His wisdom.'" (The Book of Virtue,"We Understand so Little,"p. 774-775)

We understand so little! We must have faith in God's wisdom. We must be patient, observant and in always in awe of His call: "come follow me."