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Back to Ratio IndexLetter of the
Superior General
Rome, May 1, 2002
To the members
of the Congregation of the Mission
My very dear Confreres,
May the grace
of Our Lord be always with you!
A few years
before his death, St. Vincent said to those gathered at St. Lazare:
Are we prepared
to go to Poland, to Barbary, to the Indies, to sacrifice our lives
and our satisfactions to him? If
that it so, let us praise God ... Let us give ourselves to God to
go throughout the whole world to spread his holy gospel and, wherever
he may lead us, let us stay at our post, faithful to our commitment
until we are recalled at his good pleasure. May
difficulties not deter us ... It
matters not if we die in the fight. But
let us die with our weapons in our hands, and happy too, for by our
death the Company will not be the poorer, because åthe blood of martyrs
is the seed of Christians.¼ For
every missionary who gives his life out of charity, God will raise
up others who will do the work he left behind (Abelly, Book II,
Chapter I, 194-195).
As I introduce
this Ratio Missionum, I thank God for the countless generous missionaries
whom he has formed within the Congregation. Many have lived and died in the service
of the poor in foreign lands. As
I visit the provinces, I am struck again and again by the fidelity
and creativity of our missionaries in preaching the gospel „by word
and work.¾
The General
Assembly of 1998, seeing a strong and renewed missionary drive among
the members of the Congregation, asked the Superior General to name
a special commission to write a Ratio Missionum. Soon afterwards, with the consent of the members of the General
Council, I asked Frs. Antonius Sad Budianto (Indonesia), Dominique
Iyolo Iyombe (Congo), ¡ngel SantamarÌa (Madagascar), Homero ElÌas (El
Alto, Bolivia), Hugh O'Donnell (China), and Victor Bieler (General
Curia) to serve as its members. The
Commission met three times between January 1999 and the fall of 2000. After its first meeting, it consulted all the members of the
Congregation of the Mission about the contents of a Ratio. Before drawing up its final draft, it
further consulted all of the Visitors of the Congregation. It also met with the General Council
on two occasions and asked our input at every step. When the Commission finished its work and placed it in my
hands, I then asked Fr. John Prager, who works in Panama, to serve
as a final editor and unify the style of the document, the chapters
of which had been written in various languages. When
Fr. Prager completed the editing task, I reviewed the document once
again with the members of the General Council, making a few final changes. We then unanimously approved it.
Today, with
great gratitude to all of those who worked so hard in preparing this Ratio
Missionum, I present it to you for your study. I encourage all the members of the Congregation to read this
document, to meditate on it, and to search for ways in which it can
shape the life and ministry of each of us. I
ask too that it be studied carefully in all of our houses of formation. It should be one of the fundamental documents
for those preparing for full membership in the Congregation of the
Mission, since it responds to some basic questions concerning our ministry:
What should a Vincentian foreign mission be like? What are its characteristics? What are the criteria for accepting and evaluating missions? How
should candidates be prepared for them?
In presenting
this Ratio today, I also ask the Visitors to organize study sessions
or retreats in which the confreres and our candidates reflect on and
digest the contents of this document. It
will be helpful to all of us, whether we are younger or older, whether
we are engaged directly in foreign missions or in other works.
As we begin
to use this document in the Congregation, I think of our missionaries
throughout the world. With
you and for them, I join in a prayer that St. Vincent wrote spontaneously
on September 27, 1647, at the end of a letter to Štienne Blatiron,
who was the first of our missionaries to go to Genoa:
O God my Lord,
please be the bond of their hearts; bring to flower the effects of
so many holy affections you cause them to form, and give growth to
the fruits of their labors for the salvation of souls. Water
with your eternal blessings this establishment, like a new tree planted
by your hand. Strengthen
these poor missionaries in their fatigue. Lastly,
my God, be yourself their reward, and through their prayers spread
over me your immense mercy (SV III, 239). Your brother in St.
Vincent,
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