Father Joseph’s address to the volunteers from the hospital Foch (Paris) on the 8th of February 1988 the day before his surgical operation
My Friends:
On the evening before my operation, even if I go there with confidence, I cannot help thinking. Right now, I am in the hands of doctors and nurses, and I realize once again what the poor have to undergo in their daily lives. They are at the mercy of other people’s opinions, or rather, they are forced to take into account the judgments and of other people about things that concern their own lives. When you have to depend on everybody and anybody, you stay in your own little corner and try to go unnoticed. This is my first thought.
The second thing I would like to say to you, the volunteers, is that we have to remain very, very close to the families. Above all we have to remain faithful to our combat for their family life, not as a matter of principle, but because the family is our support. The family will help us achieve the kind of society we want - a society based on human rights.
Our vocation is to stay very, very close to the most disadvantaged among the families. I must remind you of this, because we will always be tempted to lean on the most dynamic, courageous and intelligent families. Of course, we have to lean on them, but we cannot let ourselves be monopolized and hemmed in by them. We cannot allow them to come between us and the poorest families. We have to see that, in turn, they become agents for justice among their own people—their brothers and sisters. If we are not to be scattered in all directions and into all kinds of unrelated projects, we have to keep asking ourselves, "Do our projects help the most disadvantaged families get out of their situation and become agents for human rights?"
We should not be afraid to be daring, even if we think (with good reason) that the poor cannot immediately take on board what we present to them. It means that we have to act one step at a time. We have to clearly know our goal and what means we will use to attain that goal. If we are to be truly free people, free in our society and agents of liberty for others, then we have to share the culture in which we function. We have to convey everything we have learned. We must share our knowledge, and therefore invent the means for the families to assume this knowledge. We are not only people who come with ideas or a certain way of speaking. We must come with the elements people need to be full human beings, to be in harmony with themselves and others. Therefore, we are people who bring art, poetry, not only techniques.
To do this, we have to be filled with the best of what human beings have achieved, in Music, in art... We also have to put people in the midst of nature, help them love it and see the marvelous harmony of the earth and the skies. If we have a religious faith, we must lead people to the world of the invisible, of the infinite, so that they are not only members of a community, or a neighborhood, but people who belong to the universe and are actors of liberty.
This implies that we are really integrated in the world, that we love the world. We cannot introduce the families either into today’s or tomorrow’s world, if we are not ourselves part of it. I am not saying that we should be blind and not see human failures. But we must constantly remind ourselves and each other that every human being deserves to be trusted, as long as we do not have proof to the contrary. We have to love people who defend what they believe in. We have to share in the hopes of all those who fight for a cause. But we cannot let ourselves be sidetracked by them; we have to keep reminding them that the poorest have a part in their struggles and reflection.
This requires an enormous effort on our part - an effort to know the poor, their history and their environment, to personally know poor families, their past and present history, and the reality of their daily lives. We have to want to share in depth what the families carry within their hearts. We have to use the instruments that are available: psychology, sociology, economics. No one is born knowing everything. But in order to be free, people have to master the instruments that have been used throughout time to create a more just and equitable world - a world where peace would not only be an ideal but also a reality to be experienced every day, because everyone can live a constantly renewed and re-evaluated experience of love between all.
To understand the families, we have to hear, listen and write. Although we are not people who only read, write, and speak, we have to write what we learn from the families. We have to be able to speak in order to involve others in our struggle for justice for the poorest - a struggle so that justice will be re-established in the midst of extreme poverty. We have to read extensively and constantly learn all we can.
Our time belongs to the poorest families. But all workers take vacations and it is normal that we do likewise. We cannot feel guilty about taking advantage of what others consider necessary. Our time, like that of lovers, is not our own. If we take time for ourselves, the benefit to ourselves will benefit the poor.
Make the poorest known, constantly learn, give our time, and, for those who pray, give our prayer. It is important that we live in a climate of spirituality. When I speak of spirituality, I am not referring to being part of any specific religion, although it is important to have a belief, if not in a God, then, at least, in humanity. Yet, we are committed to create a spiritual climate because we are imbued with a common spirit.
The spirit is an awareness of the other person - an empathy with others, such that, the weaker and smaller they are, the greater and more important they become for us. When we speak of spirituality, it also leads us to religions and the relationship with God. We can call this the pinnacle of spirituality. In any case, we have to live a spirituality between people. This means a certain way of seeing people and of being with them. It is a process similar to our contemplation of God and prayer, trying to be silent, to come as close as possible, to become one with God — someone once said, "I keep Him informed, He keeps me informed" — we have to have the spirituality of our brothers and sisters. That is to say, we go toward a certain way of living with others, that they count for us, that we identify with them, because, like us, they lead the same struggle, encounter the same difficulties, doubts, sorrows, the same hopes and joys. This is the spirituality I am speaking about. We live this spirituality if we can purify our spirit, if we are able to let go of what is secondary, and hold on to what is essential in ourselves, in others, to what is essential in our struggle. Spirituality also means to have confidence, to trust that fraternity is the basis of all successes in a struggle. Only if the poor see that we are really one, that we love one another, will they follow us.
The poorest have brought us together. For those who believe, it is Christ who comes closer to us when we become closer to the poor. It is Christ who speaks with us when we speak with the poor. He who feels what we feel. He who bears with the poor the burden of suffering and misery. For those who have religious faith, this is what I mean by spirituality.
I think that we can all say that the poor bring us together—the poorest, the one who suffer the most, who is the most left out, rejected and abandoned. When we say that we are volunteers, we not only speak of a way of being that we have accepted or chosen - a way of being at the mercy of the poorest in order to learn from them, often with much bewilderment. There is no question that we have left behind a personal advancement and success. Being a volunteer means much more. It means that we make the poor our brothers and sisters. Their children are our children. We share deeply with them. They are present and in our thoughts. We recognize them; we contemplate them, we consider them to be our teachers. They are our constant preoccupation, pain and anguish. We are haunted by their liberation. This is our spirituality: to be in spirit with the poorest families, to taken by them, so that everything we do, everything we say is a chance for them.
I am confident
Pere Joseph
