On May 1, 2025, Fr. Aidan Rooney, CM, Executive VP for Mission at St. John’s University provided a homily as the university in our Eastern Province celebrated the Vincentians’ 400th anniversary.
You can see all of the Vincentians’ celebrations here.
Here is a transcript:
In January this year, our beloved Pope Francis wrote to the Congregation of the Mission, “The beginnings of your Congregation are to be found in Saint Vincent de Paul’s profound personal experience of the “fire of love” that burned in the heart of the incarnate Son of God and led him to identify with the poor and the outcast.
Francis had learned that, in the year before Vincent’s death, the great saint had given a series on conferences on the Common Rules of the Congregation. In fact, our holy founder had arrived at Chapter 2, article 12 of those rules, and from his heart came a very striking conference on the nature and purposes of love delivered to the members of the Congregation of the Mission. Ultimately, it answers the question posed by today’s celebration:
Why the Congregation of the Mission?
Reflecting on the gospel Fr. Tri just proclaimed, Mark chapter 12, perhaps, or its descendants in the gospels of Luke and Matthew, Vincent declared, “Let us look at the Son of God. Only our Lord can be so taken by love for creatures so much as to leave His Father’s throne and take a body subject to infirmity. And why? In order to establish among us, with His word and example, the love of our neighbors. This is the love that led Him to the Cross and accomplished the wonderful work of our redemption. If we had a little of such love, would we stay here with folded arms? Oh! No, love cannot remain barren, it urges us to obtain salvation and relief for others.”
We are not only to love God, but also to make people love Him.
Vincent continued, “It is not enough to love God if my neighbor does not love Him. I must love my neighbor as the image of God and the object of His love, and do everything so that in their turn people love their Creator who knows and considers them as His sisters and brothers, whom He has saved; I must obtain that they love each other with mutual love, out of love for God who loved them to the point of abandoning to death His very Son.”
What an awesome task! He couldn’t possibly do it alone It needed structure, this new idea. God gave him the idea of a Congregation with a rule of life and service that would answer the questions he knew must be on the all-too-human minds of his now devoted confreres with their “folded arms” in front of him: Vincent fired a broadside that day: “How can we give love to others, if we do not have it among us? Let us look if it is so, not generally, but if each one has it within himself, in due amount; because if love is not on fire in us, if we do not love each other as Jesus Christ loved us and if we do not act as he did, how can we hope to spread such love throughout the world? You cannot give what you do not have.”
Yes! The first task of the Congregation was to live in mutual love and esteem.
Then, Vincent asked, “Do I really behave towards my neighbor as I wish he would towards me?”
Today, the Acts of the Apostles described the action of the early Christian community. “With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” Bearing witness! The second task of the Congregation.
Bearing witness became a style, a way, informing a love characterized by five virtues: simplicity, humility, gentleness, self-discipline, and zeal for the salvation of souls. It became ministries and good works. It became a rule. It became a structure: the Congregation of the Mission.
And so we assemble, on the edge of, if God desires, the next 400 years.
Now certainly, universities were not in St. Vincent’s mind, so why is there a St. John’s? It’s because you and I share a duty, revealed to us by the very young people God is sending to us.
In the letter from which I quoted earlier, Pope Francis concluded, “I am convinced that the example of Saint Vincent can especially inspire the young, who in their enthusiasm, generosity and concern for building a better world, are called to be bold and courageous witnesses of the Gospel among their contemporaries and wherever they find themselves.”
You and I hold this conviction. It’s as if St. Vincent was speaking to us! Bear witness and inspire that witness in others.
Vincent said, “Now, if it Is true that we are called to bear God’s love near and far, if we must set nations alight, if our vocation is to go and spread this divine fire in the whole world, if it is so, if it is really so, how must I myself burn of this divine fire!”
In response, we needed to create and sustain other structures, like St. John’s, to teach the way, to preserve the fire. To share the fire. We remembered these words of St. Vincent, as we do in April every year: “It is not enough to love God if my neighbor does not love Him. I must love my neighbor as the image of God and the object of His love, and do everything so that in their turn people love their Creator who knows and considers them as His sisters and brothers, whom He has saved; I must obtain that they love each other with mutual love, out of love for God who loved them to the point of abandoning to death His very Son.”
If you read the gospels, you can’t help but understand that the kind of worship that Jesus the Nazarene wanted wasn’t found in temples, or synagogues. His was the time for worship in Spirit and in truth. Love poured out from the Father in the Incarnation. Love poured out from Jesus’ wounded side. Love poured out in a life, a death, a resurrection. I suppose, in the end, this love for God and this love from God destined for each of us and for the whole world, is really one single act of true worship. God reaching to us in Jesus, and us, in Jesus reaching out for God. Yes. That’s it. This Congregation of the Mission, and this University are, at the heart, acts of worship. So, it is fitting that we celebrate at a Eucharist, in this blessed season of dying and rising, to remind us that true worship, this outlandish love, this “pazzo d’amore” that Father Shanley reminded us of in yesterday evening’s celebration with our Catholic Scholars, is the 400 year old – oh, why not some French for St. Vincent – the 400 year old raison d’etre of the Congregation and of our beloved University.
St. Vincent once prayed:
O Savior, who gave us the law to love our neighbor as ourselves, who practiced it in such perfect fashion towards every person, let you yourself be, O Lord, our eternal thanks. O Savior, how happy I am to be in the state of loving my neighbor! Grant me the grace to acknowledge my good fortune, to love this blessed state, and to ensure that this virtue may be revealed now, tomorrow and always. For the Congregation of the Mission, for St. John’s University, Let it be so. Asi sea. Amen.
Vincent’s words from “A Conference to the Priests of the Mission” by St Vincent de Paul (Conference 207, CCD XII, p. 23, 30 May, 1659).