by Richard McCullen CM

This is an excerpt from a talk given by Fr McCullen at Mill Hill on 11 October 2003

Following immediately on the closing of the Second Vatican Council on 8 December 1965, each Order, Congregation and Institute was invited to return to its sources of origin. We were invited and encouraged to study afresh the actions, writings, the vision, the charism of our Founders. We were invited to return to the sources and origins of our community.

It was an invitation by the Church to make a prolonged and prayerful pilgrimage to the sanctuaries of mind and heart and thought of our Founders who, when moved by the Holy Spirit, did a new thing in the Church.

After prayerful reflection on our sources and origins, we were challenged to formulate anew and with fidelity, in our Constitutions and Statutes, the vision of our Founders so that the people of today's world would experience something of the radiance, warmth and aura with which the Spirit of God had enfolded our Founders during their life-spans on earth.

So firstly, to our sources, and particularly the sources of our vows. Some great rivers of the world can be traced back to a point where one can see a definite trickle of water bubble over the ground and begin its long journey to the great ocean. Other rivers seem to find their source in an indeterminate sort of swamp extending over a larger area, so that it is difficult to put one's finger on a particular square foot of ground and say -this is the source. When our two communities set out to look to the sources of our vows, we found ourselves, with St. Vincent and St. Louise, in rather marshy ground.

St. Vincent had begun to reflect on the introduction of vows for his Congregation of Fathers before giving thought to making them also a defining feature of the Company of the Daughters of Charity. The Congregation of the Mission was not long in existence before its members were pronouncing vows - even before the Congregation was formally recognised. By contrast, the Company of the Daughters of Charity was some decades in existence before all the Sisters were pronouncing vows. Perhaps some trace of that evolution is to be found in the fact that even today a woman who is responding to a call from Christ, commits herself to serve him in the poor through the community, and is entitled from the day she is officially admitted into the Seminary, to be called a Daughter of Charity. Two months ago, in the Province of California, two young women were admitted to the Seminary during the celebration of the Eucharist. One of them, I was told afterwards, was ecstatic at the end of the Mass and confided to a Sister how she glowed at the thought of being able to say, 'Now I am a Daughter of Charity'.

Turning for a moment to the first group of six priests that St. Vincent had gathered around him, it is interesting to note that even in the very early years they seem to have agreed to take what St. Vincent called 'vows of devotion'. Furthermore, they seem to have adopted the practice of renewing them annually. Even when St. Vincent had, some years later, obtained local approval from the archbishop of Paris for his community, the vows of the Priests of the Mission would retain their character of 'devotion' and were renewed each year. What is rather interesting is that within a month of St. Vincent's obtaining approval of the Missionaries' vows from the archbishop of Paris, on 24th February 1642, St. Louise, along with four of her Sisters, pronounced vows on 25th March of that year.

Not all the Sisters, however, pronounced vows on that day. Only gradually did other Sisters follow their example and the Founders were not insistent on the taking of vows by all the Sisters. Vows were not obligatory. What the Founders were intent on was inculcating the spirit of Christ among the Sisters, and the qualities or virtues needed for their mission of serving Christ in the poor. Glance at the list of topics in the volume of conferences that were held by St. Vincent and St. Louise, and you will find that they concentrated on cultivating 'the spirit of the Company' and of the means to serve effectively and lovingly Christ in the Poor.

In those early years, a certain pluralism obtained in the Community on the matter of the vows. There are references in St. Louise's letters in which she asks St. Vincent's permission to renew her vows. Unlike the lengthy negotiation that St. Vincent had conducted with the Holy See for over a decade and a half to secure approbation for the vows of his community of Fathers and Brothers, he made no such approach to Rome for the Company of the Daughters of Charity. While he approved and encouraged individual Sisters to take vows, it would seem that the practice among those who did, was the adoption of vows that were annual and renewable. Furthermore, the Founders, particularly St. Louise, saw with increasing clarity that there was much spiritual advantage to be gained by the growing practice of taking such vows in the community.

Let me quote St. Louise in a letter to two Sisters who, in 1651, wished to make perpetual vows. She wrote: 'As for the desire you have expressed, I consider it praiseworthy. It is not enough to begin well, one must persevere as, I believe, you intend. Nevertheless, in such matters we must be submissive to the guidance of our Superiors who, for very important reasons, have determined that it is sufficient to make this offering for one year and to renew it annually. Do you not think, my dear Sisters, that it will be very pleasing to our Lord since, having your freedom again at the end of the year, you can sacrifice it to Him anew? That is why, my dear Sisters, I advise you, if you are still in these good dispositions, not to pin it off any longer so as not to lose any merit'.

The practice of making vows and renewing them annually was establishing itself increasingly in the Company but it was not universal in the Company before 1660. However, St. Vincent's first successor as Superior General, Monsieur Almeras, in one of his circular letters, encourages the practice and alludes to it being done on 25th March each year.

So what I have called the course of the river of the vows had, through the 370 years of the Company's existence, broadly found its bed within or shortly after the lifetime of the Founders, even if it would not be until June 1954 that your four vows acquired a strictly ecclesial character with the formal approbation given to them by the Congregation of Religious in that year. Until that time the vows had been regulated by legislation internal to the Company.