Faithful Servant: Fr. Jean Marie Vincent
Fr. Donald Macdonald, SMM
Faithful Servant
T he Company of Mary was asked to pray particularly for their brothers and their people in Haiti.
Soon afterwards news came that one of their number, Father Mean-Marie Vincent, had been murdered. “He was hit with a burst of gunfire which immediately took his life. Again prayer was asked, “given the climate of fear and tension that will surround the funeral.”
One’s heart goes out to people who have gone through so much. They live in a country with no rule of law. This means that the poorest suffer most. A succession of regimes from Papa Doc Duvalier, whose climate of evil terror was captured by Graham Greene in The Comedians, to the latest military coup, must make it so difficult to preach resurrection to people whose life appears to be one long crucifixion. One feels so helpless. Does God care? Does anyone?
In the three days before Father Jean-Marie’s funeral, I was struck by the Pauline readings at each day’s Mass. They helped, as Scripture should, interpret what was happening in terms of faith. The readings were from I Corinthians 3:1-4:5. Perhaps they can offer some perspective.
DAY 1—1 CORINTHIANS 3:1-9
Given the parties, divisions and personality cults in the Corinthian Church, St. Paul felt he was speaking to ‘babes in Christ.’ One group favored Apollos, another Paul, a third Cephas . . .
This behavior was infantile since Apollos and himself are just “servants through whom you believed . . . I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth . . . For we are God’s fellow workers . . .”.
Consider Father Jean-Marie’s murder in that context, “It is a terrible blow for the Province. His brutal disappearance was an enormous loss for us. He was a man of great good humor, an optimist without equal. He always encouraged the young confreres to go forward, to take responsibility for what was happening in the Province of Haiti . . . His different assignments demonstrate so well his availability for the mission.
In the climate of fear and hopelessness such a man will be missed. Priests are not readily replaced today, especially men like that. Yet, who are Father Jean-Marie and his colleagues, but servants of God graced to encourage the faith among the Haitian people? They plant and water – in Father Jean-Marie’s case with his life – but it is the underlying presence of God who makes things grow. That presence is there still.
As ‘God’s fellow workers’ they are called to the intimacy of a joint enterprise, God is engaged with and in them, In that lies perspective and hope.
Fr. Jean-Marie Vincent, SMM
One’s heart goes out to people who have gone through so much. They live in a country with no rule of law. This means that the poorest suffer most. A succession of regimes . . . must make it so difficult to preach resurrection to people whose life appears to be one long crucifixion. One feels so helpless. Does God care? Does anyone?
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DAY 2-1 CORINTHIANS 3:18-23
Given the hurt of a brother’s murder in a society without a rule of law, is it not just pretense to believe that God in Christ is there? Are we not whistling in a cemetery pretending we are not afraid? “Continue to pray for us, because a climate of tension and fear reigns at the moment of funerals – more especially, presumably, when the governing regime has caused the death.
St. Paul’s reflection at mass on the second day before the funeral offers perspective. “Let no one deceive himself . . . For the wisdom of this world is folly with God”. Christian logic begins with the resurrection of Christ. Wherever the Christian is, the risen Lord is too.
Life on earth crucified Jesus literally while his mother watched, just as the Haitian community are crucified in the murder of Fr. Jean-Marie. His “death resembles that of so many outcasts, poor wretches, coldly and cowardly slaughtered every night in the poor neighborhoods.” The funeral itself seems to add more tears to those shed already. The chilling hopelessness of an endless cycle of misery and injustice never seems to change.
And how strange those circumstances were. “While other corpses remain abandoned , , , for many hours, the body of Jean-Marie was immediately taken up and transported ‘for an autopsy’ at the morgue of the General Hospital; despite the protests of members of the community. The vehicle that he was driving was also taken away.
Everything is in Christ in God
“It was staggering to see immediately displayed, on a Sunday, already quite late in the evening, without so much as a phone-call to alert anyone, the whole apparatus of the army, the judiciary, the justice of the peace, members of the anti-gang unit, the police and even ambulances.”
But Paul maintains that whatever the circumstances everything is in Christ in God. “For all things are yours whether Paul, Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”
That is superb. It is all-inclusive: It is to be assimilated not just explained. It can help interpret all that led to Father Jean-Marie’s funeral.
Father Jean-Marie, his colleagues, his heartbroken people; the world, life and death – all the news good and bad from wherever it comes with the immediacy of contemporary media; the present or the future – the present Haitian sorrow and fear of the future; whoever or whatever affects the Christian – ‘all are yours; and you are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.’
There is no verb used by Paul after ‘all are yours,’ but the present tense underlies all that follows. Christian reality is a present relationship with our risen Lord in God, which not even death can break.
Father Jean-Marie has gone leaving a sorrowing community, but all are in Christ in God. The last word has yet to be said. A lawless cabal has the power of life and death because they rule by gun and personal whim. But they have hurt people who belong to the risen Lord, who rose from a grave to be with them. This Lord knows. Let him hold them. It is a perspective from which to view the world and everyday experience.
DAY 3—1 CORINTHIANS 4:1-5
The Pauline reading on the third day before the funeral gave yet more insight. “This is how you should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God . . . it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.” This seems so true of Father Jean-Marie, serving his Haitian people at the cost of his life, in fidelity to God in Christ.
“His brutal death . . . completely identified with the crucified Christ and with the outcasts murdered every night in our slums . . . In our eyes, only our brother’s thirst for justice, his ardent service on behalf of the excluded and those cast aside, can explain his assassination.
“The enemies of change wanted to kill the dreams of the poor peasants of our country, for whom Jean-Marie was counsellor and animator, empowering them by his work for Caritas in Cap—Haitian.”
Faith Points to Hope and Resurrection
Such a community does not need a crucifix on a wall to remind them of what life can do to people in an unfair world. The fidelity of the faithful servant can crucify now as before when our Lord was on earth.
The faithfulness of Father Jean- Marie, as his Lord before him, can point to hope and resurrection in the present situation. ‘Heaven is full of souls who love me’ was not the least of St. Therese of Lisieux’s insights, when faced with a wall between herself and God. In Christ, Father Jean-Marie’s presence is present in that of his Lord, not simply a past inspiration.
“Our brother Jean-Marie was for us a great figure. Responding to the call of the Lord Jesus, he lived among us the radical demands of the Gospel, and we admire his tremendous thirst for justice, his unanswering commitment to the poor, the peasants, those humiliated. The spirituality of Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort profoundly illuminated his courageous and fertile life.”
FOOTNOTE
’Everything in quotation-marks is from a report sent from Haiti before the funeral on 2 September 1994.
