Thoughts on the Pilgrimage to Berceau

October 9-14, 2011

The high point, or better, the hinge event of most programs at CIF (our Paris-based “Center of International Formation”) is the week-long trip to Vincent de Paul’s starting point.  Berceau (meaning “cradle”) is the name now given to where Vincent was born to a simple, Gascon Catholic family far, far away from the action of Paris – or from anywhere of significance in those days.    

The trip itself is worth the effort.  This is beautiful land, France’s countryside.  Rolling, green and fertile hills naturally irrigated by rivers and predictable rainfall, trees and hedges dividing one large farm from another.  These are spectacular places to drive through and probably to live in, now that they are connected with the wider world through telephone, electric lines, fine asphalted roads…  I’ve never seen anything like it. 

Still, I find myself marveling how even today it’s a long way from Paris to rural, southwest France (Gascony).  Certainly the City of Lights would have seemed inaccessible to most Gascon country folks back at the turn of the 17^th century.  Vincent, the third child in a large family, early on showed promise, remarkable ambition and drive.  No doubt his dream for a good life for himself was inseparable from what he could eventually do for his family, who clearly encouraged him to move out so as to move up. 

A stay at Berceau would be a rewarding experience for any member of the wide Vincentian Family; the center has been for centuries a popular site for pilgrimage, retreats, study, and rest.  What one sees there is a modest (rebuilt) country house (the inside of which is shown in the photo above) and a multi-centuries old tree -- a kind of living memorial to those years and a tribute to this one young resident.  These are only the beginning, however, of a wider assortment of plaques, stained-glass windows, and other touchstones one can discover in many villages in the area.  Clearly, Gascony has always been proud of as well as inspired by this native son.


But our purpose was to walk where Vincent walked, to get a better sense of those early years.  So we went and looked at places where Vincent studied (Dax, Toulouse…), to the fortress-town where he set his own part-time school (Buzet sur Tarn) earning needed income for his student expenses.  The man certainly got around!  It is over 30 kilometres from his quarters in Toulouse to Buzet, a commute that eventually forced him to move his little school and students to Toulouse.  We celebrated mass where he was ordained subdeacon, deacon, then where he was ordained a priest (Chateau L’Eveque), and finally where he celebrated his first mass (Notre Dame de Grace).

One gets a good sense of the young Vincent dePaul – energetic, tireless, focused, this teenager knows what he wants and gets it.  Ordained a subdeacon at 17, a priest at 19 (likely bending some post-Trent Council reforms…) he had already developed one career as a sought-after tutor and teacher long before he had received his first parish, which certainly meant also his first benefice, his first steady income.

All due admiration aside, Vincent's early trajectory alone would have produced little more than one more successful, hard-driving churchman-businessman.  Much was to happen to Vincent after these early years.  His openness to recognizing God acting within those events and his subsequent choices would transform him to the extraordinary leader, organizational genius, and saint we celebrate today.  Certainly to me, his story has now become as wonderfully fascinating as it is believable. 


Dan Paul Borlik, CM
Paris, France

Let go of the old; let in the new…

For many of my generation (at least) June, July and August equal “summer schedule.”  Things should slow up, lighten up.  Relaxing under some backyard tree with iced tea (or something more interesting) in hand, pondering existence.  That's how I've always imagined summertime.

Not so this past summer!  Ninety days marked by some real hard work, surprises...and changed plans…those months may not have been very relaxing but they have left me breathless!

Instead of mountain hiking in Colorado and a month studying Italian in Florence I found myself giving an enthusiastic yes to Fr. Perry Henry's request that I work in Kenya for two months.  I'd never before been in Africa, much less in Nairobi where American Vincentians had labored in our own seminary for over a decade.  These two months were a marvelous opportunity to see a new world and what we CMs were doing there.  So, really, it was an easy “yes” for me.  I felt as if it was “trading up” for something new, probably very challenging.  Indeed, this has been a summer memorable for new experiences and new friends, and in a word, delightful!  It was refreshing to be among young men preparing for priesthood in a part of the world bursting with new life (along with plenty of old problems!), to be made to feel welcome in unfamiliar surroundings and to be really needed for formation work.  It all worked wonders for my flagging self-esteem, having been without a job for over a year now.... 

Still, during this time I was also startled by Fr. Greg Gay’s request to accept a new assignment to join our International Formation Center (CIF) in Paris.  That conversation has since left me with mixed feelings.  Of course it is exciting to be sent to reside in France, to learn first hand of our Vincentian history, to live at the historic heart of our Congregation, all yes.  To be able to feel free enough to agree to a five-year sojourn in France, well, this too is satisfying.  This will be an adventure!

But demanding too.  That new “yes” implies a series of “no’s” and “good-bye’s” as I leave behind my country, my culture, my comfort zone.  


Packing up 35 years of stuff in two suitcases is excruciating! 


I’m uncomfortably aware now that my life has gotten heavy with all sorts of baggage.  Put in another way, to be truly open to this life and work (truly new to me), I have had to put aside many things: giving away some of them,  discarding a few, letting go of the lot.  


Finally, I find myself mourning what now feels lost or gone:

a promising ministry position I had developed in Santa Barbara, recently renewed family ties and friendships on the West Coast, boxes of books, memorabilia, clothes, ideas, and countless other State-side relationships, routines, expectations and comfortable habits.  Attachments can be felt quite deeply, I'm finding out!





Perhaps it is true that to receive anything really new in our lives each of has to do some letting go -- even some mourning -- of that which can be no longer part of us.  How else could we welcome and hold the new?

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by things you didn't do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910