Letter to a collaborator, written from Paris, December 9, 1957

With all sincerity and humility you can say, thanks be to God for another fine, dedicated year of life. It is a divine grace to have been called to His service as He once called you to life. But it would not be sincere to fail to recognize this grace. Looking back over the path already traveled, I not only insist in the weaknesses and imperfections but also in what He has permitted you to accomplish and in the purpose to which you have consecrated your life: to search for Him in His brothers, to serve and love Him in the rest, beginning with your little daughter, the remembrance of your beloved husband, your family and then the poor, those in whom our faith shows Him always present.

The more I think about poor, post war Europe, embittered, poverty stricken, dispirited in the face of work, at least in some countries, the more clearly I see our mission as Catholics: to give testimony to Christ in this sad world, the testimony of our joy based on our faith in him in the goodness of our Father in heaven; the testimony of an unbreakable confidence and a deep charity. This and nothing more: but it is sufficient to save the world. I am reading a beautiful pastoral letter from the Cardinal of Paris entitled: The apogee or the downfall of the Church, and its lesson, repeated again and again, is that today’s Catholic has the mission of “incarnating himself, committing himself in the temporal dimension to give testimony to Christ.” One hears these words repeated countless times: they define the program for our times.

Happily, the work to which you are pledged and which responds so well to what the world needs, is dedicated to the same mission. I say this to you to invite you to look upon it not only from a humanitarian point of view, but also from the point of view of the most intimate judgment and feeling of the Church. For this reason, despite difficulties, weariness, repugnance, personal pettiness, let us move forward with the grace of God!

What you are doing to make the Hogar more pleasant is very good: the more attractive the better. Hopefully, all this effort will help the laborers to see the respect with which they are treated, and as a result, bring them to a deeper respect for themselves.

Greetings to your family.

Alberto Hurtado C S.J.