CLAUDE-FRANCOIS POULLART DES PLACES MESSAGE
- He heard the calling of the poor; to obey it, he gave up his privileged social condition and brilliant career which he had already in/at hand.
- He let the Holy Spirit guiding him to carry out this calling: his retreats of 1701, 1702, 1704 are always followed by new steps in serving the poor.
- He is the witness of the merciful love of God in their midst:
* living among them “as one who serves” (Lc 22:27): this is the main souvenir (reminding) Fr. Lib. got of him: « The venerable founder himself went asking for such alms; he waited on the students at table, and did all kinds of services even the most menial for them. »; there wasn’t any privilege in the communty for the formators.
* sharing their abandonment and insecurity: he leaves Louis-Le Grand college to share in their precarious daily life; he receives more and more poor students, out of his financial resources...
* leaving them challenging him and his purposes, as it’s clear about his great distress after some months of living together: hence a new community of formators;
* bringing them a human and spiritual liberation, as he looks carefully over their education and their right intellectual and spiritual formation;
* helping them to be good servants of poor people, because he never let them forgetting that it was them they had to serve: hence their sober way of life; he had a strong ambition for them to serve the poor in the best way.
* having such a respect for them as to be demanding with formation: they got the same formation as Jesuit students, in lasting and level of studies.
* giving his health and life for their own sake, as he was totally committed for them, until harsh mortification and deprivations which hastened his death
* finding in their midst his achievement, as the authentic holiness means being devoted to the good of our neighbour as did Jesus himself.
“No one can have greater love that to lay down his life for his friends”
(Jn
15:13)