Spirituality

St. Vincent taught that we are called to submit entirely to God’s will; indeed, to make His will our own. Even when we seek to discern the best way to help each neighbor, we are called to fulfill God’s will – to make our feeble human judgment His instrument in that particular circumstance.

Sometimes it is easy to know His will, because He stated it explicitly: go and do likewise, I have given you a model to follow, serve the least of us, turn the other cheek, do unto others, etc. We can further learn God’s will by the example and words of our Vincentian Saints and Blesseds.

But ours is a “vocation for every part of our lives”. [Rule, Part I, 2.6] How can we know His will when it seems less obvious? Are we in the right place? Are we in the right jobs? As a young man, Blessed Frédéric asked himself such questions, wondering whether “exterior circumstances” might be a sign of God’s will that he should not ignore, for “a crowd of circumstances independent of my will assail me, pursue me, turn me aside from the path I have laid out for myself.” [Letter 67, to Falconnet, 1834]

There is a short answer, of course: prayer. In prayer we place our needs before God, we ask for Him to make His will known to us. Yet prayer itself requires first that we trust in Divine Providence, that we are willing to accept that “He knows what is good for us better than we do, what He sends us is best, even if it is disagreeable to nature and contrary to our wishes,” as St. Vincent once explained. [CCD VII:255]

St. Vincent taught that we should accept everything that happens in this world, good and bad, “because God wills it, since He sends it … peace of mind will be one of the many great benefits that will result from [this].” [CCD VI:493] Our doubts are removed, in other words, when we choose to remove them, to face life with what Vincent often called “holy indifference”, letting the day’s own troubles be enough.

It is easy to confuse seeking God’s will with seeing the future, rather than “go[ing] in simplicity where merciful Providence leads us, content to see the stone on which we should step without wanting to discover all at once and completely the windings of the road.” [Letter 136, to Lallier, 1836]

Our lives are often better understood in reverse, like the early chapters of a mystery novel whose clues we understand only when going back to re-read them after we begin to surmise the conclusion. Despite his youthful doubts, Frédéric would later write that he had become “more than ever convinced of my vocation, a conviction reinforced by all the events of recent years.” [A Heart with Much Love to Give, 144]

The certainty that we are where God wills us to be is perhaps less important than the comfort of knowing that it cannot be otherwise, which enables us to trust that “you are serving God very effectively where you are. If it does not seem so to you, all the better.” [CCD IV:364]

Contemplate

Am I uncertain of God’s will, or am I distracted by my own will?

Recommended Reading

Amélie Ozanam, A Heart with Much Love to Give

During its first two decades, within the short lifetime of Bl. Frédéric, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul expanded rapidly, with Conferences established across France, throughout Europe, and even around the globe in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Only four years after the founding, Frédéric remarked that “our little Society of St. Vincent de Paul has grown large enough to be considered a providential fact”. [Letter 160, to Lallier, 1837]

It would be a natural human instinct to take great pride in this growth, to shout out to the world about how great the Society had become! Frédéric instead advised that, rather than take pride in this, we should “seek to develop the spirit of humility. Grass grows rapidly, but it does not cease on that account to be insignificant; it does not say because it covers much ground, I am the oak.” [Baunard, 396]

In a similar way, we should avoid developing pride in the annual reports of our Conferences and Councils. We are of course required by tax laws and by basic accountability to our benefactors to offer such reports, and as the old Texas saying goes, “it ain’t bragging if you can do it.” This may be true for worldly accomplishments, but the virtue of humility reminds us “that we can achieve nothing of eternal value without His grace.” [Rule, Part I, 2.5.1]

We can no more take personal credit or pride from the numbers in our reports than a child can take pride in eating the meal his parents have provided. Humility calls us to accept our gifts with gratitude, with love, and with joy.

All our gifts, the ones we receive and the ones we give, are from God. Even the very founding, organization, and growth of the Society is from God alone. As St. Vincent explained to the Daughters of Charity in 1648, “‘There can be no doubt whatever that it was God who established you. It wasn’t [Louise]; she didn’t think of it. As for me, alas! it never occurred to me… it’s God himself who has brought you together in a very mysterious, excellent way…” [CCD IX:358]

As we assemble our reports and share them with our parishes and benefactors, we should always do so with “gratitude for having been chosen, frail and weak as we are, as instruments of so great an enterprise. It especially remains for us to render ourselves worthy.” [Letter 205, to Athaud, 1837]

After all, to say that the Society is “providential” is precisely to say that it is not our doing.

Contemplate

Do I know, deep in my heart, that all my works of charity are works of God alone?

Recommended Reading

Faces of Holiness

Vincentians “do not judge those they serve.” [Rule, Part I, 1.9] This simple admonition is readily accepted by members of the Society, given that all Christians are called to stop judging. But human nature being as it is, it can be difficult to practice non-judgmentalism when we find ourselves in a circumstance which seems to call for judgment.

“Everyone,” C.S. Lewis once said, “says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” [Mere Christianity] In a similar way, being non-judgmental sounds quite good in theory, but then we encounter the neighbor who has blown every penny of his tax refund on a vacation, and now needs help with rent; the neighbor who has bought food for his five dogs but needs our help to feed the kids; or the neighbor who paid the cable bill and now can’t pay for electricity.

“What were they thinking?” we ask ourselves, allowing ourselves in that moment to believe that we know best. More often than not, though, the measure by which we measure is merely ourselves, our own experiences and circumstances. It becomes easy to assign blame when we lose sight of the different experiences and circumstances that shape each of us, as if the person with one leg should be expected to keep pace with the sprinter, or the person with no hope to make plans for the future.

Our Manual explains that our “nonjudgmental attitude excludes assigning guilt or responsibility for a person’s needs or problems.” [Manual, 62] As Blessed Rosalie also taught, we must “love those who are poor, don’t blame them too much…It is with such words that we dispense ourselves from the very strict obligation of charity.” [Sullivan, 211]

The astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said that “If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” In this witty saying, he captures the similar truth that on one home visit (or many) we cannot fully know each neighbor’s “whole story.” We cannot know all of the obstacles they have faced, nor all the victories they have won.

On our home visits, we are called to judge the need, not the person, always with a view towards helping in the best way possible. The only way to do this is, as St. Vincent reminds us, is to “get in the habit of judging events and persons, always and in all circumstances, for the good. If an action has a hundred facets to it…always look at its best side… even though intelligence and human prudence tell us the contrary.” [CCD II:638]

Each of us is created in God’s image, unique and unrepeatable, formed throughout our lives by the people that surround us. May it be our love, not our judgment that helps form our neighbors – and ourselves.

Contemplate

Are there things that sometimes cause me to jump to a quick judgment of the neighbor?

Recommended Reading

A Heart on Fire: Apostolic Reflection with Rosalie Rendu

After a year of debate with the Saint-Simonians in the Conference of History, defending the Catholic faith, Frédéric Ozanam and his friends were confronted with this challenge: “Even you, who pride yourself on your Catholicity, what are you doing to show the vitality and efficacy, to prove the truth of your faith?” [Baunard, 64]

It was a challenge Frédéric took to heart; it affected him deeply. After all, he said to his friends, having spent an entire year in vigorous debate, proclaiming the truth, defending the church; for all the educated arguments, for all the passion, “have we made one single conquest for Jesus Christ?” [Ibid, 65]

The Society was not founded to answer a challenge to feed or clothe or go to the poor. That was the answer to the challenge. The challenge was to prove the truth of our faith. Ozanam, man of letters, academic, brilliant speaker and debater, realized that words alone were not enough to do this, that we must act.

Today, we continue the timeless tradition of the home visit, responding to calls for help from our neighbors in need. But is there even more we could do – not just to alleviate suffering, but to prove the truth of our faith?

In so many of our communities, we see the homeless – asleep on a bench, huddling in a doorway, zealously guarding their few possessions. Are they the ones, in need and forgotten, that our Rule directs us to “seek out and find”? [Rule, Part I, 1.5] Do we hold ourselves back at times because we fear our outreach will be unwelcome, since we know we cannot alleviate all of their needs?

We are created to live in community. The greatest need of all people is to be part of a community, and there is none greater than the community of Christian faith. Whatever material offering we may have for the homeless, there is nothing greater we can give than our hearts, our friendship, a simple smile, and a greeting. All people are buoyed by human connections, but especially those who are most often treated as invisible.

It is we who are first evangelized by our encounter with Christ in the person of the poor. And it is we who are challenged to imitate Christ in this encounter; to prove the truth of our faith, just as Frédéric and his friends were once challenged to do. It was not, and is not easy, but the best proof of our faith remains unchanged: “We must do what is most agreeable to God. Therefore, we must do what Our Lord Jesus Christ did when preaching the Gospel. Let us go to the poor.” [Baunard, 65]

Contemplate

Where can I go to “seek out and find” the poor??

Recommended Reading

Faces of Holiness

As a young man, Bl. Frédéric Ozanam considered himself, like his father, to be a monarchist, seeing government on earth as an expression of the divine principle of authority. He was inspired especially by the example of St. Louis, King of France, whose monarchy represented “the sacrifice of a single person for the good of all… which I revere with love.” [Letter 77, to Falconnet, 1834]

Following the restoration of the French monarchy in 1813, the Ozanam family returned to France from Italy, where Frédéric had been born. Yet the church, now restored to legality in France, had not fully regained the confidence and trust of the people. Indeed, as further revolutions continued to develop, social philosophies that rejected the church became more popular – not least the philosophy of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, whose “technocratic” vision relied on a belief not in spiritual power, but in industry and science.

It was a group of young Saint-Simonians who would challenge Frédéric and his Catholic friends to “show the good of the church” in 1833. In answer to the challenge, they would choose to serve the poor as Christ did – with love and friendship; “not only as an equal, but as a superior.” [O’Meara, 229]

This continuing work pointed Frédéric towards the best alternative to Saint-Simonianism and its more revolutionary successors. He saw how important it was “to make equality as operative as is possible among men; to make voluntary community replace imposition and brute force...” [Letter 136, to Lallier, 1836]

For Frédéric, liberty was much more than a political slogan, it was a gift from God. Indeed, as he wrote to a political ally who was an unbeliever, “I believe [our] cause to be more ancient and, therefore, more sacred” Liberty, equality, and fraternity, he explained, did not come from the revolution of 1789, but from Calvary. [Baunard, 301]

As our church teaches, “Man can turn to good only in freedom, which God has given to him as one of the highest signs of his image.” [CSDC, 135]

Because it was best able to preserve equality and liberty, Frédéric concluded that “democracy is the natural final stage of the development of political progress, and that God leads the world thither.” Therefore, he asked, “are not the men of the Church and the men of the people to be found side by side at the foot of the tree of liberty?” [Baunard, 281]

Liberty is both a gift from God, and a pathway to His truth, and so, as Frédéric said, “Christianity will be the soul of Liberty.” [Baunard, 290]

Contemplate

Do I celebrate liberty as a gift from God, for me and for all?

Recommended Reading

Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam