Spirituality

Studying the words of our Vincentian predecessors helps to remind us of the challenges we share, and the spirituality, traditions, and friendship that bind us to them and to the poor. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some members of the Society in the United States began to adopt a term for home visitors: the friendly visitor, a term that captures what our Rule now calls establishing “relationships based on trust and friendship” with the neighbor. [Rule, Part I, 1.9]

The Proceedings of the National Conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, held in Boston in June of 1911, contains numerous accounts of the importance of this personal and spiritual connection which remains at the heart of our Vincentian vocation.

In a talk about our works of love, Fr. Hugh Monaghan of Baltimore explained the importance of each member committing at least an hour a week to the work of visiting families, bringing gentleness, patience, and perseverance to those visits, so that the family may “realize that there is someone interested in them, someone who does care when things go wrong, someone who makes their joys and sorrows his own.” [Proceedings, p.77]

What greater gift could we bring than to reassure our neighbor not only that while we are there, they are the most important people in the world to us, but that when we leave, their troubles are also our own? If it takes one month, or six, or even ten years to make a difference in a neighbor’s life through our friendship, Fr. Hugh said, we will have “accomplished a work of charity greater, by far, than could be represented by any amount of money.” [Ibid, p.77]

It was in this spirit of friendship and mercy, also, that James Dougherty of New York explained our obligation to get to know the neighbor ourselves, not to rely upon, or contribute to shared databases (“card catalogs”) to determine a neighbor’s worthiness for assistance. Pointing out that our mandate to perform works of corporal mercy does not include any “conditions as to the character of the needy,” Daugherty went on to explain that many in need would “rather die than expose their condition,” which obliges us, in respect of their dignity, not to share their names and stories. [Ibid, p.119]

We cannot understand Christ’s reminder that the poor always will be with us apart from his admonition that our treatment of the poor will be judged as if done to Christ Himself. How we serve the poor is not a measure of our efficiency, but a measure of our love and of our faith.

Today, as in 1911, “we are apt to allow ourselves to get into a rut and forget the spiritual side of the work,” but to be friendly visitors is to “bear the fact constantly in mind that we are working for God’s sake. Do this and note the effects in our work among the poor.” [Proceedings, P. 118]

Contemplate

Do I always seek to make the neighbor’s joys and sorrows my own?

Recommended Reading

Turn Everything to Love

When we think back to the times in our lives when we have needed some help, or advice, or a shoulder to cry on, those are the times we learned who our true friends were. If we were blessed already to know who our true friends were, those are the ones we called to help, to advise, or to offer their shoulder.

Of course, we know there are certain things you can ask only of a friend – when you are in an embarrassing predicament, your true friend is the one who will not only help, but will do so without laughing (at least not until you can both laugh about it later).

Blessed Rosalie once wrote back to a friend who had asked her for a favor so she could thank him for the request, saying: “I cannot tell you how you please me in giving me the opportunity to do something for your interests. Always act this way with me, without any hesitation. It is the proof of friendship that I hope for.” [Sullivan, 237]

And isn’t this how we react to requests from our friends, too? We might not say the words, but inside we are proud and grateful to be the ones who are trusted to help, and to share the burden. We also share our friends’ secrets; the troubles they will only confide in their closest friends. Bl. Frédéric wrote about home visits, explaining that when we visit the neighbor, “we share the lonely secret of his lonely heart and troubled mind”. Just like any good friend, we listen and we keep those secrets, without being asked.

Our Rule calls us to “form relationships based on trust and friendship” with the neighbors we serve. [Rule, Part I, 1.9] The neighbors who have called us, who have asked us for help, even though it may have been embarrassing for them to do so, have taken the first step of friendship. By confiding in us their stories, their secrets, and their struggles, they have treated us not only as friends, but as true friends; the closest of friends.

There are times when our Conferences may be short on money and may not be able to offer the material help that the neighbor needs, but that is never a reason not to visit. If we truly believe that “giving love, talents and time is more important than giving money” [Rule, Part I, 3.14] then our treasuries are always full!

The friendship we share with each other, we are bound to share also with the neighbor, welcoming them into our community of faith. After all, our true friends are the ones who ask for help.

Contemplate

Have I inadvertently withheld my friendship from a neighbor, focusing too much on the “transaction?”

Recommended Reading

Mystic Of Charity

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