Spirituality

A Week in Prayers June 19 – June 23

A Week in Prayers June 19 – June 23 1080 1080 SVDP USA

Monday, June 19

Heavenly Father,
Author of life and source of all good,
You are my consolation and my hope.
You are the beginning and the end.
May I share Your love in every encounter,
Like a pebble dropped in a pond,
Whose waves grow and spread,
That remains in its depths when they calm.
Amen

Tuesday, June 20

Jesus, Lord and Savior,
Companion by my side,
Leader, servant, teacher,
Morning, noon, and night.
I wake with You,
I walk with You,
In You I have my life.
Amen.

Wednesday, June 21

Heavenly Father, let there be light
To warm and illumine the way.
Lead me to heaven, show me the path
Guide me from night into day.
Amen

Thursday, June 22

Hear my song, O Lord,
My song of praise and joy!
My heart, my mind, and my soul
Sing out to You in gratitude!
Help me, Lord, to share this joy
With every heart I encounter.
Help me to serve in hope.
Amen

Friday, June 23

Lord Jesus, I know You are with me
Even in my discouragement,
Even in my isolation.
Help me, Lord, to be Your light,
To share Your presence
With my neighbor;
Heart to heart, in Your name,
Knowing You are with us.
Amen

Daily Prayers are written by Tim Williams, National Vincentian Formation Director.

Contemplation — A Culture of Love

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In 2018, a set of seven “Cultural Beliefs” was incorporated as Statute 2 in Part III of our Rule. Because the Society has always been governed by both the Rule and tradition, the Cultural Beliefs were not really new, but by articulating and adopting them as part of our Rule, we solidified their place as a fundamental aspect of our practices.

We often hear phrases about cultures: a culture of success, a culture of poverty, a culture of life, and so on. What unites cultures is a shared set of beliefs, whether written or unwritten. In our work, we often encounter people in poverty, especially generational poverty, in which there is an underlying belief that this is simply the way things are. After a certain amount of time without having money for things, you begin to internalize the idea that maybe a nice home, a new car, a better job, or even a cup of coffee at Starbucks are not just expensive, but they are simply not for people like you.

When we hold beliefs closely, unconsciously, deep in our hearts, they affect the way that we behave. Part of the foundational culture in the United States has always been a hopeful boldness; the same belief that enabled our forebears to load up the covered wagon and set out to cross the great plains on foot also led our great explorers to climb into a rocket and hurtle through space to walk on the moon. It’s the epitome of a cultural belief: if we believe it, we can do it.

And so, in serving the neighbor, we bring with us our beliefs: belief in Jesus Christ, belief in His saving power, and belief in the full worth and dignity of every single human person. By serving in hope, we give permission to hope, sometimes to people who have fallen into despair. We believe in our neighbors.

Importantly, “hope” is not simply a trite, feel-good slogan, it is one of the three theological virtues, inseparable from the other two, just like our three Essential Elements, through which we live the Theological Virtues: we serve in hope, we pray in faith, and in friendship we love one another and the neighbor.

In remarks to the General Assembly in 1837, Bl. Frédéric expressed our Cultural Belief in One Society and at the same time explained how the Essential Elements unite us, saying “The distances that stand between the most loyal of friends do not separate the Christian spirits or wills that come together to love one another, to pray, and to act…”

A culture is built and fed by beliefs. We believe in one God, in one Society, and in building a civilization of love. May we build our civilization of love by welcoming all into our culture of love.

Contemplate

How can I better ensure that my actions always follow my beliefs?

Recommended Reading

Building a Civilization of Love in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

Seven Duties of a Council President

If you tried to register for the “Seven Duties of a Council President” webinar last week, you may have encountered a broken link in the e-Gazette. Please register here.

Contemplation — Dropping Pebbles

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“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” Christ said, “and to God the things that are God’s.” With these words, Jesus answered His doubters’ attempt to find contradiction in His teachings, but also gives us some wisdom to carry with us on our home visits. After all, the neighbor we serve is made in the image of God. What is it, then, that is the neighbor’s due? What belongs to him?

Naturally, we are called for assistance with material needs, and seeking to meet those needs is the most basic of our works. To pay the light bill, the water bill, the gas bill; to assist with car repairs or rent; to provide food; all these things and more we do gladly, and the reward of these works is immediate, both for the neighbor, whose urgent needs are met, and for us, who feel fulfilled by offering this service. Faith without works, as we know, is dead, and these are our works, performed for the love of God alone.

Yet at the same time, and much more importantly, we are called to bring God’s love to the neighbor. To reassure them, by our kindness, our presence, and our prayers, that they are not forgotten. We are called to help them find their own way to God, to seek “the full flourishing and eternal happiness of every person.” [Rule Part I, 2.5.1]

Each bill we pay is, in a sense, merely a Caesar that must be paid; a Caesar who will never really be satisfied. Payment provides temporary relief, but not “eternal happiness.” And it sometimes happens that the neighbors have material needs that are so overwhelming that there is no chance we can meet all of them, or they struggle with illnesses or addictions that are simply not within our power to heal.

What then?

Each measure of kindness that we pour out, each prayer we offer, each bit of ourselves that we bring along and leave behind on our visit is a sharing of God’s love. It may not give us the same sort of immediate satisfaction that a repaired car might give, and it hurts our hearts to know that neighbor may continue to suffer in ways we cannot help, but it is in our acts of love, our presence, our sitting, and our listening, that we give them what is truly theirs: their dignity, and their hope.

We may never know how far in the pond the ripples may spread and grow from the pebble of kindness that we drop, but it isn’t for us to know. It is for God to know. It is for us to let go of the pebbles, to “do all the good we can, and trust to God for the rest.” [Baunard, 81]

Contemplate

Do I sometimes seek to measure success only by the bills we pay?

Recommended Reading

Turn Everything to Love

A Week in Prayers June 12 – June 16

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Monday, June 12

Place Your hands upon me, Lord,
Heal me with Your touch,
Steady me when I falter,
Or my troubles are too much.

Give me strength to share, O Lord,
For all of life’s demands,
And for my friends and neighbors,
Lord, let me be Your hands.
Amen

Tuesday, June 13

I love You, Lord Jesus, believe me.
I give You my heart in full.
I give You this day,
And all that will I do,
Happily, joyfully, and willingly.
What else can I do?
Amen

Wednesday, June 14

Awake me from my slumber, Lord,
Clear my eyes of sleep.
Help me to see You clearly, Lord,
In the falling rain, in the rising sun,
In the rustling leaves and darting birds,
In the face of a passing stranger.
Help me to love You more, Lord,
And to love You at first sight.
Amen

Thursday, June 15

Jesus, Son of God,
Who humbled Yourself as man,
Help me to follow
The way that You showed:
To love as You loved,
To serve and not to be served,
To give my life for others,
One day at a time.
Amen

Friday, June 16

O my Jesus,
Who came not to be served,
Let me take up Your mantle
And serve.
O my Jesus,
Thine is the kingdom,
Let me help build Your kingdom
On earth.
Amen

Daily Prayers are written by Tim Williams, National Vincentian Formation Director.

Contemplation – Sacred Images

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In expanding upon the principle that “no work of charity is foreign to the Society,” the Rule goes on to say that these works include “any form of help that alleviates suffering or deprivation and promotes human dignity…” [Rule, Part I, 1.3] Human dignity is at the heart of what we do, as it should be. After all, the first of the four permanent principles of Catholic Social Doctrine is “the dignity of the human person.” [CSDC, 160]

What do we mean by dignity, though? What does dignity call us to do, exactly? In all of her writing, St. Louise used the word dignity most often in speaking of the Blessed Mother, whose “dignity … unites her to her Son.” [SWLM, 785] Yet she also speaks of the “dignity of suffering” [SWLM, 775] and the dignity of the Eucharist, which, she says, “should make us realize our powerlessness to prepare adequately to receive Him.” [SWLM, 822] In each case, dignity represents a worthiness, or a nobility.

How often are the poor expected to demonstrate their “worthiness?” How often are they called to shuffle into an assistance office, fill out a form, take a number, or many other indignities. As Vincentians, our respect for the dignity of all persons demands of us that we “never adopt the attitude that the money is [ours], or that the recipients have to prove that they deserve it.” [Manual, 23]

The greatest commandment reminds us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and not just the victim on the side of the road, not just the homeless, not just the single mother, not just the most sympathetic, but rather “everyone must consider his every neighbor without exception as another self… a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception and of actively helping him when he comes across our path.” [Gaudium et Spes, 27]

In an essay on Christian charity, Frédéric Ozanam compared the ancient paganism to Christianity. They had, he conceded, better understood how to enjoy themselves, and had constructed vast stadiums to do so. We, on the other hand, “understand what constitutes human dignity, what lasts as long as life endures.” [Baunard, 322]

Each person is created fully in God’s image, the imago Dei, unique and unrepeatable, the “sacred images of that God whom we do not see”.[Letter 137, to Janmot, 1837] They are already worthy, and already deserving. As with the Body of Christ, received in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, as Louise teaches, it is we who must prepare to receive them, to serve them, and to honor them.

Contemplate

Do I sometimes feel the neighbor must “prove himself” to me??

Recommended Reading

Faces of Holiness

Contemplation — A Seamless Garment

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In Blessed Rosalie’s time, every working-class family with three or more children was registered with the Bureau of Public Assistance; it was simply assumed that in the conditions of the times, they would not be able to support themselves. Work was often disrupted by revolutions which shut businesses down, or by epidemics that both shuttered businesses and ended lives. A man’s death could leave his widow and children in complete destitution.

In the midst of this, Rosalie and the Daughters of Charity worked both tirelessly and cheerfully to bring food, medical care, and more to the homes of the poor. Rosalie, it was said, would not leave those homes without having also helped with some housework.

Mentored in our earliest days by Rosalie and the Daughters, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul carries on this tradition, meeting and befriending our neighbors in their homes and seeking ways to provide for their needs. Also, like Rosalie, this can lead us beyond the Home Visit.

After all, if her husband had died, leaving her penniless, the widowed mother of Rosalie’s time would have to go outside the home and find work to support herself and her children, but then who would care for the children? The Daughters could have simply kept bringing more bread, but instead, Rosalie founded the Saint-Marcel Day Nursery to care for newborns while their mothers worked. She saw that this would do more than provide food, it would remove a barrier to their own self-sufficiency – a barrier over which the widows themselves had no control. The women even paid 15 of the 55 centimes that the childcare cost per day.

By respecting the dignity of the widows and the duty of people to work, and continuing to walk in friendship with the neighbor, Rosalie modeled for us both our Catholic Social Doctrine and our Vincentian vocation.

It is no wonder that the young men who founded the Society would follow this example, as well, creating an apprenticeship program for young men in Paris shortly after the very first Conference was founded. It was in the course of their Home Visits they saw a way to break the cycle of poverty among young men who had no fathers to guide them into a trade.

It turns out that “systemic change” is only a new phrase, not a new idea. After all, who would sew a new patch to an old cloak? All of our works grow naturally from the knowledge we gain by climbing the stairs to the poor man’s garret. Systemic change may be beyond, but it is inseparable from the Home Visit, part of a seamless garment, rooted deeply in both our tradition and our Home Visit.

Contemplate

What barriers can I help to remove from the neighbor’s path?

Recommended Reading

Seeds of Hope

Contemplation — Come, Holy Spirit

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Four hundred years ago, on the feast of Pentecost 1623, Louise de Marillac, known then as Mademoiselle LeGras, knelt in prayer at her parish church, Église Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs. Her husband was very ill, and unemployed. Her son was troubled. She blamed herself for these burdens, because she had never fulfilled her “first promise,” made when she was a teenager, to become a Capuchin nun. She felt all of her misfortunes traced back to this failure.

It didn’t matter that the decision not to become a nun had not been hers, but her spiritual director’s. Distraught, she was considering leaving her husband in order “to have greater liberty to serve God and my neighbor.” [SWLM, 1] She was wracked with doubts and uncertainty about her future, and even doubted the immortality of her soul. And so she knelt in prayer, alone with her thoughts, offering her cry of suffering to God.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, we are taught, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

It was at this lowest moment that she received what she called her lumière, her light, and her “mind was instantly freed of all doubt.” [Ibid] It was the light of the Holy Spirit that assured her that day, that eased the burdens weighing her down, that brought the hope and peace of God to her.

She would go on to care for her sick husband for two more years before being widowed. In the meantime, she would endure hardship and relative poverty. It would be ten years before, along with St. Vincent, she would found the Daughters of Charity, finally fulfilling that “first promise.”

But it wasn’t the founding, nor her many later works, in which she found her peace, it was in the hope and the light of the Holy Spirit, received in the depths of her sorrows.

Our neighbors cry out to us on days much like Louise’s. Like her, it is temporal crises that have often driven them to despair and left them in isolation and doubt about their futures.

Blessed are you who are now weeping.

In their dark night of the soul, God answers. He sends us to prove His love, and to bring His hope. At each Conference meeting we pray, “Come Holy Spirit, live within our lives.” Let us add, in our hearts, “Make me the bearer of Your light. Let me be, for the neighbor, their lumière, so they will know that whatever happens tomorrow or next week, You are with them, and so am I. Help me to bear the light of hope.”

Contemplate

Do I pray for the light of the Holy Spirit, for myself and for the neighbor?

Recommended Reading

Praying with Louise de Marillac

Contemplation — Our Sublime Vocation

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As members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, we are not simply “volunteers.” Rather, ours is a vocation. A vocation is more than a simple set of activities, or membership in a club. The word itself is from the Latin root vocāre, meaning to call. Our vocation is a call from God, a sacred invitation to follow a pathway towards the perfection that He wishes for us. It is subordinate to the vocation shared by all lay Catholics; the call to order all of our temporal affairs according to the plan of God. [Lumen Gentium, 31]

The Vincentian vocation, then, is more than the sum of the actions we take, but that we taken them for love alone. It is more than Conference meetings, and more than Home Visits. It is “a vocation for every moment of our lives.” [Rule, Part I, 2.6] It is the means by which we pursue the integration of life that Pope Saint John Paul II describes. [Christifidelis Laici, 59]

If you are a Vincentian, it is because God called you here. You may not have recognized His voice at the time; His words may have come to you from another Vincentian. But it was God who called you here, the same God who calls, again and again, asking for your help; asking for a rent payment, an electric bill, a listening ear, and an open heart. You may not recognize His voice every time, but when He calls you, you answer, and you in turn pass along His call to the neighbor by your wordless witness in living your faith, and loving the neighbor as yourself.

When the tasks seem daunting, we follow St. Vincent’s advice, remembering that in responding to our vocation, “our Lord will be [our] guidance and [our] guide and [we] can do all things with Him.” [CCD I:589]

This is, as Frédéric put it, “the sublime vocation God has given us.” [Letter 90, to Curnier, 1835] It is the vocation to which God has called us, the vocation in which we are blessed to encounter Him, the vocation that each and every one of us should be offering to “to all those who seek to live their faith loving and committing themselves to their neighbor in need.” [Rule, Part I, 3.1]

It is certainly true that all of our actions as Vincentians are voluntary, but volunteering is something one does; Vincentian is something we are by virtue of our sublime vocation.

Contemplate

When recruiting new members, do I focus only on the work, or consciously share God’s call?

Recommended Reading

Apostle in a Top Hat

A Week in Prayers May 15 – May 19

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Monday, May 15

Your blessings, Lord,
Are right before my eyes,
As if silhouetted
In golden rays on the horizon
In the sun’s setting or its rising.
Help me to see all your children
Whether hidden in shadows,
Or shabby clothes,
Or behind unwelcoming faces,
Throughout the busy day,
In that same brilliant light.
Amen

Tuesday, May 16

Lord help me fulfill Your plan.
Because there is hunger,
May I feed the hungry;
Because there is thirst,
Lead me to water;
Because there is suffering,
Teach me to comfort;
Because of Your justice,
Help me serve.
Amen

Wednesday, May 17

You carry me, Lord, on the pathway
When I am too tired to walk.
You hear me, O Lord, in my weakness,
When I am too weary to talk.
You lift me, O Lord, when I’ve fallen,
You heal me, Lord, with Your touch.
On this journey, O Lord, You are with me,
And my burdens are never too much.
Amen

Thursday, May 18

Help me to see Your face, O Lord,
So that I do not turn away,
Or presume to cast my judgment
Upon You.

Help me to see Your needs, O Lord,
So that I break out of my comfort
And shed my second coat
For You.
Amen

Friday, May 19

Lead me, O Lord, to charity,
So your love becomes all I desire
To share from a heart overflowing
Like the song of a heavenly choir.

Lord, play me the music of heaven
In the angels’ harmonious notes.
Lead me, O Lord, then to justice,
For I am the one with two coats.
Amen

Daily Prayers are written by Tim Williams, National Vincentian Formation Director.

Contemplation — The Grace of God

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“There but for the grace of God go I.” We tend to share this idiom most often when a peer, a friend, or a colleague suffers a misfortune – somebody whose shoes we imagine to be pretty close to our own size, familiar characters who have made the same mistakes we’ve made. Yet it captures both the empathy that is expected of Vincentian home visitors, and the unmerited nature of God’s grace.

Our Rule says that we refrain from judging the neighbor because we are always aware of our own weakness, and that we “seek to understand them as [we] would a brother or sister.” [Rule, Part I, 1.9] That isn’t always easy when the neighbor comes from a very different background than we do; when we don’t quite feel like we can relate; when their mistakes are different than ours.

It becomes easy, at times, to feel as if we truly know better because we haven’t allowed ourselves to make the mistakes we perceive in the neighbor’s story. We sometimes struggle to remind ourselves to, as Bl. Rosalie put it, “love those who are poor, don’t blame them too much. The world says, ‘It’s their fault… If we had suffered as they have… we would be far from their equal.” [Sullivan, 211]

The neighbors that call us often have no place else to turn for help; theirs are calls of desperation. Have they made unforced choices that led them to this? Oftentimes, yes. But just as paramedics don’t pause to figure out who caused the accident before working to treat the wounds, Vincentians don’t, as Bl. Frédéric once put it, “render the suffering classes responsible for their misery” nor ”fancy themselves exonerated from helping the poor man when they have proved his wrong-doing…” [O’Meara, 324]

“There but for the grace of God go I.”

God’s grace is “the free and undeserved help that God gives us.” [CCC, 1996] Undeserved. We, also, are undeserving, just like “The Undeserving Poor” in Bishop Untener’s essay. [SiH IV] Maybe this can help remind us that putting ourselves in the neighbor’s place means sharing their suffering, not imagining how we’d have made better choices.

Yet, it is also we who are called to be God’s hands, His eyes, His ears, and His loving heart; to love the neighbor as ourselves for the love of God; to serve for love alone. We go to the poor not to judge them but to serve them as the embodiment of Christ, exactly as he taught us. We go in simplicity, humility, gentleness, selflessness, and zeal in witness to our Vincentian charism.

And a charism, our church teaches us, is a very special grace from God. [CCC, 2003] So, while it may be the grace of God that saved us from the neighbors’ circumstances, it is at least equally the grace of God that sends us to sit with them, listen to them, pray with them, and love them – unconditionally.

Contemplate

Do I always put myself in the neighbor’s place first?

Recommended Reading

Serving in Hope, Module IV (especially “The Undeserving Poor”)

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