Contemplation

“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”)

“The needs were overwhelming,” the Home Visit team recalled, “And they were beyond what we could provide. So we just prayed.” Have you heard an account like this before? The emotions were high, the needs were great, there was nothing we could do, so…we just prayed.

It’s easy to feel as though we’ve let down the neighbor sometimes. We are the ones who return their calls. We are the ones who listen and understand. And we are the ones who, more often than not, are able to help with that overdue bill, or groceries, or rent, so when we can’t, or when the problem isn’t really a matter of material assistance, it can seem as if we’ve fallen short. Instead of offering our alms, we share in their suffering.

And we just pray.

Yet no matter the need, no matter the outcome of our Home Visit, we always pray. It isn’t an afterthought, or a rote exercise, or something we fall back on only when things seem hopeless! Our prayers are the most important thing we have to offer.

After all, why do we offer them for each other, or for our friends and family? Vincentians are people of “prayer and action.” [Rule, Part I, 3.3] Bl. Frédéric calls us to “do all the good we can and trust to God for the rest.” [Baunard, 81] However great or little our efforts or our material offerings, our work is never complete without prayer.

We always pray; we never just pray. The final balance between our action and our prayer is up to God alone. As St. Vincent reminds us, “God does not consider the outcome of the good work undertaken but the charity that accompanied it.” [CCD I:205]

In our prayers, we place the needs of the neighbors before God in order to assure them that they are not forgotten, that this, too, shall pass. We add our voices to theirs, knowing that God has placed us n the presence for this reason, that He, too, is present on our Home Visit, and that the hope we offer is not merely the hope of a light bill payment.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great taught that to give what is ours to the neighbor is charity; to give them what is theirs is justice. [P.R., Bk III] In this sense, at least, they are all just prayers.

Contemplate

If I approach each home visit as if I have only prayer to offer, how would I pray differently?

Recommended Reading

Praying with Vincent de Paul

“God loves a cheerful giver,” the Apostle reminds us, and so, we might observe, does every person made in His image. Who wants a guest at their birthday party to grudgingly hand over a gift, sighing under the weight of all the stress of shopping for it? Thankfully, there are few such guests. Instead, the great anticipation of the recipient’s joy at seeing the gift often makes us impatient to see it opened.

The beauty of gifts given freely to friends is that they are given completely unconditionally; we don’t consider for a moment whether a friend deserves a birthday present, or whether they will repay it. Our goal is only to find the perfect gift. When we receive gifts, we can hardly help but be happy.

If by chance, the shirt is the wrong size or color, or we’ve already read that book, we always know that it’s the thought that counts; it’s the friendship and love that accompanies the gift that we really celebrate. In the same way, St. Vincent teaches, “God does not consider the outcome of the good work undertaken but the charity that accompanied it.” [CCD I:205] It is not the gift, but the giving that matters.

We bring gifts to each neighbor we visit, and giving them unconditionally, and never “taking the attitude that …recipients have to prove that they deserve it.” [Manual, Ch 2] Those gifts might include help with a bill, or food, or rent, or “any form of help that alleviates suffering or deprivation and promotes human dignity and personal integrity in all their dimensions.” [Rule, Part I, 1.3]

Most importantly, though, we “never forget that giving love, talents and time is more important than giving money.” [Rule, Part I, 3.14] What makes a birthday gift so special is the thought and care and love that goes into finding it, wrapping it, and giving it. What makes our gift of time and self to the neighbor so special is thought and care and love that goes into answering their calls, visiting them cheerfully, and always helping in the best way that we can.

When we knock on the neighbor’s door it should be with the same joyful anticipation with which we arrive at a party, with gift in hand. Every home visit is an opportunity to remind the neighbor that God has not abandoned them; to bring them the gift of love – the love of God.

Home visits should never be approached as a chore. They are a special grace from God, given to us so that we might see Him, serve Him, and make ourselves the instruments of His boundless love. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Contemplate

“Why,” St. Louise asked, “are our souls not in a continuous state of joy and happiness?” [SWLM, A.14B]

Recommended Reading

Mystic of Charity

One of the most treasured tenets of our Vincentian spirituality is trust in Providence. When our treasuries run low, we trust in Providence to refill them. When we are not sure of the path to take, we trust in Providence to guide us. But Providence is more than simply a generous donor, or a wise friend, and our trust demands much more from us than simply expecting things to work out well.

In our households and our businesses, we prudently set aside money for “rainy days” rather than spend it all on payday, because we have obligations – bills – that will remain, even if our income does not. But what about the works of the Conference, particularly the assistance we give to neighbors in need? These are not, strictly speaking, obligations, and there is no amount of saving up that will assure we can meet them. As an earlier edition of the Rule explains, our works, “being entirely optional, should be from day to day; besides, nothing is more Christian than to trust one’s self to Providence and to count upon its inexhaustible care when the work is undertaken for God. To make a reserve, to have before us a disposable capital which we never touch, to lay out beforehand a budget as in a relief association, are proceedings essentially contrary to the spirit of our Society.” [Rule, 1898, 87]

Our tradition seems almost to defy common sense. Surely it is better to set aside money for those neighbors who will certainly call us next week than to give it all out today! Or, perhaps, giving all we have to meet today’s needs makes the most sense. After all, if a homeless shelter had three vacant beds, who would ever turn away a mom with two kids just to keep those beds open for tomorrow?

The needs presented to us are as unique and unrepeatable as the images of God who present them, and we can never know in advance the best way to help. This is why we are called to “assess each home visit as a unique encounter and … not set predefined limitations on the amount of help to be given or the type of help to be given or the number of times to help someone.”

This apparent conflict between prudence and Providence is as old as the Society. As Bl. Frédéric once explained, “in such a work it is necessary to give yourself up to the inspirations of the heart rather than the calculations of the mind. Providence gives its own counsel through the circumstances around you, and the ideas it bestows on you. I believe you would do well to follow them freely and not tie yourselves down with rules and formulas.” [Letter 82, to Curnier, 1834]

To trust in Providence means to abandon ourselves completely to the will of God, and it is from Providence that both donations and the needs of the neighbor are placed before us. If we have the means, we give generously. When we are poor ourselves, we give what little we have. Money can be saved in a bank, but it isn’t money we are trying to save.

Contemplate

Are there times I let worry about tomorrow’s funds obscure the needs before me today?

Recommended Reading

The Manual

When we hear the expression “from the heart” we understand it to mean that the speech or action is both emotional and sincere; it is powerfully felt, so much so that the action it inspires cannot be resisted. When we open our hearts, we invite others in so that they may know us more deeply. When we are sad, our hearts are broken; when happy, they fill with joy.

St. Vincent often expressed his own love, sympathies, and joy by speaking of his heart, once saying to his beloved friend St. Louise that “my heart is no longer my heart, but yours, in that of Our Lord, Whom I desire to be the object of our one love.” [CCD I:172]

Our hearts are moved by each other, moved by pain, moved by joy, and moved by love most of all; the love of family, of friends, of romance – and the greatest of all loves, agape, the love of God. “That is because,” Bl. Frédéric once explained, “the human heart easily allows itself to be captured by love and there is always much love there where there is much faith.” [Letter 145, to Velay, 1837]

Just as our hearts seek one another and seek God, He also seeks us. His love comes first, unbidden and gratuitous; he is, as St. Catherine of Siena said “crazy in love” with us. [Dialog 153] This is the love that truly fills our hearts. It is the love that Frédéric said “which gives itself without diminishing, which shares itself without division, which multiplies itself, which is present in many places at once.” [Letter 107, to Curnier, 1835]

When we visit the neighbor, seeking to learn what Frédéric called “the secret of his lonely heart” [Baunard, 279], we can really only do so by “serving them from the heart” as St. Louise taught. [SWLM, a.85]

Our first Rule, in 1835, explained that Members share a friendship that “will make of all our hearts one heart.” Our vocation calls us to share that friendship not just with each other, but with the neighbors we serve; to share our hearts, and the love of God within them. As was said at the Society’s National Assembly of 1911, “were we to search carefully, we would find in this world, more hungry hearts than hungry stomachs… Humanity is made up of hearts, and hearts need sympathy more than material aid.”

This is the great lesson of our patron, and the reason Frédéric said in the first annual report that ought to model not only his works, but “the manner in which he understood his works. Charity does not consist so much in the distributing of bread as in the manner it is distributed.” Vincent’s life, he said, “is a life to be carried on, a heart in which one’s own heart is enkindled.” [Letter 175, to Lallier, 1838]

In this, may we each have, as Vincent wished for Louise, “a young heart and a love in its first bloom for Him Who loves us unceasingly and as tenderly as if He were just beginning to love us.” [CCD I:408]

Contemplate

Do I let the neighbor in to my open heart?

Recommended Reading

Praying with Vincent de Paul

“Well,” we sometimes admonish ourselves when an idea we’re discussing doesn’t seem quite right, “that’s not very Vincentian.” The phrase is a simple reminder of who we are, and how we act. It needs no further explanation. After all, our Rule finds it sufficient to say that “Visits to the Poor are made in a Vincentian Spirit.” [Rule, Part III, St. 8] The very word Vincentian carries with it a depth of meaning that conveys so much more to Members than it does to anybody outside the Society.

It isn’t that the Rule never explains what it is to be Vincentian. Throughout it, we read things such as “Vincentians feel called to pray together,” “Vincentians strive to seek out and find those in need,” “Vincentians serve the poor cheerfully,” “Vincentians endeavor to establish relationships based on trust and friendship,” “Vincentians never forget the many blessings they receive from those they visit,” and, of course, “Vincentians serve in hope.”

It turns out that our little word, Vincentian, is a very big thing. So big that if we were to make a list of all the characteristics and actions of Vincentians from our Rule and Manual, and treat as a list of instructions, it would be overwhelming.

In a similar way, if we were to make a list of all the times Jesus says things like “go and do likewise”, “as I have done for you, you should also do,” “do this and you will live,” “love your enemies,” or “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me,” we would have an even longer list!

The good news is that these lists are not in conflict; Vincentian spirituality is Catholic spirituality. To be Catholic, and to be Vincentian, is not to carry these lists only in our books, but in our hearts, and in our actions. We know that to be Vincentian is always to err on the side of compassion, even though those words are not in the Rule.

Challenged by the Pharisees to pick out the greatest of the commandments, Jesus responded with an entirely new commandment, in two parts: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He was not dismissing the Ten Commandments, but was instead answering the “why” of those commandments.

Few Vincentians have the Rule memorized, and although we try to live it fully, most of us will fall short from time to time. That doesn’t make us any less Vincentian, as long as we remember the “why”. Our “ideal is to help relieve suffering for love alone,” and that is just Vincentian enough.

Contemplate

In serving, is my foremost motive always love of God and neighbor?

Recommended Reading

The Spirituality of the Home Visit