Spirituality

The first of the four permanent principles of our Catholic social doctrine is the dignity of the human person. [CSDC, 160] What does that mean for us as Christians and as Vincentians? The word dignity comes from the Latin dignus, meaning “worthy.” In the normal interactions of life, we may not naturally apply this idea to everybody we know. We tend to apply terms like “dignitaries” or “worthies” mainly to a special few who have proved themselves in some way.

Yet our belief in the dignity of the human person – of every human person – derives from our belief that we are made in God’s image, each of us and all of us: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” He didn’t create only one of us, or only some of us, in His image. We all are worthy.

We can remember this more easily when we think of our family members and close friends. They needn’t prove their merit in any way for us to know, deep in our hearts, that they are worthy. We believe this not because of anything they have done to earn our esteem, but simply because we love them.

Vincentians are called to see the face of Christ in our neighbors; we are called to serve them for love alone. Our love is the reason we never adopt the attitude that the assistance we offer is our possession, or that the neighbor has “to prove that they deserve it.” [Manual, 23] We are serving the God whom we love, and just like our family and friends – even more so – we already know that He is worthy.

This is why Christ offered the Greatest Commandment to us in two parts. They are alike, He said, and the “whole law” depends on them: to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and to love the neighbor as ourselves. Our love for the neighbor cannot be separated from our love for God because the neighbor – each neighbor, every neighbor – is the very image of the God who created us.

In poverty and in wealth we have a tendency to measure our worth by the things we possess, or by the things we lack. We can begin to believe we are more worthy because we have a nice job, home, or car, or we can begin to believe we are less worthy because we are unemployed, addicted, or homeless. Neither is true, but both can separate us from God. The bread we bring to the hungry belongs to them already, because God did not create anybody so that they should starve, but it is in the bringing, not the bread, that we reassure the ones we love that they are indeed loved, and that they are worthy. It is how we “[help] them to feel and recover their own dignity”. [Rule, Part I, 1.8]

In a similar way, God’s gratuitous presence and love assures us that we are worthy, too. At the heart of our vocation is love. At the heart of our love is God.

Contemplate

Do I approach every home visit as if it is worth my time and effort?

Recommended Reading

Mystic of Charity (especially “Home Visits in the Vincentian Tradition”)

In our works of charity, we come to know many neighbors whose circumstances seem so overwhelming that they begin to overwhelm us, too. It weighs on us, and we begin to suffer from what some call “compassion fatigue,” a sort of despair that perhaps what we do is simply not enough.

Our Rule reminds us that “in the poor [we] see the suffering Christ.” [Rule, Part I, 1.8] If we stop right there, it’s no wonder we despair. Yet every week at Mass, as we ponder the crucified Christ, there above the altar, we find peace in the reassurance of His great promise. On the cross, Jesus suffered unimaginably. Our very word in the English language for unbearable pain – excruciating – comes from the Latin ex cruce meaning “from the cross.” Yet to meditate upon that image brings us not sadness but joy; not despair, but hope.

That is because the faithful see the cross with hope-tainted eyes. We know Christ’s story does not end on that cross, and because of that, neither does ours. The cross is suffering, yes, but it is also redemption, it is also glory, it is also hope.

So, as we are called to see the suffering Christ in the neighbor, we also are called to see Him with the same hope-tainted eyes with which we gaze upon the crucifix. Both the neighbor’s troubles and our own will surely pass, and there is never a time that we should not, as Blessed Frédéric’s father advised him during a time of great sadness, “Gaudete in Domino semper.” (Rejoice in God always.) [Letter 160, to Laller, 1837]

To be sure, it is important to share the tears of the neighbor, but not without also sharing the hope of Christ. We can express our sympathy in no more sincere way than to share a tear, to bear with us part of the sadness, stress, or sometimes even anger that the neighbor may be feeling. This is, as St. Vincent once explained, “an act of love.” [CCD XII:221]

But to share only the despair is not our calling. “Help honors,” Blessed Frédéric wrote, “when it may become mutual.” [O’Meara, 229]

Vincentians serve in hope. Not merely the hope of paying a bill, because there always will be another bill. We serve in the eternal hope, “the great hope that cannot be destroyed,” and we “can always continue to hope, even if … there seems to be nothing left to hope for.” [Spe salvi, 35]

In suffering there is redemption, in the neighbor there is God, and in hope there is joy enough to share.

Contemplate

Why do I find it difficult to “rejoice in God always”?

Recommended Reading

Turn Everything to Love

In letters to friends and family, Frédéric Ozanam always assured them of his prayers, and frequently closed by asking for their prayers in return. Sometimes, this was a simple and sincere sign-off of “pray for me,” but often he asked for very specific prayers.

“Pray for me to be wise,” he asked his mother; “pray to God for me so that I may get through so important and unusual an event…” he asked a friend; “pray, pray for us who begin to man the barricades…” he asked his cousin, Ernest Falconnet; and “pray for me who does not yet know where I am bound” he asks his friend Léonce Curnier. [Letters 207, 398, 44, 107]

Always in his prayers and his requests for prayers is Frédéric’s deep sense that prayer is the most essential bond of love and friendship, the bond that unites friends with each other and with God. For Frédéric it was the shared prayers of the Conferences scattered across France, offered in unison on feast days and other celebrations, that kept them “intertwined despite distances.” [Letter 113] Indeed, he defined our cultural belief in One Society when he said that “united in works and prayers and the strength of this union would be very great.” [Letter 135]

Prayer is at the center of Vincentian friendship, and neither ceases upon death. As our 1835 Rule pointed out, ours is even “a friendship stronger than death for we will often remember in our prayers to God the brethren whom we have lost.” [1835 Rule] Our Rule today continues to confirm for us that prayer is “the basis of friendship.” [Rule, Part I, 2.2]

Through prayer we are connected to one another and to the whole Communion of Saints, among whom we count our own dearly departed. “Let us consider,” Frédéric consoled his friend Perrière, “that our beloved dead do not forget us any more than we forget them, that they think of us, love us, pray for us, that perhaps they walk with us as invisible guardians.” [Letter 1353]

Like every aspect of our friendship, our prayers also extend to the neighbor. We pray before Home Visits for the Holy Spirit to guide us in our acts of mercy, we offer up the neighbor’s needs in prayer during the visit, and in “every Conference throughout the world and in their personal lives, Vincentians raise their prayers to God, united with the prayer of Christ, on behalf of one another and their masters the poor, whose suffering they wish to share.” [Rule, Part I, 2.3]

To ask for prayer is a prayer itself, through the intercession of our friends. Let us never cease praying for and asking for prayers of one another and the poor constantly, bearing witness to Vincentian friendship, united in Christ’s love.

Contemplate

What Vincentian friend or neighbor can I pray for today?

Recommended Reading

15 Days of Prayer with Blessed Frédéric Ozanam

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.

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

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

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