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Poverty Awareness Month: We Are Pilgrims — We Are Not Tourists

Poverty Awareness Month: We Are Pilgrims — We Are Not Tourists https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/povertyusa-logo-pam.jpg 940 788 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png January 4, 2023 January 6, 2023

Written by: Pam Matambanadzo, National Board Member and Chair of the Multicultural and Diversity Committee

In his homily on Sunday, Fr. Jim Prehn, S.J. from Loyola University Chicago (a visiting priest at Saint Mary of the Lake/Our Lady of Lourdes Chicago) reminded us that we are all called and that we should look to the blessed Mother on what to do when called. He continued to say that all too often as Christians we tend to take the approach of tourists: viewing things from a safe distance; taking notes before moving onto the next thing. We tend to seek what is comfortable.

He beckoned us to view our calling as would a pilgrim, whereby we do not know what is to come, but rather we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us. Tourists tend to set agendas on what sites to visit and how long they will be there – everything is predictable. Pilgrimage, on the other hand, beckons us to a journey of spiritual focus that is sometimes uncomfortable. How are we truly to encounter the suffering Christ if we turn away from the challenges that come with speaking for the vulnerable?

As many of you may know, January is Poverty Awareness Month, and this year the Voice of the Poor Committee is inviting all Vincentians to journey with us as we reflect and discern our role in the plight of those experiencing Homelessness, or those simply unhoused in one form or another. Each week we will invite a fellow Vincentian to share with us how their community is tackling the challenges they encounter.

We will also be inviting clergy from different parts of the country to help us as we reflect. What is Catholic Social Teaching? Is advocating for the vulnerable part and parcel of living out one’s gospel values? The U.S. Catholic Bishops say, “We are called to shape a constituency of conscience, measuring every policy by how it touches the least, the lost, and the left-out among us.”

The Voice of the Poor Committee is working on updating our Position Statement on Homelessness. The current version was approved by the National Council on August 31, 2007. Please take time to review the statement along with all the others. Consider reaching out to your regional VOP Representative for more information on how to become more informed and active as we strive to go beyond the charity of feeding the poor to also seek justice for them and defend the life and dignity of neighbors living in poverty.

It is our pilgrimage – together we can make a difference.

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1-5-2023 A Letter From Our Servant Leaders

1-5-2023 A Letter From Our Servant Leaders https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Servant-leader-1-4.jpg 900 900 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png January 4, 2023 January 5, 2023

The holidays are always a mixed blessing for those of us who value our “alone time.” My wife has to drag me to parties, but then I usually have fun when I attend. During the pandemic it was a small blessing for us introverts to see these parties go into hibernation. Alas, they have returned this year, often with a vengeance to catch up in their revelry, size, noise and meaningless chatter. It’s not really the parties I don’t enjoy, it’s only some of the people attending!

It appears that I am not, uh, alone. According to the Census Bureau American Time Use Study, which apparently is a real thing we pay the government to do, we have all been spending more time alone since way back in 2014! The pandemic just made it more socially acceptable. In 2019, Americans already spent only four hours a week with friends, a decline of 37 percent in just five years.

We should pause to note that cell phone market penetration crossed 50 percent in 2014. Add some polarization to make us fearful of political discourse, and is it any wonder that we spend less time with others?

This trend includes all age groups (though exacerbated in younger generations), racial, urban/rural, married/unmarried, and parent/non-parent groups.

The trend reversed but just slightly post-pandemic, but we are still behind the 2019 levels. We don’t know yet how much we have each changed permanently due to the pandemic, and a Pew Research Center study found that 35 percent of Americans say that large gatherings, going out and socializing have become less important since COVID. Every day we can see that more of us now have our meals and groceries delivered. We stream movies at home. And most distressing, we don’t go to church as often and maybe not at all. Even putting faith aside, this can’t be a healthy outcome.

Our Society’s Mission Statement, coincidentally revised before the pandemic, starts with the words “A network of friends…” Through attention to these words perhaps we can start to reverse this trend.

Friendship has always been one of our Society’s Essential Elements, along with Spirituality and Service. We know as well that the Society was created by a group of college friends and an adviser. At times, some Conferences gloss over the importance of friends meeting together in their rush to serve and seek holiness. In trying to satisfy our mission, we may be forgetting that making and maintaining friendships, as well as relationships with those we serve, is our mission!

As we come out of the holidays, we hopefully renewed some friendships at all those darn parties we were dragged to, I mean invited to attend. Let’s keep those relationships going and with some Vincentian zeal. Let’s also think of who we didn’t see at those holiday gatherings and seek them out. Maybe they aren’t well, or afraid to gather, or like me, they just may need an extra nudge to be sociable sometimes. You have my blessing, in fact my fervent wish, that you be that nudge!

Good friends are hard to find, so let’s not lose some due to carelessness and unintentional neglect. Just like with customers, it is easier to keep a current friend than to make a new one. We know too that many hands make light work, and that many minds create better solutions to serve people in need. We also recognize that we all benefit from praying and serving as friends more than coming together as acquaintances now and then for a service project. The continuity of friendships was modeled for us by Christ’s Apostles, and we continue this tradition of serving as a faith-based team of friends in deed and spirit.

We speak often about making new friends and inviting them into our beloved Society. Let’s take stock of our Vincentian relationships, and then start 2023 right by adding to our network of friends. You might even find an occasion to throw a party!

Yours in Christ,
Dave Barringer
CEO

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Months after rescue of 87- year-old and her dog from squalid Dallas home, Poldi starts anew

Months after rescue of 87- year-old and her dog from squalid Dallas home, Poldi starts anew https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/dallas-5.jpg 797 668 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png January 3, 2023 December 6, 2024

Article originally published by Dallas News and written by Sharon Grigsby

“That something like this could be going on right beneath our noses and no one knew was awful.”

Poldi Tonin (center) is helped out of the car at Tonin’s new complex Juliette Fowler Communities in Dallas on Thursday, 2022, by Maria Stanley (left) and Chuck Stegman, who are both with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul charity at St. Thomas Catholic Church and joined together to help Tonin. (Liesbeth Powers / Staff Photographer)

Six months after 87-year-old Poldi Tonin was rescued from the filth and rot of her rat-infested East Dallas house — long cut off from the outside world — she begins
2023 in a safe new home and with cautious hope for a new life.

Poldi’s story, which I first told in August, is that of a woman well-read and street smart who returned to Dallas after years working in New York City. She bought a white-frame cottage on the edge of Lakewood in 1987 and rode the bus daily to her job downtown.

But the residue of soul-crushing trauma from her early years — episodes that even now she insists on keeping locked away — got the better of Poldi. Depression and
anxiety inflated a distorted sense of mistrust, anger and, finally, the decision to exist with her beloved terrier Lexi in total isolation.

Having turned away many who tried to help, Poldi seemed destined to die in her toxic home with Lexi by her side.

Then volunteers from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul charity at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church showed up with their gift of enduring patience. They refused to let Poldi’s obstinate armor, worn to hide her fragility, drive them off.

“This is what we are supposed to do,” said Maria Stanley, who has led Poldi’s St. Vincent team. “Just think, if everyone would just help one person.”

St. Vincent volunteer Chuck Stegman talks with Poldi Tonin about a new book in her new living room Thursday. (Liesbeth Powers / Staff Photographer)

I was on hand Thursday when Maria and fellow Vincentian Chuck Stegman introduced Poldi to her permanent home in The Peak, the sparkling new apartment development inside Juliette Fowler Communities in Old East Dallas. Poldi, a delightful and seemingly decade-younger version of the woman I met in August, proclaimed it “a day of surprises” as she discovered one treasure after another that volunteers had pulled from the disintegrating interior of her sincerazed home.

Century-old family photos. The two Jewish mezuzahs long affixed to her old home’s front and back doors. An elegant mirror, porcelain objects and Waterford crystal. Her two treasured Neiman Marcus scarves, which she had framed decades ago.

Decorated in Poldi’s favorite colors of blue and white, the cheery apartment shows the subtle touches of the interior-decorating magician Maria brought in to help make it perfect.

When Poldi asked why one of the drawers was missing from her refurbished antique buffet, Maria gently reminded her it was lost to the rodents that invaded her previous home in those last years. Poldi doesn’t remember much about how badly life had deteriorated before her rescue. But her days have been vastly different since the Vincentians moved her first into a North Dallas extended-stay hotel and now into the spacious apartment.

She has had real food, working utilities, a clean bed and a shower. She’s had regular medical attention, resumed her passion of newspaper reading to catch up on the
many world events she missed — and even gotten over her terror of riding in a car.

“She had no way to know what day, month or even year it was,” Maria told me. “She still has no idea what COVID is. How would she?”

Poldi Tonin looks at a family photo and the two mezuzahs saved by Chuck Stegman from her old home. (Liesbeth Powers / Staff Photographer)

Poldi is in amazingly good physical health. She’s a tough woman and a courageous one, traits that undoubtedly helped her survive the hell in which she was living.

But even the strongest of us need support — and my words are inadequate to describe the miracle that Maria and her team have worked to create what Poldi calls
her “going-forward life.”

The new Poldi is invested in what’s to come: replacing favorite books that couldn’t be saved, getting back to her genealogy work and needlepoint, and helping the
Juliette Fowler staff with an upcoming history project.

“You can start over at 87, and we’re supporting you as you do just that,” Maria repeatedly tells Poldi.

The future darkens only when Poldi remembers Lexi, the sweet 12-pound terrier who habitually curled up next to her in the old house and barked to keep the rats off the bed so she could sleep.

After living with great fosters since the pair’s rescue, Lexi,with Poldi’s bittersweet OK, has been adopted by a Dallas family whom Maria describes as “treating their
dogs like gold.”

“I know not to ask if I can have her back,” Poldi told me. “I know she is in a better home now.”

Maria Stanley with Poldi’s dog, Lexi, after the pet received a “medical shave,” shots and thorough exam at the vet July 26. Lexi has since been adopted by a Dallas family. (James Stanley / Family photo)

Poldi walks well with a cane, but her mobility and short-term memory issues prohibit her from adequately caring for Lexi, who has her own housebound trauma from which to heal.

When Chuck thinks back to the initial July visit he and Maria made to the Abrams Road house, his first thought is of the dead rat rotting in the middle of the room
where Poldi invited them to sit.

“To see Poldi now, it’s nothing short of miraculous,” said Chuck, who regularly spends hours in conversation with her as they discuss current events and family history.

“Maria just has a way of connecting with people and is convincing,” he said.

Maria told me Poldi’s rescue wouldn’t have happened without Chuck. “I would not have walked in that door, and gone back in again and again without him.”

A cavalry of generous people, many of them from St. Thomas Aquinas, have helped clear the way for Poldi’s new life.

At the Sonesta Extended-Stay Suites, Poldi’s home for almost six months, staff treated her with special care. Now the sale of her property has provided the funds to
live a comfortable life at Juliette Fowler.

Realtor and parishioner Becky Oliver handled the sale without charging any fees. Craig Penfold at Chicago Title did his work pro bono, as well.

Becky was horrified when she read in August about Poldi existing in such dreadful conditions in a home that she, like so many of us, drove by hundreds of times a
year.

“In this community, where there’s so much affluence — that something like this could be going on right beneath our noses and no one knew — was awful,” Becky
said.

Another of Poldi’s heroes is Dr. Akira Numajiri, who despite having no openings for new patients, agreed to take her on after learning of her story.

Poldi is “blatantly honest with him, says whatever is on her mind and he is this lovely man who ‘gets her,’” Maria said.

With volunteers determined to save any belongings they could from Poldi’s house, in stepped brand-new Vincentian Andy England, who had a connection with Mike
Paschall, the owner of a local restoration company.

Paschall and his crew removed, cleaned and stored what was salvaged — and didn’t charge a penny. Andy spent his Christmas refurbishing Poldi’s furniture so it would be ready for moving day.

Poldi Tonin with Chuck Stegman and Maria Stanley, right, at her new home, which she and her volunteer supporters say starts the next chapter of her life (Liesbeth Powers / Staff Photographer)

No one has done more than Maria, as much as she tries to deflect the praise.

“Maria has gone above and beyond anyone or anything I can expect in my life,” Poldi told me. “She’s a saint.”

Maria does not see it that way. She feels strongly that each of us is on this planet to help others — not to hope someone else will pick up that responsibility.

Her husband, James, and her son and daughter, both in high school, knew not to get in her way. Maria, a clinical gerontologist and social worker, is a veteran of tough cases, but even she acknowledges it’s been a grueling six months.

The payoff is knowing she has put Poldi — who will have continued support from Maria, Chuck and all the St. Vincent team — on a hopeful path. The once crusty
octogenarian now giggles that she wants to live to be 100.

May we all be Vincentians in our actions this coming year.

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Contemplation — At the Top of the Stairs

Contemplation — At the Top of the Stairs https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Contemplation-blog-1-8.jpg 1080 1080 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png January 2, 2023 January 2, 2023

“The little Society of St. Vincent de Paul is alive and growing,” wrote Bl. Frédéric, “the extraordinary needs of this winter have reinvigorated the activity of our almsgiving.” [Letter 224, to Lallier, 1840] This was, he said, the way in which they strove to keep the fire of Christian brotherhood burning. But for this seven-year-old Society, “almsgiving” had already expanded to include the kind of works we now describe as “systemic change”.

Frédéric went on to explain that a “great many of our members have volunteered to help young ex-prisoners, and the excellent La Perrière is engaged in establishing preventive assistance.” [Ibid] Not content only to serve the needs of those already hungry and in poverty, the Conference at Lyon was working to help ex-prisoners make their way back into society and setting up other programs to help people avoid poverty in the first place. This only makes sense – as the old saying goes, we fight poverty, not the poor. So why would Vincentians not try to head it off at the pass?

Such approaches do not contradict our mission of person-to-person service, of seeing and serving Christ in the poor whom we visit. On the contrary, it is our home visits that give us the insights necessary to determine what sort of programs are most needed in our own communities. That is why the Rule explains that the “Society should work not only with individuals in need but also with families and communities.” [Rule, Part I, 7.9] Special Works and Systemic Change are, and have always been, the natural outgrowth of the home visit, and the regular practice of the Society. [Manual, p. 5]

Social scientists may do their studies, and offer insights in their publications, but it is as true today as it was in Frédéric’s time that “knowledge of social well-being and of reform is to be learned, not from books, nor from the public platform, but in climbing the stairs to the poor man’s garret, sitting by his bed side, feeling the same cold that pierces him, sharing the secret of his lonely heart and troubled mind.” [Baunard, 279] We are called not to simply drop the groceries at the top of those stairs and walk away, but to gain from our neighbors the knowledge Frédéric described, and put it to use beyond the home visit.

“There is no act of charity that is not accompanied by justice,” St. Vincent wrote, “or that permits us to do more than we reasonably can.” [CCD II:68] Charity and justice go together in our church’s teaching, our Patron’s spirituality, and our founder’s example.

Justice places its demands on each of us and all of us, not just the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. And while justice and charity are inextricably bound together, Vincentians remain especially committed to solve those problems that we understand uniquely through the eyes of our neighbors, always “[making] charity accomplish what justice alone cannot do.” [Letter 136, to Lallier, 1836]

Contemplate

My Conference serves many individual needs. Can I add them up to a wider problem we can address?

A Week in Prayers December 27 – December 30

A Week in Prayers December 27 – December 30 https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/My-project-1-9.png 1080 1080 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png December 30, 2022 December 30, 2022

Tuesday, December 27

Lord Jesus Christ
Son of the Father, Son of Mary,
Help me to seek you in Your poor,
To imitate Your life,
To share in Your hope,
To be emptied of self,
And filled with You.
Amen

Wednesday, December 28

I walk in Your light, Lord Jesus.
In Your light is no darkness or sin.
You are the Savior, Light of the world,
That I seek my redemption within.
Amen

Thursday, December 29

Save me, Savior of the world,
Through Your sacrifice for all.

I will bear Your cross in suffering,
I will serve the poor as You,
I will love the Father above all else,
As You command, so shall I do.

Save me, Savior of the world,
Though I am unworthy and small.
Amen

Friday, December 30

Lord, bless my father and mother,
As they have blessed me in Your name.
May they live in Your love
For all of their days,
And rest in Your peace at the end.
Help me, in my weakness,
To honor them through my faith,
As Your Son honored You,
Along with His parents on earth.
Amen

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

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SVdP News Roundup December 24 – December 30

SVdP News Roundup December 24 – December 30 https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/News-Roundup-1.png 3600 3600 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png December 29, 2022 December 29, 2022

With 100,000 Vincentians across the United States and nearly 800,000 around the world, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul provides person-to-person service to those who are needy and suffering. Read some of their stories here:

INTERNATIONAL

NATIONAL

ARLINGTON, VA: Vincentians step up aid
BAKERSFIELD, CA: St. Vincent de Paul to convert its thrift store, open since 1964, into service center for homeless
BATON ROUGE, LA: Volunteers serve meals to Baton Rouge community
BEND, OR: Community steps up, helps St. Vincent de Paul help those in need of propane
BILLINGS, MT: Billings woman has served Christmas meals to the needy for 25 years
JUNEAU, AK: Outpouring of support makes fulfilling family wish lists possible for local charity
PHOENIX, AZ: Thousands fed a warm Christmas meal at St. Vincent de Paul

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Contemplation — Pray, Pray Again

Contemplation — Pray, Pray Again https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Contemplation-blog-1-7.jpg 1080 1080 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png December 27, 2022 December 27, 2022

In advising a young priest who was departing to become the Superior of the Agde Seminary, Vincent offered guidance that was both deeply spiritual and profoundly practical – advice that remains pertinent to those in servant leadership in the Society today. [CCD XI:310-316]

He urges the new leader to focus on imitation of Christ, discernment of God’s will, and especially on the virtue of humility. Indeed, it is Christ’s humility that Vincent holds forth as an example to imitate. Christ, as leader of His disciples did not “lord it over them”, despite, in fact, being the Lord! He taught us that he had come not to be served, but to serve.

Vincent contrasts this very basic tenet with those who that you have to “make it clear you are Superior.” Instead, he emphasizes that the superior should live just like the others, and always seek God’s will in prayer and meditation, rather than rely on his own personal judgment. Observers should not be able to tell by watching how we live, which is the leader.

Again and again, he comes back to humility, and to imitation of Christ’s humility: The superior does not take personal satisfaction in the works or successes of the company, instead always attributing them to God. He does not offer his words of advice or make decisions without recourse to prayer and meditation to God. He asks God to tell him the needs of the others and to guide him in serving them.

No matter how dedicated we may feel that we are in our prayer lives, Vincent’s words here remind us how much more room there is for prayer and meditation – and how very practical this advice is. For those times when, even subconsciously, we think “this problem is not important enough to bring to God,” Vincent reminds us, echoing the Sermon on the Mount, that God counts even the hairs on our head. Not to bring our “little things” to Him more regularly is, in a sense, to deny the great humility of God’s incarnation in Christ; it is to elevate our own judgment in place of God’s.

As servant leaders, we should marvel each day that Providence led us to this place and to this role and pray that we are giving back to heaven all that we have been given. Perhaps this, from St. Vincent, should be one of our daily prayers:

“Lord, what have I done to have such a ministry? What works of mine correspond to the responsibility being placed on my shoulders? Ah, my God, I’ll spoil everything if You yourself don’t guide all my words and works!”