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11-3-2022 A Letter From Our Servant Leaders

11-3-2022 A Letter From Our Servant Leaders https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Servant-Leader-1-1.png 1080 1080 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png November 2, 2022 November 2, 2022

Dear Vincentian Friends,

I have spoken and written frequently this year about the need to build our capacity to serve. The first focus area of our Strategic Plan is to “Expand and Strengthen our Network of Friends,” with an underlying goal to “Strengthen organizational capacity at Council and Conference levels.” Our service to people in need depends on our organizational strength and capacity.

One of the objectives of this goal in our Strategic Plan is to reintroduce the Standards of Excellence, which were created about 15 years ago as a tool for councils and conferences to evaluate themselves. Those standards included the requirements necessary for our Councils and Conferences to be in compliance with the Rule and their bylaws and also offers best practices that are in place in our most successful locations. Our Governance Committee, with input from our Board of Directors, has dusted them off our Standards of Excellence and has updated them. We are asking every level of our organization to use them to evaluate their structure and operations.

“No work of charity is foreign to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul” is a slogan of our founders that is captured in the Rule. If we are faithful to the basic structures our Rule provides, we have unlimited opportunities to follow the leadings of the Holy Spirit and use our time and talent to meet the challenges we encounter in our communities as we serve those in need. The Standards of Excellence process will help us address those challenges while allowing us to remain faithful to the foundational wisdom of our organization. Referring to the Rule of the Congregation of the Mission, St. Vincent de Paul said, “If you take care of the Rule, the Rule will take care of you.” His counsel certainly also applies to the Rule of the Society that bears his name.

Most of us bristle a bit at the suggestion of compliance, but St. Vincent suggests that we should see following our structure and the guidance contained in our Rule as liberating. It may be why those who came before us used the title of “excellence” as the goal of this process. It is a blessing that the structure of the Society has been laid out for us, and our time and talent don’t need to be spent in changing that.

After being your president for five years, I can tell you that the best Councils in our country have practices we can all learn from. They all will score high on the questions offered in the Standards of Excellence. Part of my duties include working with Councils and Conferences experiencing problems. From what I have seen, those problems are always rooted in issues that would have been identified if these Standards of Excellence had been applied and led to plans for change.

I suggest you go to the National Council website and review the Standards of Excellence documents for Councils and Conferences (click here). For each level there is a Questionnaire, a Reporting Document to be shared with the next higher Council, and a Notes Document that provides background for each of the questions.

You will notice each questionnaire is organized into three sections – with questions about required practices, standard operating procedures and practices, and recommended best practices. Special attention needs to be paid to anything that is not in keeping with the required practices, and a plan for improvement should be made. The other two sections will give you an opportunity to consider recommended best practices for future planning.

I hope this Standards of Excellence exercise will be embraced by your Conference and Council. Keeping our house in order and planning for the future are important for the well-being of our organization. We know many changes are happening in our parishes and communities. Let’s be prepared as a well-organized network of friends to meet the challenges we know are coming.

Serviens in spe,
Ralph Middlecamp
National Council President

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Contemplation — Something of the Glory of God

Contemplation — Something of the Glory of God https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Contemplations-Image-1.jpg 940 788 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png October 28, 2022 October 31, 2022

Our Rule tells us that our “journey together towards holiness” is made primarily in four ways: visiting the poor, attending our Conference meetings, praying, individually and communally, and transforming our concern into action. [Rule, Part I, 2.2]

Our visits to the poor are the central and founding activity of the Society; the activity that defines our particular way of being Christian. We don’t make our visits alone. Yet the visit itself is not our primary purpose. As Blessed Frédéric explained, “visiting the poor should be the means and not the end of our association.” [Letter 182, to Lallier, 1838] Our calling to see Christ’s face in the poor whom we visit is not a practical tool to facilitate material assistance, it is a reminder of Christ’s own teaching.

Few Conferences are small enough or busy enough that every single member has the opportunity to visit the poor every week, but that doesn’t mean growth in holiness is limited only to the home visitors! Instead, this is one reason that “Conferences meet regularly and consistently, usually weekly, but at least every fortnight (twice a month).” [Rule, Part I, 3.3.1] By meeting to share our encounters with the poor, we enable all the members of our Conferences to grow closer to Christ at every meeting.

We open and close our meetings with prayer, share in spiritual reflection, and support each other in our work. Our meetings ”are held in a spirit of fraternity, simplicity and Christian joy.” [Rule, Part I, 3.4] Beyond the Conference meetings, we also seek to live individual lives of prayer, believing, as St. Vincent taught, that beginning our days with prayer, our “mind may be filled with God for the rest of the day.” [CCD IX, 29] We pray the rosary together, and celebrate Mass together, especially on our Vincentian Feast Days.

Finally, true to the spirit of our Patron Saint, we seek to transform our prayer into action, our contemplation into effective love. This commitment is the fruit of the relationships we form with the neighbor and with each other. It is the zeal with which we pray for, and work for “the full flourishing and eternal happiness of every person.” [Rule, Part I, 2.5.1]

We journey together towards holiness because God creates us as social beings, whose relationship with God is reflected in our own social relationships. [CSDC, 110] United with each other and the poor, we recognize that “something of the glory of God shines on the face of every person”. [CSDC, 144]

The four aspects of our shared Vincentian journey are not separable. Through them, “we strive to develop a three-fold relationship with God, the poor and one another”. [Rule, Part III, St. 5]

Contemplate

To which of these four things (visits, meetings, prayer, action) can I seek to more fully dedicate myself?

SVdP News Roundup October 22 – October 28

SVdP News Roundup October 22 – October 28 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 October 28, 2022 October 28, 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

AUSTRALIA: Vinnies marks centenary with treasure hunt
CANADA: Etobicoke church holding ‘Bundle Up’ weekend to collect used clothing and other items
IRELAND: As winter approaches, not all energy bill ‘hardship funds’ are created equal
UNITED KINGDOM: SVP Conference commissioning ceremony in Norwich

NATIONAL

ALPENA, MI: Tom and Gerrie LaCross do it all for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul
ATLANTA, GA: Atlanta program helps families transition from motels to stable housing
CINCINNATI, OH: St. Vincent de Paul-Cincinnati taps Talbert House executive as CEO
PHOENIX, AZ: Philanthropists set up endowment for St. Vincent de Paul CEO position
PHOENIX, AZ: Phoenix approves $10 million for St. Vincent de Paul homeless services

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A Week in Prayers October 24 – October 28

A Week in Prayers October 24 – October 28 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 October 28, 2022 October 28, 2022

Monday, October 24

Lord Jesus, make me small,
Make me the least
Make me the last
Make me the servant
Make me the one who follows
Let me be Your disciple.
Amen

Tuesday, October 25

Lord bless my small works of charity,
So that they may be like the seed
Whose roots are planted firmly
And whose branches reach skyward.
Though I may never see it grow
Help me plant the seed,
And bless the neighbors that I serve.
Amen

Wednesday, October 26

Lord Jesus,
Help me to suffer as You did,
With gentle resignation
To the will of the Father,
And love for Your people
Your neighbors, Your friends.
You turned the humility of the cross
Into the glory of the resurrection.
Lead us to glory, O Lord!
Amen

Thursday, October 27

O Jesus, my Jesus,
Alone on the cross,
How can I serve You today?
With humble devotion,
With love for the Father,
With troubles enough for the day.

O Jesus, my Jesus,
The way, truth, and life,
How can I serve You in love?
By serving my neighbor,
Loved as myself,
For the sake of the Father above.
Amen

Friday, October 28

God the Father,
Lord of all,
Give me the strength to serve.
Jesus Christ,
Son of God,
Show me the way of life.
Holy Spirit,
Come to me,
Light my heart on fire.
Amen

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

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10-27-2022 A Letter from Our Servant Leaders

10-27-2022 A Letter from Our Servant Leaders https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Servant-Leader-1-1.jpg 1080 1080 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png October 26, 2022 October 26, 2022

We often take modern conveniences for granted. How life has changed from just a century ago in the United States with air travel, television, the microwave oven, the computer, and the Internet. Some of it has even been good!

Let’s look back further to 400 years and to Paris, France. We see none of the items above. Heck, we don’t even see indoor plumbing, penicillin, or widespread literacy. Heating and cooling meant opening and closing a window and starting a wood or charcoal fire and cutting blocks of ice. This is the world of Vincent de Paul (before he was a Saint) and it makes his works all the more remarkable.

Imagine now if Vincent had a cellphone.

In his day, Vincent ran several businesses, raised funds, recruited volunteers constantly, and otherwise organized like the dickens the numbers, the meals, the fuel, the people, and the buildings to feed the hungry and serve God’s neediest across Paris and rural France. Distances were “longer” then because you either walked them or, if you were fortunate, you had a horse or carriage to carry you at a whopping five miles an hour. If Vincent needed someone, he either sent a runner or had to go get them; he couldn’t send them a text or pick up the phone. Leave a message? Ha! Maybe a note on the door or with a neighbor, and even that with hopes that the recipient knew how to read!

Saint Vincent gives us so many examples in which to lead our Vincentian lives. He used the resources of his time to do the best he could with what God gave him. No excuses, just the use of the blessings he had to do all he could to serve. How did he recruit others to help? He rang the church bell, went door to door, preached in the pulpit and met people where they lived and worked to ask for their time and resources to help their neighbors. He delegated, encouraged, and then organized the laity (the Ladies) the religious (the Daughters) and the clergy (the Congregation of the Mission). He then provided the structures (the Rule) and prayed. A lot.

As Vincent’s organizational descendants we have many more tools at our disposal, including relatively more discretionary time and money, than most of the Parisians of Vincent’s day. We have communications and transportation technology that make the loads lighter and the distances shorter between our volunteers and people we serve. We have only modern-world problems!

This month as we consider our Fall activities and start of our alumni gatherings, church festivals, and holidays, please think of St. Vincent for a moment. How would he utilize these days of friends getting together to recruit – in pairs, face to face? How would he organize an evening of Vincentians in a Conference meeting, each with the modern-day miracle of a cellphone and a roster of inactive members, to hold an old-fashioned phone-a-thon to make some calls to invite them back, celebrating with each “new-found” friend? How would he inspire a Conference President or young adult to give a brief Invitation to Serve address at Mass, followed in the school hall or elsewhere nearby by other Conference members welcoming prospective members into our ranks? As his example inspired a young Frederic Ozanam and his friends nearly 200 years ago in Paris, how can that same zeal demonstrated by Vincent inspire us today here in our community?

Technologies change over time. Yet history reminds us that many of the needs of our world are timeless and universal. Fortunately, so too are our Church’s eternal examples of the Saints, none so more than our Society’s patron, St. Vincent de Paul. Let us learn from, and live by, the examples with which he has graced us.

Yours in Christ,
Dave Barringer
CEO

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Register Now for the 2023 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering

Register Now for the 2023 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CSMG-logo.png.jpg 512 237 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png October 26, 2022 October 26, 2022

“Blessed are the Peacemakers” (Mt 5:9)
January 28 – 31, 2023, Washington, D.C.

Don’t wait, special early bird registration ends November 15!

Don’t miss this transformative annual gathering for leaders in Catholic social ministry and advocacy! This year, we will gather in person to pray, learn, and advocate together on our Catholic call to help heal a world broken by conflict, division, and inequality.

For more than 30 years, the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering (CSMG) has brought together hundreds of current and emerging leaders in Catholic social ministry from across the United States, including bishops, diocesan, and parish leaders, as well as representatives of major national and international Catholic organizations, volunteer organizations, and university faith and justice programs whose faith inspires them to address pressing current domestic and global challenges affecting our most vulnerable brothers and sisters at home and around the world.

Dynamic and thought-provoking presentations and workshops will invite us to work together as a Church to think creatively and boldly about how we can create opportunities for healing and renewed encounter. Then, we’ll raise our voices in solidarity by advocating with our members of Congress.

This year’s in-person gathering will include:

Inspiring leading voices in Church and society.
Workshops with policy experts and community leaders.
Intentional opportunities for best practice-sharing
Resources from dozens of Catholic social ministry organizations.
Advocacy visits with elected officials.
And much more!

Financial assistance is available for leaders from under-represented ethnic, cultural, or disability communities. The program at CSMG 2023 will include offerings for Hispanic/Latino leaders who play an important role in forming disciples on mission in their communities. Act now to be part of our special initiative for young leaders in Catholic social ministry and learn more about our Diversity Outreach Initiative.

Join the discussion and be part of the solution! Don’t wait, register before November 15, 2022, to take advantage of special early bird registration.

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Stores Corner — How To Use Facebook To Your Advantage

Stores Corner — How To Use Facebook To Your Advantage https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Stores-Graphic-1-2.png 1200 628 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png October 26, 2022 October 26, 2022

By: John Thelen
Mideast Region, Council of Lansing, MI

Our St. Vincent de Paul Store’s Facebook Page is used as an informational tool to educate and inform followers about our mission and how our store helps us to achieve our mission. To increase our followers, we’ve posted signs throughout our store, (dressing rooms, restrooms, donation intake, store entrance, cashier counters, etc.) inviting people to LIKE our Facebook Page. We list our Facebook Page on business cards that are available at various places throughout our store that show our store and donation hours and the telephone number to request assistance.

Each week, we will advertise our color sale for the week. We use Facebook to show case unique, higher value items to draw customers into our store. Our community has several trader pages, so we will post items to pages that we feel will help us reach our targeted audience for the particular item we have available. We post pictures of the item, along with the price and indicate our address where the item can be seen. We’ve had good success bringing new people into our store that otherwise would not have visited.

We also use Facebook to further the work of our mission to serve our ‘Neighbors in Need.’ During Covid, when our store was forced to close, we used Facebook to show how we collaborate with other agencies within our community. We would share links to mobile food pantries and the food banks that are available in our area. We’d take pictures as we partnered with agencies to collect care bags for those that had to quarantine in motel rooms so they didn’t expose other family members still at home. We used Facebook to promote the collection of blankets and sleeping bags for the homeless. Facebook followers could see what we really were all about. That we were doing the work of St. Vincent’s even though our store was closed.

As you watch your Facebook LIKES increase, you can see when followers share your posts, which helps communicate important, timely information. Be sure to continue inviting your staff members, volunteers, fellow Vincentians, church members, collaborating agencies, etc. to LIKE your page which will continue to grow the number of people that can help tell our story. It has been said that St. Vincent de Paul is the “best kept secret” within many parish communities. Let’s help to change that. Our work with ‘Neighbors in Need’ should be discreet, but sharing about the greater good that we do needs to be shared.

If we don’t share it, who will?

The National Stores Committee is a group SVdP store folks that represent each SVdP Region and are committed to best practices in support of SVdP thrift stores for success across the nation. Find great topical articles from the Region Reps here in the Stores Corner of the E-Gazette on the last Thursday of each month.

Connect with a Region Rep to learn more about what they are doing in your area – list of committee members can be found under the Resources drop down at https://www.svdpusa-thriftstore.org/

Check out the SVdP Stores webpage! You’ll find tons of great information regarding all things stores!?

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Contemplation — Enough

Contemplation — Enough https://ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Contemplations-Image-1.jpg 940 788 SVDP USA SVDP USA //ssvpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/svdp-usa-ssvp-int.png October 24, 2022 October 24, 2022

We are called to see the face of Christ in those we serve. In imagining His face, it is easy to imagine the peaceful face portrayed in so many great works of art over the years, or the glorified Christ, or even Christ crucified on a clean cross at the front of our churches.

Which Christ, then, are we called to see? Christ, our Lord, risen in glory? Jesus of Nazareth, carpenter? Jesus the condemned, bloodied, and humiliated? For St. Vincent, the great lesson of the incarnation was that “Since Christ willed to be born poor … he made himself the servant of the poor and shared their poverty.” [Manual, 54] Through Vincent’s vision, we are called to see the carpenter, the unemployed, the single mom – all those neighbors who so regularly call our Conferences for help. He is there.

Blessed Frédéric’s vision reminds us that in the poor before us “we can put finger and hand in their wounds and the scars of the crown of thorns are visible on their foreheads…and we should fall at their feet and say with the Apostle, ‘Tu est Dominus et Deus meus.’” [Letter 137, to Janmot, 1837] We serve Him, and we also share in His suffering.

Who is Frédéric’s Jesus in our neighborhoods today? In whom can we see Christ’s scars? Who is wrapped in tattered clothing, wounded, unwashed; who sleeps in the cold, and on the street? From whom is it sometimes easier to turn away?

Do we “[speak] about them with euphemisms and with apparent tolerance”? Do we “look at those who suffer without touching them”? [Fratelli Tutti, 76] Do we offer them our prayers but not our hearts, wishing them to go in peace, but not providing for their needs? Are we sometimes paralyzed into inaction not by lack of charity, but by the fear that their needs are too great for our efforts?

As he walked towards Golgotha, Jesus stumbled under the weight of His cross. Veronica stepped forth, offered Him a cloth with which He wiped away the blood, sweat, and tears, and then continued on His way. Should she have held back, knowing she could not save Him from the cross?

There is not a Jesus of Frédéric or of Vincent. There is only one, and if we seek to see and to serve Him, we must remember that our smiles, kind words, handshakes, consolations, and prayers [O’Meara, 177] are not an extra thing for the neighbor without electricity, they are the most important thing we offer – especially to the neighbors who have nothing.

Do not be afraid. As He promised He will be with us to the end of the age.