It is difficult for us to process the recurring news about mass shootings whether we try to do so as Americans, Catholics, or as family members. As Vincentians, however, perhaps we can add constructively to the conversation and to the question of “What can we do?”
This column won’t address the Second Amendment or gun control issues. Rather, as Vincentians we focus our prayers and services on people. What do we know, and what can we do?
We know that poor health (physical, and especially mental), leads to unhealthy situations including marriage challenges, rage issues, workplace violence, and child abuse. Many of us act differently when we are in pain, even if from a simple headache. Chronic pain often leads to worse choices and outcomes. Some pain leads to depression, hopelessness, and “acting out” in many forms. In our work with families, we can see more readily than most how deficiencies of income, health, medicine, and general medical care intersect, often in potentially dangerous ways. We know that some of our friends in need must make a choice between buying food or medicine. And since food is often for one’s entire family, food wins. If the medicine is for a mental or psychological condition that may not even manifest in physical pain, it can be an easier if more dangerous choice.
Some of our Councils have started free and least-cost pharmacies to help. With such support, a person in need has more money available for other basic needs. Some folks can’t even afford a doctor visit co-pay, so anything we can do is helpful in daily-life terms. Other nonprofits have initiated a prescription program in concert with their returning citizens work, wherein someone gets diagnosed and prescribed a mail order medicine before prison release and it carries forward when they are home. Imagine the mental health issues alone that are avoided with this program for a vulnerable returning citizen!
We look at not only emergency needs but also systemic change solutions for our neighbors in need to mitigate or even exit their poverty situation. We may need a more strategic look at how mental health services, medicines assistance, and general healthcare intersect with other poverty challenges. Vincentians don’t need to be the medical providers, but we can help organize the dollars, transportation, and scheduling and/or arranging the visits needed. All of this will require collaboration with public health offices, healthcare providers, funders, pharmacies, and other important players. We are pretty good at this in other areas of our work, notably food pantries and utility payments. Consider this another stream of basic needs we can contribute toward for those we serve.
We won’t know if helping someone manage their money to afford both healthcare and proper nutrition will result in positive societal outcomes. What we already know is that any help we can provide against the root causes of poverty is good help, and that no act of charity is foreign to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
Even in such pain and tragedy as the national news brings us all too often, God is trying to tell us something. Those we serve have more than financial needs. Our Home Visits provide social interactions which, even by themselves, support mental health by having trusted friends to talk to in difficult times. We have such a unique perspective of being with people and families in need where they live. While we are not trained to diagnose, we can observe and listen, and then make services connections and offers to help with healthcare costs.
In our Council and Conference meetings, let’s broaden our discussion about how to help our neighbors and explore how we might support, and even lead, community health access and supports. In discernment and prayer, let’s partner as needed to do more. If needed services already exist in our community, we can at least advertise and refer.
All of this may never save one single life from a senseless shooting. Yet how many more shall we learn about before we ask if there is something, anything, we can do as Vincentians to help prevent this?
Yours in Christ,
Dave Barringer
CEO
“My kingdom does not belong to this world,” Christ said to Pilate, when asked if He was “King of the Jews”. Indeed, He went on to explain, if it were, there would be armies of angels fighting to free Him from His earthly captivity. In this, Christ modeled for us what St. Vincent de Paul often called “holy indifference” – a detachment from worldly suffering and reward in order that we might better discern God’s will.
Before His passion, Christ had already explained that we must “seek first the kingdom,” that same kingdom which is not of this world. We must, like the birds who neither reap nor sow, like the grass that neither works nor spins, let each day’s troubles be enough for the day. In short, He calls us to trust in providence.
Where does this leave our neighbors in need? Does trust in providence mean that they are on their own, or that we need not “give them the necessities of the body”? On the contrary, Bl. Frédéric once cautioned that we must not let our detachment turn into discouragement from our duties! This, he said, was ”the whole secret and the whole difficulty of the Christian life.” [Baunard, 423]
While we constantly seek to discern God’s will in different circumstances, we already know that “the same authority which tells us that we shall always have the poor amongst us is the same that commands us to do all we can to ensure that there may cease to be any.” [O’Meara, 230] For the poor, it is we who are called to be God’s instruments, providing for their needs as best we can, and by this work, reminding them of God’s love and their hope.
Detachment, indifference, or unrestricted readiness is not an excuse to neglect our works of charity but instead is the necessary condition to pursue them tirelessly and selflessly; to love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. As we remind ourselves on each home visit, it is Christ we serve in the person of the neighbor; the same Christ who sent us, the same Christ who awaits us.
“We must think,” Bl. Frédéric said, “as if we were to quit the earth tomorrow, and we must work as if we were never to leave it.” [Baunard, 423]
Contemplate
How can I better offer up my own rewards and my own suffering to God?
Recommended Reading
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
- DALLAS, TX: Free Pharmacy in Dallas Celebrates Major Milestone
- FON DU LAC, WI: New shelter in Fond du Lac aims to bring families hope
- MADISON, WI: St. Vincent de Paul hosts Care Café to fight poverty
- PHOENIX, AZ: Phoenix, Maricopa County partner to open heat relief shelter
- SAN RAFAEL, CA: St. Vincent de Paul Society in San Rafael gets new base
- SIERRA VISTA, AZ: St. Vincent de Paul receives milestone food donations thanks to letter carriers
Help us share the good news of the good work being done in your local Conference or Council! Email us at info@svdpusa.org with the subject line Good News.
SVdP-USA Disaster Services Corporation (DSC) has deployed a Rapid Response Team this week to respond to the wildfires that are aggressively spreading across New Mexico. The fires have burned more than 468 square miles over the last 42 days to earn the distinction of being the largest fire in the arid state’s recorded history. It’s also the largest fire currently burning in the U.S.
Gov. Michelle Grisham estimates that at least 1,500 homes have been destroyed. Residents are staying in mass care shelters, hotels, vehicles, and others have been evacuated to northern New Mexico. There are currently three towns on alert who may have to vacate their homes at any given moment.
DSC’s Rapid Response Team is meeting with local Vincentians to train volunteers, document their needs, assess damage, pre-plan DSC’s Parish Recovery Assistance Center (PRAC) deployment, introduce Vincentian leadership to other nonprofits they can work in partnership with, and share best practices in how to handle a disaster while it is still affecting their community.
DSC has been in contact with our collaborating partners, FEMA, Red Cross, Salvation Army, New Mexico VOAD, Catholic Charities, and local government in New Mexico.
One resident described her horrendous experience of putting her three children and pets into her car and just driving for their lives, sleeping in different hotel parking lots, and doing anything they can to survive. Another resident described that he lost his small herd of animals that he depended on for his income and will now likely fall into situational poverty. Lastly, one elderly couple who ended up in a shelter stated, “We need your help, my town is destroyed.”
DSC will be working with SVdP Councils and Conferences in addressing current needs and long-term recovery. Seasoned DSC volunteer and Vincentian, Cathy Garcia, met with one local Vincentian who was actively contacting people who need assistance, as they were packing up their car to evacuate.
How can you help? Please visit the DSC website at www.svdpdisaster.org to support our efforts and prevent more families from falling into situational poverty. DSC will be posting the needs of this community and ways you can help on our website and social media this upcoming week.
One of my earliest leadership roles was in the fourth grade. I started a Legion of Super Heroes club among my classmates, based on a popular comic book at the time. Each of us took on the identity of one of the heroes – there were about 25 of them, thus a “legion” – and played that character’s role during the meetings we held at recess. I was, no laughing please, the Invisible Kid. In the comics the Kid was the elected leader, had a pretty cool uniform – with a headband! – and it could have been worse, like being Matter-Eater Lad whose superpower was, correct, to eat all kinds of matter.
As with many things at that age, the club lasted about three weeks. On the other hand, no super-villains ever attacked our school.
I learned at that point some valuable lessons. One, girls who were not that interested in boys anyway at that age, were even less interested in boys pretending games. Different members need their own motivation for joining and staying in a group. Second, and most important, was that you can have a cool name, interesting mission and, in this case, all the logos you could ever want, but you better have something tangible do at the meetings.
Here we are today with almost the same challenges. We might even argue that super villains really do exist, but that’s for another column.
We meet every two weeks or so with a group of heroes – we call them Vincentians. We don’t have a Legion, but we do have a Society, and it’s even global. The group has a cool name, a very interesting and important mission and, somewhat unfortunately, even multiple logos!
When we invite new heroes to join us and save the world, or at least make our neighborhood better by caring for those within it, what do these recruits see? Do they see bickering current members, more focus on the snacks that day than the mission, or discussions not resulting in action, the main heroic purpose? Do they leave without an assignment, a mentorship, or even a member handbook?
Heroes need purpose, or else they hang up their capes.
How blessed I was to learn this at age nine! Through the years, I had plenty of other formal and informal leadership roles, as have most of us. We lead in our families, jobs, military, clubs, sports teams and even in our group of friends. Leadership decisions might range from formal goal setting to figuring out where to go tonight to have some fun. We set budgets, we organize and motivate the group for some purpose, and we evaluate our work for the next time. We might even do this without thinking about leadership concepts or lessons to carry forward.
It amazes me when someone is elected as a Conference President and act as if they have never led a group! Or worse, they did lead but apparently didn’t learn much from the experience. They act as if leadership is something new at the age of 60, or 70 or older.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has it own rules (and Rule!) for its leaders, tested and confirmed over decades. Every leadership experience has its unique set of rules of the game. If we choose to see it as such, it’s what makes it fun! Every rule set allows for different innovations and approaches, even when the basic leadership skills are more or less the same.
Please consider the various leadership roles you have experienced. You were thrust into some by circumstances, others you were elected into, and some you no doubt took on because no one else was willing to lead. However you got there, remember that God put you there. Just as He does with all aspects of our lives, God gave us these past opportunities to prepare for future opportunities. As we reflect on each of these experiences, let’s ask what we learned, or should have learned, and how that might help us in our Society leadership roles today. Also, how did these experiences help us to be better followers of other Society leaders?
We all know the saying of “live and learn” and appreciate its truth. To “lead and learn” as we approach new Society leadership opportunities allows us some confidence. We have the experience, maybe just not here. God has provided it for us if we just review the life He has blessed us to live. Everything He has given us prepares us for the moment before us!
Yours in Christ,
Dave Barringer
CEO
Servant leadership is the calling of every Vincentian, and term-limits for Conference Presidents ensure that every three to six years, somebody new will be invited to serve in that role. [Rule Pt III, St 2 & 12] The next time, it might be you. All too often, though, many of us pull back, insisting that we are not the “take-charge” sort; that somebody else should be President. St. Vincent would say that if this is how you respond, you probably are the right person to lead.
In fact, writing about a priest who had “an unimaginable passion for being in charge” Vincent remarked that “this frame of minds frightened me” even though he was “having a hard time finding anyone among the others willing to be a Superior in certain circumstances.” [CCD II:326]
He went even further in a Conference for the Daughters of Charity, explaining that “to be ambitious for more honorable offices or duties, leading one to want to become a Sister Servant” (the superior) is a “diabolical” sign of hidden pride. [CCD IX:532] By no means, though, did he teach that we ought to avoid invitations to serve as leaders!
Instead, he taught, to be called to leadership is to be called by God, and that therefore when “obedience designates us for a leadership position … we must submit”. [CCD XI:128] Our Rule explains further that leadership positions “are always to be accepted as service to Christ, the members and the poor.” [Rule, Part III, St 11]
When invited to serve, we should always prayerfully discern the invitation, but remember that it is not our own talents or strengths that we are discerning! Rather, we are discerning whether we hear God’s call, whether it comes to us in an invitation from our fellow Vincentians, or in an invitation within our hearts.
Vincentian servant leaders are not commanders or bosses – quite opposite! We believe, as Christ taught, in the leader as the servant, and as leaders we then then take the last place, in imitation of Christ, “who was the natural Master of everyone and yet made himself the least of all”. [CCD XI:124]
It is not so difficult to step up to leadership when you understand it instead as a call to step down, to be humble and gentle, to serve and not to be served. And since it is God who calls us to servant leadership from time to time, we also needn’t worry about our capabilities, because “God gives sufficient graces to those He calls to it.” [CCD IX:525]
Contemplate
Am I open to God’s call to servant leadership, even though I may feel unworthy?
Recommended Reading
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: Professor Luke O’Neill asks people to join charity Sleepout in support of homelessness services
- AUSTRALIA: Chris Christofi: The man on a mission to end homelessness in Australia
- CANADA: The Little Girls with Big Hearts food drive returns
- CANADA: Society of St. Vincent de Paul Windsor-Essex celebrates 125 years
- IRELAND: Second-year Coláiste Mhuire students raise €1,650 for St Vincent de Paul
NATIONAL
- ALBUQUERQUE, NM: Remarkable Women Finalist Linda Strasburg
- ALTOONA, PA: Focusing on homeless important
- DALLAS, TX: Charitable pharmacy supplying those in need amid price increase for hundreds of medications
- DUNEDIN, FL: For 60 years, St. Vincent de Paul volunteers in Dunedin have been helping the needy
- ORLANDO, FL: SVdP Orlando Executive Director Appears on “Space Coast Daily: Sit Down With Steve”
- ORLANDO, FL: Collaboration with St. Vincent de Paul made all the difference
- PHOENIX, AZ: How to help feed struggling Phoenix families (without leaving your house)
- QUEENS, NY: Criminal Justice Majors Work with Wrongfully Convicted and Recently Freed
Help us share the good news of the good work being done in your local Conference or Council! Email us at info@svdpusa.org with the subject line Good News.
Monday, May 9
Tuesday, May 10:
Wednesday, May 11:
Thursday, May 12:
Friday, May 13:
Lord Almighty
Who let there be light
Who flooded the earth
Who parted the sea
Who walked on the water
Who healed the sick
Who raised the dead
Who gave Your life
Who conquered death
Lead me from night into day.
Amen