Tim Williams

A Week in Prayers October 17 – October 21

A Week in Prayers October 17 – October 21 1080 1080 SVDP USA

Monday, October 17

Lord, lay Your hands
Upon my weary head
Give me peace in my heart
And strength for the journey

Amen

Tuesday, October 18

Lord, You have sent me in Your name
To bear wordless witness
Through works of charity
Help me to find Your blessed poor
And to bring them comfort and hope

Amen

Wednesday, October 19

O Lord, you have called me,
O Lord, You are here
Watching me always
Removing all fear
Walking beside me
Drying my tears
O Lord, I have sought You
O Lord, You are here

Amen

Thursday, October 20

Lord Jesus standing before me
In poverty and deprivation
With hands outstretched
To offer and to receive
I, Your lowly servant
Stretch out my hands to You
To join in Your poverty
To give for love alone
Receiving Your grace in humility
And gratitude

Amen

Friday, October 21

O Lord, I long to see Your face!

Greet me in Your doorway,
Greet me on the street,
Greet me in the face and heart
Of everyone I meet.

Greet me with Your poverty,
Your sadness, or Your fear.
I’ll see Your face at last, O Lord,
And know that You are here.

Amen

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

Contemplation — The Vincentian Tradition

Contemplation — The Vincentian Tradition 940 788 SVDP USA

The Catholic Church teaches the importance of tradition in addition to Scripture. It is through tradition that the divine revelation is passed along from the Apostles to us. Tradition and Scripture “form one sacred deposit of the word of God”. [Dei Verbum, 10] It should be no surprise then, that the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is governed by both the Rule and by the traditions of the Society. [cf Rule, Part II, 7.4]

The Rule, of course, has been revised from time to time over the past 187 years, often in order to incorporate accumulated traditions into the Rule itself. One of the changes made to Part III of the Rule in the most recent revision (in 2018), was to slightly change the wording of Statute 7 to allow Conferences a little more flexibility in conducting their meetings, specifically so that they might have meetings wholly dedicated to spiritual reflection, but not necessarily including the “business” items of the agenda every week.

After all, “the end of the Society is especially to rekindle and refresh … the spirit of Catholicism,” Bl. Frédéric wrote, explaining further that “fidelity to meetings, and union of intention and prayer are indispensable to this end”. [Letter 182, to Lallier, 1838] In other words, while our home visits are the primary means to our growth in holiness, we cannot achieve that growth without meeting together regularly in prayer and reflection.

The Manual further explains our Rule and is one of the best resources for understanding our traditions. In the case of the meeting agenda, for example, the Manual makes clear that “Every Conference meeting includes a spiritual component that promotes active participation and discussion.” [Manual, p. 18] While there is not a prescribed form for the spiritual reflection, both the Rule and Manual explain that the center of it is discussion and sharing between members.

Writing about the meetings of the first Conference, Bl. Frédéric related that they were reading and discussing The Imitation of Christ, and the Life of St. Vincent de Paul in their meetings, for example. [Letter 175, to Lallier, 1838] More recently, using tools such as the Spirituality of the Home Visit booklet, many Conferences have begun using home visit reports as the basis for their reflections. In this way, all members, not just the visitors, benefit from the visitors’ experience. In turn, by adding their own insights, they enrich everybody’s growth.

Through our spiritual reflections, we seek to explicitly connect our service, spirituality, and friendship. This is one of our most precious traditions, if we believe, as Bl. Frédéric did, “that visiting the poor should be the means and not the end of our association.” [Letter 182, to Lallier, 1838]

Contemplate

How can I better foster shared growth in holiness in my Conference?

Recommended Reading

The Manual

A Week in Prayers October 10 – October 14

A Week in Prayers October 10 – October 14 940 788 SVDP USA

Monday, October 10

Lord, in Your glory,
Lord, in Your power,
You rule both heaven and earth.
Lord in Your mercy,
Lord, in Your love,
You heal my heart and soul.
Amen

Tuesday, October 11

God of mercy,
Grant Your mercy to me.
God of hope,
Grant Your hope to me.
God of love,
Grant Your love to me.
Fill my heart, O Lord,
Fill my soul to overflowing.
Amen

Wednesday, October 12

Holy Spirit, live within me!
Fill my heart with love, joy, and peace.
Join my heart to those in need
With patience, kindness, and generosity.
Soften my heart to serve
With faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Amen

Thursday, October 13

Lord Jesus, with every step I take,
I seek to follow Your way.
With every prayer and action
I seek to know the truth.
Through Your great love and mercy,
I seek eternal life.
Amen

Friday, October 14

I praise Your name, O Lord,
I seek to do Your will
At all times,
Even, and especially,
When it is difficult.
And with You at my side
I will not be afraid.
Amen

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

Contemplation — Breathe Deeply

Contemplation — Breathe Deeply 940 788 SVDP USA

The word “spirit” has its roots in the Latin verb spīrāre, meaning “to breathe.” If we think, then, of the Holy Spirit as the breath of God, it seems easier to open ourselves to that spirit, to the wind upon the waters, and the breath of life. When we feel ourselves filled and moved by the Holy Spirit, we are literally inspired.

The founders of the Vincentian Family received a special grace from God, a charism. For St. Louise, her inspiration began following a period of great doubts, a dark night of the soul in which she began to doubt even the immortality of her soul. On the Feast of Pentecost, 1623, which commemorates the descent of the Spirit on the apostles, Louise prayed and felt herself suddenly relieved of all her doubts. [SWLM A.2]

This experience was so powerful that she wrote down all that she believed the Holy Spirit had spoken to her and carried that piece of paper, the account of her lumière (“light”) folded in her pocket for the rest of her life. It remains in the Motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity to this day.

The great peace that she instantly felt was threefold: first, that she would receive a new Spiritual Director (which would turn out to be St. Vincent); second, that she would one day fulfill her “first vow” to live a consecrated life in service of the poor; and third, that as long as she had her belief in God, the rest would be assured.

Importantly, nothing really changed in her daily life. She wouldn’t meet Vincent for another two years, the founding of the Daughters of Charity, in which she would live her religious vocation, was eight years away. In other words, she received a great interior peace solely through the movement of the spirit; not through an external event or change in her circumstances. Nothing that had been troubling her was resolved, but her heart had been changed.

The light she carried with her from that day forward helped her to see in the people and events of her life the Providence and Will of God; to further discern her charism – our charism – to serve Jesus in the poor and in each other.

Louise, “aware of [her] own brokenness and need for God’s grace” [Rule, Pt. I, 2.2] opened herself to the working of the Holy Spirit, exactly as we are called to do. Just as we breathe out only in order to breathe in again, we empty ourselves of self not to remain empty, but in order to be filled by God. And to be inspired, we breathe deeply.

Contemplate

How can I be more open to be moved by the Holy Spirit?

Recommended Reading

Mystic of Charity

Contemplation: Falling Forward

Contemplation: Falling Forward 940 788 SVDP USA

There is a commonly used exercise in corporate training events called a “trust fall.” In it, one person stands with his back to the others, with arms crossed and eyes closed, then simply falls backward from a platform, trusting his team members to catch him. The point is not to overcome a fear of falling, but to build trust that you will be caught before crashing to the floor.

In a similar way, St. Vincent teaches us to “abandon all that we love to Him by abandoning ourselves to all that He wishes, with perfect confidence that everything will turn out for the best.” [CCD VIII:298] To abandon all that we love seems to be a very demanding call, but it is the same one to which Christ calls us.

As Vincentians, we are called to abandon ourselves to His will by hearing the cry of the poor whose calls often interrupt us, demanding that we abandon our plans for that evening, or our precious free day, or an activity we enjoy, in order to serve Christ in their persons.

Indeed, we are called to share not only our time, but our talents, our possessions, and ourselves. [Rule, Part I, 2.5.1] You might even say that we are called to share, to abandon, “all that we love” to God in the person of His poor. Sometimes, we pat ourselves on the back too quickly when we pay the bill, and sometimes we wallow in regret too deeply when our whole Conference treasury is not enough.

But the Home Visit is not a math problem – it is an encounter with Christ, and an opportunity to imitate Christ. We don’t know, before the visit, whether we have the means to meet the material needs that will be presented to us. All that we know is that Christ is calling, and we must answer – it is the call, and the will, of God. So, if we begin our works of charity with the understanding that we are doing God’s will, then we must accept that the outcome of those works also will be His will.

We serve not with resentment for what we have given up, nor with regret that we haven’t been given enough, but with the joy of knowing that we are serving Christ exactly as he asked us to do, with exactly the gifts we have been given to share.

We serve in hope not that the light bill will be paid, but in the hope of eternal union with Christ and with the neighbor, trusting that the gifts we have been given are enough. We serve in hope, we serve in faith, and we serve in love.

We don’t fall backward, but forward, our hearts and our eyes open, and our arms spread wide. Our whole vocation is a “trust exercise” – trust in Providence.

Contemplate

Do I sometimes place more trust in myself than in Divine Providence?

Recommended Reading

Faces of Holiness

Contemplation: Our Inheritance and Legacy

Contemplation: Our Inheritance and Legacy 940 788 SVDP USA

In studying our own genealogy, we first catalog the names and dates and places of our ancestors. Our understanding and our love for them truly comes alive, though, when we find photographs, objects they owned, and best of all, words that they wrote. In a similar way, the portraits, relics, and words of our Vincentian saints and blessed help us to understand and fulfill our place in our shared Vincentian Family.

A treasure trove of St. Vincent’s words is contained within the fourteen(+) volume Correspondence, Conferences, and Documents, from the mundane, such a real estate transactions, to the personal, revealed in letters that were intended originally only for one recipient, to the conferences in which he gave spiritual lessons to his followers. While Vincent himself did not want his conferences recorded, designated note-takers recorded them surreptitiously anyway, realizing that the words of this holy man would feed generations who succeeded them.

Coincidentally, we also see Christ admonishing people more than once in the gospels not to tell anybody of some of His particular words or works – yet there they are, written in the gospels.

Bl. Frédéric Ozanam’s words are collected for us (in English) in a volume called A Life in Letters, with translation of more of his work currently underway. It was Frédéric who said that we owe to our patron “a two-fold devotion… imitation and invocation.” He argued that we could escape our personal imperfections “appropriating the thoughts and virtues of the saint”. [Letter 175, to Lallier, 1838]

How, after all, do we truly imitate Vincent’s example without his words, his teaching, his very personality that is visible to us in the collections of his words? Vincent’s insights were meant not only for 17th Century France, but are, as Frédéric put it, “for all lands and for all time.” [Baunard, 275]

It has often been observed that the third generation of a wealthy family is the one that tends to squander that wealth; no longer appreciating the work that it took their ancestors to earn it, they no longer are inclined to work themselves.

“The poor,” St. Vincent taught, “are our inheritance.” [Gallican Church, Vol.2, 8] Through the words preserved for us, we receive from his spiritual estate our way of seeing, serving, and loving them, so that we will be better able to pass this along to future generations of our Vincentian Family.

Contemplate

How often do I pause to study the words of our Vincentian saints and blessed?

Recommended Reading

Frédéric Ozanam, A Life in Letters Letter 90

A Week in Prayers September 19 – September 23

A Week in Prayers September 19 – September 23 940 788 SVDP USA

Monday, September 19

Who do You say that I am, Lord?
A servant, a neighbor, a friend?
Have I stopped for the victims
At the side of the road?
Have I offered food to the hungry?
Have I offered Your love
With the works of my hands?
Have I comforted all those in sorrow?
Have I done as You asked me,
In spite of myself?
Who do You say that I am?
Amen

Tuesday, September 20

How can I better know You, Lord?
Where can I see Your face?

In the lines of an old man’s face,
That mark his labor on this earth
In the laughter of a young girl’s eyes
Sparkling with mirth

In the sweat that earns
The family’s food
In the last breath drawn
In a hospital room

In these and more, I love you, Lord
Through these I serve You in hope.
Amen

Wednesday, September 21

Lord of mercy, lift me up
Fill me with Your grace
Grant me the mercy
To serve and to love
As You have loved
And served me.
Amen

Thursday, September 22

O my Jesus,
For Your kingdom
I will labor.
In Your name
And by Your grace,
I will not waver.
From dawn to setting sun
The work of love is never done
For Your sake,
And for Your love,
And for my neighbor
Amen

Friday, September 23

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

Contemplation — Saints Among Us

Contemplation — Saints Among Us 940 788 SVDP USA

After the death of St. Louise de Marillac, St. Vincent de Paul gathered the Daughters of Charity together for two conferences in remembrance of their “dear mother.” He asked them to share their memories of the virtues they had observed in St. Louise, and that they would choose to imitate.

Among the virtues they recalled was Louise’s love of poverty, her insistence that “We are the servants of the poor; therefore, we must be poorer than they are.” [CCD X:572] This was of a piece with her great humility, by which she felt called to perform the most menial of labor in the house before asking one of the Daughters to do it.

When a loved one dies, we are sometimes left to sort through their belongings, some of them long forgotten in a basement or attic, some kept close at hand until the end. While these things may remind us of memories, both happy and sad, it’s the memories we treasure most; the little bit of the spirit of our dear departed that we carry within ourselves.

In a similar way, it is not the material assistance that is most important for us to give to the neighbors we serve, but the gentleness that penetrates their hearts, the kindness and patience we offer, and the love that brings us to them.

For us to grow in holiness together, we should always try to see and imitate the holy example of our fellow Vincentians, not only after they have died, but while they are among us, praying with us, and serving Christ in the person of the poor. Who is the member in your Conference who has never once seemed impatient or angry with anybody? Who is the one who nearly weeps at every home visit report she gives? Who is the first to ask about your troubles, and offer his prayers for you?

Seek first the Kingdom, Christ teaches us. Neither our lives nor our Vincentian ministry are best measured by the sum total of the belongings we accumulate. St. Louise left behind almost no material possessions, but her example of virtue and holiness still lives, ready to be shared by all members of the Vincentian Family today. Through her intercession, may we share in her spirit of poverty, her great charity, and her selfless devotion to God.

These alone are enough.

Contemplate

Which of my fellow Vincentians can I grow in spirit by imitating?

Recommended Reading

Let’s listen to a song this week: These Alone Are Enough

Contemplation — Working for God’s Sake

Contemplation — Working for God’s Sake 940 788 SVDP USA

Studying the words of our Vincentian predecessors helps to remind us of the challenges we share, and the spirituality, traditions, and friendship that bind us to them and to the poor. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some members of the Society in the United States began to adopt a term for home visitors: the friendly visitor, a term that captures what our Rule now calls establishing “relationships based on trust and friendship” with the neighbor. [Rule, Part I, 1.9]

The Proceedings of the National Conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, held in Boston in June of 1911, contains numerous accounts of the importance of this personal and spiritual connection which remains at the heart of our Vincentian vocation.

In a talk about our works of love, Fr. Hugh Monaghan of Baltimore explained the importance of each member committing at least an hour a week to the work of visiting families, bringing gentleness, patience, and perseverance to those visits, so that the family may “realize that there is someone interested in them, someone who does care when things go wrong, someone who makes their joys and sorrows his own.” [Proceedings, p.77]

What greater gift could we bring than to reassure our neighbor not only that while we are there, they are the most important people in the world to us, but that when we leave, their troubles are also our own? If it takes one month, or six, or even ten years to make a difference in a neighbor’s life through our friendship, Fr. Hugh said, we will have “accomplished a work of charity greater, by far, than could be represented by any amount of money.” [Ibid, p.77]

It was in this spirit of friendship and mercy, also, that James Dougherty of New York explained our obligation to get to know the neighbor ourselves, not to rely upon, or contribute to shared databases (“card catalogs”) to determine a neighbor’s worthiness for assistance. Pointing out that our mandate to perform works of corporal mercy does not include any “conditions as to the character of the needy,” Daugherty went on to explain that many in need would “rather die than expose their condition,” which obliges us, in respect of their dignity, not to share their names and stories. [Ibid, p.119]

We cannot understand Christ’s reminder that the poor always will be with us apart from his admonition that our treatment of the poor will be judged as if done to Christ Himself. How we serve the poor is not a measure of our efficiency, but a measure of our love and of our faith.

Today, as in 1911, “we are apt to allow ourselves to get into a rut and forget the spiritual side of the work,” but to be friendly visitors is to “bear the fact constantly in mind that we are working for God’s sake. Do this and note the effects in our work among the poor.” [Proceedings, P. 118]

Contemplate

Do I always seek to make the neighbor’s joys and sorrows my own?

Recommended Reading

Turn Everything to Love

Contemplation — Our True Friend

Contemplation — Our True Friend 940 788 SVDP USA

When we think back to the times in our lives when we have needed some help, or advice, or a shoulder to cry on, those are the times we learned who our true friends were. If we were blessed already to know who our true friends were, those are the ones we called to help, to advise, or to offer their shoulder.

Of course, we know there are certain things you can ask only of a friend – when you are in an embarrassing predicament, your true friend is the one who will not only help, but will do so without laughing (at least not until you can both laugh about it later).

Blessed Rosalie once wrote back to a friend who had asked her for a favor so she could thank him for the request, saying: “I cannot tell you how you please me in giving me the opportunity to do something for your interests. Always act this way with me, without any hesitation. It is the proof of friendship that I hope for.” [Sullivan, 237]

And isn’t this how we react to requests from our friends, too? We might not say the words, but inside we are proud and grateful to be the ones who are trusted to help, and to share the burden. We also share our friends’ secrets; the troubles they will only confide in their closest friends. Bl. Frédéric wrote about home visits, explaining that when we visit the neighbor, “we share the lonely secret of his lonely heart and troubled mind”. Just like any good friend, we listen and we keep those secrets, without being asked.

Our Rule calls us to “form relationships based on trust and friendship” with the neighbors we serve. [Rule, Part I, 1.9] The neighbors who have called us, who have asked us for help, even though it may have been embarrassing for them to do so, have taken the first step of friendship. By confiding in us their stories, their secrets, and their struggles, they have treated us not only as friends, but as true friends; the closest of friends.

There are times when our Conferences may be short on money and may not be able to offer the material help that the neighbor needs, but that is never a reason not to visit. If we truly believe that “giving love, talents and time is more important than giving money” [Rule, Part I, 3.14] then our treasuries are always full!

The friendship we share with each other, we are bound to share also with the neighbor, welcoming them into our community of faith. After all, our true friends are the ones who ask for help.

Contemplate

Have I inadvertently withheld my friendship from a neighbor, focusing too much on the “transaction?”

Recommended Reading

Mystic Of Charity

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