Tim Williams

Saint Vincent de Paul famously said that it is our vocation to “set people’s hearts on fire, to do what the Son of God did. He came to set the world on fire in order to inflame it with His love.” [CCD XII:215] These are inspirational “marching orders”, but what, in a practical sense, do they mean? How do we go about lighting that fire?

As always, our patron teaches that we must focus first on the interior. If we wish to set the world on fire, in other words, we must do so using the fire within our own hearts. When we examine the fire in our hearts, we recognize very quickly that our love, our charity, must be truly all-consuming. This is the love, the charity, that sets the world on fire.

Vincent asks us to examine our charity by its effects. What are the things we do, the ways in which we behave that result from our charity? How will it be known to others (and to ourselves)?

The first thing animated by charity is to do to others as you would have them do to you. How simple that sounds! It is so obviously good as a sentiment that virtually everybody in our culture knows this teaching, from children to the aged, and to one extent or another we measure our acts of kindness by this measure. True charity in our hearts is more than a disposition to kindness. Instead, we cannot help but “to do for our neighbor the good that a person has the right to expect from a faithful friend.” [Ibid, 216]

Another effect of our charity is that we bear with one another. No one on earth is perfect; everybody has imperfections and faults. Vincent calls us to examine our own faults, our own failings, and our own weaknesses first. When we realize how much we need the forbearance of others, we will naturally be more willing to bear with the neighbor, who in no case is more in need of mercy and forbearance than we are. As our Rule says, because we are conscious of our own frailty and weakness, our hearts beat with the heartbeats of the poor, and so we do not judge them. [Rule, Part I, 1.9]

In charity, we need not learn to empathize, because we simply “can’t see someone suffering without suffering along with him, or see someone cry without crying as well. This is an act of love, causing people to enter one another’s hearts and to feel what they feel…” [CCD XII:221]

In charity, our love for the neighbor is for God’s sake, and our love for God is for the neighbor’s sake, for who loves another has fulfilled the law. Charity is the light within us, the source of the flame that lights the world on fire.

Contemplate

How often do I act in charity because I simply cannot act in any other way?

Recommended Reading

Mystic of Charity

“But, you say, how can we draw youth to us? We call them eagerly, and no one comes.” So said the President General of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in a Circular Letter. It is an ironic problem for the Society to face, the challenge of recruiting more youth members to join an organization that was founded by 19 and 20 year-olds.

It is an inexorable reality of human life that we all grow older, even if we are Members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The founders themselves remained Members for the rest of their lives, long after graduating from the Sorbonne. The photos we have are of white-haired men, not college students.

We always recognize and celebrate longtime Vincentians at our General Assemblies, as we should. Their example of dedication is inspiring. Lest we forget, though, the longest-serving among us, like the founders, began in their youth!

Ours is still – or should be – a Society for young Members. Indeed, our Rule calls on “Members of all ages” to “strive to preserve the spirit of youth”. [Rule, Part I, 3.5] Doing this does not mean trying to listen to the latest music, learn the latest slang, or pass ourselves off as young. After all, the first Conference, despite its youth, was quite out of step with its own times and fads, but in touch with something more radical, something more disruptive, something deeper, something greater, something…younger.

The young seek what we all seek, because all of us, young and old, have God’s word written on our hearts. As a young Frédéric Ozanam put it, the young have felt “the hunger for truth crying out” but have been left empty by “the barren philosophy of the modern Apostles” in which they “have not found food for [their] souls.”

“The religion of your forefathers appears before you today,” he continued. “do not turn away, for it is generous. It also, like you, is young. It does not grow old with the world. Ever renewing itself, it keeps pace with progress, and it alone can lead to perfection.” [Baunard, 20]

It is not enough, then, to “call them eagerly”, unless we also “welcome young Members into all Conferences.” [Rule, Part I, 3.7] Their youthful enthusiasm revitalizes the older Members, while the timeless experience of serving the poor deepens the spirituality of the young.

That Circular Letter was not written by the current President-General – although it could have been. It was written by Adolphe Baudon in 1851. It turns out that seeking young members is not only an ironic challenge for the Society – it is an old one.

Contemplate

How can I truly be more welcoming to young Members?

Recommended Reading

A New Century Dawns (especially Chapter 10: A Saint for the Campus)

Our Vincentian virtue of zeal is more than simply enthusiasm or evangelical fervor. It is, St. Vincent de Paul said, “a pure desire to become pleasing to God and helpful to our neighbor”. [CCD XII:250] Zeal, then, requires first our own interior conversion, and then our concrete action.

As the first Rule explained, we must always serve the needs of the poor without regard to whether they are Christian. Even if they are “impious” we should always to speak to them in a way that makes them comfortable, for it is “by charitable gifts that we prepare the way for spiritual benefits.” [Rule, 1835, Intro]

Similarly, St. Vincent once advised his missioners “show no apparent difference in your treatment of Catholics and Huguenots, so that the latter may know you love them in God.” [CCD VIII:209] It should be noted that the Huguenots were a Calvinist sect that was fanatically opposed to the Catholic Church, going so far as to kill priests and to destroy churches and relics. Yet Vincent’s advice was to seek their conversion by being “more reserved in their presence, more humble and devout toward God, and more charitable toward your neighbor so that they may see the beauty and holiness of our religion and be moved to return to it.” [Ibid]

We evangelize through our works, “through our witness to follow Christ through service to those in need and so bear witness to His compassionate and liberating love.” [Rule, Part I, 1.2] As Pope St. Paul VI explained, the Gospel must above all be proclaimed by the witness of our own devotion and action:

“Through this wordless witness these Christians stir up irresistible questions in the hearts of those who see how they live: Why are they like this? Why do they live in this way? What or who is it that inspires them? Why are they in our midst? Such a witness is already a silent proclamation of the Good News and a very powerful and effective one.” [Evangelii Nuntiandi, 21]

Zeal, of course, is a necessary part of the evangelical nature of our charitable works. After all, the challenge our founders answered in 1833 was to “show the good of the church in the world”. Distressed by the attacks on the church, Frédéric proposed bearing witness through action, as a group of friends “who would work as well as talk, and who would thus, by showing the vitality of their faith, affirm its truth.” [Baunard, 65]

As we seek to grow in holiness, we seek also to draw others to Christ, by demonstrating our faith through our works.

Contemplate

If you were accused of being Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Recommended Reading

The Rule, Part I

Imitation, it is said, is the sincerest form of flattery – a distinction that must be made, because flattery is by its nature insincere. We flatter in order to gain something for ourselves by playing upon another’s vanity. The things we say when flattering might or might not be true, but that isn’t really the point.

By imitation, though, our praise is expressed with a concrete action; we show through imitation that it is the very habits or actions of another that will lead us to the thing we seek to gain. Think, for example, of children learning to play a sport well by trying to imitate the professional athletes they admire.

For Vincentians, what better way could we find to follow Christ’s call to be perfect, just as our heavenly Father is perfect, than to imitate Christ? This, after all, was the very basis of the Society’s founding – to go to the poor, just as Christ Himself had done; to show God’s compassion and love through our actions. In Aristotelian terms, we “become builders by building”. [Nicomachean Ethics, Book II:1]

Christ, then, is not an object of flattery, but is instead our ultimate role model. He is the God who shared our humanity so that He could “fully reveal man to himself.” [Redemptor Hominis, 8] Yet our humility can cause us to shy away from imitating Christ, seeking instead role models closer to our personal experience. In a similar way, that child athlete, however ambitious, will usually try first to imitate an older friend before swinging for the big leagues. For us, our “older friends” include especially the saints and blessed of the Vincentian Family.

In 1838, one of the first Conferences had been studying The Imitation of Christ, but then began reading The Life of St. Vincent de Paul. As Frédéric explained it, our patron “is a model one must strive to imitate, as he himself imitated the model of Jesus Christ.” [Letter 175, to Lallier, 1838] In our day, we also have the holy life of Blessed Frédéric to imitate. Perhaps, as a lay Catholic, he is even closer to us.

The Little Leaguer believes that if he can swing the bat like Ken Griffey, Jr., then he might become a great player on his own. For Vincentians, imitation has a deeper goal, an interior goal. We hope that someday it will be no longer we who love, but Christ who loves through us. [Rule, Part I, 2.1]

We seek, then, not simply to behave like Christ, but “to empty ourselves of self so that God alone may be manifest”. [CCD XII, 247]

Our imitation, it turns out, is not flattery at all. Flattery will get us nowhere. Imitation of Christ will lead us home.

Contemplate

In what way can I better imitate the life of Blessed Frédéric Ozanam?

Recommended Reading

Apostle in a Top Hat

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Christ tells of a man who stopped to care for a victim of a robbery who had been left naked and dying by the side of the road. Others had passed by, averting their eyes. Who, Christ asks us, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim? The one who showed mercy.

This parable is a Vincentian favorite as we seek to “go and do likewise”, to form mutual relationships “based on trust and friendship.” [Rule, Part I, 1.9] But if we are the Samaritans, the neighbors, who are the robbers’ victims?

The Samaritan had no helpline; he was, as far as we know, minding his own business on his journey. There was nobody else around but the man lying in the ditch, and he could have kept walking as others had. Unconscious, the victim did not cry out for help. Called only by his own conscience and his own mercy, he stopped and gave his time, his possessions, and himself. [Rule, Part I, 2.5.1]

As Vincentians, though, are we not called to do even more than the Samaritan? Our Rule, after all, says that we are “to seek out and find those in need and the forgotten…” [Rule, Part I, 1.5] Are “the forgotten” the robbers’ victims? How do we find them?

Bl. Frédéric believed that the victims of his time were the people who had been robbed of “the treasure of faith and love” and left so badly wounded that even the priests who stopped to help were turned away by the victims who could no longer recognize them. Frederic believed that we “weak Samaritans” might be able to soothe and comfort them, to welcome them into community, and to reassure them of “the hope of a better world”. [Letter 90, to Curnier, 1835]

Who are the robbers’ victims in our world? Who do we pass by, from whom do we shift our gaze, at whom do we look without touching? [Fratelli tutti, 76] It is easy to answer the phone, or to send a check – to solve a math problem. And while indeed we should never neglect to care for the necessities of the body, anybody can do those things.

It is only on our home visits, face to face, person to person, that we can truly discover those left on the side of the road, forgotten. It is by setting aside our own plans, and needs, and desires, that we reassure them that they are important. Through our loving presence we show them that God has not abandoned them.

Our visit is proof that even on the side of the road, beaten down, with the world passing by, God sees them. He cares for them, He loves them, and He awaits them.

Contemplate

Am I truly giving myself to the neighbor in need?

Recommended Reading

A Heart on Fire