On this day, three hundred and seventy nine years ago, in Paris, France, a few young women started a revolution. It wasn't a revolution with guns or even with non-violent protests. In fact, these women, young peasants who could barely read or write, didn't understand the immensity of their quiet action of moving in with Mademoiselle LeGras (also known as Louise de Marillac) and forming a new religious community called The Daughters of Charity under the direction of a priest who was slowly becoming famous all over France, Monsieur Vincent de Paul.

But their simple action on this day and afterwards changed Church history forever.

These women were former servants who fell in love with the work of serving the poor and now were dedicating themselves to that mission, yet in a way that would have seemed nearly impossible before. They were now to be religious, to be Sisters. But unlike other religious communities, there was to be no separation based on the background of their family, no such thing as "choir sisters" and "lay sisters" to differentiate between Sisters from poor or rich families. And also unlike other religious communities, they were there not just to pray but for an apostolic purpose - to serve Christ in the poor.

The first "habit" of the
Daughters of Charity

These first Sisters probably didn't know anything about canon law at the time, but Monsieur Vincent de Paul did. He knew that, under canon law, all Sisters were to be cloistered and there were no "if's or but's" about it. He had seen religious communities that tried to bend the rules either crumble or forced into the cloister, even the religious community of his friend Francis de Sales (the Visitation Sisters). But he was determined that his Sisters would survive. So, being the clever man that he was, he took the loopholes to his advantage. Instead of taking perpetual vows, his Sisters would take annual vows. Instead of calling their house a "convent", they would simply call it a "house". Instead of calling it "novitiate", they called it "Seminary". And instead of wearing a religious habit, his Sisters would simply wear the typical clothes of French peasants. He summed it up when he wrote the Daughters were to have "as a convent, the houses of the sick; as a cell, a rented room; as a chapel, the parish church; as a cloister, the streets of the city and the halls of the hospitals; as enclosure, obedience; as grating, the fear of God; and as a veil, holy modesty."

Maybe these first Sisters didn't exactly know how much of an experiment their new community, called the Daughters of Charity, was. But the "experiment" worked. There was no category in canon law for such a community - and, although the Vatican approved their Constitutions soon after their foundation, there wouldn't be a term for their type of community until hundreds of years later when the Vatican came up with the term "Society of Apostolic Life". 

Simply by becoming Daughters of Charity and paving the way for others, these women changed what religious life would become in the Church. After the foundation of the Daughters of Charity, priests and bishops started founding new religious communities, also under an apostolic purpose. Eventually, canon law changed, allowing but not requiring the cloister for Sisters anymore.

Some claim that it was St Vincent's ingenuity that allowed this to happen. While that is true, that ingenuity would have been useless if it weren't for a few peasant girls who decided to leave everything they knew to serve Christ in the poor.

They had no idea that millions of Daughters of Charity would follow after them (some now numbered among the saints and martyrs), no idea that one day their community would be serving the poor all over the world in almost 100 countries. and no idea that they would change the face of religious life in the Catholic Church.

They just knew they loved Christ and loved the poor and that was enough. That was enough to start their own kind of French revolution.

Vincent's Metanoia: Hope for All of Us

Let me tell you a secret. The founder of the Daughters of Charity, one of the most famous Catholic saints, St Vincent de Paul became a priest to become rich. Sure, he probably loved God and all but he really did it to be comfortable, to enjoy all the privileges that priests did, and to put an end to this working in the fields. And he did, even living in palaces and castles, becoming the personal tutor and confessor to a rich family, the de Gondi.

But somewhere along the line, something changed in Vincent. He went through a variety of experiences, even becoming a slave to pirates at one point. With each experience, Vincent grew from that ambitious yet selfish young man into someone new. Thanks to Madame de Gondi, the matriarch of the rich family he served, he began to have even more experience with the peasants - the very life he was hoping to escape when he left home to become a priest. Vincent underwent a "metanoia" that changed his life, and the world, in a way he never would have expected.

Unlike "discernment" and "transition" (two of my least favorite words), one of my favorite words in the world is "metanoia". It's a word that's barely used outside of Lent, but yet it's one that could describe our entire lives. Vincent would certainly say that it would describe his.

I don't know Greek, nor will I pretend that I do. Yet, to my understanding, or at least according to Webster's Dictionary, "metanoia" means "a transformative change of heart, especially a spiritual conversion" The word is used in different contexts - theology, rhetoric, and psychology - but they all essentially point to the same thing, "a change for the better". It's basically a conversion.

Metanoia, in the Christian context, means repentance. We realize that we have been sinful and regret our actions. We recognize that sin was driving us further away from God and we dedicate ourselves to becoming better. In fact, the use of the word "metanoia" in the New Testament, originally written in Greek, is translated into English as "repentance" (example: Matthew 4:17).

All of that is good and true, yet I believe that metanoia doesn't always have to be a large "mea culpa" moment, in which we beat ourselves up over a sin we have committed. I think it's also the realization "there's something better out there. I can transform myself into something better than what I already am", which can come about through an experience that turns us upside down. Vincent's experiences with the peasants didn't come out of a sin he committed, but rather due to the persistence of Madame de Gondi, his employer and good friend. It's a change of mind and heart...and strangely enough and wonderfully enough, that's exactly what God wants.

Jesus tells a short parable in Matthew 21:28-32. He gives the example of two sons. The father tells the two sons to go and work in the vineyards. One says no, but then changed his mind and went. The other said he would go, but then didn't. Jesus uses this parable to illustrate to the disciples that tax collectors and prostitutes will go into the kingdom of God even before them. (I can only imagine how the disciples felt after that one, geez). But Jesus uses this parable to make a point - that it is because of metanoia, a deep transformative change of heart, that we more fully enter into the kingdom of God.

That may sound wonderful, but this change of heart, this conversion, isn't easy. Ask anyone who has ever converted to Catholicism or even Christianity. Now, I can't speak from experience since I was born Catholic, raised Catholic, and now on the way to becoming a Catholic Sister. But any kind of metanoia means a peeling-off of the old self. Problem is there's something familiar and comfortable, maybe even easy, about that old self. A part of us is whispering "just stay the way you are", yet another part is screaming "but now, it's impossible for me to do anything but change".

After those experiences with the peasants, Vincent was probably distraught. What to do? Life in the palace, life with the de Gondi, was comfortable - yet it was that same comfort that bothered him. He ended up leaving that family and returned to parish life. He would never be the same - and, because of that, neither would France or the rest of the world.

In my opinion, metanoia isn't a one-time deal. In Jesus' parable, the first son's decision to obey his father and work in the vineyard wasn't the only change of mind/heart he would ever have in his life. The tax collectors and prostitutes won't enter the kingdom by a simple decision to become a Christian. Throughout Vincent's life, we see him constantly changing his heart to grow into the Vincent de Paul that would die at the age of 79.

Our life is full of metanoias. We are constantly evolving or, to use a Biblical image, we are constantly being formed in the potter's hands. We are being transformed through the heart.
And if one of the greatest saints in Catholic history went from a young man joining the priesthood for all the wrong reasons to a man known all over the world for his compassion and humility, what can metanoia do for me?

Peace is More than Just Words: St Vincent's Take on Peace

Some famous Catholics, like Merton or Day or Francis de Sales, have written unceasingly about peace - both our need for it and how it fits into Christian theology.

Saint Vincent de Paul, though, remains mysteriously silent on the topic. He writes (or talks, as in the case of the Conferences to the Daughters of Charity) about everything else under the sun, but nothing specifically on peace or violence - at least, not anything quotable.

I'm currently reading a collection of letters from Dorothy Day, an obvious pacifist, so this bothered me. How could Saint Vincent, the founder of my religious community, really have nothing to say about the topic?

But oh, he did. Only, in typical Vincentian fashion, he did through action, not words.

Vincent, a Frenchman, lived through a century of wars. And, of course, as anyone will tell you, the first to suffer in war is the poor. People were starving, their lifestyle of farming was gone, and many were fleeing. In today's day, we can imagine crowds of African refugees walking, with nothing no longer to call their own, fleeing war to live in white tents. I recall a particular scene (the last scene?) of Hotel Rwanda. This, indeed, was the French equivalent of that three centuries earlier. His accounts from the war-torn areas are haunting.

No tongue can express… no tongue can express nor ear dare to listen to what we have witnessed from the very first day of our visits: almost all the churches desecrated, sparing not even what is most holy and most adorable; vestments pillaged; priests either killed, tortured, or put to flight; every house demolished; the harvest carried off; the soil untilled and unsown; starvation and death almost everywhere; corpses left unburied and, for the most part, exposed to serve as spoils for the wolves.

 The poor who have survived this destruction are reduced to gleaning a few half-rotted grains of sprouted wheat or barley in the fields. They make bread from this, which is like mud and so unwholesome that almost all of them become sick from it. They retreat into holes and huts, where they sleep on the bare ground without any bed linen or clothing, other than a few vile rags with which they cover themselves; their faces are black and disfigured. With all that, their patience is admirable. There are cantons completely deserted, from which the inhabitants who have escaped death have gone far and wide in search of some way to keep alive. The result is that the only ones left are the sick orphans, and poor widows burdened with children. They are exposed to the rigors of starvation, cold, and every type of misery and deprivation (CCD., IV:151-152).

As I read this, I can imagine Vincent's shock upon arriving that first day. I can imagine him writing with a shaky quill, still re-playing those memories from that first day, and the words not coming. You can hear his shock "no tongue can express nor ear dare to listen to what we have witnessed from the very first day of our visits..." He knew that no one could understand their misery unless they saw it with their own eyes as he did; he even wrote to Pope Innocent X "they must be seen and ascertained with one’s own eyes" (CCD., IV:446)

He knew that, not only did the war-ravaged poor need priests (both for material and spiritual aid) but they also needed someone influential to plead for peace. And so, Vincent, a friend to both the rich and the poor, did just that. Not only did he write (including to Pope Innocent X), but he also traveled, meeting directly with the rulers themselves who could bring peace. Travel in a war-torn country wasn't too easy nor safe in the seventeenth-century but Vincent, in a holy stubbornness, was determined. On one such trip, to plead with Anne of Austria, Vincent's carriage was attacked by villagers with pikes and guns. If one of the villagers hadn't recognized Vincent as his former pastor and stopped his companions, Vincent's story may have ended there. Later in the journey, he encountered a flooded river - his only means of reaching Anne of Austria. But as I said before, he was determined so the elderly 68-year old Vincent got on his horse and forded the river.

There is no way to determine if Vincent's words brought any peace, but he knew that it was something he had to do. Because of what he first saw in the war-torn areas, he was now committed to the pathway of peace. Not only did he send Vincentian priests to serve there, he also organized relief efforts for the victims of war among the rich and influential he knew - he created leaflets containing their stories and distributed them in parishes all around Paris. Vincent organized a relief effort very similar to how Catholic relief organizations gain collections today. He provided seeds, axes and other farming tools to the war victims, explaining "in this way, they will no longer be dependent on anyone, if some other disaster occurs which could reduce them to the same wretched state."

Throughout his work for peace, plagued by the misery of those affected by the war, by their starvation, by their illnesses, by the destruction, he wrote words that still resonate today and words that truly show how the war-torn poor had indeed traveled to the core of his heart and soul:

After that, what can be done? What will become of them? They must die: I renew the recommendation I made, and which cannot be made too often of praying for peace.... There’s war everywhere, misery everywhere, In France, so many people are suffering! O Sauveur! O Sauveur! If, for the four months we’ve had war here, we’ve had so much misery in the heart of France, where food supplies are ample everywhere, what can those poor people in the border areas do who have been in this sort of misery for twenty years? Yes, it’s been a good twenty years that there’s always been war there; if they sow their crops, they’re not sure they can gather them in; the armies arrive and pillage and carry everything off; and what the solider hasn’t taken, the sergeants take and carry off. 

After that, what can be done? What will become of them? They must die. If there’s a true religion … what did I say, wretched man that I am …! God forgive me! I’m speaking materially. It’s among them, among those poor people that true religion and a living faith are preserved (CCD., IV:189-190).

Vincent teaches us that peace is not words. You won't find eloquent or flowery words from Vincent about peace. You will, however, find action, which as Vincent shows us, is the only way of truly being a Christian who stands for peace.

(I owe much thanks to Fr John Freund's response to my email, in which I asked about the Vincentian response to war and violence, and his research (you can also search "peace" on famvin), including David Carmon's study on Vincent and Peace)

Our Treasure: What Sets Our Hearts on Fire

This morning, Jesus tells us "where your treasure is, there also will your heart be". I smiled as I stood in the pew at Mass because, in these past few days, I've completely understood exactly what Jesus was saying.

Sunday, I arrived to Harlingen, Texas to my new mission. Sister Elizabeth, a Sister I lived with in Macon, and I drove twenty hours, with a stop in New Orleans, to get here. I now work at Proyecto Juan Diego in the nearby city of Brownsville. It's hard to describe what exactly PJD is - a community center would be the best description. There are summer camps, exercise programs, citizenship and ESL classes, health education, tutoring, etc.

As Daughters of Charity, our treasure here on earth is the poor. Our heart is where the poor are. Saint Vincent de Paul and Saint Louise didn't found a religious community simply to start one - it had nothing to do with different Bible verses as charisms, a different spirituality...although those things did have a part. They founded the Daughters of Charity (and Saint Vincent - the Congregation of the Mission, our brother community) to serve the poor in a world where religious were cloistered. Nothing more, nothing less. They didn't found the community to start a revolution within the Catholic world, although other communities would soon follow their example, slowly changing the face of religious life in the Church.

It is Christ in the poor
that sets our hearts on fire
(This is the logo of the DCs)

No, it was all to serve the poor. They are our treasure. They are our reason for being. Without them, we would be nothing. They are where we find Christ - Blessed Rosalie Rendu wrote "never have I found God so much as I have in the streets". Without the poor, there would be no reason for the Daughters of Charity to exist.

Yet I also believe there is a vocation within the vocation of a Daughter of Charity. Serving the poor makes our heart come alive. My own vocation as a Daughter of Charity means that treasure that holds my heart is the poor, yes, but there is another "treasure within a treasure" that is special to me - serving the Hispanic poor. It seems like my whole life pointed me to the Hispanic poor - (now here we go with some much-deserved promotion) with my Spanish teacher at the Institute of Notre Dame who inspired me, volunteering and then later working at Education Based Latino Outreach, and then my time in Bolivia with VIDES (Salesians). God pointed my whole life so I would fall in love with them.

While I liked living in Macon, my service to Hispanics was limited. As Sr Irma drove me around the "colonia" (neighborhood) surrounding Proyecto Juan Diego, I was overcome with emotions. I felt an intense sense of belonging. I felt my heart growing in joy.

I don't mean to speak for all Daughters of Charity but, based on what I know and experienced, every one of them would say that there is some group of the poor that makes their heart come alive. It may be working with Hispanics or even other immigrants, may be the homeless, may be working with the rural poor, may be working with abandoned children, may be working with single-parent moms struggling to make ends meet, it may be the sick. While the poor are our treasure, a special piece of our heart is held by a people.

Sister Elizabeth was with us in Texas for a few days before going back home. She was able to see me at I first met the ministry of Proyecto Juan Diego. As we drove back to the house in Harlingen, we had this exact conversation. A comment she made made me laugh but only because it made so much sense. She said "I want to learn Spanish but mainly because there are Hispanics at St Peter Claver Church [the church we attend in Macon] and I want to connect with them. I don't necessarily feel a calling to be in Hispanic ministry. But give me a guy that lives under a bridge that smells of cigarettes and beer, and I'm there!"

Jesus was right (but of course He was) - if our treasure is the poor, then our heart is there as well. But only that, but later, He tells his disciples "And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be." (Matthew 6:23) If we are with our treasure, if we are where our hearts live, there will be not great darkness and the light in us will shine and shine its brightest.

(As I write this blog post, I feel more and more that this is one of the poorest posts I have ever written but only because it's so hard to put into words the passion that I feel for the Hispanic poor, it's so hard to do justice to Sr Elizabeth's love of the homeless or to any other Daughter of Charity and their love of the sick, of children, of parents, etc, yet it is something I feel compelled to share...or rather, borrowing from the Daughters of Charity motto, Christ urges me to do so.)

Daughters of the Church

Due to recent events, I've seen my Facebook wall, Twitter and other blogs explode with comments/links supporting cloistered nuns, some underhandedly implying that they are the only ones getting young vocations because of their faithfulness to the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church (bishops and the Pope). I wanted to jump and wave my hands in front of them saying "HEY, LOOK OVER HERE!"

When some monasteries are filling to the brim with young vocations, it's easy to forget about active Sisters out there faithful to the Magisterium. We do exist, we are often left in the dust and I strongly believe there are more of us that exist than people think.

Recently, while reading an article celebrating the opening of our new Seminary in St Louis, a commenter posted, attacking the Daughters for the use of the word "Seminary", painting us as a religious community obviously in favor of female ordination for "re-naming" our novitiate "Seminary" Talk about a facepalm.

Because we use the word "Seminary", because some of us don't wear veils (coifs), because we do not call our community a "religious order", some Catholics write us off as unfaithful Sisters, without even glancing at our history. 

Many of those attacking us have no idea we're actually not "nuns". We are actually a Society of Apostolic Life, a genius idea of St Vincent de Paul. This idea of his allowed us to work among the poor while still remaining Sisters faithful to canon law, which said that "nuns" were to live cloistered in monasteries. So what's the difference? Historically, we were founded without a real habit - we were meant to walk with the poor, blending in with them. We take annual vows (of poverty, chastity, obedience and service of the poor), not perpetual ones. We live in houses, not "convents". We are a "community" or "Company", not a "religious order". And to avoid confusion over whether we are "nuns" or not, St Vincent named our "novitiate" to "Seminary". 

St Vincent de Paul founded us to be Daughters of Charity, specifically "to honor our Lord Jesus Christ as the source and model of all charity, serving Him corporeally and spiritual in the poor" But he also emphasized in his many conferences to the Sisters that we are also to be "daughters of prayer" and "Daughters of the Church", urging us to remain faithful to the bishops and the Pope. St Elizabeth Ann Seton, centuries later, whom we consider to be our third founder, in her last words whispered to her Sisters "Be children of the Church"

We haven't forgotten Vincent's conferences nor Elizabeth Ann's last words. 

One American Sister recently was awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice. Two Irish Sisters received Bene Merenti medals. Bishop John McCarthy raves about the Daughters of Charity in his state of Texas. Pope John Paul II, in a letter to us in 1997, he wrote "as a pledge of encouragement for your assembly’s work and the apostolic life of the institute, I entrust all the Daughters of Charity to the motherly protection of the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the Church and Mother of the Little Society, as well as to the intercession of St Vincent de Paul, St Louise de Marillac and St Catherine Labouré, and I wholeheartedly send them my Apostolic Blessing." (Fun fact of the day: we actually own a vial of his blood from his assassination and his undershirt) And decades before, our Superioress General, Mother Suzanne Guillemin, was one of the few women invited to the Vatican II Council. 

We love our Church.

For me, it isn't a blind love. If it was a blind love - love without thinking for myself - it wouldn't mean a thing. Ask any active Sister (Daughter of Charity or not) faithful to the Magisterium and I'm sure they would tell you the same. We don't follow those teachings just because we're told to, but rather because it's what our consciences tell us is the right thing to do, the right thing to believe. It's the same conscience that tells us to be Roman Catholics rather than Methodist, rather than Baptist, rather than non-denominational.

We are children of the Church and I, for one, long to not be forgotten by our fellow Catholics. We exist, we're still here, we're still on fire with love for our Church and trying to follow our founders' teachings.

Thirty-two years ago today....

A shot was heard, its sound's echo eventually reaching all the ends of the earth. As a Salvadoran archbishop prepared the gifts of bread and wine at the offertory after the homily, a shot went through his chest. He grabbed unto the altar cloth to steady himself but fell backwards, with the communion hosts now scattered on the floor, and died.

It was a shot that would eventually ring in the whole world's ears. His name was Oscar Romero. He had only been archbishop of San Salvador, the capital, for three years - certainly a short term and maybe not enough to make a real impact. But a real impact he did make.

El Salvador was at the start of a horrible bloody civil war - the military-led government against leftist guerrilla groups, a civil war that would continue for 12 more years after Romero's martyrdom. People were disappearing, people were being murdered daily, some streets littered with blood. The Church was being persecuted, as the government thought priests and nuns who worked with the poor were subversives, egging on the poor against the government. I know several Sisters that lived during that time period in El Salvador and they recall that they've never been more scared in their life. One Sister, a young girl at the time, was walking to school when she saw a young naked body lying face down on the sidewalk surrounded by military soldiers. She held her books more tightly, lowered her eyes to her feet so no one would notice her and switched to the other sidewalk. Another Sister remembers bombs going off near the convent. The novice mistress ordered them to hide wherever they could and they scattered. She hid in a closet, where she stayed for hours afraid to move even after the explosions stopped. Meanwhile, the novice mistress assumed her dead because she couldn't find her.

The time was tense and everyone who spoke out was soon killed or mysteriously disappeared. But Archbishop Romero chose not to care about that. He knew he might be killed - he even said so. It was a radical act of courage to speak up for those who were gone every day, to denounce the violence in his publicly-heard homilies over the radio. He refused to attend government functions he was invited to "until the repression stops". He wrote a letter to US President Jimmy Carter, begging him to stop sending arms to El Salvador.

But Romero wasn't radical for radical's sake. He probably never saw his ideas as "radical" and I won't even say his ideas were radical. Everything he said was said out of love. The same love of neighbor Jesus Christ called for. The same love cloistered nun St. Therese called for in his "Little Way". The same love St. Vincent de Paul called for in his love for the poor. In fact, something Romero said in February 1980 could well have been something Saint Vincent de Paul would have said some 300 years earlier: "We believe that from the transcendence of the Gospel, we can assess what the life of the poor consists of and we also believe that placing ourselves on the side of the poor and attempting to give them life we will know what the eternal truth of the Gospel consists of."

Monseñor Oscar Romero is the "unofficial" saint of Latin America, a region I feel a deep affinity for, starting in high school and continuing until now, an affinity that led me to live in Bolivia for two years and visit a number of Latin American countries throughout the years. But that is not the reason I remember him today.

I remember him today as an outstanding example of what I, as a believer in Jesus Christ and follower of the spirituality of Saint Vincent de Paul, should be. I'm not called to be an archbishop, probably not called to be a martyr, probably not called to speak out against injustice publicly despite fear of death, but I am called to love all, most especially love the poor as St Vincent, St Louise, St Elizabeth Ann and Monseñor Romero did....for that is where Christ is and that is where the gritty work of the Gospel lies. Love is what will win, love is what Christ tells us to do more than anything else.

“Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world. Let us not tire of preaching love. Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love. Love must win out; it is the only thing that can." - Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917 - 1980)

Who is one of your personal heroes? Why do you remember them?

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Prayer

Prayer rejuvenates the soul far more truly than the fountains of youth the philosophers speak of rejuvenate the body. . . . In prayer your soul grows quite vigorous; in prayer, it recovers the vision it lost; ears formerly deaf to the voice of God are open to holy inspirations, and the heart receives new strength, is animated with a courage it never felt before. . . . it is a fountain of youth. (St. Vincent de Paul)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & the Power of God in Vocation

If it was not God, my daughters, who brought about that which is visible in your vocation, would it have been possible for a girl to leave her native place, her relatives, the pleasures of marriage...to come to a place she has never seen, to live with girls from places far distant from her own, to devote herself, in voluntary poverty, to the service of convicts, to poor children abandoned by their parents, to the sick poor rotting in filth and even those in dungeons? Oh! no, my daughters, God alone could effect that! (St Vincent de Paul)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Worrying

‎"Do not worry yourself over much… Grace has its moments. Let us abandon ourselves to the providence of God and be very careful not to run ahead of it." (Saint Vincent de Paul)

I really needed to hear this today.
Like, really needed to hear it.

In midst of the craziness that was today (and will be tomorrow as well), it's nice to know that our Founder knew what it was like to worry and what we should do instead. Truly providential that famvin's Facebook page had this as their quote of the day.

An Open Letter to St. Vincent de Paul

Dear Monsieur Vincent,
I feel that I should begin this letter with an introduction, but I believe you already know who I am. Or at least I hope so - I hope you hear all those times I whisper under my breath "oh, Vincent de Paul, pray for me!" Serving with the poor can be hair-pulling frustrating sometimes - but you know that and inspire me to continue on anyway. 

You're a saint for all ages, Monsieur Vincent. I write to you today, as our dear Saint Louise de Marillac did. I'm afraid I don't have any strange home remedies for illness as she did for you, though I don't think you need them anymore. Nevertheless, I try to write to you with the same familiarity that she did. You were her inspiration...and just as she is mine, you are as well. If others have written you, I'm sure some have been sharing about systemic change or the state of health care or something similar....but I think by now, you know that I have a very simple soul.

On Tuesday, we'll celebrate the 351st anniversary of your death. Here, we're having a Mass and reception with the Vincentian family in your honor. I don't know if you've looked around our little corner of Georgia lately, but I can say with good certainty that you'd be pretty proud of your Daughters here...of the school, of the parish, of the ministry for poor mothers, of the new day shelter for the homeless. As you know, though it's been almost 400 years since you founded the Daughters of Charity, poverty still exists. It may look different than what you saw on those French streets but it has the same sting, the same cycle, and we see the very same face of Christ. And the Daughters, like the Sisters in the past, love them all the same.

Monsieur Vincent, I must admit that I haven't started reading the Conferences you gave to the first Sisters. I've heard though that they're full of incredible wisdom that you gave the first Sisters, the first to dedicate themselves as both servants of the poor and religious women. I wonder how they felt, taking the first footsteps in an adventure no one knew the future of. If you would give us in formation a Conference here in 2011, what would you say? As you know, our postulant is coming back, I'm here and, God willing, we have two more prepostulants on the way. What would you say to us, a group of bright-eyed 20-something's?

Or maybe I'm asking more specifically and more selfishly, what would you say to me? Would you smile and say "trust in God, that's all you need. stop worrying about everything"? Or sternly tell me that I'm not praying as often as I should, tell me that being a Daughter of Charity means also being a daughter of prayer? Would you remind me that the poor are my Masters, to pause and see the face of Christ in them every day? Or maybe you'd tell me all of those things. And my unspoken response would be "how?"...but maybe somehow you'd already see that question on my mind and tell me the way to perfection is trusting in God and following His will?

Well, Monsieur, it's approaching 1am here in Georgia, which means I should end this letter and begin to get some sleep.I end this letter with a heartfelt plea to continue to pray for me, as I continue to follow in the large footsteps you and your Daughters have left, with a deep longing to one day meet you, and with profound love and admiration for the instrument of God that He made you to be.

Your daughter, 

Amanda

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Chosen by God

"Is your heart not touched at the thought: 'God has chosen a poor country girl for so holy an employment?'?" (St. Vincent de Paul)

If St. Vincent were alive today, I feel that he would laugh at me.

Seriously.

He would probably laugh if he would see me, the pre-postulant, mentally pacing back and forth, focusing on my own weaknesses and inabilities. "Oh, that poor girl!" he would think, chuckling. "Why doesn't she just see that she should be thanking God for His choice of her instead of subconsciously trying to tell Him He must have picked the wrong person! Why doesn't she see that He picked her with weaknesses, inabilities and all!" He would shake his head, smiling, and think "One day, she'll get it. One day."

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Vocation

Does our Lord not reveal the greatness of a vocation to follow Him when He says to His apostles 'you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you'? Therefore, you should greatly esteem your vocation. Humble yourselves for this grace, my dear Sisters, and be grateful for it. - St. Vincent de Paul (Spiritual Writings, A.89B)

More on this topic to come!

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Materialism

Those who become detached from the desire of worldly goods...enjoy perfect freedom...they are people who are free, who know no law, who fly, who go left and right, who fly still more. No one can hold them back. (St. Vincent de Paul) 

I Just Might Be Dealing with the Face of Christ...

If there ever was a song that summed up St. Vincent de Paul's spirituality and the charism of the Daughters of Charity, it would be this one ("The Face of Christ" by Chris Rice):

Sr. Denise used this song after a reflection at our young adult meeting, in which we visited a house of the Daughters of Charity. The whole reflection, led by another Sister, was on Matthew 25: 31-36, which was essentially the basis for St. Vincent de Paul and consequently St. Louise de Marillac, the founders of the Daughters of Charity, the first successful religious community to live outside the cloister. This is the whole Vincentian charism - to see and serve Christ in the poor.

The Constitutions, almost 400 years later, continue to echo this sentiment - the poor are our masters because their face is the face of Christ's - not just as an afterthought, but rather as the theme and foundation of the whole community and the reason for their unique fourth vow: complete service to the poor.

"The King will reply: 'Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'" - Matthew 25:40

Be Still and Know...

I just came back from an amazing week-long visit in Macon, GA, which will be my new community for the next year. I couldn't have picked a more perfect place for me to start formation with the Daughters of Charity. It was if the Sisters on the Council looked into my soul and knew exactly what I was looking for - a chance to live completely among with the poor, a mix of different ministries, and a house with a rich history (St. Katherine Drexel stayed in my house!)

At one point during the week, my Sister Servant (that is, the superior of the house) and I were talking. I'll be a very busy pre-postulant, working four days in the school and one day in Hispanic ministry and probably doing odd things on the weekends. But my Sister Servant emphasized having time at the house to relax outside of my jobs. I agreed, saying that "yeah, I would need time to do lesson plans and grade".

And she said "and you need that time to reflect and discern"

Oh yeah.

Personally, I'm a person that loves being busy. I love it when my calendar is full. And between thinking about teaching Spanish and religion and working in Hispanic ministry, I had forgotten that I needed time to just sit still. Just time to sit with God and put my whole life before Him. Just time to listen to what He has to say.

(Drawing from
St. Vincent de Paul Image Archive)

The Daughters of Charity are obviously all about the apostolic works - hence the name and all. But St. Vincent emphasized that just as much as we are daughters of Charity, we must be daughters of prayer. While the Daughters were the first successful religious community to live and work outside the cloister (others tried but either eventually grew cloistered or disbanded), they were founded with a very strict prayer schedule set by our two founders, St Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac. Today, the Daughters have morning meditation, Lauds, Vespers, evening meditation as well as the Rosary privately. And of course, while other religious communities have a specific devotion, the Daughters of Charity have the (daily) Mass - the most important part of their day.

St. Vincent de Paul gave a numerous amount of Conferences to the first Sisters, which amazingly has been preserved to this day. In those Conferences, he says "always do what you can so that, prayer being your first occupation, your mind may be filled with God for the rest of the day." (v.1, p28-29) And Mother Suzanne Guillemin, Superioress General during Vatican II, wrote "work and prayer, that is our unique spirituality, the spirituality of full life."

All I can hope, as I start prepostulancy, is to follow in the steps of the founders and Sisters - learning how to be a daughter of Charity, but foremost being a daughter of prayer...a daughter that knows how to be still every one in awhile.

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St. Vincent de Paul & Fervor

"Fervor is a fire that makes things boil and grow hot, just as fire causes water to boil. It is, properly speaking, charity on fire, and that is what you should have because a Daughter without Charity is like a body without a soul." (Saint Vincent de Paul)

Love LOVE this quote. I don't even anything to add to this quote because I think those two sentences explain exactly what the Daughters of Charity are.

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & the Poor

You see a great deal of distress that you are unable to relieve. God sees it also. Bear the pains of the poor together with them, doing all you can to give them whatever help they need, and remain in peace. (St Vincent de Paul)

The 1600s in France was a time of horrible poverty. Imagine how the first Vincentian priests felt as they witnessed this? (Interestingly enough, some of the first Daughters of Charity were poor themselves...some didn't even know how to read or write before entering!) St Vincent de Paul gives great advice - share the pain of the poor but do not let yourselves get overwhelmed with problems you can't relieve alone; rather, breathe and do what you can!