THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE HOME VISIT
Slide 1
The Vincentian heart knows that the Home Visit is our holy ground.
Slide 2
The home visit is rooted in our Vincentian Heritage…and so the spirituality of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul begins and lives in the home visit. In the Providence of God, all the works of charity for Vincent de Paul began when he made a home visit in Chatillon, in August 1617….399 years ago. Vincent always remembered and he often told the story:"whilst I was living in Chatillon, a little town near Lyons, to which God had called me to be parish priest, one Sunday when I was vesting to say holy Mass, I was told that, in an isolated house, a quarter of a league away, everybody was ill; that there was not even one of them who could render any assistance to the others, and all were in an expressible state of poverty and indigence. This news touched me to the heart. I did not fail to commend them affectionately to the charity of the congregation in the course of the sermon, and God, touching the hearts of those who heard me, moved them with compassion for those poor afflicted people.
After Vespers, I took along with me a citizen of the town, a very upright man, and we went together for a walk to visit those people. We overtook on the road some ladies who had set out before us and, a little farther on, we met some others who were returning home. As it was summer and the weather was very hot, these good ladies were sitting on the side of the road to rest and refresh themselves. To sum up, there were so many of them you would say it was a regular procession.... The next day, I then proposed to all those good ladies who had been animated by charity to visit those people that they should band together to make soup, each on her own day, and not only for them but for all who might afterwards come, and that is the first place where the Confraternity of Charity was established. This was the beginning of the Charities where lay women from the parish took care of the sick and the poor.”
Slide 2-continued
In prayer and reflection on this event, and in telling the story, over and over, Vincent realized that the poor “touched his heart” in a profound way. Vincent constantly found God’s presence in events and in the people involved in them, he came to know that indeed “God is here.” Indeed we find God in the everyday reality of our lives. The mystery of the poor led Vincent along the road of detachment and humility and helped him see with eyes of faith.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul
In 1833, two hundred years after the time of Vincent, the Providence of God led Frederic Ozanam and the founding members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to Sister Rosalie Rendu, a Daughter of Charity. She mentored them to serve those who were poor in the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul especially by making home visits in the Mouffetard district of Paris. And so, from the beginning the core mission of the Society has been home visits.
Frederic Ozanam Making a Home Visit
Frederic Ozanam wrote: (bottom p.5)
“The knowledge of social well-being and reform is to be learned not from books nor from the public platform, but in climbing the stairs to the poor man’s garret, sitting by his bedside, feeling the same cold that pierces him.
It is true that in the Home Visit that the spirituality of the Society begins and lives. As Vincent and Frederic knew, we also discover that our Vincentian heart is formed in the home visit. This is where our “person to person” care ignites our heart. To be formed in Vincentian spirituality, after a home visit each Vincentian has only to ask one question: “Where was God in this event, in this home visit?” Vincentian formation, of course, will take time and patience, but prayerfully reflecting on the home visit and sharing the insights at Conference Meetings will lead each Vincentian to spiritual growth and to holiness.
Slide 3
Frederic often prayed and reflected on the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan, and the question posed by Jesus captured his heart: “Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the man who fell in with the robbers?” The answer came, ‘The one who treated him with compassion.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then go and do the same.’ ” This is what drove Frederic and the founding members to go out to those living in poverty to bring Christ’s love and compassion to their neighbors. Today, we hold this grace in our hearts as we are called to serve our friends and neighbors,never thinking of them as or calling them clients.Read together bottom p.6
“Vincentians serve the poor cheerfully, listening to them
and respecting their wishes, helping them to feel and recover their own dignity, for we are all created in God’s image.
In the poor, they see the suffering Christ.” (Rule 1.8)
Slide 4
Our Vincentian Spirituality
We find that Vincent de Paul had a spiritual way. God, for Vincent, was found in experience, events, persons, circumstances, history, life, not in a system of doctrines. His way was the way of experience, faith and practical wisdom—all embraced in a spirit of love. Vincent became one of the most devoted servants of the poor. To all who, hungering for God, surrounded Vincent and asked for a “doctrine,” he silently offered them the bread of the poor.
Indeed, the poor led Vincent to an authentic spirituality and he calls us to follow Christ in the very terms which Jesus opens his public ministry: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners…”(Lk 4:18)
Slide 5
The Home Visit has two dimensions, each filled with grace. First,we find joy in being able to bring help to someone in need for Jesus promised: “I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers or sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25: 31-46)
Second, we are profoundly touched and transformed by those who are poor.
Slide 6
Because…As we go on a home visit, we let go of our comfort zone, our sense of being in control, and we come face to face with our own vulnerability. It is true that those living in poverty can lead us to realize our total dependence on God, our spiritual poverty, our lack of self-sufficiency. If we give them time and space, by entering into their home in friendship, based on the mutuality of dependence, they will bring forth in us a depth of love we didn’t know, nothing less than the presence of Christ. They show us how to empty ourselves of self-preoccupation, self-importance, selfishness and judgment.
Slide 7
When we listen to and observe their qualities, such aspatience, faith,dependence on God, we become in touch with our own poverty and our own dependence on God. Slowly we become aware how often we are blind to our own poverty and how we struggle to cover it up. The poor lead us to see the world from a different perspective, and they help us to let go of our grandiose ideas, or money, or reputation or any of the other ways that we puff ourselves up rather than face the emptiness that alone can be filled with God. Once we are aware of our own poverty, our own brokenness, we can acknowledge our need for God’s grace and we find our Vincentian heart is filled with compassionate and tender love.
Read together, p.8 Rule 2.2
“Vincentians are aware of their own brokenness and need for God's grace. They seek His glory, not their own. Their ideal is to help relieve suffering for love alone, without thinking of any reward or advantage for themselves. They draw nearer to Christ, serving Him in the poor and one another. They grow more perfect in love by expressing compassionate and tender love to the poor and one another.” (Rule 2.2, par 2)
Slide 8
We find that that in our home visits our Vincentian Virtues are molded into our hearts.
The grace of home visits leads us to a deeper awareness of how to live our virtue of humility. Since dealing with the poor is an opportunity for us to empty ourselves of selfishness, we are then ready to allow the Lord to do what he wants in us. When empty of self, we are in a position to enter into friendship which is found through the mutual sharing of wounds, not by concealing them or pretending they don’t exist.
It is true that no one escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. The main question is not “How can we hide our wounds” so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but “How can we put our woundedness in service of others?” When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become “wounded healers,” as Henri Nouwen so powerfully wrote. The freely chosen emptying of ourselves unites us with others in their enforced emptiness.
Rooted in humility, Vincent de Paul had a smile of simple goodness and transparent kindness. He prayed for the grace of being cordial, pleasant, kind, present and accessible to all. And he feared even the slightest harshness to others. Vincent begged God to imprint on his heart pure and tender love, and in this gift he offered his heart to others and humbly asked for theirs.
As we go on home visits, let us beg God to give us a loving and humble heart so that we can, like Vincent, offer our hearts to our neighbors and humbly ask for theirs.
Slide 9
The grace of home visits leads us to a deeper awareness of how to live our virtue of simplicity. It is true that Vincent came to know how the poor of God disturb our consciences rather than guarantee us good ones. The poor person does not forget God, for the reason that he or she cannot live without God. In a profound way, the home visit gives us an awareness of our own brokenness, and it is then that we find that slowly our Vincentian heart is filled with compassionate and tender love.
Face to face, in the home visit Vincentians learn reverence for the poor. Indeed. the poor of God have a mysterious effect upon us. By their presence, they call us to take Christ’s attitude toward them, and we find dispositions growing in ourselves which lead us to a love that is open to the faces of poverty and humility.In this way the life of Jesus begins to take hold in our hearts. Without doubt, this life in and through Christ remains hidden and mysterious. It asks for everything, for death to self. In simplicity, we empty our hearts so that we can truly live in Christ and Christ can act in us. (start letting go of judgments…there go I…)
Slide 10
The grace of home visits leads us to a deeper awareness of how to live our virtue
of gentleness. Vincent encountered Jesus Christ most powerfully among sick, abandoned, and hungry people—the outcast of society. From his experience, he reflected and wrote:
“I should not judge poor peasants, men or women, by their exterior nor by their apparent mental capacities…But turn the medal, and you will see by the light of faith that the Son of God, whose will it was to be poor, is represented to us by these people.”
Jesus reproached those people wholook, but do not really see, because of their prejudices, ignorance, or cynicism. Vincent did his seeing through the eyes of the poor people with whom he worked. They became the lenses through which he glimpsed God at work in the world. Forsaken people, worthy in themselves, were the holy ground where Vincent encountered the living God.
Home visits soften our hearts. As we sit in the homes of the poor, listening to their sufferings, we find that their pain pierces our soul and fill our hearts with gentleness and compassion. Indeed, our lives are never the same…
Slide 11
The grace of home visits leads us to a deeper awareness of how to live our virtue of selflessness. It is true that service to the poor demands a price. We must put aside our own prejudices, comfortable circumstances and favorite ideas in order to do the will of God. This sort of discipline calls Christians to die to themselves in order to follow Christ. Vincent called this discipline mortification, our Rule calls it selflessness…called to be unselfish…
Opening Prayer at our conference meetings…we pray…Help us to be generous with our time, our possessions and ourselves in this mission of charity.
Mortification, or dying to self, was not theoretical to Vincent. While Vincent was still a young man, his yearning to serve people living in poverty grew rapidly. However, his repugnance in their presence did not match his enthusiasm. Poor people made him uneasy and Vincent had to discipline himself not to forsake his good intentions. As Vincent moved among the prisoners, he had to swallow his revulsion and suppress his fear, and he realized that ministry to the prisoners, indeed ministry to any of God’s poor people, required that he die to his attachment to pleasant surroundings, cleanliness, polite conversation, and even personal safety. During home visits, we are also challenged to find to what extent our love of neighbor can stretch us and move us out of our comfort zone.
Vincent knew that we could not be free to become healers and preachers of the Good News without mortification or selflessness. He told his missionaries: “We do not know where we will stay or exactly what we shall be doing. We will have to adjust to things we never expected, for Providence frequently upsets our plans.”
In making home visits, sometimes we presume that we will be in control, but often our plans are upset and we have to adjust to things we never expected. In order to freely serve God and our neighbor, we need to detach ourselves from the attachments, compulsions and narrow habits of mind that fill our hearts.
As we return after a home visit, we realize that the reward of faith is an encounter with the God of love and our hearts grow in selflessness and generosity.
Slide 12
The grace of home visits leads us to a deeper awareness of how to live our virtue of Zeal. Frederic Ozanam, rooted in the grace of home visits, wrote:(P.14)
“Help is humiliating when it appeals to men from below, taking heed of their material wants only, paying no attention but to those of the flesh, to the cry of hunger and cold, to what excites pity, to what one succors even in the beasts. It humiliates when there is no reciprocity.
Help honors when to the bread that nourishes it adds the visit that consoles; …when it treats the poor man with respect, not only as an equal but as a superior, since he is suffering what perhaps we are incapable of suffering; since he is the messenger of God to us, sent to prove our justice and charity, and to save us by our works. Help then becomes honorable because it may become mutual.”
It is true that Vincent de Paul learned that Christian love must weave together deep affection and hard work. His words capture this truth: “Let us love God, but let it be with the strength of our arms and the sweat of our brows.”
Vincent, the realist, questioned any love that did not translate into deeds. He always instructed us to serve the poor with affective and effective love, a love which takes flesh in works of charity, service of the poor, which is undertaken with joy, constancy and tender love.
To Vincent, sentiments of love of God, of kindness, of good will, good as these may be, are often suspect if they do not result in good deeds. The love of God had to be expressed in love of neighbors.
During a home visit, as we open our eyes to the depth of poverty found in the lives of our neighbors, Zeal is ignited in our hearts and we find desire stirring within usurging us to do more.
Slide 13. The Home Visit Journal
Prayerfully reflecting on your home visit and sharing the insights at Conference Meetings will lead each Vincentian to spiritual growth. Doing the visit and reflecting on it leads to a greater closeness with the depth of one’s being where God resides.
It is important that a journal be kept so that you can reflect on this spiritual journey. After a Home Visit as you pray and write the answers to the questionsin the notebook journal let the Holy Spirit ignite in your heart the deeper meaning of the event. The following are the suggested questions: (Outline p. 17-18)
1. Reflect on your feelings…the details of the visit.
2. Reflect on where you found God’s presence in the visit.
3. Did you experience mutuality in the visit?
4. In what ways did the visit reveal the Vincentian virtues?
5. Reflect on the visit.
Slide 14