Celebrate the Vincentian Founding – Mass & Lunch Wednesday, April 16 at 12:00 p.m. | St. Louise de Marillac Chapel
The DePaul community is invited to a special Mass and lunch in honor of the 400th Anniversary of the Congregation of the Mission—the Vincentian religious order that founded DePaul. Mass will be held in the St. Louise de Marillac Chapel (LPSC 1st floor), followed by lunch in LPSC 325.
Please RSVP HERE to let us know you will be attending the lunch. All are welcome as we gather in prayer and fellowship.
Faculty and Staff are Invited…
DePaul faculty and staff, you are invited to Lunch with Vincent where our distinguished presenters will be Professor Ken Butigan, from the Peace, Justice, and Conflict Resolution Program and Fr Stan Chu IIo from the Catholic Studies Department. Together they will share stories of peace and justice from around the world inspired by their faith and enriched by our Vincentian spirit. Please join us for meaningful conversation, warm community and a tasty meal!
Written By: Gabriella Bucci, Associate Professor of Economics
Image by Marija Zaric.
Sustainability was core to the work of Saints Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac. Saint Vincent understood that charitable donations of food and clothing, while providing temporary relief, are not long-term solutions for the deprived, war-torn, and impoverished. He wanted to provide seeds for farmers and “to enable all the other poor people who have no land—men as well as women—to earn their own living by giving the men some tools for working and the girls and women spinning wheels and flax or linen for spinning.” [1] He worked with villagers and taught them to create self-sustaining food banks. He created partnerships with the wealthy to fund and sustain orphanages and hospitals. [2] All this he did during times in which the wealthy avoided contact with the poor and in which bishops felt threatened about losing power in their villages and missions. [3] We continue to face societal challenges today and are called to meet these challenges sustainably, as Saint Vincent did.
At DePaul we build sustainability into our actions, courses, and programs throughout the university. Interested students can get involved in environmentally conscious student organizations such as ECO Depaul, DePaul Urban Gardeners, the Student Sustainability Committee and Net Impact. In our classrooms, we teach best practices in sustainability in environmental science, the arts, the humanities, geography, urban development, public policy, and many other corners of the university. Students and faculty have been involved, and continue to be active, in Life Cycle Assessments of products such as sports equipment, textiles, jewelry, and toys to determine the products’ impacts on the environment through their life cycle. Students, faculty, and staff are part of the Sustainable Urban Food Systems Initiative through the Steans Center. The President’s Sustainability Committee strives to make lasting environmental changes at DePaul and in the community. Those who care about climate change and environmental activism have an array of opportunities to find meaning and involvement throughout the university.
Students may be surprised to learn that environmental sustainability also has a home in DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business. We tend to think of climate advocacy as something that is the purview of individuals, nonprofits, and governments. However, students can also learn about the role of corporations in advancing environmental sustainability and even pursue careers that focus on corporate sustainability. In fact, in 2024, 82% of C-suite leaders say they believe the significance of environmental, social, and governance factors (ESG) in corporate performance will continue to grow. [4] Businesses impact sustainability through decisions they make about sourcing, logistics, and care for the environment.
We are preparing a new generation of business leaders who advocate for businesses to interact responsibly with the environment. Any undergraduate DePaul student can take the course Business 103: Business for Social Good where students learn about the ways businesses reduce their environmental impact and advocate for change. The new Business for Social Good student organization, B4SG, already has hundreds of student members!
And there’s more to come. In fall 2025, we are launching the Master of Science in Sustainability in Business degree. This STEM-designated degree prepares students to take on roles as corporate sustainability leaders. The program combines sustainability frameworks with data analysis and strategy for business decision-making and management. We seek to develop business leaders who carefully consider the full impacts of business practices on people and the environment.
By creating new business programs in sustainability, we recognize that business practices are a key to the future of environmental sustainability. We have more to do, more to learn, more to teach, more partnerships to build, more business relationships to foster, more service to complete. Let’s learn and work together.
Reflection Questions:
Saint Vincent de Paul focused on long-term solutions over short-term aid. How can you apply this mindset to environmental sustainability on campus, at home, and in your communities?
Sustainability challenges require input from many fields, including science, business, and the arts. How can we foster interdisciplinary work to develop innovative solutions for a more sustainable world?
Reflection by: Gabriella Bucci, Associate Professor of Economics
Updates, resources, and events highlighting the integration of DePaul’s Vincentian mission into the daily life and work of the university community.
MISSION MONDAY
This ‘Best of Mission Monday’ post revisits a reflection on the intertwined spiritual seasons of Lent and Ramadan. Enjoy!
Seasons of Change
As spring blooms and spiritual practices like Lent and Ramadan unfold, we confront our vulnerabilities and envision a world of connection, transformation, and radical generosity.
With the intent of nurturing our DePaul Catholic community spiritually (mass), and corporally (lunch and good community after!) we would love to have faculty and staff join us at this Catholic faculty and staff mass.
Please RSVP HERE to let us know you will be attending.
On the third Wednesday of each month, rotating between both campuses, DMM will now host a mass/lunch, especially for faculty and staff.
With the intent of nurturing our DePaul Catholic community spiritually (mass), and corporally (lunch and good community after!) we would love to have faculty and staff join us at this Catholic faculty and staff mass.
Please RSVP HERE to let us know you will be attending.
On the third Wednesday of each month, rotating between both campuses, DMM will now host a mass/lunch, especially for faculty and staff.
Written By: Tom Judge, Chaplain and Assistant Director, Division of Mission and Ministry. This ‘Best of Mission Monday’ post revisits a reflection on the intertwined spiritual seasons of Lent and Ramadan.
President of Ireland, Sean T. O’Kelly, receives honorary degree from the Rev. Comerford O’Malley, CM, in 1959. Image courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, DePaul University Libraries.
In honor of the Feast of St. Patrick or what we more colloquially know as St. Patrick’s Day, I found myself wondering: What has the relationship been like between DePaul and the Irish (or, as time passed, Irish Americans)? What may be some of the highlights that have marked the special bond between the Emerald Isle and the Little School under the El? As a proud, and curious, Irish American, I decided to do a little investigating.
When our university was founded as St. Vincent’s College in 1898, the City of Chicago had over 1 million citizens, making it the third-largest metropolis on the globe. It was teeming with new arrivals from all over the country and the world, so that fully half the city’s population were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. One of the largest of these migrant communities, and the most Catholic, were the Irish. Most were drawn to Chicago because of the twin opportunities it offered. There was work (in construction, the stockyards or on the railroads and waterways that made Chicago the transportation hub of the United States). And there was also freedom (to worship or advance or express themselves in ways that were not supported in the places from which they came).
To achieve their desired upward social mobility, the new Chicagoans required access to education. To answer this need, the Archdiocese of Chicago asked Vincentian priests to found a school on the city’s North Side for male children of the Catholic immigrant and working classes, most of whom were Irish. [1] One can only imagine the comfort felt by many of these early students when they were addressed by DePaul’s first president, Rev. Peter Byrne, CM, and as they heard the familiar brogue he spoke with as a native of County Carlow in Ireland.
It was DePaul’s third president, Rev. Frances McCabe, CM, himself an Irish American, who sparked early controversy at the young university. In 1919, he presented the man destined to become Ireland’s dominant political personality of the twentieth century, Eamon de Valera, with an honorary degree. De Valera, who had been a leader of the Irish rebellion and only narrowly avoided execution by the British, was then touring the United States to acquire official recognition and money for those across the Atlantic who were battling for Irish independence. DePaul again bestowed an honorary degree upon a president of Ireland, this time Seán Thomas O’Kelly, in 1959. Similarly, the Vincentian priest conveying this honor was another first-generation Irish American, DePaul’s seventh president, Rev. Comerford O’Malley, CM.
Perhaps it was in recognition of this early, and inimitable, connection of the Irish with DePaul that led the Illinois Chapter of the American-Irish Historical Society to move their library to the university in 1927 in hopes of reaching a larger audience. [2] Their choice turned out to be prescient. DePaul’s special collection of Irish literature, begun by the donation from the American-Irish Society, has broadened and deepened over the years. It includes works by W. B. Yeats, Samuel Becket, and Seamus Heaney, all Irish Nobel Prize winners, as well as other authors who represent the best of Irish literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a time that has come to be known as the Irish Renaissance.
As is the case when we engage with any diverse culture and community, DePaul has been made better by our relationship with the Irish and Irish Americans. To this very day, our university’s touchpoints with the Land of Saints and Scholars remain vital, unique, a little playful, and too numerous to list here. Classes continue to be offered through the university’s Irish Studies Program, and students continue to trek downtown to enjoy the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the dyeing of the Chicago River green.
But there is one more contemporary connection between DePaul and Ireland that deserves to be highlighted. In just a few days, a study abroad class centered around Irish Literature will leave Chicago for Dublin. As part of their curriculum, the class instructors have arranged for their students to spend time engaging in community service with local Daughters of Charity—the order of religious women founded by Sts. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac—in the Irish city of Cork. This coming together in Ireland, of peoples from near and far, in the Vincentian spirit of relationship and service calls to mind the long-ago days of the 1640s, when Vincent de Paul first sent a small group of missionaries from France to serve on the distant shores of Ireland. Vincent de Paul could have been speaking for many of us, Irish or not, who look with fondness towards this small island across the sea, when he wrote to the Bishop of Limerick upon their departure, “Would to God that I were worthy to be one of their numbers. God knows how willingly I would go.” [3]
Reflection Questions:
Whether it be wearing green, ordering a serving of corned beef and cabbage, or attending a social gathering to mark the occasion, do you have any special St. Patrick’s Day memories or rituals that you celebrate?
What might be a cultural heritage that you treasure? How do you celebrate or observe this heritage?
Consider the new arrivals coming to Chicago in 2025. Do we as a university or larger community welcome their presence and affirm their dignity, as our Vincentian mission urges us to do?
Reflection by: Tom Judge, Chaplain and Assistant Director, Division of Mission and Ministry
[1] From its earliest days, DePaul was unique among higher education institutions in admitting students from many faith traditions, not just Catholic, without quotas being attached. Unfortunately, at the beginning we were less inclusive when it came to women, not admitting our first female students until 1911.
Join the Global Engagement Conversation! DePaul faculty and staff, connect with our award-winning Global Engagement team to explore how Vincentian values shape multicultural experiences on campus and abroad. Learn how they support international students and discover ways to get involved in Global DePaul. Enjoy engaging conversation, community building, and a delicious lunch!
With the intent of nurturing our DePaul Catholic community spiritually (mass), and corporally (lunch and good community after!) we would love to have faculty and staff join us at this Catholic faculty and staff mass.
Please RSVP HERE to let us know you will be attending.
On the third Wednesday of each month, rotating between both campuses, DMM will now host a mass/lunch, especially for faculty and staff.
Written By: Miranda Lukatch, Editor, Vincentian Studies Institute
Photo by Chaewul Kim
When you are always striving for something, it’s easy to think that what you are doing is not enough and to internalize things that reinforce that view. Although I am not Catholic, I attended 8 years of Catholic school, which required me to take several theology classes and reflect on the Bible. One of the verses that stuck with me was Matthew 5:48, which is one that perfectionists of all faiths or beliefs may find affecting or even disturbing. It reads, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [1] As Vincent de Paul himself very relatably said, “That’s aiming high; who can reach it? To be perfect as the Eternal Father is perfect!” [2] This seems like an impossible standard, and it has troubled me for a long time. So, I began to research the verse.
It turns out that this is one of the most mistranslated and misinterpreted verses of the Bible. The Greek word that has been translated as “perfect” is teleios, which means “complete” or “mature.” Scholar Bonnie Bowman Thurston notes that the verse, which occurs within the context of loving one’s enemies, indicates a “perfection in love” that “contemplates all persons alike from the standpoint of God.” It is a call for “observable dedication to certain qualities of conduct. Perfection . . . does ‘not imply complete sinlessness and full virtue as matters of fact.’” [3] She adds that “perfection is not a completed state of being; it is not an abstraction. It is the person of Jesus whom we grow toward and follow after in order to complete or mature ourselves. Our perfection is, in modern parlance, ‘in process.’” [4]
Vincent had a similar insight. He observed, “Whom can we call perfect? No one on this earth. . . . Anyone who strives to know himself well will see many weaknesses and failings in himself, and will even acknowledge that he can’t help having them.” [5] He defined perfection as growing in holiness, which meant aligning a person’s will to God’s and imitating Christ’s behavior as much as possible. [6] Under this definition, we are always supposed to be striving, but we gain righteousness through God’s love, not through our own effort. In earthly life, the striving, the effort itself, is perfection because it’s as close as we can get to being like God.
You don’t have to be Christian or even believe in God to take comfort in the advice that Vincent gave his followers about pursuing perfection. He said, “True, solid holiness consists in this: doing well what you do.” [7] In a later conference he qualified it, adding the phrase “as far as our human weakness . . . allows.” [8] That is liberating for perfectionists. It is enough that we try our best while recognizing and accepting that we have limitations.
Reflection Questions:
What does it mean to “do well what you do” within the context of your work at DePaul?
How does your work contribute to your overall efforts to pursue goodness? If you’re a perfectionist, what are some ways in which taking stock of these efforts allows you to be gentler to yourself in self-assessments?
Reflection by: Miranda Lukatch, Editor, Vincentian Studies Institute
[6] For more on these ideas, see conference 180, “Observance of the Rules,” May 17, 1658, ibid., 12:2n5; conference 143, “Repetition of Prayer,” October 17, 1655, ibid., 11:286. Available online at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vincentian_ebooks/37/; and conference 196, “Members of the Congregation and their Ministries (Common Rules, Chap. 1, Art. 2 and 3),” December 13, 1658, ibid., 12:93.
All are invited to join for the following prayer services on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten Season in the Christian tradition—a season for prayer, fasting, and giving alms in preparation for Easter. Come for prayer, community, and ashes that remind us of our ultimate reliance on God.
Faculty and Staff are Invited…
Join the Global Engagement Conversation! DePaul faculty and staff, connect with our award-winning Global Engagement team to explore how Vincentian values shape multicultural experiences on campus and abroad. Learn how they support international students and discover ways to get involved in Global DePaul. Enjoy engaging conversation, community building, and a delicious lunch!
With the intent of nurturing our DePaul Catholic community spiritually (mass), and corporally (lunch and good community after!) we would love to have faculty and staff join us at this Catholic faculty and staff mass.
Please RSVP HERE to let us know you will be attending.
On the third Wednesday of each month, rotating between both campuses, DMM will now host a mass/lunch, especially for faculty and staff.
This week the worldwide Christian community celebrates Ash Wednesday, the traditional beginning of the Lenten season. The annual season of Lent is an individual and communal religious practice inviting Christians to a period of focused attention on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It lasts over 40 days, the amount of time Jesus faced temptation in the desert before his public ministry began, as recorded in three of the four Christian gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).
Religious holy days, holy weeks, holy months, or holy seasons, such as Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, are commonplace in many religious traditions. The global Muslim community recently initiated the annual religious practice of Ramadan. Jewish people will soon celebrate Passover in April. Other major and minor religious holidays occur throughout the year among these three Abrahamic faiths, as well as in many other religious, spiritual, and cultural communities.
Human beings are often aided by ritual practice. Aristotle said that we are what we do repeatedly. Mindfulness practitioners speak of the importance of the consistency of its practice, and psychologists tell us that habits practiced regularly over time can lead to the changes we seek. Through the pervasiveness of religious holidays, and, as Christians initiate the season of Lent, we are reminded that what we practice regularly shapes who we are and who we become.
Conveniently falling a few months after New Year’s resolutions were pronounced, perhaps these next 40 days of Lent can offer a booster shot or a restart to the vision you may have identified for yourself at the time. Repeating encouragement from a past pre-Lenten reflection, perhaps we might also use this season of Lent for organizational purposes, as an institution founded in the Catholic tradition, to reflect together on how we can refresh our work with renewed positivity, hope, creativity, and commitment. To quote an often-used Scripture text [1] during Ash Wednesday services: “Behold, now is a very acceptable time” to get started on habits that will aid us in becoming more fully who we are called or inspired to be.
Reflection Questions:
What is the vision you had for the year 2025 when it began three months ago, and what is still possible for you to renew or begin (again)?
What is one individual or communal practice that you could strive to make a regular habit over the next 40 days?
Is there a team or group of people with whom you might initiate a shared practice?
The season of Lent runs from Ash Wednesday on March 5th through Easter on Sunday, April 20th. Learn more about DePaul University’s Ash Wednesday services here.
Reflection by: Mark Laboe, Interim VP for Mission and Ministry
All are invited to join for the following prayer services on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten Season in the Christian tradition—a season for prayer, fasting, and giving alms in preparation for Easter. Come for prayer, community, and ashes that remind us of our ultimate reliance on God.
From Seeds to STEM
