Written by: Siobhan O’Donoghue, PhD, Director of Faculty and Staff Engagement, Division of Mission and Ministry

No matter how long you may have worked or studied at DePaul, I am pretty sure that by now you will have become familiar with the Vincentian question, “What must be done?”

This pivotal question was originally asked of Vincent by Mme de Gondi as they contemplated some of the deplorable conditions in which those living in poverty were existing in seventeenth-century France. It still has much relevance for us today. [1] Indeed, the question could be considered an unofficial motto for DePaul in today’s context.

In fact, we tend to hear this question so frequently that I sometimes wonder if it is at risk of losing its true meaning. As the question doesn’t offer any easy answers, it may occasionally sound hollow, or perhaps even perfunctory, as though it is stating the obvious. Yet, at the same time, the open-ended nature of these words may be their genius.

I was recently invited to reflect on this question anew through a poignant experience that occurred during immersion week as part of a Discover Chicago class that I was teaching. On the hottest day of the year, under a sweltering 97-degree sun, we had visited Pilsen to participate in a mural tour. This site visit is always one of the most popular, as we get to walk around Pilsen led by a dynamic tour guide, Luis, who accompanies us from mural to mural explaining the history of the neighborhood and helping us interpret the meaning behind each art piece.

This summer, we were undeniably flagging as we trudged through the Pilsen streets and alleyways. In the height of the afternoon sun, we struggled to maintain our focus on the wealth of information that was being shared, as we artfully sought to plant ourselves beneath any sliver of tree coverage or dappled sunlight that we could possibly find. As we paused to behold yet another striking piece of art, resplendent with layers of deep meaning, a street vendor selling popsicles happened to walk past us pushing a cart full of tempting cool refreshments. When he saw our group, he promptly sidled up to us, though with the large size of our group, there was no remaining shade under which he could shelter. As he rang his bell, he beckoned to us several times, petitioning us to buy something. A couple of us politely said no thanks and continued to listen to our guide. After waiting for several moments to see if there were any last-minute customers, the vendor moved on, disappearing into the haze of the blazing sunlight. We, too, continued along our way to stop at the next art piece, though clearly some of the group were more focused on when the tour might end, and when we would be able to escape the heat and rest. It had certainly been a long day.

At the end of immersion week, back in the air-conditioned classroom, the group was invited to reflect on the week’s many activities. One of the students chose to refocus our attention on our Pilsen experience, though she took a different angle than I might have imagined. In addition to acknowledging the intense heat of that day and expressing her appreciation of the various murals, this student’s most enduring memory was of the humble palatero, whom many of us had soon forgotten. As she recalled, “We were all so tired that day as we had been standing out in the hot sun for about an hour, but I also found myself wondering about the palatero and how he was. How many of us had truly seen him? We felt so exhausted standing outside in the sun for a bit, but he had probably been outside trying to make a small living from early that morning to late evening, and he would be out long after we had returned home. We were a large group. What would it have taken for one of us to buy something from him? How did we acknowledge his dignity? What might we have done differently?”

The prophecy and wisdom of this first-year student’s words invited the class to pause and enter a moment of deep reflection. What might the students have done differently? What might their professor?

When taken seriously, the Vincentian question asks us to consider not just what I must do, but also what you must do, and what we must do. It is an eternal question that does not offer immediate answers. It should not. Life is complicated, and discerning just action must involve myriad voices and endless possibilities.

From a Vincentian lens, a simple gesture that might start out by acknowledging the humanity of another, who may otherwise be forgotten or ignored by much of society, must also invite us to consider larger societal questions of equity and justice. For, in the tradition of Vincent, personalism must be informed by professionalism. Both invite us to integrate an affective and relational approach to the person in need in front of us while considering an effective, pragmatic, and systemic solution to the challenges that they may be facing.

I believe that the Vincentian question of what must be done, while it may feel overused at times, should never stop challenging each of us to plant seeds of goodness in the world today to leave it a better place than we found it. Who would have thought that a simple act, such as buying a refreshment from an outside vendor on a hot Chicago summer’s day, might present us with such a rich opportunity to embrace our mission anew?

Reflection Questions:

• Was there a pivotal moment in your DePaul career that challenged you to envision the mission anew?
• What is the one small action that you might do today with great love to continue to cultivate a culture of dignity at DePaul?

Reflection by: Siobhan O’Donoghue, PhD, Director of Faculty and Staff Engagement, Division of Mission and Ministry

[1] Edward R. Udovic, C.M., Ph.D., “‘Our good will and honest efforts.’ Vincentian Perspectives on Poverty Reduction Efforts,” Vincentian Heritage 28:2 (2010): 72. Available at: http://‌‌via.library.depaul.edu/vhj/vol28/iss2/5.

Since the revision of DePaul University’s mission statement in 2021, our documented commitment to sustainability “guides our actions as we respond to current realities while looking to the future and remaining faithful to our core values.” Environmental sustainability emerged as a necessary focus for a Vincentian institution today, largely because of the impact of climate change on some of society’s most vulnerable populations around the world, as well as on the future well-being of all on our planet. In carrying forward the spirit and mission of Saint Vincent de Paul, sustainability is identified as a fundamental and emerging commitment for DePaul:

We consider sustainability a meaningful way to frame a broader set of institutional and societal challenges relevant to our work as a university in the twenty-first century. As a university community, we are strongly motivated to action by the looming crises caused by climate change. We must ensure that DePaul’s education, research, and operations contribute to a sustainable future for our city and planet. Our role as educators compels us to prepare future generations with the proper knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary. We recognize the interdependence of environmental, human, and economic systems required by people around the globe to enjoy a healthy and fulfilling quality of life both now and in future.

Given this, and as we move through Sustainability Month this October, we are pleased to share the following update on the continued work of our Just DePaul team related to social and environmental justice.

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2024 has brought a number of flourishing sustainability events to DePaul’s campuses. From the creation of The Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) back in January, to the development of working groups in the President’s Sustainability Committee, to Earth Week events in April, and to our beginnings of developing a Climate Action Plan this fall, DePaul is engaging in sustainability in many ways. As always, through these actions we are seeking to answer the question, “What must be done?”

We at Just DePaul in the Division of Mission and Ministry dedicate our work to the advancement of sustainability as well as social and environmental justice initiatives across DePaul. We host quarterly network-weaving sessions that tackle various environmental and social justice questions like migration, food waste, housing access, and climate action plan development. In so doing, we want to recognize what Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Si’ says, which is that “we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation.” [1]

Did you know that according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), October is Campus Sustainability Month? Just DePaul created an October Sustainability Month Calendar, with the goal of uniting as many departments and clubs as possible around sustainability and environmental justice. This calendar encapsulates events from various departments and organizations around the Loop and Lincoln Park campuses. It offers all of us at DePaul the opportunity to participate in different types of sustainability and environmental-related events through engaging in community, service, and education.

Among these events are Climate Action Plan listening sessions, which will take place October 17th, 2024, at 1:30 PM in the Loop Campus, and October 22nd at 1:30 PM online. Our DePaul community will be able to discuss physical plant improvements to create initiatives that reduce our campuses’ carbon footprint. This will be an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to engage in improvement and innovation.

There are myriad opportunities to dive into sustainability at our university, all of which challenge us to think of environmental contexts and help to knit the tapestry that is DePaul closer together. As a community we can drive meaningful change for our environment and future, together.

Let us know how we can help at JUST@DEPAUL.EDU, and if you’d like to engage in any of these events, please see our Sustainability website: https://sustainability.depaul.edu/.

Also see:

• Sustainability Month Calendar
• Climate Action Plan – Physical Plant: Loop Listening Session
• Climate Action Plan – Physical Plant: Virtual Listening Session

Reflection Question:

• What more can you or your area do to contribute to DePaul’s efforts to become more environmentally sustainable?

Reflection by: Rhianna Herd, Sustainability Coordinator, Just DePaul

[1] Francis, Laudato Si’ (2015), 48.

In a remarkable scriptural teaching echoed throughout multiple faith traditions, we learn that for whoever takes a life it as if they killed the whole world, while for whoever saves a life it as if they saved the whole world (or all of humanity). [1] This is an incredible inspiration for those who engage in noble pursuits seeking to save human lives. [2] In line with our Vincentian mission, it is a powerful testament to the sacred dignity of the human person and a warning against the temptation to use violence.

Personally, I have been thinking about this teaching recently as a way to approach the incomprehensible loss associated with the taking of human life occurring through war and other forms of violence. No matter who this involves or where it takes place, with each human life lost it is as if all humanity has been lost. In a time saturated with information about loss of life near to us and around the world, lives become tallied by numbers. Yet, for anyone who has lost a single person they love, the magnitude of loss is immeasurable. In this case, one understands that a whole world has been lost, a world of value and a world yet to be fully explored. When we focus on a single loss that is dear to us, it often becomes too overwhelming to function. Multiplying that by every life taken and the suffering of the world seems too much to bear.

In the Qur’an we find the promise that “God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear.” [3] Many readers do find reassurance in this, that whatever they are struggling with, or whatever losses they are dealing with, they can make it through. Many others, though, find it hard to understand since so many people are burdened with what is quite clearly impossible to bear—the death of a child, chronic illness, crushing poverty, pervasive violence. One lesson of the verse is that God will not hold us to account for being placed in impossible situations. Another implication is that when facing impossibly difficult situations or unimaginably deep grief, we should realize we are not meant to try to bear these things alone.

Our Vincentian role models Saints Vincent and Louise encountered many of the overwhelming problems of their world: ignorance, poverty, sickness, loneliness, inequality. They realized that divine connection, community, and an organized and sustained effort was needed in response. They created communities organized around the mission of responding systemically to such needs, and to nurturing spirits in the process.

Most of us recognize that grief and the attempt to respond to grief, whether in ourselves or others, can take many forms. Sometimes people find community with which to share burdens and loss. Some seek help in prayer, some find healing through the arts. Some turn to political activism and find meaning through making change. Some find expressing their righteous anger at the perpetrators of injustice to be the best response. And some organize with others to provide humanitarian relief to those in desperate need.

All these responses help people to make meaning of what they’ve endured or witnessed, to strive to make a better world, or to just make it through the day. We may have a particular response that makes the most sense to us, or we may cycle through many of the above responses. Sometimes we may find the responses of others confusing, counterproductive, or even offensive. My invitation to us all is to start with reminding ourselves of the magnitude of the burdens people carry. In a large and diverse community such as DePaul University these burdens are countless. Some may be apparent and known to others, but more are hidden under the surface, or perhaps not even fully understood by people about themselves. Jesuit priest Father Greg Boyle talks about how everything changes when we make the choice to “stand in awe at what [people] have to carry rather than stand in judgement at how they carry it.” [4]

As we move forward in a city and a world wracked with immeasurable loss and a great deal of fear, let us not let the enormity of the world’s grief overwhelm us to the point of despair. Let us instead allow it to open us up to community and to awe at what many of those around us are carrying. For every evil we witness or loss that we suffer, there are many opportunities to do good, to spread beauty, to facilitate healing. Let us use our creativity, our intelligence, and our tenderness to shape productive and life-giving pathways for people to respond to the suffering of themselves and others.

For Reflection

What grief or anxiety are you most experiencing in these days? What are ways in which you respond to that suffering? What are some ways in which you might accompany others who are suffering?

Reflection by: Abdul-Malik Ryan, Assistant Director, Religious Diversity and Pastoral Care.

[1] From the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37A). Also cited in the Qur’an (5:32).

[2] It is memorably quoted in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (1993).

[3] Qur’an 2:286.

[4] Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York, NY: Free Press, 2010), 67.

I am writing this reflection in September 2024, well before Election Day, but still in the thick of American political passion. Regardless of the election’s outcome, it’s unlikely that the result will end the sense of overall polarization in our country caused by a myriad of issues, polarization that has been evident even in our own DePaul community over the past year. No matter which candidate people support, it sometimes seems difficult to believe that those who support the opposing candidate might share a similar sense of justice or morality. And yet this very feeling makes it all the more important for us to believe that they do. But why is this?

One reason is because it seems to be true. In an article for Time, journalist Karl Vick reports the results of several studies of American attitudes and how those translate into politics. He writes that in January 2021, a study surveying 2,000 people across the political spectrum asked them to consider fifty-five separate goals that the nation should have, and to rank them according to what was important to them personally and according to how important they believed other people thought they were. The results were surprising. For instance, the goal to “successfully address climate change,” was the third highest priority for the survey participants themselves, but these respondents ranked it thirty-third in their perception of its importance for other people. As Vick writes, “no one thought their fellow Americans saw climate as the high-priority item nearly everyone actually considered it to be.” This study, the American Aspirations Index, “found ‘stunning agreement’ on national goals across every segment of the U.S. population, including, to a significant extent, among those who voted for Donald Trump and those who voted for Joe Biden.” The polarization we have been hearing about on the news is something one scholar calls “learned divisiveness,” which is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy: people believe there’s more division than actually exists, and that, in turn, fuels further division. We would do well to keep this in mind before we vilify those who we believe think differently from us. [1]

Goodness transcends opposing viewpoints; justice is more than politics. We don’t have to look far into our Vincentian heritage to find reinforcement for this lesson. For example, Frédéric Ozanam, the key founder of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, knew it well. The nineteenth-century France he lived in was also bitterly divided into partisan groups. But he never lost sight of what this conflict was really about. He wrote:

“For, if the question which disturbs the world around us today is neither a question of political modalities, but a social question; if it is the struggle between those who have nothing and those who have too much … our duty to ourselves as Christians is to throw ourselves between these two irreconcilable enemies … to make equality as operative as is possible among men; to make voluntary community replace imposition and brute force; to make charity accomplish what justice alone cannot do.” [2]

If we are to work together to better our society, we must be prepared to approach each other with tolerance, at least. Vincent de Paul would go one step further: he would have us approach one another with love, looking for the goodness—and, indeed, the God—that exists in all of us. As he once said, “I have to love my neighbor as the image of God and the object of His Love.” [3] He pointed out that it’s easy to show respect to people we love and who think like us. But he asked,

“Have we felt less esteem and affection for certain persons? Do we not, from time to time, allow thoughts of this more or less? If that’s the case, we don’t have that charity which dismisses the first feelings of contempt and the seed of aversion; for, if we had that divine virtue, which is a participation of the Sun of Justice, it would dispel the mists of our corruption and make us see what’s good and beautiful in our neighbor in order to honor and cherish him for them.” [4]

So, as our future unfolds, let us follow one more of Vincent’s injunctions and “continue to offer one another to God and to love each other in Our Lord, as He has loved us.” [5]

Reflection Questions:

Has the polarization that seemingly permeates our society affected your view of others? How so? What are some ways you could look for the good in those with opposing viewpoints?

Reflection by: Miranda Lukatch, Editor, Vincentian Studies Institute

[1] All quotations in this paragraph are taken from Karl Vick, “The Growing Evidence That Americans Are Less Divided Than You May Think,” Time, July 2, 2024, https://time.com/6990721/us-politics-polarization-myth.

[2] Quoted in Craig B. Mousin, “Frédéric Ozanam―Beneficent Deserter: Mediating the Chasm of Income Inequality through Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” Vincentian Heritage 30:1 (2010): 62. Available online at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vhj/vol30/iss1/4/.

[3] Conference 207, “Charity (Common Rules, Chap. 2, Art. 12),” May 30, 1659, CCD, 12:217. Available online at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vincentian_ebooks/36/.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Letter 1663, “To Nicolas Guillot, in Warsaw,” October 10, 1653, CCD, 5:28. Available online at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vincentian_ebooks/30/.