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.
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
Reflection by: Roxanne Farwick Owens, Associate Professor, Teacher Education, College of Education
“God allows [us] to give rise to the practice of two beautiful virtues: perseverance, which leads us to attain the goal, and constancy, which helps us to overcome difficulties.” [1] — Vincent de Paul
In this season of setting resolutions, let’s think about the virtues of perseverance and constancy. If those came naturally to us, we would not be among the 43% of Americans who give up their goals by mid-January, or the 91% who throw in the towel by early March. Examining Saint Vincent’s quote above more closely, we see a few important words beyond perseverance and constancy: “practice” and “overcoming difficulties.” There are going to be roadblocks and we’re going to have to practice how to get around them. Why are we surprised when we are presented with difficulties in meeting our goals?
We live in a society that values immediacy and quick results. We can’t order express delivery of accomplished resolutions from Amazon. Success takes time. We have to remind ourselves to celebrate each success along the way. We may not have hit our final target yet, but we’re on the way. And we have to grant ourselves grace if we take a step off the path once in a while.
Speaking of hitting targets, I love to bowl, even though I am terrible at it. (I’m not being modest. I am really bad, but I have a good time.) In bowling, the ultimate goal is to knock down the ten pins at the end of the 60-foot lane. There is a lot involved in a proper bowler’s stance, the steps you take, how you hold the ball, the way you swing your arms, and your follow-through. One of the biggest surprises to me? Successful bowlers don’t focus primarily on the 10 pins at the end of the 60-foot lane. They use the arrows and dots on the lane just past the foul line to help them aim their ball at the target. In other words, they focus on what is right in front of them. They know where the strike zone is—but they keep their eyes on what is closer to them to guide their path to success.
Another interesting thing about bowling is that the ball doesn’t have to actually hit all 10 pins to result in a strike. If the ball hits 4 specific key pins, there is a domino effect, and the rest will all fall. If the ball hits other random pins, it can result in dreaded combinations of splits. It will still be possible to achieve a strike, but it will be more difficult. So, as we fine-tune our resolutions, perhaps rather than considering all the many ways we could improve ourselves, we can narrow down to a few “key pins.” Working toward achieving a few key targets sounds so much more do-able than splitting our focus among multiple goals.
And perhaps on those really tough days when we want to abandon our resolutions, we can say to ourselves, “Saint Vincent said there would be days like this.” And then we can pick up the next ball and smash right through that obstacle.
I am going to consistently ask myself four key questions this year that might also be useful to you:
How have I practiced taking risks toward growth this week?
In what ways have I assessed and avoided conditions that might make me veer off-course, so I don’t get stuck behind a roadblock?
Have I regularly granted myself grace and celebrated victories large and small to keep up motivation and maintain perseverance?
Am I remembering to use the arrows right in front of me to guide the steps along my path, rather than focusing only on the end goal?
Reflection by: Roxanne Farwick Owens, Associate Professor, Teacher Education, College of Education
[1] The original quote is in reference to boredom, but making this slight change to the wording (see bracketed “us”) does not alter Vincent’s intentions nor the quote’s universal meaning. Letter 1228, “To Guillaume Cornaire, in Le Mans,” June 15, 1650, CCD, 4:36–7.
Reflection by: Mark Laboe, Interim Vice President, Mission and Ministry
A very influential and helpful idea on my personal spiritual journey emerged for me decades ago when I read This Blessed Mess: Finding Hope Amidst Life’s Chaos by Patricia Livingston. The simple yet profound main idea that captured my attention and that I internalized was this: just as God created life, love, and beauty out of darkness and chaos (see Genesis), so must we be agents of the ongoing creative process in our own lives, during which we often face moments of chaos. Furthermore, there is a creative energy that is present within the chaos of our lives that can ultimately become transformative and life-giving. Grasping this idea conceptually is one thing, but living it is another.
Fortunately, life inevitably provides a lot of practice by bringing us situations that feel like chaos again and again over the course of a lifetime. This might take the form of heartbreaking and tragic losses, illness and injury, or seemingly impossible situations in which the whole world seems to be against us. We may also have to deal with the painful aftermath of harmful human decisions and actions, whether our own or those of others (such as war and violence, greed, or ego-driven and self-centered behaviors). Whatever form it takes, the word “mess” is an unfortunately adequate description for what we often face in our lives. How could this “mess” possibly be “blessed”?
One piece of adult wisdom that helps us get through such moments comes in remembering simply that “this too shall pass.” I have heard it suggested that the difference between the child and the adult is that that adult knows the moment will pass. A child or adolescent is without the life experience to know that a painful life situation will eventually give way. Christian theology holds the profound understanding of the paschal mystery, modeled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, to understand that there is hope and the potential for new life and redemption on the other side of death and suffering.
In fact, each “blessed mess” offers us an opportunity to clarify and define who we are and who we will become moving forward from that difficult moment. It is an opportunity to create and re-create our lives, grounded in the values and actions we know or believe to be good, true, and beautiful, and for the betterment of humanity. Victor Frankl, the famous Holocaust survivor, is known to have said that “everything can be taken from a (person) but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” [1] Though I may first complain and cry in the face of chaos, sometimes I can also then laugh out loud when things start piling up on me and I realize that I am more… and life is more… than what I am experiencing in that moment. I am encouraged when I consider the freedom that I have to choose how I will face it.
Moments of “chaos” lead me repeatedly to the question: What anchors and guides me now and ultimately? What values and commitments do I want my life to reflect, and do I want to choose to live into in this moment? Which are most consistent with who I know myself to be and believe I was created by God to become? And how can we answer these questions in applying them to ourselves as a community?
Institutions and communities go through similar moments. Yet, making a shared commitment or “attitude adjustment” as a collective is quite a bit more complicated than just deciding to do so for oneself. It can be work, and it can require patience, empathy, generosity, love, and courage to get all on the same wavelength. Yet, having a shared mission to draw on can help a community like ours at DePaul. As we move through difficult and uncertain moments, our periods of chaos can become opportunities for clarification, for remembering and re-committing to each other, and for carefully discerning the values and sense of vocation that anchor and guide us.
I have often heard two related African proverbs quoted that emphasize the communal nature of the human person. They serve as important reminders about how we may best move through communal moments of chaos. One states that “no one goes to heaven alone,” and another is, “If you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go together.” In a society and world that is so often individualistic or that struggles to bridge divides, such a communal mindset is countercultural. However, at DePaul, we often point to an understanding that we are a “community gathered together for the sake of the mission.” This is a modern take on the initials C.M. for Congregation of the Mission, the apostolic community we may better know as the Vincentians, established by Vincent de Paul. Our mission, therefore, offers us the encouragement and the charge to be countercultural in working and caring for the good of the whole, rather than simply defending our own individual positions or being satisfied simply with “going it alone.”
To move through moments of chaos in our lives, then, we benefit from seeing them as opportunities to anchor ourselves more deeply in what is most important and most true to who we are, and to do so together with others. The moment will pass, and we will endure. The question that remains throughout it all is who we will become in the process. Such moments reveal the ultimate gift and test of our human freedom, our identity, and our mission.
Reflection by: Mark Laboe, Interim Vice President, Mission and Ministry
New Student Fellowship will focus on interfaith dialogue and bridgebuilding
As a Vincentian institution, DePaul’s mission calls the university community to support the integral human development of students in a diverse, multifaith and inclusive community. A new student fellowship program will contribute to this goal by combining Interfaith America’s curriculum and a sustainable, distributed program model rooted in the student experience to engage students in leveraging their strengths to find solutions to issues important to them.
Between 40 and 50 students will have the opportunity to gain transformative skills in interfaith dialogue and facilitation through a $6,832 grant from Interfaith America, a Chicago-based nonprofit that provides consultation and training to “unlock the potential” of religious diversity and to foster a vibrant pluralism. Fellowships are open to student leaders in the Division of Mission and Ministry (DMM) and from the broader campus community.
At a time when many DePaul community members are personally experiencing the pain and anguish of a divided and war-torn world, this collaboration with Interfaith America offers opportunities for the healing, sharing and restoration that our community needs.
The Student Bridgebuilding Fellowship begins with information sessions and a community building brunch on Nov. 1, 2024, in Arts and Letters room 211. Sessions will take place at 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. and will last an hour. Attendance at one of the information brunches is required to apply to the fellowship. Students will then complete a brief application and be notified of their selection for the program.
Throughout the winter quarter, fellows will participate in sessions co-facilitated and guided by staff members who were trained last summer at the Interfaith America Bridging the Gap seminar. Each session will include time for making connections between DePaul’s Vincentian mission and the curriculum called the “Vincentian Voice.”
Using a distributed model of leadership, each student leader will be asked to engage their peers in bridgebuilding skills during the spring quarter. Fellows will use the spring quarter to share their wisdom and new skills with peers on campus, generating enthusiasm and invitations for the following year. Seniors will be gifted special cords for graduation, indicating their training as a Bridgebuilding Fellow.
I have been moved over the last several years by the need for “refounding” our DePaul mission for our current and emerging context, if it is to endure for our next 125 years. [1] There has been a growing recognition of the need to deepen the integration of our Catholic and Vincentian mission into the fabric of our community and institutional practices if our mission is to be sustained in a meaningful way for the future. Since the mid-1990s, this pressing need has been identified in multiple institutional strategic plans. Every year, we move further in the direction of a need for this effort to be led and sustained primarily by laypeople. Those who work and study here at DePaul will ultimately steward this mission well into the future.
So, 126 years since our foundation in 1898, what is needed for a process of “refounding” our mission to take place?
One important step that has been well underway for many decades now is the ongoing, thoughtful study of and reflection on our history, including our original foundation and our evolving sense of purpose over time. We may trace our history as an institution to 1898. However, our roots go much deeper and trace back to the historical example and spirit of Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac in seventeenth-century France, and to the larger Vincentian Family that grew out of their life’s work. This family includes, for example, the Daughters of Charity and figures like Frédéric Ozanam, founder of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, which now includes over 800,000 laypeople throughout the world inspired by this same history and spirit. In this refounding effort, we should ask ourselves the perpetual question of how the original intuition and mission of Vincent and Louise, as contextualized by the history of their day, can be most faithfully lived out and re-contextualized for today.
We cannot go far in this reflection and the work of re-contextualizing the Vincentian mission without also refounding ourselves in a profound and relevant understanding of our Catholic identity. As the Catholic identity of Vincent and Louise inspired, guided, and shaped their lives and work, so also our Catholic roots remain integral to the very foundation, history, and unfolding identity of DePaul University. Without attention to our Catholic roots and the way in which they inform and ground the adjective “Vincentian,” we risk losing our fundamental orientation and the guardrails that keep us moving in the same spirit of Vincent and Louise, who sought to embody the love or “caritas” of God, as modeled in Jesus.
Because our mission ultimately lives in and is sustained by people, another essential aspect of any refounding of our mission comes in the engagement and ongoing formation of DePaul students, faculty, staff, and leadership. “Formation” is a concept often used in Catholic circles, essentially to mean the integral development of people, including their spiritual development. The strong and ongoing formation of people who are prepared to help integrate a sense of mission into their work is necessary to sustain the mission of the institution for the future. In our work in Mission and Ministry, we speak of the need to develop and support a distributed network of leaders for mission throughout the university community if we are to enliven our mission.
Finally, in thinking about refounding our mission, a vital energy source for this work ultimately lies in our individual and collective openness to personal renewal and transformation. Especially in a cultural epoch of rapid change, we need to commit, in an ongoing way, to deepening our own spiritual roots so that we can withstand the many challenges that such constant changes can bring and to respond effectively and faithfully to the needs and signs of the times.
Now, some questions for consideration:
· What do you believe is necessary for DePaul’s Catholic and Vincentian mission to be “refounded” in a way that positions us well to launch our next 125 years?
· What are the action steps you would suggest individuals, departments, teams, or the university take to solidify the integration of our Catholic and Vincentian mission into the life of the university?
· What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats that we need to consider as we engage in this process?
If you have any thoughts or ideas on these questions, I would appreciate hearing your comments.
Reflection by: Mark Laboe, Interim VP for Mission and Ministry
[1] The notion of the renewal or “refounding” of religious communities or institutions is based on historical evidence suggesting that those that have thrived over long periods have periodically been “re-founded” in ways that help them to adapt and remain relevant and vibrant in new historical contexts. The work of Gerald Arbuckle and Diarmuid O’Murchu suggests that the failure to evolve in new contexts leads to a rigidity and loss of dynamism that ultimately causes the demise of institutions. See: Gerald Arbuckle, Out of Chaos: Refounding Religious Congregations (1988), and Culture, Inculturation and Theologians: A Postmodern Critique (2010), and Diarmuid O’Murchu, Religious Life in the 21st Century: The Process of Refounding (2016).
“Holiness consists in this: doing well what you do, in conformity to your vocation.”
–Vincent de Paul
We have enough on our plate. And please remember, no one is asking us to be Saint Mother Teresa. We are all challenged enough each day with the ongoing invitation to become most fully and authentically who God has called us to be. That is, to become self-giving, for our own fulfillment and joy, as well as for the benefit of others. Therefore, what I do ask is that you consider what you must do to attend to your unique talents and how to offer them to a world greatly in need of them.
This ever-present call to honor our unique vocation is true for individuals—and it is also true for institutions. We are not Harvard, nor Notre Dame, nor a public state-sponsored university, nor are we called to be. Rather, we are DePaul University, with our own unique history, present-day context, and reason for being. Institutionally, we, too, can benefit from remembering who we are and thereby growing more into who we can become for the world’s sake.
It has long been my contention that this focus on vocation—or purpose, mission, reason for being, or contribution to the world—is at the heart of what our Catholic and Vincentian mission is for all those who work and study here at DePaul. It is a threshold concept that moves or reframes our thinking about who we are into a transcendent dimension while grounding us in the realities of the present moment. It is a concept that can be articulated or understood in different ways appropriate for the diverse community we are and seek to serve. It is relevant to every academic discipline and area of work. It names a profound aspect of the human experience that is essential to the “integral human development” and the “way of wisdom” that we profess are central to our institutional mission. What is the unique contribution we can make to the world and those around us—in this moment, and in the entire arc of our lifetime? This question always beckons us forward.
This summer, all those around you at DePaul and beyond will benefit if you do what you must to reconnect to who you are most deeply, to that which you know you have to offer our community, and to what makes you come alive. If you work for the university, take a moment to re-center on what you know that you and DePaul have to offer to our students and to society. Envision your work within this larger frame of reference.
It is a simple concept, but that does not mean it is easy to do or to sustain. Yet taking time and space now and again to remember who we are, and to re-center ourselves in our vocation, makes a world of difference to our lives and to those around us. Therefore, I encourage you, in the words of Vincent de Paul, “Please be steadfast in walking in the vocation to which you are called.”
Reflection Questions:
When you engage the question, “What must be done?” in your own life and growth as a person to become who you are called to be, what comes to mind for you?
How do you understand DePaul University’s institutional vocation?
How can you use the summer weeks—individually and with those you work most closely—to re-ground yourself in your own vocation or connect your daily work more consciously to DePaul’s mission?
Reflection by: Mark Laboe, Interim Vice President, Mission and Ministry
2 Howard Thurman, well-known theologian and spiritual advisor to many in the US civil rights movement, once famously said: “Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
3 Letter 1824, “To a Priest of the Mission,” January 2, 1655, CCD, 5:256.
DePaul University’s St. Vincent’s Circle celebrates its 20th anniversary October, 2015, since its dedication in 1995. (DePaul University/Josh Woo)
What does it mean for our beloved Vincentian mission to be integrated effectively into the daily life and work of the university community, in and out of the classroom?
This question is often top of mind for those of us working in Mission and Ministry and for many leaders for mission across the institution. Collectively, we hope that tangible evidence of our mission is woven regularly into the fabric and culture of all that happens at DePaul. Into the workplace environment. Into the classroom and the student experience. Into how decisions are made. Into plans for the future. Into how we evaluate our efforts and programs. In the way we frame our daily work as part of something bigger than ourselves. At DePaul, our mission is the essential ingredient mixed into all we do and create.
One theologian used the metaphor of yeast to describe the integration and flourishing of mission within Catholic universities in a pluralistic context. [1] Another metaphor often referenced in the world of Catholic theology is that of seeds already present in different contexts and cultures, needing only to be nurtured to flourish. [2] You may recall a somewhat recent campaign we did at DePaul called “Seeds of the Mission,” which built on this idea. Both metaphors help us to recognize the ways in which our Catholic Vincentian mission is already present and has opportunities to grow and be deepened among us and in our shared work.
But what does mission integration mean?
As we reflect on our work in light of the ongoing responsibility to understand more about DePaul’s stated mission and its deeper Vincentian roots, a shorthand construct and starting point emerge from the recognition that our mission is relevant in several different ways:
Why? What is motivating and orienting our actions and choices? How do they reflect our fundamental purpose and deeper sense of vocation, individually and collectively, to contribute to a more just and compassionate society?
What? How do the choices we make about what we do or how we spend our time and resources reflect consideration of our mission? How do we include care and concern for those who are marginalized?
How? How does the way we do what we do reflect the personalism, professionalism, and institutional values that we have come to understand as essential to the Vincentian way?
Who? How do I understand my own unique vocation as a person, an educator, a professional, or a leader and how does this frame my specific work and role? And, how do those we include and invite reflect the rich diversity of our human community? Are we paying attention to equity, to who is “at the table,” and to those who may be excluded?
Of course, even responding to these questions and different dimensions of mission integration requires additional considerations if we are to move toward concrete action. This is the careful discernment and collective wisdom that precedes action and that we have reclaimed again recently as Vincentian Pragmatism, which is qualitatively different from “just do it.”
The vital work of mission integration requires intentionality and care on the part of everyone at DePaul. The distinctiveness and foundational spirit of our mission are sustained only when it is thoughtfully and habitually part of our daily actions and choices and the way we function together as a human community, whether that be facilitating programs for students, teaching, leading teams of people, making budget decisions, doing research, or relating to one another. Each of these actions can reflect the underlying spirit we have come to identify as characteristically Vincentian, infusing our DePaul community and the work we do with a deeper sense of purpose and what many of us deem a sacred dimension.
Reflection Questions:
Which of the mission integration questions or dimensions (why, what, how, and who) do you most easily answer in relation to how mission is relevant to your life and work at DePaul? Which is most difficult to answer and why?
What ideas do you have for further integrating or sustaining Vincentian mission in your own area of work or within the university community?
Reflection by:Mark Laboe, Interim VP for Mission and Ministry
[2] The image of the “seeds of the Word” is used by Saint Justin Martyr in the second century and is highlighted often in the field of Catholic missiology. One helpful summary of this idea, framed by a larger conversation about the importance of interreligious dialogue, is written by one of the leading Catholic theologians in this field, Stephen Bevans, SVD. See his “Practices of Mission: Interreligious and Secular Dialogue,” convocation speech, 2013 Missional Church Convocation, July 2013, Chicago, IL, https://centerforparishdevelopment.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/interreligious/.
