vincentian question

Sustained by Deep Roots: Celebrating our Heritage

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“Nature makes trees put down deep roots before having them bear fruit, and even this is done gradually.”1

Over the next seven days we celebrate Vincent de Paul Heritage Week. This includes a series of events leading up to Vincent’s church-designated feast day on September 27th. These events are meant to invite the university community into a deeper reflection on our shared mission and heritage, which traces all the way back to seventeenth-century France.

When facing urgent and troubling challenges such as those of our present reality, you may ask why spend our time and energy remembering historical roots going back over 400 years? How do the words and actions of those who have preceded us and lived in such different contexts so long ago speak to us now? How can this focus on history help us to discern a meaningful and relevant mission for today?

Ultimately, whenever we reflect on our sense of mission, whether personal or institutional, we are asking: what is essential to who we are? Thinking about such profound questions may spark a religious, spiritual, or philosophical impulse in us, including a consideration of our origin stories. From where do we come and why were we created? Is there a purpose to our existence? If so, who are we called to be and what are we called to do? Storytelling traditions surrounding the origins of communities of people have been common since the dawn of humanity. These stories often help us to hold and communicate values, meaning, purpose, and a sense of connectedness with one other, as well as to engage present-day circumstances with a deeply formed sense of identity.

We have a storytelling tradition at DePaul University. It is passed on within the history of the Congregation of the Mission and all those in the Vincentian family who live and sustain our shared, foundational mission rooted in the lives of Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac. Over his many years at DePaul, Vincentian historian, Fr. Edward R. Udovic, C.M., often reminded us that in order for the lessons of history to be meaningfully re-contextualized for today, we must first understand the historical background from which these gifts emerged.

In other words, our efforts today to be rooted in and clarify our common mission as an institution comes with a two-fold responsibility. First, we must continually seek to better understand the historical roots and foundational stories of the Vincentian family, which ultimately gave birth to DePaul University. Second, we must seek to faithfully discern how those roots can be extended creatively and effectively to sustain our lives and work today. This is so even considering that the current challenges and opportunities we face could never have been imagined by Vincent de Paul hundreds of years ago.

The roots that have sustained our Vincentian tradition over time are characterized by a generous and caring spirit, essential to both historical and modern-day Vincentian communities, religious and lay. It is a spirit that focuses its efforts and attention on the service of those in society who are most in need. It asks critical questions about who is being left out or marginalized and seeks to affirm their dignity. It is a spirit that works to change social, economic, and political systems for the better.

When we reflect upon our Vincentian heritage this week, we do so with great humility, a virtue many recognized in Vincent de Paul. We do so with a willingness to acknowledge how far we still must go to live up to the deep, time-tested ideals that urge us forward. We take heart in knowing we are not alone on this journey. In fact, we join the decades and centuries old caravan of those who have also taken the Vincentian spirit to heart and sought to improve the lives of others.

To be Vincentian is to ask, as Madame de Gondi did of Vincent de Paul, “What Must be Done?” It is to get up day-after-day and continue our mission by taking concrete action. In times like these that challenge society and our institution, we are indeed fortunate for the deep roots of our mission.

Reflection Question:

How do the deep roots of our Vincentian mission and story inform your approach to today’s challenges?

1 1796, To Charles Ozenne, Superior, In Warsaw, Paris, 13 November 1654, CCD, 5:219.

 

Reflection by Mark Laboe, Associate VP for Mission and Ministry

 

See all the Vincent de Paul Heritage Week Events

What Must Be Done?

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This past weekend we celebrated the graduating Class of 2020. After years of hard work and perseverance, our students are ready to go out and change the world. We, as a DePaul community, have prepared them to thrive, care for others, and act justly. We have given them the tools to act upon the Vincentian question, both in their lives and in their communities, “what must be done?”

However, as we celebrate the accomplishments of the Class of 2020, we must also recognize that our job as a Vincentian, Catholic, and urban university is not done. Our world is broken. We must look ahead to the Class of 2021 and our incoming Class of 2024 and ask how are we preparing them to change, or even heal, our broken world? What action must the DePaul community take today to ensure that future classes flourish. Perhaps in 50 years theirs will be a world that is more just, more loving, filled with students whose experience of our broken world is only to be found in history textbooks?

Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac lived in a society marred by systemic inequality. They asked and strived to answer, “what must be done?” Today, inspired by our shared mission, we seek to emulate Vincent and Louise by asking that same question. To follow in their footsteps we recognize, as Vincent did, that “having charity in our heart and words isn’t everything, it has to be put into action.”1

What is one way you can personally take action to help fix our broken world? What must we do to better teach, advise, or support the Classes of 2021, 2024, or 2070, to build a world in which all can thrive?

1) 207, Charity (Common Rules, Chap. 2, Art. 12), 30 May 1659, CCD, 12:223.

 

Reflection by:

Michael Van Dorpe, Program Manager for Faculty and Staff Engagement, Division of Mission & Ministry

 

Read the Division of Mission and Ministry Statement on the Dignity of Black Lives

Seeing with Vincentian Eyes

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You will attain this happiness if you practice faithfully humility, gentleness, and charity toward the poor…1

Vincent de Paul remembered the moment captured in the featured illustration as pivotal for him in transforming his sense of mission and vocation. The sacred dignity of this poor, dying peasant became evident to him. With Madame de Gondi’s help, Vincent came to realize there were many people like this who lacked vital spiritual and physical care, and that existing systems within both the Church and society routinely neglected their needs.

Over time, Vincent de Paul grew to be consistent in living the mission he professed. He encouraged his companions to look at reality through the perspective of those enduring poverty, those who suffered basic needs, or those who were routinely left out by the status quo of church, state, and society at the time. He would ask his community, in essence: What do these people need and how do our actions and decisions impact them? How can our resources be used to better serve them? Vincent further recognized the importance of forming leaders who shared his vision and were committed to this sense of mission. He envisioned a community of solidarity that surrounded and supported people in need, and in so doing, enabled all to flourish.

Compassion and care for those struggling with the effects of material and systemic poverty is essential to a Vincentian perspective. Their realities make a claim on us, inviting us to take action. They call us to make changes individually and collectively to address their immediate needs, as well as to confront the root causes of their suffering. This is what we are challenged to do when asking ourselves what has come to be known as the Vincentian question: “What must be done?”

The COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath have required us to make difficult decisions about what we value, as well as the vision we will pursue, both individually and collectively. Vincent’s example invites us to center the perspective of those in poverty, or of those suffering or in pain, and to care for them. Currently, this includes those facing the horrible effects of COVID-19, those who have died, those who have lost loved ones, or those struggling because of unemployment. Vincent’s vision ensures that all people experience a sense of human community and that they are given both the opportunities and resources necessary to flourish. For Vincent, safeguarding hope for those left behind or forgotten by society, especially those in dire conditions, was a necessary part of working for the good of all humanity.

How might “seeing with Vincentian eyes” shape our vision for how to respond to the current crisis? For the education we offer? For the way we go about business as a university? What does it invite you to consider in your work as a colleague, or in your role as a neighbor, citizen, or family member?

1 2787, To Sister Françoise Ménage, In Nantes, 12 February 1659, CCD, 7:471.

Reflection by:

Mark Laboe
Associate Vice President
Faculty and Staff Engagement
Division of Mission and Ministry

Vincentian Candor 101

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Is the world awash in duplicity?

When was the last time you heard the media report an incredulous story? Did you hear an inner voice say, “Now, I’ve heard it all!” Such occurrences seem more frequent these days than in the past.

The age of disputed questions did not end with Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth-century. The chicaneries of seventeenth-century France prompted Saint Vincent de Paul to exclaim, “The world is awash in duplicity.” (CCD, 10:58) The saint encouraged his collaborators to “have a candid heart and candid spirit.” (Ibid.) He instructed them how to engage appropriately in public discourse and civic rhetoric. They were “never to say anything contrary” to what they thought or to their principles. (CCD, 10:286)

Now, as does a toxin, polemical disputation permeates our national psyche. We are left to ask, What must be done? Perhaps Vincentian personalism is our answer. It promotes unity in diversity and emphasizes the common good of everyone. The Vincentian way is honest, forthright, and employs the art of conversation to speak respectfully and listen attentively with a “spirit of straightforwardness and simplicity,” and ultimately, integrity. (CCD, 34a:41)

 

Reflection by:

Betty Ann McNeil, D.C., Vincentian Scholar-in-Residence
Vincentian Studies Institute, Division of Mission and Ministry

Citation:
Conference 66, Secretiveness, CCD, 10:58; Conference 86, Uniformity, CCD, 10:286; Conference 34a, Simplicity with Crafty Persons, CCD, 34a:41.

The Vincentian Question

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As a church historian specializing in the history of the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians), Fr. Edward R. Udovic, C.M. addresses the historical context for the development of the “Vincentian Question: What Must Be Done?”  In this original essay, he speaks to the conditions of early 17th Century France and the responses of those involved in the Catholic Reformation of that time and how Vincent became the most prominent guide for channeling that spiritual movement into effective, practical action.

A modern-day application and recasting of this talk by Fr. Udovic is available at: youtube.com/watch?v=MK7sMN11p6s

 

Conversion and Discernment According to Vincent de Paul

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Edward Udovic writes, “For Vincent de Paul the life-long conversion required by a vocation to Christian discipleship begins with the prayerful discernment of God’s will in one’s day-to-day life, the free decision to accept that will in faith and love, and then, to the best of one’s ability, living that faith in action and love relying always on God’s grace.” To follow God’s will was to be as obedient to it as Christ was. For Vincent, doing God’s will meant evangelizing the poor as Christ did, accepting God’s grace to follow Providence, and recognizing that only God can know what the results of Providence will be. Further discernment was required to discover the best ways of doing this. Before such discernment was possible, it was necessary to cultivate indifference, or detachment from one’s own will and to hold oneself in complete “unrestricted readiness” for whatever God might require. Vincent’s advice on how to do this as part of conversion is described, as are the obstacles to such conversion. Grace was needed during this process as well. Questions of discernment for the modern Vincentian Family are included.

“Conversion and Discernment According to Vincent de Paul” is an article that was published in the Vincentian Heritage Journal, Volume 32, Issue 1, Article 1 (2015) available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vhj/vol32/iss1/1