Saint Vincent describes the spirit of the Company very clearly (SV IX, 594-95):<\/p>\n
The spirit of your Company consists of three things: to love our Lord and to serve <\/i>him in a spirit of humility and simplicity. As long as charity, humility and simplicity exist among you, it may be said that the Company is still alive.<\/p>\n
Your Constitutions say the very same thing when they speak about the spirit of the Daughters of Charity: “The Evangelical virtues of humility, simplicity and charity are the path along which the Daughters of Charity should allow themselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit.”<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n I have already reflected with you on simplicity and humility. Today, let us focus on charity.<\/p>\n Jesus’ psychology, Saint Vincent writes in one of his letters, is caught up in two all-consuming directions, “his filial relationship with the Father and his charity toward the neighbor” (SV VI, 393)<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n “Let us give ourselves to God,” Saint Vincent says repeatedly to the Daughters of Charity, as well as to the Vincentians (cf. SV IX, 26, 534, 592; X, 513; XII, 323, 354). He has deep confidence in God as his Father, into <\/i>whose hands he can place himself and his works. The journal written by Jean Gicquel recounts how Vincent told Frs. Almeras, Berthe and Gicquel, on June 7, 1660, just four months before his death: “To be consumed for God, to have no goods nor power except for the purpose of consuming them for God. That is what our Savior did himself, who was consumed for love of his Father” (SV XIII, 179).<\/p>\n Saint Vincent wanted love for God to be all-embracing. He writes to Pierre Escart: “I greatly hope we may set about stripping ourselves entirely of affection for anything that is not God, be attached to things only for God and according to God, and that we may seek and establish his kingdom first of all in ourselves, and then in others, That is what I entreat you to ask of him for me” (SV II, 106).<\/p>\n Because God loves us deeply as a Father, he exercises a continual providence in our lives. In a letter to Bernard Codoing, Saint Vincent states: “The rest will come in its time. Grace has its moments. Let us abandon ourselves to the providence of God and be very careful not to run ahead of it. If it pleases God to give me some consolation in our vocation it is this: that I think, so it seems to me, that we have tried to follow his great providence in everything” (SV 11,453), Likewise he writes to Saint Louise de Marillac: “My God, my daughter, what great hidden treasures there are in holy providence and how marvelously our Lord is honored by those who follow it and do not kick against itr–<\/sup> (SV I, 68; cf. III, 197).<\/p>\n Saint Vincent’s teaching on providence rests on two foundation-stones: 1) deep confidence in God as a loving Father; 2) “indifference,” that is, “willing only what he wills” (SV V, 402).<\/p>\n One senses in this focus on providence a distinctively Lucan empha\u00adsis<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>. The Spirit of God is active from the beginning in Luke, guiding the course of history. He anoints Jesus with power from on high and directs him and his disciples in their ministry.”<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n Trust in providence is confidence in a loving Father. It shows itself in the ability to see beyond particular events to a larger picture, in patient waiting, in perseverance. But providence is also honored, as Saint Vincent pointed out, by using the means that God places at our disposal for accomplishing his goals<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>. If someone should be tempted to interpret Saint Vincent’s teaching on providence too passively, she might recall the founder’s words to Edme Jolly (SV VII, 310): “You are one of the few who honor the providence of God very much by the preparation of remedies against foreseen evils. I thank you very humbly for this and pray that our Lord will continue to enlighten you more and more so that such enlightenment may spread through the Company.”<\/p>\n While the Christ of Saint Vincent is “Lord” and “Son of God,” he lives in the person of the poor. He continues to suffer in them (SV X, 680)<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n He says to the Daughters of Charity on February 13, 1646: “In serving the poor, you serve Jesus Christ. 0 my Daughters, how true that is! You serve Christ in the person of the poor. That is as true as the fact that we are here” (SV IX, 252; cf. X, 123). He frequently cites Matthew 25:31-46 to reinforce the identification of Jesus with the poor<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>: “So this is what obliges you to serve them with respect, as your masters, and with devotion: that they represent for you the person of our Lord, who said: ‘Whatever you do for one of these, the least of my brethren, I will consider it as done to me’ ” (SV X, 332)<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n Because of this identification with Christ, the poor are “our lords and masters” (cf. SV IX, 119; X, 332). In drafting the rule for the Daughters, he writes that they should “love one another deeply, as sisters whom he has joined together with the bond of his love, and they should cherish the poor as their masters, since our Lord is in them, and they in Our Lord” (SV XIII, 540). He repeats the same theme to the priests and the brothers of the Mission: “Let us go then, my brothers, and work with a new love in the service of the poor looking even for the poorest and the most abandoned, recognizing before God that they are our lords and masters and that we are unworthy to render them our small services” (S V XI, 393). The Christ of Vincent, his “lord and master,” is therefore to be found in the sick, the prisoner, the galley-slave, the abandoned child, those ravaged by the religious wars of the day (SV X, 680).<\/p>\n Let me briefly mention two characteristics of love of neighbor, as taught by Saint Vincent to the Daughters of Charity.<\/p>\n a. The love of those living in the Vincentian spirit is to be both “affective and effective” (SV IX, 475, 592. 599; XI, 40). Saint Vincent repeats this theme over and over again. “The love of a Daughter of Charity is not only tender, it is effective, because they serve the poor effectively” (SV IX, 593).<\/p>\n b. They will minister to the poor “spiritually and corporally” (SV IX, 59, 593; XI, 364). This is clear not only in regard to the Daughters of Charity, but it is evident in the mandates that Saint Vincent gives to the various other groups he founded: the Congregation of the Mission, the Confraternities of Charity, and the Ladies of Charity. For Vincent, Jesus comes “to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord” (Lk 4:18). He comes to “save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21; cf. Lk 1:77). The Daughter of Charity, therefore, will tend not only to bodily needs; she will share her faith by her witness and her words. Saint Vincent, moreover, warns the members of the Congregation of the Mission that they should not think of their mission in exclusively spiritual terms<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span>. Rather, they too should care for the sick, the foundlings, the insane, even the most abandoned (SV XI, 393).<\/p>\n Today, the unity between evangelization and human promotion, so much a part of Saint Vincent’s spirit, is one of the linchpins in the Church’s social teaching<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n The emphasis in the Vincentian tradition is on practical <\/i>charity. Saint Vincent puts the accent on effective <\/i>love. It is as if he hears Jesus saying: “When I was hungry, not only did you sympathize with me, you gave me to eat. <\/i>When I was thirsty, not only did you look on me with compassion, but you gave me something to drink.” From the origins of the Company right up to the present, the world has recognized in the Daughter of Charity a woman of practical, concrete, effective love. It is in this way that she shows herself a daughter of God, who is love. Let me suggest four ways of loving concretely.<\/p>\n God’s love comes first. We give only what we have received.<\/p>\n A number of superiors and those responsible for formation programs today attest that a negative self-image is the root of many of the problems with which members of communities struggle. This being the case, let me suggest that, along with healthy, loving human relationships, acceptance of the Lord’s love is a key factor in the self-acceptance that enables us to love maturely. For many, work or achievements unfortunately play a disproportionate role in their feeling valued personally. But in the long run, genuine self-worth rests on a consciousness of the deep personal love of the Lord as Creator and Redeemer.<\/p>\nCharity: Developing a “Filial Relationship with the Father and Love for Our Neighbor”<\/i><\/h2>\n
1. A filial relationship with the Father and docility to his providence.<\/i><\/h3>\n
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Love for Christ in the person of the poor.<\/i><\/h3>\n
Some Means toward Practical Charity<\/i><\/h2>\n
1. Accepting the Lord’s love<\/i><\/h3>\n