An image each Vincentian should consider!
It is a simple image of people imperiled by a river flooding out of control. Read on to learn how a Franciscan uses that image to explore various approaches to saving people.
He writes…
I think there are three basic levels of social ministry, and none is better than the other.
I believe all are the movement of the Holy Spirit within us for the sake of others.
I like to imagine a river flooding out of control—symbolizing the circumstances and injustices that bring about suffering—overflowing its banks and sweeping those in its path off their feet.
At the first level, we rescue drowning people from the swollen river, dealing with the immediate social problem right in front of us: someone hungry comes to our door and we offer them some food, or invite them inside.
These are hands-on, social service ministries, like the familiar soup kitchen or food pantry. Such works will always look rather generous, Christian, charitable, and they tend to be admired, if not always imitated.
At the second level, there are ministries that help people not to fall into the swollen river in the first place, or show them how to survive despite falling in.
In general, these are the ministries of education and healing. Most of the religious orders in the Catholic Church in the last three hundred years went in that direction, filling the world with schools, hospitals, and social service ministries that empowered people and gave them new visions and possibilities for their lives.
Finally, on the third level, some ministries build and maintain a dam to stop the river from flooding in the first place. This is the work of social activism and advocacy, critique of systems, organizing, speeches, boycotts, protests, and resistance against all forms of systemic injustice and deceit.
It is the gift of a few, but a much-needed gift that we only recently began to learn and practice. It seeks systemic change and not just individual conversion.
I don’t think most people feel called to activism; I myself don’t. It was initially humiliating to admit this, and I lost the trust and admiration of some friends and supporters.
Yet as we come to know our own soul gift more clearly, we almost always have to let go of certain “gifts” so we can do our one or two things well and with integrity. I believe that if we can do one or two things wholeheartedly in our life, that is all God expects.
The important thing is that we all should be doing something for the rest of the world!
We have to pay back, particularly those of us born into privilege and comfort. We also must respect and support the other two levels, even if we cannot do them.
Avoid all comparisons about better or lesser, more committed or less committed; those are all ego games.
Only in our peaceful, mutual honoring do we show forth the glory of God.
Thus write Richard Rohr.
An examination of
Consciousness – How aware am I of my preferred approach to Vincentian service
Conscience – How have I failed to support those who engage in a Vincentian form of these ministries.
Commitment – What I can do to support those who engaged and gifted in on or other form of ministry,
Click below for an Audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk.
Very helpful distinctions — let me see how I and others fit in.
This is the best edition of “levels” of living out our charism I’ve run into. Noticed it was in other forms as well, but this is my first encounter. Thanks for this clarity. That third way is so hard–thanks to the Simon Campbells in our midst…. best I can do is honor and support it.
St. Vincent’s June 19, 1658 letter to a missionary reads in part:
“If you say you would not want to be a burden to the Company, you will not be; for the infirm are no burden to it, thank God. On the contrary, it is, in a certain sense, a blessing to have some. And if you were to convince yourself that your health would improve in your native place and you would have greater means to procure God’s glory there than elsewhere, that would be a ruse of the evil spirit who, by showing you a seeming, uncertain good, would try to make you leave an actual, real one.”
And the part that speaks about a “ruse of the evil spirit” seems to me to serve as a warning in regard to your, John, or Rohr’s, “Avoid all comparisons about better or lesser, more committed or less committed; those are all ego games.”
Like Thomas McKenna, I find this a helpful distinction of social ministry. Anyone of them is a movement of the Holy Spirit for the sake of those in need. Thanks for sharing this insight.