Sometimes, on our Home Visits, we feel the urge to give the neighbor a plan, or a list of tasks to improve their material well-being. It can become frustrating when they don’t follow our advice, and we may even feel as if our help should be made conditional on following it. It shouldn’t, and not only because we should have the humility to admit that our advice may be completely wrong.

As the Conference President Handbook explains, we should “not be too quick to advise,” instead offering advice only when it is “wanted and appropriate.” But, the Handbook continues, “we must never force our will onto those we help… Be sure that you don’t make your assistance dependent upon them actually taking your advice.” [Pres Handbook, 35]

It helps to remind ourselves of our true purpose, which is to seek our own holiness, and to draw the neighbor closer to Christ. We do this work of evangelization “through visible witness, in both actions and words.” [Rule, Part I, 7.2] The material assistance we offer is of course meant to relieve real needs, but we hope, as Blessed Frédéric put it, that in “ensuring material help, it will be possible to ensure at the same time spiritual improvement.” [Baunard, 127]

Our model, as in all things, is Jesus Christ, who offered material help, often miraculously, and always unconditionally. In feeding the five thousand (and healing their sick), He did not ask them to earn it in any way, He was simply “moved with pity.” His great and unconditional acts of compassion showed God’s love for all of His people, and He often took the time to explain exactly this point, as when he healed the man with the withered hand, who had not even asked to be healed, or the paralytic, whom He first forgave of his sins, then healed only to demonstrate that His power to forgive was real.

Similarly, we give of our time, our talents, our possessions, and ourselves not in order to extract submission to our advice, but in order to demonstrate Christ’s love, and to inspire hope in the heart of the neighbor. After all, Frédéric explained, “material assistance is only a secondary object of the Society; sanctification of souls is the principal aim.” [Baunard, 339]

All of this is not to say that we should ignore longer term needs, nor limit our assistance only to the offering that begins our relationship. As Frédéric said, “the same authority which tells us that we shall always have the poor amongst us is the same that commands us to do all we can to ensure that there may cease to be any.” [O’Meara, 230] The poor, we are taught, are blessed, yet their material deprivations can separate them from God just as surely as riches can separate the wealthy from God. Jesus did not withhold his miracles from us because we are undeserving. If our assistance is offered with the same unconditional compassion and love, it just might be miraculous, too.

Contemplate

Do I ever, even subconsciously, set conditions for offering assistance?

By Timothy Williams,
Senior Director of Formation & Leadership Development
Society of St. Vincent de Paul USA.