When I was a kid, I used to pull my dad’s old academic books from the shelves and flip through them. He was a college professor at the time, and although I wasn’t really interested in medieval history, I was always fascinated by the little notes he had made in the margins, most of them written in faded pencil many years before. Sometimes they were words, sometimes just lines or arrows.Why did he put those notes there?

That memory comes to mind when I read in our Rule about our “common mission to help the poor and marginalized.” [Rule, Part I, 3.3] To be marginalized is to be excluded, to be kept on the edges of society, and we distinguish it from poverty because it may be caused not only by poverty, but by old age, infirmity, illness, or any “living conditions [that] interfere with … proper growth”. [CSDM, 182] Isolation and despair can be both a cause and a result of marginalization.

It is to the marginalized that we are called by solidarity, one of the four permanent principles of Catholic Social Doctrine. Solidarity is a virtue; it is not merely “a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people” but “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the … good of all and of each individual”. [Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 38] This specific call to seek the good of each individual is echoed in our definition of the Vincentian Virtue of zeal as “a passion for the full flourishing and eternal happiness of every person.” [Rule, Part I, 2.5.1]

Our material assistance can alleviate some of the causes of marginalization, but it is our loving presence and our friendship that brings the hope that alleviates despair and the love that welcomes all into community.

We have a choice, then, as to how we will view marginalized people. We can choose to see them as outside the mainstream, outside the body of the text; we can see them as “others”. Or we can see them as God’s margin notes, left for us in the flesh and blood image of His Son; we can see them as His highlights, not placed in the margin to be ignored, but to remind us of the most important things.

It would be easy to overlook a faded pencil marks in the middle of a printed paragraph, but in the margin, it cannot be simply ignored. So maybe, like my dad’s old pencil-written notes, they can remind us most effectively of our call to solidarity because, whether at the margins or in the text, we’re all on the same page.

Contemplate

Do I truly seek out those at the margins?

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