“Do you serve illegal immigrants?” asks the voice on the phone. The question seems confusing, not because we don’t know the answer, but because the question doesn’t make sense. They might just as well ask us if we serve short people, Protestants, or athletes. The short answer, of course, is yes, but the short answer is not a complete one.

When a Protestant organization had entrusted the early Society with a large donation, the members began to discuss using it first to benefit Catholics in need, and “dissenters” only if there was any left over. Blessed Frédéric, appalled at the conversation, declared that “if it is not clearly understood that we help the poor without religious distinction, I shall go forthwith and return to the Protestants the donation which they have given. I shall say to them: ‘Take it back, we are unworthy of your confidence.’” It was not necessary, his biographer adds, to put this to a vote. [Baunard, 299]

There are many categories into which we may place people, and some in which we place ourselves, but within and without those categories each of us is made in the image of our loving Creator, unique and unrepeatable.[CSDC, 131] Each of us, Pope Benedict XVI taught, “is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

Not all of us, but each of us. This miraculous distinction is at the heart of our faith and our call to service, for nowhere in the Bible are we commanded, Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft points out, to love humanity. We are commanded to love our neighbor. Even God does not love humanity – He loves You. He died for you. It is easy to love any group, even all of humanity, in the abstract. But, as Kreeft explains, “’Humanity’ never shows up at your door at the most inconvenient time. ‘Humanity’ is not quarrelsome, alcoholic, or fanatical. ‘Humanity’ never has the wrong political, religious, and sexual opinions…. But to die for your neighbor … unthinkable. Except for love.”

Jesus taught us to love in exactly this way, one person at a time. “For I was hungry, and you gave me food…” We serve each person before us who is in need, in any way “that alleviates suffering or deprivation and promotes human dignity”. [Rule, Part I, 1.3] We do this not because they are tall, or polite, or women, but because they are hungry, or cold, or alone; we do this not because they are Catholic, but because we are Catholic, and because in them – in each of them – we see the suffering Christ.

Our Church teaches that nations have a right to regulate borders and control immigration. Vatican City itself exercises this right. But that has nothing to do with the poor one before me today, for as St. Vincent de Paul taught, we “can’t see someone suffering without suffering along with him, or see someone cry without crying as well. This is an act of love”. [CCD XII:221] Vincentians serve for love alone.

Contemplate

Can I see and hear through the fog and noise around us to see only Christ in the person before me?

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