Faithful to our Rule, we “endeavor to establish relationships based on trust and friendship” with the neighbors we serve. [Rule, Part I, 1.9] It’s easy to remember of the importance of friendship. After all, it is one of our essential elements, shared between Members and extended to the neighbors we serve. But what about trust? If I do not trust my neighbors, can I truly call them friends?

Trust is the foundation of all solid relationships – business relationships, marriages, and friendships – and while our friendships with next door neighbors, co-workers, old Army buddies, or our closest confidantes may differ in their nature, every kind of friendship depends upon trust. Indeed, without trust, we would not consider them to be friendships at all.

There is no such thing as one friend; there are always at least two. To have a friend, you have to be a friend. And just as friendship itself is defined by this mutuality, so, too, is the trust upon which that friendship is built. It is not enough to trust the neighbor if we do not also seek to earn his trust.

It is very easy to find fault in others while excusing it in ourselves, and it is easy to let this natural tendency of thought to seep into our home visits, causing us to think, perhaps unconsciously, “why did they wait so long to call? How could they have made the decisions that have led to this crisis? Why don’t they clean up this clutter, get a second job until the crisis passes, etc., etc., etc.” Yet every one of these amounts to the same question, “Why aren’t they more like me?”

This is not a question that is based on trust.

If we seek to find faults, we will find them. Similarly, if we seek the good, it will just as surely make itself known. As St. Vincent explained, “If we excuse those faults of our [friends], we’ll win their trust”. [CCD IX:223] This is especially so since we cannot trust our own judgment of the faults of others. If one day we offer advice in good faith to a friend, the friend will be open to it if we have proven ourselves trustworthy. They will extend to us the same benefit of the doubt that we first extended to them.

We are called to this vocation by God. He entrusts to us the care of His beloved poor, asking us to see His face in each of them, and always to trust in His Providence. Therefore, if our love for the neighbor, as the Greatest Commandmentreminds us, cannot be separated from our love for God, then neither can our trust in God – and more importantly, God’s trust in us – be separated from our trust in the neighbor.

“Let’s trust in God,” Vincent said, “but let our trust be total and perfect, and let’s rest assured that, having begun His work in us, He will complete it.” [CCD XI:31]

Contemplate

How can I change my doubts and judgments to trust?

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