“Since its inception, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul has always shown an extraordinary concern for youth. Its first members, who were barely past adolescence, joined together to form a community that began by defending the works of the Church and later devoted themselves to the poor by personal contact with all those who suffered and for youth’s participation in the life of the Conferences.”Paris, June 30, 2002
CIRCULAR LETTER TO MY DEAR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, MEMBERS OF THE CONFERENCES OF SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL WORLDWIDE
“To serve youth in hope”
Dear friends, brothers & sisters:
Since its inception, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul has always shown an extraordinary concern for youth. Its first members, who were barely past adolescence, joined together to form a community that began by defending the works of the Church and later devoted themselves to the poor by personal contact with all those who suffered and for youth’s participation in the life of the Conferences.1
In the first circular letters of my predecessors, the former Presidents General, this desire is apparent and is accompanied by a certain concern about the continuing rise of the average age of the members. Though it was quite evident that this served as the base and insured the future of the Conferences, it was also true that the advancing age of the members of the Society highlighted two problems. The first, and certainly most important, was that this special work of accompanying the youth in their formation, emanating from the founders’ enthusiasm and their own youth, ran the risk of not corresponding anymore to the principal objective for which they met: Helping each other along the way; the reason being that more often than we wish to admit, we the elders, believe that we do not need to reinforce or deepen our formation and our knowledge, this being regrettably an obvious but non the less genuine error. Secondly, the continuing rise of the average age of the members could, as it often does, create a certain decrease in the Society’s abilities to respond to the problems it encounters. Admittedly we all recognize the greater capacity that youth has to detect and then to react when faced with injustice and distress that are very often too prevalent in the world.
We do exactly the opposite, believing so wrongly, that we possess the truth in certain matters, that we do not take the trouble to regularly review our opinions and examine them closely. Furthermore, we must not forget the everlasting enthusiasm which always accompanies young people’s initial actions, as they are still pure, energetic, and do not yet feel the weariness inherent in life.
Youth has always been a great preoccupation for the Conferences. Because of this, it is good to spend a few moments reflecting on the participation of the youth in our Society and on the Society’s capacity to serve them. I repeat: to serve them. It is in this aspect of service, and only in this aspect that we must especially envision the permanency of youth and of any other member2 in our conferences. In trying to present the Society as it truly is: a permanent Christian life project, that will last until we come to the end of our path in this world. A path that is easier to follow if we do so accompanied by our brothers and sisters, in faith and in hope.3 And this is what we must pass on: A sense of belonging to a group that we are at liberty to abandon at any time, that offers it’s friendship, support, and fraternity and which, around the world, vibrates, feels and worries about the same problems.
Remember that in my Circular Letter sent to you at this same date last year4, I made reference to the relation that should motivate a meeting between fellow members. I was speaking of the fraternity that must prevail in each conference if the poor are to be served appropriately. I went as far as to assure you that without this camaraderie, the group of persons helping the poor, although certainly accomplishing a great mission, would not form a real conference of Saint Vincent de Paul because of the lack of fraternal feelings between them. True friendship must lead us to care, on all levels, about the needs of our fellow members who share with us in the life of the Conference. These needs most often stem from a lack of affection, spirituality and formation and once they have been detected it is evident that our esteem for the fellow member will lead us to serve him in brotherly love, while at the same time helping him achieve his full potential. This same way of seeing and doing should also guide our actions towards the younger members of our Conferences.
When older members, anywhere in the world, question me on the absence of young members in the Conferences, I always ask them to be patient and to have the desire to serve them, not to use them nor keep them among us just for reasons of survival or pure statistics. But, during quiet moments many questions fill my mind: Why are there not more youth among us? Where are our children? Did they not receive from their families the example of our devotion to our brother members and to the poor? Are they so self-centered that they only think of themselves? But the question that keeps returning is this: Why are they not among us? What did we do to disillusion them? At what moment in our commitment do we behave wrongly or fail to communicate?
I know that at one time or another we have all asked ourselves these same questions concerning our relations with our children or our younger family members and friends. We have almost never found a valid answer; at least not one that satisfies us. We see young people dedicating themselves to other causes with a real passion and even with a certain abnegation. Not even deep down inside, do we dare accuse them of being selfish, and we end up thinking that time will fix everything and that one day they will understand and then join us. Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple.
Although we the older people have always accused them of idleness, youth are, were, and will always be agents of transformation within the societies in which they live. They are also necessary in this role within our conferences, and subconsciously, on many occasions, and without even realizing it, what the members want, is this capacity to adapt to changes that they themselves have almost lost and which they think the younger members will bring.
But, as I mentioned above, this should not be our concern. The renewal of each conference and of each of us, will be found first and foremost inside of us and in the intensity with which we live our community life of prayer and action that each basic cell of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul should be5. This is an ability we have, to live and spread the Gospel.
We must certainly be concerned about attracting youth to our Conferences and this concern must arise from the fact that we have a responsibility towards the young. A responsibility for the project of Christian life that each one of them should be for each one of us, as Vatican Council II reminds us6. This responsibility though, must firstly be ecclesial. We must urgently spread the Word to all men, starting with those nearest to us. This is a special obligation for the lay people who endeavour to live their life in a community of prayer and action.
As written in a Vincentian publication7, “youth are projects of life whose fulfilment we must work at throughout their lives and deepen their self training” And we could add to that, dedication to their neighbours. A life that we must equally be part of, by sharing our spiritual experience and our knowledge about how to approach God, understand Him, feel Him and participate. This is a long process that is not always easy8.
The daily and personal effort of each of the members of the Conferences following the path that they chose to deepen their faith, service and goal, must be shown to young people as examples. We become more aware of this goal every day and of the distance that separates us from it because of our imperfections. But we must also help the young people accept their responsibilities in every matter they will have to deal with during their life. We must show them to be good fathers, spouses, professionals, and friends so that they honestly deserve to be considered a true father, spouse, professional and friend…9. In other words: a genuine human being, deserving of such a name.
Regarding the matter of the deepening of faith: Will they want to join us when it seems that we have reached some kind of holiness, that often appears under an unpleasant and even sad timidity, rather than showing them the contagious joy of a Christian? Yes: joy, even in the face of pain. Nothing worsens suffering more than the feeling of being accompanied by sadness or abandonment. How can we attest to a life long project of spiritual growth, when it appears as though we have already made the journey and even reached the truth? Which child will get into the habit of reading if he never sees his father with a book in his hands? Who will get used to praying, to feeling small and weak before the strength and the love of God, if they do not have the example of those who pray and those who say that they are in debt with our Lord?
If they hear us criticizing friends; if they see us weaken when faced with the efforts life demands from us on all levels; if they see us find a thousand justifications to abandon the work to which we are called; how can we hope to attract them and essentially serve them?
The way to attract young people and serve them must be part of our personal conversion. The conversion of each of the older members to a choice of service through and for young people. A choice of service that will lead us to a deep renewal of ourselves: by admitting that we are far from reaching any particular wisdom except the one that is granted to us by the weight of the years; by starting to be tolerant with ourselves and among ourselves; by respecting the freedom of the other; by realizing that we are in a process of education, I repeat of education, at all levels, which must last our whole lifetime and which we must share with the youth, without false barriers between generations and in a harmonious and legitimate exchange10.
This should not stop us from pointing out what we consider erroneous positions and what, in our opinion (the wise opinion of a friend), require not only a correction but a conversion. Although we wish to make their presence among us easier, we must not become the accomplices of situations contrary to the Christian spirit. Let us recall the advice of our President General: “be useful to young people in everything, as far as caution and discretion allow it, and which are the first among all conventions” (J. Gossin, Circular from 8-12-1844). Tolerance, so necessary among us, cannot be practised only for our benefit or for the benefit of older members. We must show that tolerance is not a pretext to justify what is simply not well done. As in the past and more than ever, not everything is right or valid today. Knowing that we are also awkward, it is possible that at some time or other, in the same fraternal spirit and without recrimination, our younger members be called to point out our thousands of defects and infringements on the Christian philosophy that we proclaim to serve. We must help one another.
We must do so by listening to the youth with respect and attention and accepting their initiatives. When the first young members met and discovered the necessity of practising charity without limiting themselves to the purely intellectual defence of the Holy Church, Frederic Ozanam was urged by his friends, to count on the collaboration and the leadership of Mister Bailly. The St. Vincent de Paul’s Conferences were born because Mister Bailly was able to listen to, and be enthusiastic about, the proposals of a young person that was not yet 20 years old and visited him in his interest, representing other friends, among whom only one had reached this age. The St. Vincent de Paul’s Conferences exist today, undoubtedly, because Mister Bailly did not care about the age of those who proposed their ideas to him and he listened to their argumentation with respect11. Let us recall that the Spirit acts where It wishes and how It wishes.
We must carry on the process of Vincentian regeneration within all Conferences, as I have been claiming since my election to this service to which you called me. This is a permanent process that has a beginning but no end.
Thanks to this, we shall demonstrate to our future young members that our way of life is one of commitment, and that it is not only because of our concern for survival as an Institution that we want them at our side. Our concern is to not waste the resources that the years have granted us, in order to be able to help the youth on the path that they have chosen, even if they must face it by themselves, without lessening in any way their capacity of choice or of freedom, so we can tell them that years before, we went through similar circumstances12. In short, help them find the necessary information so they can decide freely. There must be no limits on their freedom to learn and to know in order to have precise information. It is rather the contrary: very often freedom finishes with the ignorance that confronts us on many occasions and in the most diverse circumstances. What we want for our young people, for those we will have approached or for those who will approach us, is to help them, whenever possible, to overcome the poverty of their lack of experience. We must help them with our collaboration, and through the experience of the poverty we ourselves have lived. It must never be by imposition or command, and must of course be complementary, by receiving from them, in all humility, the necessary pressure to be able to serve a changing world that they probably know better than us.
This is the way of working within the Conferences. A way of creating, maintaining and developing an ecclesial community of equal people, where the date of birth does not make a difference.
We should then start to feel responsible. Yes, responsible. Every generation ensured the following one a better and ordered world. It is not an exception for us. We guaranteed a better and an easier world; we promised to make and defend a better organized and simpler world. But in some way we disappointed them. Maybe because of our own lack of security or the way in which our civil societies live, in a permissive relativism, giving no answers to their worries or their needs. All this puts an end to the hope of so many people, and we also are responsible for that, we, the components of the Conferences who locked ourselves in the vigorous defence of our circumstantial and temporal truth, instead of opening ourselves to the revitalizing, regenerative and timeless sweetness of faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
We must all feel the need and the responsibility for this service to the younger ones, but the Presidents of Conferences even more so. It is their duty to care for their fellow members who elected them to direct and serve as examples. They must be the first ones to be attentive towards the youth and make their permanence among us easier by giving them the appropriate service that they expect from the Conferences. As with any good parent, the deep knowledge acquired from their fellow members will show them to which of their “children” this ministry can be entrusted and which of the youngest of our Brothers and Sisters will need help to grow in service and in knowledge so as to achieve their full potential.
This will enable them to entrust their younger members with real responsibilities which will link them more and more to the Conference. They must not see us as distant, even though attentive, “teachers”. They must find groups of human beings who, through their generous dedication to the poor, to their fellow members and to the Church as well as to their professional and family life, offer them a true area of involvement where all may be enriched13.
Let us say to the young: dear friends, we want to be close to you. We want to undertake the journey in your company. Would you allow us to do so? Are you going to help us in the wonderful journey of our Conferences? We want to be able to count on you so that we can support each other mutually and be a community of prayer, action and hope. We want to serve those who suffer, together with you. We want to preserve the living fire of God’s love. Come to us to learn and to teach us! One only arrives to old age when one has lost the capacity of learning or teaching another human being.
Let us assure them that the poor await us: the suffering, the crying, the persecuted, the sick, the abandoned, the deprived; Oh Lord, there are so many! They await the immense strength that together we all represent. And we, the older members are also among those who are waiting for them. We, the old friends who already wish to welcome you within the groups of Conferences. The points of view of some of us have become old and we, maybe, have become more inflexible. We expect joy from you, comprehension, a necessary effort to dialogue in order to get on well together and to understand each other. All of us together need to understand that even the humblest, the oldest, the youngest, the best trained or the worst trained, always has something to say and deserves to be respected14.
And lastly, and perhaps I should have started my Letter with this: Let us not forget that without prayer, without true communication with the Lord, we can do nothing. The Holy Father reminded us of this: ” The efficacy of the apostolic work of the lay people, is closely linked to their spiritual basis, to their life of individual and community prayer, to the frequency with which they receive the Sacraments, above all the Eucharist, the penitence as well as an adequate doctrinal training” (John Paul II at the Episcopal Conference of Brazil 30-5-1995).
God bless you Mary! You who, as a Mother, felt the need to serve your Divine Son in His first years, these same years during which He ran away to teach the Doctors. Beg Him so that, in the service of our Conferences, we adapt to our times and succeed in serving in a Christian way the youngest of our members, in order for them to help us keep alive the vigilant spirit that your Divine Son inspired to our founders.
With my affection for all in Saint Vincent de Paul and Frederic Ozanam.
José Ramón Díaz-Torremocha
(i.n.e.d.)
XIV President General International
Text as found on www.ozanet.org
