A vocation within a vocation – Serving Hispanics

This morning, Jesus tells us “where your treasure is, there also will your heart be“. I smiled as I stood in the pew at Mass because, in these past few days, I’ve completely understood exactly what Jesus was saying.Sunday, I arrived to Harlingen, Texas to my new mission. Sister Elizabeth, a Sister I lived with in Macon, and I drove twenty hours, with a stop in New Orleans, to get here. I now work at Proyecto Juan Diego in the nearby city of Brownsville. It’s hard to describe what exactly PJD is – a community center would be the best description. There are summer camps, exercise programs, citizenship and ESL classes, health education, tutoring, etc.

As Daughters of Charity, our treasure here on earth is the poor. Our heart is where the poor are. Saint Vincent de Paul and Saint Louise didn’t found a religious community simply to start one – it had nothing to do with different Bible verses as charisms, a different spirituality…although those things did have a part. They founded the Daughters of Charity (and Saint Vincent – the Congregation of the Mission, our brother community) to serve the poor in a world where religious were cloistered. Nothing more, nothing less. They didn’t found the community to start a revolution within the Catholic world, although other communities would soon follow their example, slowly changing the face of religious life in the Church.

No, it was all to serve the poor. They are our treasure. They are our reason for being. Without them, we would be nothing. They are where we find Christ – Blessed Rosalie Rendu wrote “never have I found God so much as I have in the streets“. Without the poor, there would be no reason for the Daughters of Charity to exist.

Yet I also believe there is a vocation within the vocation of a Daughter of Charity. Serving the poor makes our heart come alive. My own vocation as a Daughter of Charity means that treasure that holds my heart is the poor, yes, but there is another “treasure within a treasure” that is special to me – serving the Hispanic poor. It seems like my whole life pointed me to the Hispanic poor – (now here we go with some much-deserved promotion) with my Spanish teacher at the Institute of Notre Dame who inspired me, volunteering and then later working at Education Based Latino Outreach, and then my time in Bolivia with VIDES (Salesians). God pointed my whole life so I would fall in love with them.

Read her full post “What sets our hearts on fire”