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Church of St. Laurent
The parish church of St. Louise De Marillac (and St. Vincent).
Click Here for 90 second video  

REFLECTION
- Daughters of Charity – Sr. Elizabeth

MUSIC
- "Shadows" by Ola Gjeilo
- "For the Honor" by Khamir Music

NOTES
-

PRAYER OF LETTING GO
To You do I belong, O God,
into Your hands I surrender my life.
Pour out Your Spirit upon me
that I may love You perfectly,
and serve You faithfully
until my soul rests in You.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hello and welcome as we continue our Vincentian Spirit Week. In 1633, along with St. Louise de Mariac, Saint Vincent brought together a small group of women, initially peasant girls, to serve the sick and poor directly in their homes, rather than living a cloistered, convent-bound life. Part of their role was to assist the ladies of charity that was quickly expanding, and their name reflected it. They were called the Daughters of Charity. Unlike traditional female religious orders of the 17th century, the daughters were mobile. Saint Vincent famously stated that their monastery was the houses of the sick, and their cloister was the streets of the city. Today, roughly 17,000 sisters serve in nearly 100 countries. Welcome to prayer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. O Lord, open my lips.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

And my mouth shall declare your praise.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

Listen to my heart, O loving God. Hear the cry within me. Heed my prayer from lips that speak your truth. Be thou my eyes that I may see with clarity.

SPEAKER_05 2:20

If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will discover my only desire is to draw closer to you.

SPEAKER_04 2:36

I call upon you, knowing you will answer me. O God of my heart, incline your ear to hear my words.

SPEAKER_05 2:50

Show your steadfast love, O love divine. You walk beside me, giving me strength to face the fears that dwell within. Keep me as the apple of your eye.

SPEAKER_04 3:09

Where I meet pride, humble me. Where I meet anger, calm my fears. Where I meet injustice, cause me to act in love's way. May I be as gentle as the doe, strong as the lion, as faithful as the dog.

SPEAKER_05 3:34

Deliver me from deadly fears and doubts. O God, shine your light into my darkness. May my heart receive the bounty of your love. May my children and their children walk with you in gratitude and joy.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_05 4:02

As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Hi, I'm Sister Elizabeth, and I'm a daughter of charity, and I'm a Vincen. So why do I love being a Vincench and being a daughter of charity? I suppose the simplest answer is because this is where I've learned to see God. God has not always shown up where I expected. When I first came to the Daughters of Charity, I thought I knew something about what my life of service might look like. I was an English teacher and I thought I would teach. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Well, 30 years later, God apparently had some other ideas. Much of my life as a daughter of charity has been spent with people experiencing homelessness, with refugees and immigrants, and with people who, for one reason or another, have found themselves standing on the edges of society and community. And I have loved it. One of my great gifts of being of intention is that through their writings, Vincent and Louise have given me very simple instructions. Go to the people who are very vulnerable, find them, listen to them, pay attention, and learn. And this really is what has shaped my life. The Ministry of People Experiencing Homelessness in Baltimore, Macon, Georgia, and Little Rock. I quickly learned that I wasn't arriving with all the answers. People don't need me to come into their lives to fix it. What they needed was what we all need is to be seen, to be listened to, and to be treated with dignity. And to have someone sit beside them and say in one way or another, you know, you're really important and you matter. The funny thing about being Vincentian is that somewhere along the way, the distinction between the person serving and the person being served starts to blur. I can't begin to tell you how much I have received from the people I was supposed to be serving. I guess the same is true with my workers' refugees. I've accompanied people who arrived in this country with very little of what we would call security. But they brought tremendous courage, faith, humor, resilience, and hope. They taught me something about being welcoming and about hospitality. And hospitality isn't simply saying, come in and I'll help you. That sounds a bit arrogant. But what it really says is come in, there's a place for you here. And your being here will enrich us. To me, that's very intention. I also love being a daughter of charity because none of this is lived in isolation. I especially do all this with other women who have made the same countercultural decision to give our lives to God, to people who live in poverty and to one another. So we pray together, we serve together, we laugh together, and occasionally we drive one another crazy. But that's a community. And somehow it works. And God is in all of it. The charity of Christ crucified impels us, as a scripture verse that St. Louise de Mariac included in our community zeal. I have to say that the older I get, the more I understand it. This life of Christ keeps pushing us outward for the person who's hurting, for the person who's been rejected, for the person everyone else has decided is too difficult or doesn't belong. And I, like most people, think I've been told I don't belong in certain places. But I've also known what it feels like when somebody saw me and saw something that I could not yet see in myself. I think I've spent much of my life trying to offer that same gift to other people. And now, as a seminary directress, I have the most amazing privilege of accompanying our newest members as they discover what being a daughter of charity means for them. You know, I can't give them a map of exactly where God is going to take them, but I can tell them what I discovered. Being a daughter of charity means going where the people are, listening to them, see them, let them teach you. And don't be surprised when you discover that Christ was already there long before you arrived. I think that's what I love about being Vincentian. It's what I love about being a daughter of charity. This is the life that has taken me places I never expected to go and introduced me to people I would never have met otherwise. And through those people, and over and over again, God has found me. And truly, I can't imagine a better way to have spent my life.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

The ones who need to be seen, heard, welcomed, or simply reminded that they matter. And together let us pray as Jesus taught us.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Let us pray. Christ of Compassion, you are already there, in the stranger, in the forgotten, in the poor, in the person waiting to be seen. Give us vincentient hearts that recognize you in unexpected places. Teach us to listen, to welcome, to serve, and to let the people we encounter change us too. May the charity of your crucified love keep drawing us outward until every person knows there is a place for them. We ask this through Christ our Lord.

SPEAKER_05 11:01

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

To you do I belong, O God. Into your hands I surrender my life. Pour out your spirit upon me that I may love you perfectly and serve you faithfully until my soul rests in you.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

What a gift Sister Elizabeth has given us today! A glimpse into a life that kept taking unexpected turns and somehow kept leading her straight to Christ. And before we go, as Father Kelly mentioned in breaking open the word on Sunday, there's something really wonderful happening in the life of the church today. Archbishop Fulton Sheen will be beatified in St. Louis. Long before podcasts, he understood the power of using the media to bring the gospel into people's everyday lives. In many ways, he helped pave the way for ministries like the God Minute. So let's lift up a thank you to him as we end our prayer today. And may God bless us as we do in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Look for Christ in the small things until we pray again tomorrow.