Homily, 24 September 2017: Parish Celebration of St. Vincent De Paul

Abstract

Parish Celebration of the Feast of St. Vincent de Paul|Readings for the day: Isaiah 58:6-7; Philippians 2:1-11; Matthew 25:31-40|“Hey dad!” said Tim as he walked into the kitchen. “I had to take a friend to the airport this morning, so I thought I’d drop in and see what’s up.”|“Not much,” said his dad. “Have some coffee and sit down.” Tim grabbed a cup out of the cupboard, poured himself some coffee and sat down at the kitchen table.|“Yesterday I was over at the corporate office waiting for meeting,” remarked Tim, “and there was an annual report from Catholic Charities. I saw you and mom listed in the donor section. You give them a fair amount of money.”|“Yeah, I guess,” said his dad. “We give it through payroll deduction … have for years. I guess I don’t think about it that much any more.”|“You know,” said Tim, “when I was little, and it didn’t seem like we had much money, I noticed one day how much you gave to the Church every week. I saw the check before you put it in the envelope. I didn’t say anything, but I was really mad.”|His dad was a little startled by this revelation, but he just looked at his son and asked, “Why did that make you mad?”|“Because we didn’t ever seem to have enough money!”|“But Tim, we had a nice home, we never wanted for any necessities, and we even went on some great vacations.”|“I know,” said Tim, “but as a kid, we just seemed to have less money than everybody else. Our house was smaller, our toys were cheaper, and though we had some great camping trips, we never went to cool places like Disney World.”|“Hmm,” said his Dad, setting down his coffee cup. He thought his son still seemed a little resentful.|“Well, we certainly weren’t rich,” he said to his son, “but we weren’t poor, not by any stretch of the imagination. We never really talked about it, your mom and I, but I guess we just knew that we had enough … so giving some of our surplus to help the poor and support the Church just seemed like the right thing to do.”|I don’t know what else to tell you … except maybe this: mom and I noticed that when we started giving, things just worked out, so we kept it up. We just figured God was taking care of us somehow.”|Tim sat quietly for a couple of minutes, sipping his coffee.|“Dad, I know that what you give is a lot for you, but in the big scheme of things, it’s not that much money. Don’t you help out already just by paying taxes? It’s not like you’re some big philanthropist.”|“Or a great saint!” said his dad. “No, I’m not a St. Vincent, I’ll admit that. You like to run – 10Ks, half marathons. Do you ever win?”|“No,” said Tim.|“Do you ever finish in the top third?”|“No.”|“So why do it? Your mom and I don’t give to others because we’re going to change the world. We give simply because it helps someone else and because it’s what Jesus asks us to do.” Tim shrugged his shoulders.|“It’s not just the money,” his dad went on, “we do a lot of volunteer work too, and we do more now that you kids are grown. We visit shut-ins; we help with habitat for humanity, we donate blood. But the giving of money is very important.”|“St. Vincent was a poor man from a poor family, yet he and his companions helped hundreds of thousand of people. They couldn’t have done that without a lot charity given by lots of good people.”|“I guess,” said Tim. “It’s just that it bothered me so much when I was little.”|“I suppose it felt like we were neglecting you or something?”|“Yeah, kind of,” said Tim, looking a little sheepish.|His dad chuckled and shook his head. “There is a line from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians,” he said, “that my mom had on some embroidery framed in her bedroom:” |“Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but for those of others.”|“I guess if our charity bothered you, that takes care of the vainglory part of it! But the way we raised you kids, it really was out of love and concern for all of you. In every decision we made, it was your interests that mattered most of all.”|“The Church refers to the family as the ‘domestic church’ and as the ‘school of humanity’. But it’s not just the kids who learn from family life, parents do as well … maybe more so, now that I think about it.”|“I guess that as we learned to look out for your interests, we just applied to other people as well.”|“Okay,” said Tim, “I just needed to talk about it.”|“I’m glad we did,” said his dad. “I’m glad we did.”