Timothy P. Williams, Society of St Vincent de Paul USA

09/12/2026

Contemplation:
God in the Mirror

The motive for our works, the mission of our vocation, and the God whom we serve are all a single thing: charity. This theological virtue, which the Apostle teaches us is above all other virtues, is defined in our catechism with a recitation of the Greatest Commandment: to love God above all things for his own sake, and to love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. The love described here, like the trinitarian love of God, consists of three inseparable parts, without any one of which it would be incomplete: love of God, love of neighbor, and love of … ourselves.

Few people would suggest that it is difficult – in theory at least – to love God. He is our loving Father, our all-powerful Creator, source of all good things. Our love for Him is written on our hearts, and we know, as Vincent reminds us, that “God is love, and wants us to go to Him through love.” It is written on our hearts. To love the neighbor sometimes takes conscious effort, for the neighbor often is a stranger; the neighbor may be difficult, or unfriendly; the neighbor at first seems to offer us nothing in return. Yet, with our minds firmly set upon scripture, remembering that it is specifically in the suffering that Christ promised we would find Him, that we can persevere in loving our God in the neighbor. Knowing that our neighbor is, to us, God, we understand that love of God and love of neighbor cannot be separated.

But that still leaves out the third of the loves that charity comprises: love of ourselves. Because as while God’s love is the motive for our love of neighbor, the character of our love is meant to be the same as our love for ourselves. Intuitively, this feels as if contradicts the virtue of selflessness, yet it was Frédéric himself who explained that “if we assemble under the roof of the poor, it is more for ourselves than for them.” St. Thomas Aquinas defined love as willing the good of another, and the good, the highest good, that we can will for the neighbor is exactly the same as the highest good we can will for ourselves. It is the universal vocation of eternal union with the loving Father who created us for that purpose.

If we take it to be true that “something of the glory of God shines on the face of every person," then this necessarily includes the face we see in the mirror. A rightly ordered love of self is not love in service to ego, but a deep appreciation for the gift of being made in the image and likeness of a loving God, and like all of God’s gifts, it is meant to be shared. To will eternal life for another in the same way we will it for ourselves does not at all contradict selflessness. Instead, it is the definition of zeal, and both flow gently through charity.

Contemplate
Do I love the neighbor as I love myself?

Recommended Reading
Turn Everything to Love

09/08/2026

09/04/2026

Contemplation:
A Sheer Waste of Time

Bl. Frédéric once lamented that his Conference’s meetings were “nearly always concerned with business” and seemed “long.” It is a tension many Conferences feel at times, when they become caught up in numbers or dollars. The habits of members, many of whom have worked in business environments for many years, lead them to start thinking like businesspeople. No wonder some Conferences want to meet less frequently - who really wants to sit through another business meeting?

Certainly, proper accountability must never be overlooked. Both Vincent and Frédéric emphasized the importance of accountability in reporting on our works, but the center of our meetings, our works, and our vocation must always remain our growth in holiness. This is the primary purpose not only of our Vincentian vocation, but of the vocation of every person, each of us and all of us. We are each made in the image and likeness of God, and “being a person in the image and likeness of God ... involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other ‘I’”

From the beginning, God created us to live in community – in communion – with one another, just as the three Persons of the Holy Trinity live in eternal union. Praying at the last Supper that we would be united in the same way, Jesus “implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity.” In seeking holiness, then, we seek union with one another, and in this union, “to journey together towards holiness.” This is the basis of our friendship, and of our Conference meetings. “Indeed,” the Manual reminds us, “it is in the Conference meetings that members can experience Christ’s presence in each other and the workings of the Holy Spirit.”

In turn, the friendship that we share with one another, we seek also to share with the neighbors, welcoming them into communion with our one Father by the love we extend through our presence and our works. After all, Christ not only prayed that our union with each other would draw us to union with Him, but that our love and faith would continue to draw others into that same union.

For most of us, business meetings can never be short enough, and if the business can be conducted instead by email or telephone, so much the better. Still, it seems sometimes to take a special and dedicated commitment to keep our primary purpose foremost in our meetings - to put the big rocks in first - when there are so many smaller pebbles vying for our attention.

St. Vincent, though, teaches that there need be no conflict between “business” and holiness, if we remember that “Our business is to gain heaven; everything else is a sheer waste of time.”

Contemplate
How can I make the best use of the time spent in my Conference meetings?

Recommended Reading
Vincentian Meditations II

09/03/2026

09/02/2026

How great to see my old friends Hank and Janice - and what a great message.

09/01/2026

08/28/2026

Contemplation:
Shining Before All

In all of our lives there is darkness and there is light – a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. It is a cycle and rhythm of life as natural and regular to our human experience as night and day. Yet we are called to journey out of darkness, to seek the light of God’s promise and His kingdom. Christ is our light and our hope, and to serve in hope is to serve as light.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, Christ teaches, and this is indeed the poverty most in need of our loving care. Those who suffer from worldly losses, such as a job, a car, the death of a family member, begin sometimes to dwell in the darkness of despair. Seeing no easy way out, they can lose sight of the fact that we all have the same way out. The question is where we wish to go when that time comes. It is not worldly rewards, but the reward of heaven that gives us true hope.

But each of us can only arrive at the truth in freedom. When deprivation and suffering cloud our vision, we become separated from truth, seeking merely food, not goodness. Recognizing this, Frédéric wrote that “the poor are hungry, so we must first give them bread in order to dispose them to receiving the word of God.” In our simple, selfless, and generous acts of charity, we proclaim the kingdom through our wordless witness. We serve for love alone.

It is God’s power alone to console, Frédéric said, for “To console is to draw forth the kind light of hope amid the chaos of pain, it is to break the chains atop a groaning and heavy heart, it is to heal a soul, it is a blessing whose dispensation is reserved to God.” When we act according to His will, serving the least among us, it is not our light that we share, but God’s. To truly serve in hope, we must seek to shine before others, that they may see our good deeds and glorify our heavenly Father.

St. Vincent taught that “visitations, made well and exactly, do what the sun does: they give light... Just as the sun spreads its influence over all creatures, it can also be said that the visitation benefits the entire family visited.” We may never know whether we have truly planted a seed of hope to illuminate the lives of our neighbors, but we can know that we made our best effort to alleviate the suffering that can lead to despair, that we did so purely for the love of God, and that we can trust the rest to Divine Providence.

As Vincentians, we seek both to see the face of Christ in the neighbor, and to be the face of Christ for the neighbor. To help us with this, perhaps we should remember that even as Christ declares that “I am the light of the world,” He tells us also that “you are the light of the world.”

Contemplate
How can I better shine a light before the world?

Recommended Reading
Letters of Frédéric Ozanam