Thousands of people around the world who are cash-poor, not just during the holidays but all year long, will get food and other necessities for their families, thanks to a caring man — St. Vincent de Paul — who lived more than 400 years ago.
His name should be familiar to Catholics, because the work for the poor that this great man began and carried out in his lifetime has actually never ended; it has gone on for centuries in many nations because good people continue this work through societies that bear the name of St. Vincent de Paul.
Should anyone doubt this, I strongly recommend a book published in October 2010 by Jane Knuth, “Thrift Store Saints: Meeting Jesus 25 Cents at a Time” (Loyola Press, Chicago). Here we have a middle-class, suburban housewife/mother in Kalamazoo, Mich., who got kind of “swept in” to working at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in her city.
“Right away, curious incidents that were almost like grace started to occur,” she said in her book. And now, 13 years later, she is a regular volunteer, absolutely committed to “following the spiritual path of St. Vincent de Paul.”
On page after page, Knuth tells us the stories of people knocked down by poverty and “out of the ordinary problems” who she met at the thrift store. They have taught her what the saint himself said that we followers of Christ must do. She said: “Our purpose is to help the poor and to change our own way of thinking and being. It only looks as though we run a store.”
I learned about the important work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society back in the 1960s when I was a reporter for The Long Island Catholic, the diocesan paper of the then-newly formed Diocese of Rockville Centre.
The late Luke Smith, the dynamic leader who got the organization going after the new diocese was formed in 1962, inspired me to write often about the work of this great society. He would repeat: “We have to help the people who live on the margins of society, the poor!”
After reading Knuth’s book, I contacted Msgr. Patrick Armshaw, the longtime spiritual adviser to the General Council of the St. Vincent de Paul Society on Long Island, N.Y., to ask him how the work begun by Smith is going today. I was astounded when he gave me a summary of their years of ministry: Besides their stores, they have rent-assistance programs for homeless and disabled persons, counseling for ex-offenders, assistance for the elderly disabled, and much more. All told, this particular St. Vincent de Paul Society spent $10,658,523 aiding the poor in the year ending Sept. 30, 2009!
Knuth writes that many people ask her what kind of impact her work at the St. Vincent de Paul store has had on her “emotionally.” Her answer is powerful: “What our patron St. Vincent de Paul teaches us is that by helping each other face-to-face, there is always something we can do, even if it’s only to offer a listening ear, help pay a bill, or provide clean clothing. It’s the love that is offered that matters most.
“That’s what changes the world, because it changes us. Our job is not to solve all the problems; our job is to comfort, clothe, feed and visit.”
Knuth acknowledges something that was also told to me by Msgr. Armshaw: “Most people know very little about the work of the society, which is one of the reasons I wrote the book.”
We Catholics owe her thanks.
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