Phibsborough
For Vincentians, September is the month in which we celebrate the feast day of our founder: St Vincent de Paul on the 27th. It is obviously an event of major importance to us, and it is also a date on which new novices are enrolled formally into the Community, so it is a date laden with memories not only of the Great Man, but also, for each of us, the hesitant, tentative stepping out on that journey that leads to priesthood and the lifetime service of the poor.
In the past we tended to celebrate the feast in relative isolation from the many different organisations that have sprung from St Vincent de Paul’s vision of service of the poor, both those directly founded by him, and later ones which took inspiration from his example. Links between these organisations vary; some are institutional and formal, while others were mild and gossamer thin. On the 27th, with some cases, warm wishes were given and received, in others, there was hardly any acknowledgement at all. We were all the poorer for the polite thinness of our exchanges as each chugged along in their relative spheres, engaging with the task of living their founder’s/patron’s vision.
In recent times we have changed and there is now in place more deliberate attempts to work in real partnership, pulling the insights of the different organisations together to make fresh responses to new forms of poverty both material and spiritual. The “umbrella” if you will for this more structured cooperation is “The Vincentian Family”. In Ireland the Family includes the Ladies of Charity (more recently named the “International Association of Charity” – AIC), Congregation of the Mission (CM), Daughters of Charity (DC), Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP), Association of the Miraculous Medal (AMM), Holy Faith Sisters (CHF), Vincentian Lay Missionaries (VLM), DePaul Ireland and the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice. The people of Phibsborough have been so active in supporting all the above organisations, the Administrative office of the Vincentian Family is based in St Peter’s Presbytery.
Celebrating a feast day runs the risk of being little more than a self-congratulatory exercise, unless it is used as an opportunity to evaluate, reflect and pray for an ever better response to the needs of the poor in Ireland today. Whether you belong to any of the Family organisations or not, we ask you to do two things,
1 Pray with us
St Peter’s has a beautiful shrine to the Saints of the Family, a simple prayer, invoking their protection before their Icons would help us enormously.
2 Join us for the Feast Day Mass
This year, we will be observing the feast as a Family on the nearest Sunday (the 30th) at the 11.30am Mass.
St Vincent once wrote, “Go to the Poor, you will find God”, the Family of women and men who are inspired by him will be praying to find ever better ways of going to the poor, and through them to find God. Join us, pray with us and perhaps we may find the poor and God together.
Fr Joseph Loftus CM
jloftus@stpetersphibsboro.ie