Today the St. Vincent de Paul Society of our English Catholic Community met with the national leadership of the SVDP group in Cambodia to talk about our experiences and to get our English group more closely aligned to the SVDP worldwide model. It was a good meeting!
SVDP is a lay organization, i.e., it is not run by priests but by lay people. Priests are not supposed to be regular members. I’m still involved because I started SVDP with our English community and am helping with formation.
Two things are really important in the Catholic Church:
• the eucharist: at the Last Supper, Jesus said “Do this in remembrance of me.”
• serving the poor: again at the Last Supper, washing the feet of the disciples, Jesus said “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
Those were Jesus’ explicit commands. He never said build hospitals, run Catholic universities, protect the environment. Those are all good things and we must do them. But when it came down to the essentials, he wanted us to gather and support each other in the eucharist and then go out and serve the poor.
[More tomorrow…]