Lessons from a man who was captured by pirates

My role as a volunteer for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul led me in a new direction last week. A grade six class invited me to speak to them about the Society and what we do. One of our volunteer coordinators supplied me with a lesson plan focussing on the Society's work with the poor, but unfortunately there was little reference to St. Vincent himself or how the Society began. I decided to do a bit of research, and found a story too good to keep to myself.

I've always been a sucker for saint stories. When I was a child, my parents bought us four little square books filled with the lives of the saints, and I read them over and over. The people in their pages were so strange, and so heroic! I don't remember reading about St. Vincent de Paul in those little books, but he was probably there. After all, anyone who survives being captured by pirates definitely belongs in saintlore!

Vincent de Paul was born in France in 1581, to a middle class farm family near Paris, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1600. In 1605, while he was sailing along the coast of France in order to collect an inheritance, the ship on which he was travelling was captured by Turkish pirates. Of course, Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies wouldn't last a minute next to the pirates of Vincent's era. They killed everyone who wouldn't provide them a fine ransom or fetch a good price when sold as a slave.

Vincent, being young and strong, was taken to be a slave in Tunisia. After six years of hard labour under different owners, his singing in the fields captured the attention of his new master's wife, and her interest in Vincent created the opportunity he needed to convert his French master back to the Christian faith he had abandoned. The two eventually escaped back to France.

I strongly suspect that had Vincent collected his inheritance without incident, we never would have heard of him at all. However, when he returned to France, his experiences as a slave opened his eyes to the plight of the poor, and he used every opportunity to bring the needs of the oppressed before France's wealthy elite. The rest of his life was spent ministering to the poor and building hospitals, orphanages, schools and housing for them. He took a special interest in galley slaves, insisting that they be fed more than black bread and water and be treated more humanely. He started seminaries and convents to train those who were attracted to his mission of serving the poor, and he wrote over 13,000 letters of appeal and spiritual encouragement. After reading everything that Vincent did, I find it hard to imagine that he ever slept! During the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) that devastated so much of Europe, he was Paris' Mother Theresa, rescuing people from the gutters. Hardly an ordinary middle class citizen.

Yet it's so darn easy to be an ordinary middle class citizen if you've never known anything else. My needs and those of my family are met, we have good health, a warm home, plentiful food, and enough work that we can provide for ourselves. It's easy, in a middle class world, to close our eyes and believe that poverty doesn't exist, that no one falls through the cracks, that injustice has no home in our wealthy oil-rich province. But it's only a matter of opening them to see the illusion break apart. Homeless people warm themselves in the malls. Immigrants clean our office towers late into the night. The un- and under-employed keep the Food Bank hopping. Those with chronic illness or mental health issues, and people who have simply made poor choices, perhaps because they were never taught how to make good ones, fall through the cracks at regular intervals. We often hear of their "crimes" on the nightly news.

But is it a crime to be sick? To be uneducated? To have to flee a country where civil war threatens life? To have a disability? To be a misfit? Vincent de Paul understood first-hand how simple misfortune can change a life, and 350 years after his death, he has provided us with the inspiration and opportunity to follow in his footsteps. One of his disciples, Frederic Ozanam, started the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in 1833 during a cholera epidemic... but that's another moodling for another day. There's no shortage of inspirational stories when it comes to the Society, and I suppose many middle class people like me could be examples, too.

I used to be one of those people who was scared of the poor. If a panhandler came up to me on the street, I felt afraid. I suspect my fear was because I might be inadequate in my response. Perhaps it grew out of a sense of guilt that I lived a comfortable middle class life while some of these guys were dumpster diving in my back alley.

As a friend of mine likes to say, "Guilt is only good for about ten seconds. Then you have to do something with it." Volunteering with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is a definite antidote to guilt... and fear. It has brought me into regular contact with those I once avoided out of discomfort. I used to be afraid that the poor would ask more of me than I am able to give, but I've since learned that, with the help of the Society, I have an unending supply of what our inner city folks most need: respect, compassion, and the ability to help them find solutions, at least for one day, sometimes for more. My work at the clothing room has given me a strong desire to live simply, sustainably, and in solidarity with the poor. I've learned that abundance is meant to be shared, not hoarded. I've learned that fear and guilt can only be overcome by action, by stretching myself. And I've learned that every person deserves attention and compassion because God loves us equally, no matter our status in the world's eyes.

That's quite a load of good lessons from a man who was captured by pirates!