St. Lazarus: home of lepers, home of missionaries

The house of St. Lazarus is a powerful symbol. At first, it was created to welcome the pauperes leprosos, the poor lepers that no one wanted to look at or touch. With the arrival of Vincent, something new happened: St. Lazarus also became a home for missionaries who dedicated themselves to another “leprosy”, that of the soul – religious ignorance, the lack of pastors, a faith that had been abandoned.

It is not a matter of shifting attention, but of broadening one’s gaze:

• healing the wounded flesh
• and at the same time the wounded dignity, the abandoned faith.

Today, the question for us is: what are the “leprosy” that isolates people?

Stigmatised diseases, addictions, mental disorders, HIV, certain disabilities that still cause fear. The Vincentian approach does not choose: neither material aid alone, nor spiritual words alone, but holistic care of the person.

Quinze-Vingts: the blind of yesterday and the blindness of today

Another key place is Quinze-Vingts, the hospice for poor blind people founded by St. Louis, where Vincent sends Louise de Marillac to meet with those in charge of Charity.

Here, poverty is not ‘generic’: it is made up of people who cannot see, have no income, and often have no family.

Today, there are many forms of “blindness”:

• physical disabilities,
• digital exclusion,
• lack of education,
• inability to participate in social life.

Vincent’s method is surprisingly relevant today:

do not settle for occasional help, but enter the structures, talk to decision-makers, create networks, bring order and transparency so that no one is left behind.

Faces of women and girls: not numbers, but stories

In his letters, the concrete tenderness with which St. Vincent speaks of a “poor girl, so sick and unsuitable for Charity” or of “poor women” to be accompanied spiritually is striking. These are not abstract categories: they are faces, stories, very concrete questions.

Vincent asks himself:

• how to care for her,
• whether one day she will be able to support herself with a trade,
• whether a work created for certain women should be continued or closed.

Here we glimpse our female peripheries:

• girls marked by abuse and domestic violence,
• women who are exploited or addicted to substances,
• migrants, single mothers, women without support.

The Vincentian response is not a slogan, but a delicate balance of:

• listening,
• discernment,
• concrete choices: healing, training, providing tools to stand on one’s own two feet… and having the courage to change course when a work is no longer healthy.

Convicts and prisoners: closed peripheries

Even more prophetic is his view of convicts and prisoners. Vincent sees convicts and prisoners as poor in their own right: poor in freedom, relationships and hope. He goes so far as to say that charity towards them is of “incomparable merit” and sends priests to assist them on a permanent basis, with the Word and the sacraments, not just with some material help.

Today, this speaks to us of:

• overcrowded prisons,
• people marked by a mistake and without the possibility of redemption,
• migrants locked up in reception or deportation centres.

The question remains relevant: who takes care of these “closed peripheries”, where no one sees and no one wants to see?

“Good and holy souls”: the protagonists of charity

Within this mosaic, there is a thread that ties everything together: the conviction that God raises up “good and holy souls for the assistance of the poor”.

Structures, laws and regulations (which are important!) are not enough: we need people who are touched inside, who feel the call to share their time, skills and lives.

This is why Vincent:

• supports the Confraternities of Charity,
• involves high-ranking ladies in serving 800–900 poor sick people at the Hôtel-Dieu,
• encourages new vocations such as the Daughters of Charity and other emerging works.

Today, this takes the form of:

• lay people and consecrated persons,
• families and young volunteers,
• social workers,
• networks of parishes and ecclesial realities.

It is the plural face of the Vincentian Family and of many men and women of good will.

Goods, money, choices: everything ‘starting from the least’

A final decisive point concerns the relationship with goods. The documents on Saint Lazarus and hospitals speak of income, foundations, and annuities. Vincent insists: all this makes sense only if it is oriented towards the poorest, in body and soul.

Even the indulgences and spiritual graces requested from the Pope for the missions and for Charity are intended for the ‘poor people’.

Today, this also affects us:

• parish budgets,
• investments in Catholic works,
• use of real estate,
• priorities in pastoral activities.

The question is uncomfortable but necessary: is everything really designed ‘starting with the least’?

And where do we stand?

Looking at these pages, we understand that, for St Vincent, the poor are not only recipients of charity, but a criterion for reforming the Church and a litmus test for living the Gospel.

• The lepers and the blind of yesterday resemble the forgotten sick of today, the excluded disabled, the invisible people in our neighbourhoods.
• The convicts and prisoners of that time are reminiscent of today’s prisoners, migrants in transit, the poor ‘imprisoned’ in suburbs with no future.
• The poor girls and wounded women speak of new forms of slavery, emotional wounds, domestic violence.

To actualise St Vincent means to allow ourselves to be touched by these faces and to ask ourselves personal questions:

• Where is my “St Lazarus” today?
• Who are my “Quinze-Vingts”?
• Which convicts and which “poor people” are waiting for an evangelical presence near me?

The answer will be different for each person, but for those who live the Vincentian charism – and for anyone who takes the Gospel seriously – it will always start here:

standing with the discarded, with intelligence, tenderness and practicality, recognising in them the face of the poor Christ who continues to ask to be loved in the flesh and in today’s history.