Living The Beatitudes

The first time I saw them they were laughing. He was young and rangy, she was a wisp of a girl, and he was walking her to school. The world seemed to swirl around them, and they weren’t aware of the morning traffic.

The second time I spotted them I smiled as I watched them walk together. Father and daughter. I thought about how nice it was that they had one another.

But the last time I saw them — a few days ago — they were far, far away from their destination. They weren’t talking; they weren’t laughing, they were just walking.

It was an early spring morning, and I was sitting in a car with the heater turned on just enough to take the chill off. And my gauge indicated that I had a full tank of gas.

What lives we lead. Close enough to reach out and touch one another, yet far enough away — emotionally, spiritually — that we don’t.

Most of us have a familiarity with Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic who tried to live the Beatitudes throughout her daily life.

She spent many years working with the poor, and the Church has opened the cause for her canonization, referring to her with the title of “Servant of God.”

Perhaps fewer of us know about Peter Maurin, who served as her mentor.

He was from southern France and raised Catholic, but he fell away from the Church “because,” he said, “I was not living as a Catholic should.”

Inspired by the life of St. Francis of Assisi, Maurin eventually returned to his faith. He met Day in 1932, just as our country was entering the most difficult days of the Great Depression.

Together they dedicated their lives to improving the lives of the poor.

Maurin once wrote, “The world would become better off if people tried to become better. And people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off.”

It’s something that St. Vincent de Paul councils all over our diocese strive to do. The members are volunteers, and they choose to spend their discretionary time working in food pantries and making homes visits, helping the poor to find the way to better lives.

My mother-in-law, Betty (Wilzbacher) Barber, was a long-time member of St. Vincent de Paul. She grew up in the Depression, and understood the hardships that the poor face on a daily basis.

When her six children were grown and she could have used her newly found leisure time any way that she desired, she made the decision to spend it helping the poor.

In her quiet way, and in their quiet ways, St. Vincent de Paul members remind me of Dorothy Day, as they strive to live the Beatitudes on a daily basis through their work with the poor.

Perhaps they understand the words of the psalmist who wrote, “You are my inheritance, O Lord.”

We have all we need.