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If you have been a Vincentian long enough, you are sure to have encountered a neighbor who seems always to come back, always to fall short, never to change habits that might change their circumstances: the family that used a tax refund and to go to the beach for a long weekend, then returned home to find their water cut off; the lady who paid her past-due cable bill, then came up short for the rent; the man can’t afford his rent, but won’t leave his part-time job to look for full-time work.
Exactly how long are we called to keep offering assistance? How much is too much, when they seem to bring their troubles on themselves? There is an old and popular saying that “God helps those who help themselves.” This saying, though, is not in the Bible. Instead, over and over again, we see that it is almost always those who do not, or cannot, help themselves who receive God’s mercy.
Bl. Frédéric’s wife related a story about a man Frédéric had helped when there was nobody else who would hire him. Frédéric gave the man work, paying him to do translations that he didn’t really need until he was able to arrange for a job for him. Before long, the man was fired for cause, and, homeless and destitute, he returned to Frédéric, begging for help.
Frédéric’s immediate reaction was anger. He told the man to go away and never call on him again, but no sooner had he closed the door than he repented, “saying that one should never push a man to despair, that one did not have the right to refuse a slice of bread, even to the vilest scoundrel.” More importantly Frédéric said that he would himself “need, one day, that God would not be as harsh to him as he had just been to this man.” [Sickinger, 75]
The neighbor who calls us repeatedly should serve first to remind us of Christ’s instruction to pray always without becoming weary. As He explains, if even the dishonest judge was eventually persuaded, our loving God will surely not be slower to answer. Whose model do we seek to follow?
The family that went to the beach saw a simple pleasure within reach - a pleasure that they hadn’t thought could be theirs. The woman who paid the TV bill before the rent had little other contact with the rest of the world. The man who doesn’t work enough is hesitant to leave his job because some work is better than no work, and he’s been there before. The challenges of poverty often can overwhelm us, blinding us to all but our immediate needs, making today’s trouble enough for today.
Of course, none of this is to say that we should not try to help people help themselves, but just as God feeds the birds who neither reap nor sow and clothes the grass of the field, perhaps sometimes the tyranny of the moment calls us first to offer the generosity of the moment.
Contemplate
Am I sometimes too quick to decide that further help is “enabling”?
Recommended Reading
Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam (Especially Chapter 3)
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