How My Mom Became My Vincentian Role Model
Every summer growing up, I was fortunate enough to travel to Peru with my mom to visit my family. While it wasn’t always something we could financially afford, we knew we needed to see our family at least once a year since we had no one in the U.S. The trip would only last a few weeks but my mom made sure I remembered those weeks for the rest of my life.
Our trips took us to the northern coastal highlands of Peru where my family lives. They live in poverty with 5 to 6 children to care for and my grandfather, who is nearing the end of his life. My mom had me visiting from a very young age so that I could be accustomed to the lifestyle in Peru and not be traumatized at a later age by the low quality of life they were living in compared to my own in the U.S.
But, it was hard at first. My body was still adjusting to puberty so travelling to Peru and trying new foods was not ideal for my stomach. I was also having a tough time playing with my cousins who were all growing up in a different way than I was. I didn’t understand their slang, I wasn’t familiar with the games they played and I was shocked to find out at 7 years old that they didn’t know who the U.S. President was (oh, little, imperialist me.)
The worst part for me though was seeing how different things were in the U.S. in comparison to the life people lived in Peru. I would constantly ask how it was possible that almost every American family could own a car, a two-story house, and all the gadgets that came with that lifestyle while my family in Peru was struggling to put food on the table. And while my family in Peru lived in poverty, it doesn’t mean they felt poor. I’ve never met people so eager to spend hours singing, dancing and eating with family despite barely having any money for tomorrow’s dinner. My family in Peru was not enslaved to the 9 to 5 lifestyle or glued to their cellphones. They lived their lives graciously, giving thanks at every turn. It was a sharp contrast to the monotonous lifestyle I was coming home to every year.
So, for awhile, I had a tough time understanding why my mom left Peru in the first place or how she was okay with living in the U.S. by herself while her family lived in poverty thousands of miles away.
That is, until recently, I started to understand why she kept going back.
Out of the many summer trips we took to Peru, there is one specific memory that has stuck with me. If I recall right, I was around twelve years old standing in the Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru waiting for my mom to figure out how to contact my family to tell them we had arrived. We were standing by the currency exchange desk with 5 to 6 suitcases most of them filled with clothes, shoes, toys, and other appliances we had collected to donate to our family. It was something we did every year because my mom insisted it was our responsibility to be at their service even though my family was hosting us.
While we were standing around, a group of about 20 to 30 American students with their North Face camping bags and U.S. passports started to take up the line. I could only assume that they were either on a service trip or visiting Machu Picchu (or maybe even both). But regardless, their presence had taken over the room and I could only help but wonder what they were up to. It wasn’t the first time I had seen a group of Americans in Peru but it was the first time I felt angry by their presence. I had always been told that Americans went to Latin America for service trips but I never knew what kind of “service” they actually provided. I felt that my mom, who worked 60 hours a week to pay for our annual trip to Peru in which we would take 5 to 6 suitcases filled with donations, was providing more service than any American on a “service” trip.
I was even more angry knowing I, too, was American. But I never felt like one in Peru and I did not especially feel like one standing next to that group of American students. So it was at the age of 12 that I told myself I would never become one of those Americans on a service trip because I knew that their acts of “service” had no positive effects on my family or on the community around them. I also knew that as an American, I had the privilege of being a U.S. citizen and that I had access to resources that could help my family in need. That no matter what I studied to be or what job I had, my duty was to give back.
That’s when I understood why my mom kept returning. She had asked herself twenty years ago, “What must be done?” and since then, has spent every year answering that question.
It’s my favorite Vincentian story.
But, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t hard for me to understand what all of that meant to me and how it connects to my own Vincentian journey.
When I was hired almost a year ago to be the new Student Assistant for the Meet Me at the Mission Initiative, I was ecstatic to be working close to the Vincentian community of DePaul University. All I knew as a first-year student, was that I was excited to become more engaged with service and social activism. I wanted to know what it took to be a part of the change that we needed in our world. And if a trip to Paris could teach me that, then I was definitely on-board.
At the same time though, I did not have the best relationship with my mom. I had moved out-of-state, away from my parents, to attend DePaul University and I was terrible at calling her. We could no longer afford annual trips to Peru, considering how costly it was to get me to college. So, our relationship had become very distant.
Over the course of several months after I had begun my new job and sophomore year, I was experiencing sudden changes to my own personal life that I had never experienced before. I was switching majors, friend groups, lifestyles. I was overwhelmed with having to balance classes and three jobs. My mental, physical and spiritual health had hit rock bottom. I was also starting to have doubts about the power of service and social activism. I couldn’t find a way to connect to Vincentian service and it was making me feel unprepared and unenthusiastic about participating in the Vincentian Heritage Tour.
I started taking the prerequisite course to the program: CTH 290 The Life and Times of St. Vincent de Paul in the Winter Quarter. It was taught by Fr. Edward Udovic who I would otherwise consider an expert on St. Vincent de Paul. But, I was fearful of what to expect. Would I have to know all things about the Catholic faith to understand the course? Would I be expected to have a strong sense of faith and spirituality in my own life? Or better yet, would I be forced to learn about the power of service in third-world countries?
The first thing he made sure we knew, was that as a class we would learn the difference between the Vincent of Myth and the Vincent of History. In other words, we would be dissecting and pulling out the pieces of Vincent’s real life from the pieces of his “mythical” life that was created and polished by historians for centuries to grant him Sainthood. I had always been critical of the Catholic church, but I didn’t know a Catholic University could be critical too.
Throughout the class, I was starting to paint my own picture of Vincent de Paul. The name above the door that welcomed me in two years ago was all of a sudden starting to make more sense. Vincent de Paul was from a middle-class family. He had decided to become a priest at a particularly young age presumably for the paycheck. He had no true significant understanding of his work as a priest and his entire life was spent in a country overwhelmed with poverty, war and disease.
He had no understanding of what it meant to be at the service of others until one day, he knelt beside the bed of a dying man to hear his confessions and it dawned on him that this man represented a whole population of people who had been robbed of their basic necessities in life. This man represented those who have been stripped of their human dignity by circumstances out of their control. Vincent de Paul (with the help of Madame de Gondi) thought to himself: Who would have been there to listen to this man’s last breath if I had not been there?
He used that experience to reflect on his own life. He knew he held a lot of privilege in his role as a priest. Not only was he excused from living in misery amongst the lower class, but he was also well-connected to the nobility. He could have easily decided to be blind to the realities of the lower-class but instead he chose against that. His decision to kneel beside the bed of a dying man was the first of many decisions he would make to kneel beside the poor.
It wasn’t just about the act of serving others though. Vincent de Paul was organizing a plan to create a consistent and sustainable way of service. He knew that that man needed a plate of food and a roof over his head, but that he also needed economic reform and social justice. So, he served the poor in a hospitable manner. He made sure to embrace the human dignity of every person he served. He served in a consistent and direct way. He was also an efficient fundraiser. He saw what worked, what didn’t work and made changes accordingly. And everything he did was rooted in Love.
By the end of the course, I was able to understand who Vincent de Paul was and what his model of charity represented. But mostly because I had watched my mother do the same thing every year of my life. The Life and Times of Vincent de Paul was, for me, a parallel to the Life and Times of my own Mother.
At the same time that I was taking the class, I went to counseling for the first time. I made progress to ensure my mental and physical health were taken care of. I began to read and write more. I straightened up my priorities and put myself first. I also began to talk to my mom more.
I was missing my mom in all these conversations I was having about service. All the years of visiting Peru to serve my own community had been put on pause so that I could afford to go to college. I didn’t expect that all the things I would experience in college would make me crave all the experiences I shared with my mom.
Because of that, I no longer doubted the power of service.
Service, by definition, is an act of helpful activity; help; aid. It is defined in such basic terms because an act of kindness should not have limits. Giving a man on the streets some change to get food might actually provide him with a meal. It might not provide him with a meal for tomorrow — -but it does feed him today. However, service alone is not sustainable. Sustainable service must go hand in hand with justice.
Justice, by definition, is just behavior or treatment. It is a concern for justice, peace and genuine respect for people. It is what drives us to do service. Seeking justice is the long-term commitment I was willing to make but service was the act of seeking justice everyday — a much harder commitment to make.
That’s how I started to understand why my mom left Peru in the first place and why she kept going back. My mom had grown up witnessing poverty and war left and right. But she saw an opportunity that, in the moment, benefited her current situation and would later on benefit her community. Her acts of service were those annual trips we made to Peru and her act of justice was all about getting me to understand why.
My mom has been my Vincentian role model. Her service has been consistent, direct, personal, professional and rooted in love.
Of course, I didn’t really piece any of that together until I was finally in Paris walking in the footsteps of not just Vincent de Paul but also of my mother’s — who had also landed in Paris almost 30 years ago right after leaving Peru. My own Vincentian journey took me to my childhood and back, took me to counseling for the first time, and took me on a boat cruise on the Seine River of Paris embracing my own human dignity.
As I continue to reflect on my journey and how the pillars of service and justice will be embedded into my own framework, I hold myself accountable to make sure one thing does continue to happen: Going back to Peru.
