In the latest episode of “Charisms for Catholics,” host Jill Simons and guest Theresa Zoe Williams dive into the Charism of Helps. This episode is especially compelling for those who possess this often misunderstood charism. From historical saints to personal anecdotes, they unravel how this spiritual gift can shape lives and support missions.
Understanding the Charism of Helps
The Charism of Helps is not merely about generic acts of service but focuses on supporting a specific mission or vision. This charism involves a deep surrender and a behind-the-scenes role that is crucial for executing grand visions. Jill Simons explains that people with this charism play vital roles at all church levels, from supporting their spouses to aiding significant church leaders.
Saint Louis Martin: A Pillar of Supports
Saint Louis Martin, the father of Saint Therese and husband of Saint Zelie, exemplifies the Charism of Helps beautifully. Despite running a successful watch business, Louis sold it to support his wife’s more successful lace-making venture. In the 1800s, this was remarkable, especially since it was uncommon for men to assume support roles at that time.
Even after Zelie’s death, Louis continued to support his daughters’ spiritual journeys, enabling them to enter religious life. His actions exemplified how the Charism of Helps can guide someone toward sainthood by making sacrifices for the greater vision of those they love.
Saint Timothy: Paul’s Loyal Companion
Saint Timothy serves as another example, closely following Saint Paul and aiding him in his mission. Through letters like those to Timothy in the New Testament, Paul offers encouragement and guidance. Timothy’s role wasn’t to lead but to execute Paul’s broader mission, embodying the Charism of Helps by promoting a vision that was not his own but vital for the early Christian church.
Saint Phoebe: The Trusted Messenger
Saint Phoebe, a lesser-known but equally significant figure, exemplifies how the Charism of Helps extends beyond gender and societal norms. Entrusted by Paul to deliver his letter to the Romans, Phoebe’s role was not just crucial but dangerous. By ensuring the letter reached its destination, she furthered Paul’s mission and reinforced the idea that helps often involve significant personal sacrifices.
Applying the Charism of Helps in Modern Times
Jill Simons points out that the Many Parts Ministries team primarily consists of people with the Charism of Helps. Each member contributes to the mission’s overall vision without seeking personal accolades. This collaborative spirit, rooted in a shared vision, is crucial for the ministry’s success and harmony.
Finding Your Patron Saint
Theresa Zoe Williams suggests that those with the Charism of Helps should seek a patron saint who embodies this gift. Saints like Louis Martin, Timothy, and Phoebe can offer inspiration and intercession, guiding modern Catholics in their unique paths to sainthood.
In closing, this episode illuminates how the Charism of Helps can be a powerful force in building the Church. Whether you’re supporting your family, community, or a larger mission, embracing this charism can pave your way to sainthood. For more insights and to discern your own charisms, visit Many Parts Ministries and start your journey today.
Jill Simons:
Hello and welcome to Charisms for Catholics. My name is Jill Simons and I’m the executive director at Many Parts Ministries, where we equip the body of Christ by helping people learn about and discern their charisms, which is really another word for spiritual gifts. When you discern your charisms, you’re able to see how the Holy Spirit is already active in your life and where he is inviting you to further build the church. Let’s dive in.
Jill Simons:
Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of Charism for Catholics. I am so excited to be with you for another week. This week we are talking about saints for the Charism of Helps, which is a Charism that a lot of people have questions about in general because it’s probably the one that is the most organically unclear what exactly it entails because what we think of in going with helping is a lot more in line with the charism of service specifically, and helps as a charism is really about supporting a specific mission. It is going hand in hand with someone else’s idea, someone else’s vision for something, and being ready to be that really surrendered support person, the person behind the scenes making things happen. And so this is something that shows up just like every charism at every level of the church. So you have people with helps just in their marriage where it’s they’re helping execute the clearer vision or the more powerful vision of the other partner in the relationship, and that’s what it looks like, all the way up to the right hand people to the pope and cardinals and other people in power that are the ones that are really making it possible to execute their vision and their mission within the larger church. So we’re gonna be looking at 3 different saints today that came alongside somebody else’s vision, and that was their path to sainthood, which I think is a really inspiring thing to look at because so often it seems like you have to start the order, build the apostolate, begin the ministry to be on a path to really being the saint that God saint that God made you to be. And for people with helps, that’s not probably something that you really want to do, and that is okay.
Jill Simons:
That’s not the path that you are created for. And so we’re gonna be looking at 3 saints today who are going to give you inspiration about your own unique path to sainthood. So to talk about that with me today, I once again have Theresa Zoe Williams with me who is our resident saint expert going to be sharing some knowledge about 3 saints for helps today. Thanks for being here with me. Yeah. Of course, Jill. I’m
Theresa Zoe Williams:
so happy that you asked me to do this with you. It’s really been a blessing in my life. So thank you for inviting me into this. And that’s a perfect example of helps because that is one of my main charisms, and Jill’s one of her main charisms is leadership. And so I bought into Jill’s vision, and I help in support roles to make that vision come to life and to reach the people that it needs to reach, which hopefully is you. I hope you, get a lot out of this today. So hope is very dear to me. These saints are very special to me because we share a main charism.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
And to start us off, I have Saint Louis Martin, who is the father of Saint Therese and the husband of Saint Zelie or Zayli, if you’re very French.
Jill Simons:
And also a Bartain, if you’re very French.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
Yes. Exactly. Like Not Martin. It’s Martin. But he had so this is a lot of times we see helps in women. Just it seems to come with the nurturing aspect of being a woman a lot. Even if you don’t have this supernaturally, you’ve probably experienced it on a natural baseline level, being the support person in some way. But I loved St.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
Louis because he’s a man, and he had a successful watch business that he ran, but he gave that up. He sold his business to then sign on to his wife’s business of the lace making business, which was even more successful than his and helped further her vision for the lace business. And, I think especially for their time frame, the 1800, that was a little unusual for the woman to be really the breadwinner of the family and the husband to play the support role in what do you need? What can I do? And that’s what he did for Zelie. And then when Zelie died, Therese was only 4. It’s their youngest child. And he then took on this helps role of what do his daughters because only daughters survived, from childhood, 5 of them. What do each of you need? What is your vision for your life, and how can I help make that a reality? And he did that by helping all 5 of them enter religious life, 4 of them into the Carmelites. And then Lianni, who is venerable right now, I believe.
Jill Simons:
Yeah. Because I know her cause is
Theresa Zoe Williams:
same cause. I’m not sure. Definitely. I can’t remember if she’s servant of God or venerable at this point. But Therese’s one sister, Lanny, was a visitation sister for a while and kind of hopped around and did some different things, but he helped them by not refusing them to go. I mean, he really could have used one of his daughters to marry and help out the family, but he knew that that’s not what God wanted for them or what they wanted for themselves. So he made it okay. He cleared the path for all of his daughters to enter religious life even though that meant a personal cost to him, especially because the Carmelites that they joined were very cloistered.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
We’re talking you don’t see them ever again. You don’t get time with them ever again. Some some letters, and that’s about it. There’s no real communication that will ever take place outside of the convent again. And so that was a big sacrifice for him to make with 4 out of 5 of his daughters. But he cleared that path for them so that their vision for their lives and what god was asking of them could come true. And in that, he cleared his own path for doing what god had for him, in helping these other people do what God wanted them to do. He was doing what God wanted him to do.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
And I just helps is, I mean, obviously, very special to me since I have it, but I think it’s just a very special charisma in general because it’s not about you. It’s really not about you. It’s about the other people in your life. It’s really about supporting and nurturing and clearing a path for what else is in your life, who else is in your life and what they need. And I think that’s kind of different. Like, when we talk about active charisms, we talk about going out and doing or how this manifests and helps is an act of terrorism in a very different way. And I just I love that. I would love helps very much even if I didn’t have the charism.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
I just think it’s very unique in what kind of charism it is.
Jill Simons:
Yeah. Because I think that that’s kind of the crux of all of the charisms is that it’s not about you but there’s other ones where it’s easier to get caught up in thinking it might be. Yeah. Whereas helps just doesn’t even have that temptation in it anywhere. That’s something that’s just very clearly removed from it, and that’s a great grace for a lot of people that do experience it. And I think right now that’s probably the most common charisma on our staff right now. I think I pretty intentionally hired all of the people on the many parts staff right now to come around a vision, and everyone is so phenomenal at doing their part of what is happening and what is coming together. And we don’t have that conflict around, well, I’d rather do it this way or I think that this direction would be better or something because there’s just a lot of clarity around the vision and everybody knew that that was the buy in from the beginning.
Jill Simons:
And so that is something that has just been a huge benefit to us is to have people who are really aware of the fact that we’re all going in the same direction together. That’s what it really amounts to is not that it’s, like, my vision is perfect, and I need everyone to fall in line, but that we are moving in the same direction together, and that’s what creates that harmony. Exactly. Exactly. And that’s really what Louis did in his family’s life. He found the he latched onto what
Theresa Zoe Williams:
the vision was, which was perfection in Christ and made a way for that to happen. So that’s our second one. Our last 2 both tie down to the same vision, but I’m gonna speak about them separately. Saint Timothy was he traveled with Saint Paul. He helped Saint Paul in his ministries. He, you know, did what Paul told him to do, basically, in going out into the different communities. Two letters are written to Timothy in the New Testament just of Paul’s encouragement to him to keep doing what they had talked about. But to do that, Timothy really had the charism of helps, not leadership.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
He wasn’t, like, deciding where he should go and what he should do and what he should say. He was really doing and saying what he had been taught to say and do by Saint Paul. And so he furthered what Saint Paul is doing rather than creating something new himself. Yeah. And we’re 2 of these famous because he’s don’t let your age be a a factor in what you do, which is great. It’s a great reminder. And it also tells us that Timothy was quite a bit younger than Paul. Yeah.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
But it means that charisms are for everyone. And Timothy used to be very dear to I was very close to him when I was a lot younger because I worked for my diocesan youth office when I was 17, 18, 19 years old and helped put on, like, Steubenville style retreats and things like that for my diocese and helped form team leads and was part of the team lead team when I was a teen and things like that. So I used to look to Saint Timothy all the time on, like, how did he approach Paul? How did he then take what Paul did and do it in his own way, but while still furthering Paul’s mission? What was Paul’s mission? You know? To go out and preach to as many people as possible and bring them all into the fold of Christ. And so I used to look at how Timothy related to Paul to see how I could relate to our director of youth ministry and do my job better. So he’s just a great example of helps in that way.
Jill Simons:
Yeah. I love that. I saw this meme once that was, like, every letter of Paul summarized, and it was, like, hello. Stop being stupid. Timothy says hi. And so I just thought that that was funny. Yeah. And then the the next thing is another New Testament saint that I think people might not be as familiar with.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
Yes. So Saint Phoebe, she was also she also bought into the vision of Saint Paul, and she helped Paul financially and through hospitality. But she was entrusted by Paul to deliver his letter to the Romans, and she did that without fail. And that’s a big deal to entrust a letter to someone and make sure that it gets delivered, especially a letter like this at a time like this when you can’t be so out and out Christian or else you’re going to be murdered. And if you’re gonna further your mission, you’ve definitely got to stay alive for a little bit. And if she had been intercepted or anything like that, she would have she would have faced the same fate and the letter never would have gotten there. We wouldn’t have had the letter to the Romans. Those people wouldn’t have been edified in their faith.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
Like, it’s a big deal for Phoebe to have taken this letter. And she’s famous right now because she was referred to as a deacon in Paul’s letters. And there’s a lot of back and forth about what that means and what he really was referring to. And that’s not something I wanna get into because it doesn’t matter if she was a deacon or not. If she was, in our understanding of deacon, that’s still a position of helps. It’s not the priest. It’s a position of helps. So everything that Paul writes about her just affirms that she was this very important support person to him and someone he entrusted his life to, which is a big deal.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
I I have one person I would entrust my life to for him to choose. And to choose a woman, again, at this time was a big deal. So Paul pushed all kinds of boundaries when he chose someone very young, chose a woman, these different people to buy into his vision of Christ and to spreading, that good news in the way they did. So I love Phoebe. I have a a cousin named for her and just a very you don’t you have to look for the women of the new testament. Like, the men are all pretty prominent. You see them very clearly, but you have to look deeper for the women. And I think that’s neat because you’re going deeper.
Theresa Zoe Williams:
And when you go deeper, you get the women and that that they bring the next level of everything. That’s not saying women are better than men at all or deeper than men at all, but just in how it’s leveled in the New Testament. The women are taking it to the next level for us. So you have to be ready. You have to have gotten that first in your face aspect first before you can then delve into where these women were living, the plane that they were living at spiritually.
Jill Simons:
Yeah. I love that. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us about these saints for helps. If this is one of your charisms, I recommend that you find one of these saints or one of your own to be a intercessor or a patron for this Charism for you moving forward to really help you understand what it looks like to live your life, to commit to using this Charism on a regular basis. We’ll be back in 2 weeks with another episode talking about specific saints for a certain charism, and next week, we’ll be back with a regular episode. They come out every single Thursday, and we can’t wait to see you again next time. God bless you.
Jill Simons:
Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode of Charisms for Catholics. If you would like to learn more about your charisms or begin your own discernment journey, head to our website at manypartsministries.com where you can download our free pdf guide to all 24 charisms and also begin your own journey by taking our charism assessment.
