Daily Inspiration- 365 Quotes From Saints
Page 23
– St. Vincent de Paul
By 1629, it became apparent to Father Vincent that the Charities he and the priests assisting him had been establishing with each mission were too numerous for him to oversee. He enlisted Louise de Marillac to follow right on the heels of the Missionists, setting up new Charities, visiting existing ones, providing encouragement, and getting things organized. She took on the task with enthusiasm, modeling servitude to the poor while organizing, recruiting and training new members, caring for the sick, and educating poor children. In some wealthier parishes in Paris, the society ladies volunteering to become servants of the poor lacked practical skills and were unaccustomed to doing any real work. Thus was born the Daughters of Charity in 1633, to help the ladies in doing the work of their Charities.
“The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it.”
– St. Vincent de Paul
In founding the Daughters of Charity, St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac envisioned a group of religious women who would move freely and serve in the community, but at the time, the French government wanted nuns to be cloistered. Not wanting to draw attention to the Daughters of Charity, they didn’t use the term “sister” in referring to the women. The Daughters of Charity were unlike other orders of their time, and the same distinctions exist today. For example, they make annual vows, not lifetime ones. No vows are said at all until five years after the date that a young woman enters the seminary. At that point she pronounces vows for the first time and will repeat them every subsequent year. Vincent and Louise didn’t want the Daughters of Charity to be set apart in any way from the people they served, so rather than a traditional habit, the Daughters wore the clothing of a French peasant woman, complete with sunbonnet.
“Give me a person of prayer, and such a one will be capable of accomplishing anything.”
– St. Vincent de Paul
St. Vincent de Paul is the patron saint of all charities, among them the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, founded in 1833, by Blessed Frédéric Ozanam. The Society of St, Vincent de Paul is a Catholic lay organization of men and women seeking spiritual growth through personal service to the poor and suffering. Members, known as Vincentians, come from diverse backgrounds but adhere to the same basic Rule. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul differs from other charitable organizations that aim to do good for others without concern for their members’ spiritual advancement. Vincentians do good because they see the face of Christ in every person they help. In 2016, nearly 1,000 trained volunteers in the U.S. alone donated 17.5 million hours of volunteer service to nearly 21 million people in their homes, in prisons, and in hospitals.
“Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying.”
– St. Vincent de Paul
St. Vincent de Paul identified five characteristic virtues of a missionary: simplicity, humility, meekness, mortification, and zeal. Simplicity referred not only to leading a simple life without superfluous possessions, but also speaking the truth with absolute candor and transparency and acting with purity of intention—for love of God alone. Humility lies in recognizing our own lowliness and that everything good comes from God. Meekness comprises gentleness, serenity, turning the other cheek to offenses, forgiving the offender, and suppressing anger. Mortification refers to denying pleasures of the senses and subordinating passion to reason. And finally, zeal is the willingness to do anything and go anywhere to evangelize and save souls. These virtues are common themes throughout the writings of St. Vincent de Paul.
“Every time that some unexpected event befalls us, be it affliction, or be it spiritual or corporal consolation, we should endeavor to receive it with equanimity of spirit, since all comes from the hand of God.'”
– St. Vincent de Paul
St. Vincent de Paul saw an untenable situation in Paris and resolved to do something about it. Several hundred children were being abandoned by their parents every year on the streets of the city. The police routinely took them to a house, La Couche, where they were cared for by a widow and two or three assistants who didn’t have the resources to even feed them properly. Many of them soon died, and those who lingered were sedated with narcotics, sometimes fatally. Some were sold, and it was rumored that their blood was used in satanic rituals. The souls of the children taken to La Couche lacked nourishment just as their bodies did. Vincent had some of the ladies who helped him investigate, and when they confirmed the sad plight of these abandoned and orphaned children, Vincent conducted an experiment in 1638 by selecting twelve of them to be cared for in a house by the Sisters of Charity. As donations came in, the number of children grew, and in 1640, Vincent revealed his plan to take charge of all the foundlings of Paris. Executing the plan and sustaining it required a significant fund-raising effort during a time of famine and increasing poverty in France. Eventually, two houses were bought, and King Louis XIV increased the funding initially granted by his mother, the queen dowager. Because of the persistence and determination of St. Vincent de Paul and the commitment of the Sisters of Charity, countless children lived to grow up and know God’s love.
“When we receive with an entire and perfect resignation the afflictions which God sends us, they become for us favors and benefits; because conformity to the will of God is a gain far superior to all temporal advantages.”
– St. Vincent de Paul
When St. Vincent de Paul wrote about the virtue of meekness, he was writing about a virtue he possessed in good measure. When Vincent was serving as the almoner for Queen Marguerite of Valois, he boarded in the same house as an attorney. After a large sum of money was stolen from the attorney, he accused Vincent of having taken it, and he slandered Vincent to everyone he knew. Vincent denied the charge, saying “God knows the truth,” and lived under the shadow of suspicion for six years until the real thief confessed. Vincent sometimes told this story to illustrate what meekness looks like, and why patient resignation is the best defense unjust accusations.
“Extend your mercy towards others, so that there can be no one in need whom you meet without helping. For what hope is there for us if God should withdraw His Mercy from us?”
– St. Vincent de Paul
Perhaps remembering the two years he spent as a slave in Tunisia after the ship he was aboard was captured by Barbary pirates, St. Vincent de Paul founded a home for former galley slaves. During his time, French convicts were often sentenced to row the Navy’s war galleys. It was a brutal existence. Convicts were chained to their benches and stood no chance of surviving if their ship foundered. They were whipped mercilessly to make them row faster or harder until they died or were deemed useless and not worth feeding. Vincent provided a home for them in Marseilles. During the Thirty Years War, Vincent organized relief for those most affected by the hostilities, raising the money he needed to ransom more than 1,200 Christians enslaved in Africa.
“It is absolutely necessary, both for our advancement and the salvation of others, to follow always and in all things the beautiful light of faith.”
– St. Vincent de Paul
In his youth, St. Vincent de Paul was known to be a difficult person to get along with. He described himself as short-tempered and quick to anger and declared that he would still be irascible if it were not for the grace of God. That description doesn’t seem to fit the theologian who regarded meekness as one of the five characteristic virtues of a missionary, but those who knew him in his earlier years verified its truth. Through the grace of God and much prayer Vincent increased in humility and became the exact opposite of what he once was—tender, affectionate, sensitive, patient, and infinitely empathetic.
“Every baptized person should consider that it is in the womb of the Church where he is transformed from a child of Adam to a child of God.”
– St. Vincent Ferrer
Legends abound regarding the beginning and end of St. Vincent Ferrer’s life.
His father had a dream in which a Dominican friar revealed to him that his son would become known worldwide. The story is that Vincent’s mother never felt one twinge of pain in giving birth to him. In his later years, St. Vincent preached to St. Colette and her community, and she foretold that he would die in France. He did, in fact, die in Brittany in 1419, at the age of 62. There is disagreement among his early biographers whether Vincent had the gift of tongues because of his ability to convert so many souls on his travels through Europe if he spoke only Valencian.
“Whatever you do, think not of yourself, but of God.”
– St. Vincent Ferrer
The year before the ordination of St. Vincent Ferrer, the Western Schism tore the Church into two factions. Vincent supported the validity of the Avignon papacy of Clement VII and tried to sway Spaniards to follow him. In 1394, Clement VII was succeeded in the Avignon papacy by Benedict XIII. Though loyal to Benedict XIII and having served him in several positions of increasing importance, Vincent tried (unsuccessfully) to end the schism. Eventually, Vincent withdrew from “combat,” asking only to be named apostolic missionary. Some would say that he went on to become the most famous missionary of the 14th century, evangelizing and converting souls throughout Europe, equally welcome in the districts on either side of the schism. He died in 1419, shortly after the schism ended with the election of Pope Martin V.
“Remember that the Christian life is one of action, not of speech and daydreams. Let there be few words and many deeds, and let them be done well.”
– St. Vincent Pallotti
Born in 1795, Vincent Pallotti decided at sixteen to become a priest. He was ordained at the age of 23 and continued on to earn a doctorate in theology and accept a position as assistant professor. He soon found that he preferred pastoral work to academics and spent the rest of his life serving the urban poor. Like St. Philip Neri, to whom he was often compared, Father Vincent established evening classes for general education of the illiterate and unskilled and a number of trade schools in shoemaking, carpentry, horticulture, tailoring, and more. He set up orphanages and homes for girls and established the Society for Catholic Action,” to continue his urban mission work and provide services for the poor and underprivileged. Social action was Father Vincent’s passion, but it wasn’t his only contribution.
“Since God is perfect in loving man, man must be perfect in loving his neighbor.”
– St. Vincent Pallotti
St. Vincent Pallotti is best known for his pioneer work in Catholic social action, but he also envisioned a world in which all souls would belong to Christ. He dreamed of converting all non-Catholics, especially Muslims. There was strong anticlerical sentiment in Rome during the 19th century, accompanied by a decline in public morals. Carnival, intended to mark the beginning of Lent, had become a time of particularly questionable behavior, and Vincent decided to address the situation. During the Roman Carnival of 1825, Father Vincent and an assistant walked through the crowds, their habits a somber note in the atmosphere of gaiety and abandon. They pressed slips of paper into the hands of those they passed, each slip bearing one of these messages: “Life is short, and death comes quickly,” “Death strikes even at play,” or “One mortal sin merits damnation.” Perhaps some of those messages did bring the recipients into the Church, or perhaps not. Either way, this incident is a good example of St. Vincent Pallotti’s hands-on approach to doing good in the world.
“You must be holy in the way that God asks you to be holy. God does not ask you to be a Trappist monk or a hermit. He wills that you sanctify the world in your everyday life.”
– St. Vincent Pallotti
During his lifetime, St. Vincent Pallotti was regarded as a mystic and miracle worker, credited with prophecies that came to be realized and several healings. Often, his mere presence was enough for any subsequent healing or cure to be attributed to him. In 1830 or thereabouts, Lucia Fabiani was visited by Father Vincent as she lay dying. He prayed with her to ease her fears and help her trust in God and the Blessed Virgin. Shortly after he left, Lucia told her husband that she was once again healthy. When the doctor arrived to check on her, half expecting her to be dead, his reaction to her obvious cure was, “Don Vincenzo must have been here,” though he knew nothing about Father Vincent’s earlier visit. On another occasion, Vincent apparently fell into a trance in the confessional and told the penitent that Cardinal Capellari had been elected pope, though no announcement had yet been made by the Vatican and the relatively unknown Capellari’s name had not been mentioned among those speculating on the identity of the next pope.
Z
“A servant is not holy if she is not busy.”
– St. Zita
St. Zita is the patron saint of domestic workers for good reason. She was a pious and obedient child who entered domestic service at the age of 12 as the housekeeper for a wealthy weaver and his family eight miles from her home. She was the ideal servant, and she remained with that same family, the Fatinellis, until she died in 1278, at the age of 60. During the 48 years Zita spent with the Fatinelli family, she displayed every virtue one might seek in a servant. She was seen to be extremely devout, charitable, and good-hearted, and over time she went from servant to friend to advisor. Her employers let her set her own work schedule, and she routinely visited the sick and the incarcerated. She is also reported to have had numerous mystical experiences. St. Zita was named saint by popular acclamation upon her death.