Vincentian – Communio

St Vincent de Paul

Today we are given the liturgical memorial of the often overlooked saint who has led by an experience of Christ, a man of deep desires to serve the Church, and a man who is a model of service to faith and the poor. St Vincent de Paul, the 17th century French priest is recalled not only for personal holiness and for what has become known the Vincentian charism. The importance of the Vincent’s influence is likely more important to our era than I dare say the Ignatian heritage. While Loyola’s real gift to the Church is not necessarily the least Society of Jesus and the educational system, but really the Spiritual Exercises and the method of discernment. Vincent’s gift to the Church is the integration of evangelization and charity.

What is also key to understanding and appreciating what Vincent did for us –and continues to do for us– is the spiritual bond he had with St Louise de Marillac. Vincent and Louise worked in complement to each other. Three Vincentian values that are often spoken of are spirituality, friendship and service. For me, the key value is friendship. Friendship is the sun to which one’s spiritual life and service orbit. What is the quality of our relation to God, others, the Church, the poor, to seminarians, and to ourselves? Without a flourishing and mature relationship with others, and principally with the Lord, then all else falls apart or doesn’t even get off the ground. As a young man and student under the Vincentians, I was taught that by example, Vincent indicated that our service to the poor is first nourished by our spiritual life, by personal and corporate prayer. Time spent praying before the Most Blessed Sacrament has an abundance of grace. Short of spending hours in prayer our friendship with those we work and serve is banal. In the end, we recall a gem in the crown of saints and blesseds in the crown of the Church.

St Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

St Vincent de Paul

Today is the liturgical memorial of Saint Vincent de Paul and the 400th anniversary of the Congregation of the Mission (the Vincentians). My prayer today is focussed on the Vincentian gift I received as a school boy at St. Stanislaus Church, New Haven, CT. Thanks be to God for Vincent and his Family!

In his letter to the Vincentian Family today, the Holy Father wrote:

He was always progressing, open to seeking God and himself. Grace worked to supplement this constant quest: as a shepherd, he encountered Jesus the Good Shepherd in a striking way in the person of the poor. This occurred in a very special way when he allowed himself to be touched by the eyes of a man thirsting for mercy and by the situation of family lacking everything. At that moment, he was deeply moved by Jesus looking at him, inviting him to no longer live for himself, but to serve Jesus wholeheartedly in persons who are poor, whom Vincent de Paul would later call “our lords and masters” (Correspondence, Conferences, Documents XI, 349). His life then became steadfast service, up to his last breath. A verse from Scripture showed him the meaning of his mission: “The Lord has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor” (cf. Lk 4:18).

In the glorious wounds of Jesus, may you find the strength of charity, the happiness of the grain that gives life by dying, the fecundity of the rock from which water gushes forth, the joy of coming out of yourself in order to go out into the world, free from nostalgia for the past, confident in God and creative regarding the challenges of today and tomorrow because, as Saint Vincent said, “love is inventive to infinity”.

Blessed Pierre-René Rogue

Vincentian Father Pierre-René Rogue is a martyr of the French Revolution who suffered death by guillotine on 3 March 1796. His mother witnessed the death of her son. The Church beatified Father Pierre-René on 10 May 1934. His mortal remains can be found interred in the Cathedral of St. Peter (Vannes, France).

Rogue was a sensible, prudent and holy man who maintained good relations with civil authorities. Yet, in a time of persecution of the Catholic Church in France, Blessed Pierre-René was betrayed while bringing Viaticum on Christmas Eve 1795.

The liturgical memorial for Blessed Pierre-René is today according the most recent changes to the liturgical calendar, but he had initially his own liturgical memorial on May 8th. He is called a Martyr of the Eucharist.

Vincentians elect new superior general: Father Tomaz Mavric

The Congregation of the Mission –the Vincentians– elected a new Superior General on Tuesday, 5 July 2016, succeeding Saint Vincent de Paul and most recently Father Gregory G. Gay who was elected Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission in 2004.

The Vincentians began their 42nd General Assembly at DePaul University in Chicago, the first General Assembly outside of Europe. You will know, among many others, Saints Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, Elizabeth Seton and Blessed Frederic Ozanam who form the Vincentian family.

Father Tomaz Mavric, 57, is the Twenty-fifth Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission and the Company of the Daughters of Charity.

A biography of Father Tomaz Mavric is posted here.

Saint Vincent de Paul

The prayers for the Mass of Saint Vincent de Paul today have us focus on “the relief of the poor and the formation of the clergy” imitating what Vincent loved and did in following the Savior. The Church’s mission is one of service and education. Baptized into the company of saints, all Christians ought to have concern for the least in society; likewise, the baptized are to be concerned for their own education in the faith aiming to be as Saint Paul said, mature Christians. In Vincent’s world, education of the faithful came through the formation of healthy and holy clergy. An uneducated, that is, an untrained clergyman can lead others to perdition.

“Charity is the cement which binds communities to God and persons to one another in such a way that whoever contributes to union of hearts in a Company binds it indissolubly to God.” (Coste II, Letter 651, p. 413)

Saint Vincent said in his common rules as noted by Vincentian Father José María Román:

Charitable behaviour towards the neighbor should always be characteristic of us. We should try, then: 1) to behave towards others in the way we might reasonably expect to be treated by them; 2) to agree with others, and to accept everything in the Lord; 3) to put up with one another without grumbling; 4) to weep with those who weep; 5) to rejoice with those who rejoice; 6) to yield precedence to one another; 7) to be kind and helpful to one another in all sincerity.

Hence, Vincent stressed three attitudes for his companions in the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity, but they are also applicable to us who are not Vincentians, namely: mutual respect, condescension (humility) and bearing with the weaknesses of our neighbors.

Our prayer today ought to note how we engage in concrete works of charity, spiritual and corporal, and how we attend to our education in the faith while supporting those preparing to serve the world as Catholic priests.

The Vincentians need our prayers, so, I’d like to remember the Fathers of the Congregation of the Mission who serve in the Archdiocese of Hartford, especially those at St Stanislaus Church, New Haven, CT.

I’d recommend reading St Vincent de Paul: A Biography by Father José María Román, CM (London, 1999), but the same author has published various aspects of Saint Vincent’s life and work online.

Frédéric Ozanam at 200

Today is the 200th birthday of Frédéric Ozanam the famed co-founder of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society (may 1833). Born in Milan and lived in various cities in France, Ozanam was a well-educated man earning doctorates in law and letters; we was a literary critic and professor of literature. In June 1841 he married Amélie Soulacroix.

In the years following the Revolution, Ozanam advocated ideas pertaining to Catholic democracy based on his reading of Church history and knowing the contributions to culture by those who lived the Catholic faith. Some place Frédéric within a movement called ‘neo-Catholic.’

Frédéric Ozanam was an early proponent of a spirituality based on Saint Vincent de Paul that demonstrated that you can see the face of Christ in the poor, the teaching readily known in the biblical narrative.

In honor of Ozanam’s 200th birthday, VinFormation produced 2 videos accessed here.

Pope John Paul beatified Frédéric Ozanam.

His feast day is September 9.

We continue to pray for Blessed Frédéric Ozanam’s canonization.

Feast of the Miraculous Medal

The feast of the Miraculous Medal may be surprising to a few. Catholics honor buildings, theological ideas, people and medals. The Miraculous Medal is known as the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, the medal that Our Lady on this date in 1830 instructed Saint Catherine Labouré to have struck. There is nothing miraculous about the medal. What is miraculous is the fact that it is a sign that God does miraculous things in our lives. In a boring world there are events that turn reality on end.

Do you believe in miracles? Do you believe that God cares for each of his creatures enough to make His presence known through signs?

The devotion to the medal is nothing more and nothing less than a person having trust in Mary’s instrumentality before the Throne of Grace. It is a devotion to the hearts of Jesus and Mary. Miracles of conversion, healing, cure, renewed faith, and more. Those who are devoted to the wearing the medal receive special graces at the time of death.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Saint Vincent de Paul

I want to remember the Vincentian community in here in Connecticut, and particularly at Saint Stanislaus Church in New Haven.

My prayer is that the Vincentian priests and brothers fulfill what the Church prays in the Mass Collect (see below) so that their witness be bold and clear for the faithful following of Jesus Christ. We need the witness of Saint Vincent de Paul and his sons and daughters through the vowed life of the Vincentian Society today more than ever. In an age of diminishment in vocations, the love with which the Vincentians live their vocation needs to be extroverted.

With the Church we pray,

O God, who for
the relief of the poor and the formation of the clergy endowed the Priest Saint
Vincent de Paul with apostolic
virtues, grant, we pray, that, afire with that same spirit, we may love
what he loved and put into practice what he taught.

Continue reading Saint Vincent de Paul

Poverty Eradication and Intergenerational Justice: Stewardship, Solidarity and Subsidiarity

This coming year Pope Benedict is going to spend time teaching matters of Justice. In fact, he’s called for a new emphasis on Justice several times in the past year. St John’s University is a college operated by the Congregation of the Mission (the Vincentians), the religious order founded by the great Saint Vincent de Paul who had a special love for the poor and marginalized but also taught that one can’t effectively serve the poor without an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. For Saint Vincent de Paul, in order to walk with the poor one had to first first walk with the Lord. To that end, the Vincentian Fathers, Brothers and laity organized the Vincentian Center for Church and Society.

Next week, there is the 7th Biennial Vincentian Chair of Social Justice at St. John’s University (Queens, NY Campus) on “Poverty Eradication and Intergenerational Justice: Stewardship, Solidarity and Subsidiarity” to take place on October 22, 2011.

More information can be found here: Poverty Eradication and Intergenerational Justice.pdf

350 years since the deaths of Sts Vincent de Paul & Louise de Marillac

In the Pope’s Weekly Sunday Angelus Address (September 26, 2010) he spoke of Saint Vincent de Paul. Sunday’s gospel of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus gave Benedict XVI a perfect context by which to teach that us that “God loves the poor and raise them from their abjection; secondly, that our eternal destiny is dependent upon our behavior, it is up to us to follow the path God has shown us in order to achieve live, and this path is love, understood not as emotion but as service to others in the charity of Christ,” and further the Pope said:

“By a happy coincidence, tomorrow (9/26/2010) we will celebrate the liturgical memorial of St. Vincent de Paul, patron of Catholic Charities, which marks the 350th anniversary of his death. In France of 1600, he touched with his hand the sharp contrast between the richest and poorest. In fact, as a priest he was able to attend both the aristocratic circles, campaigns, as well as the slums of Paris. Driven by the love of Christ, Vincent de Paul was able to organize stable forms of service to the marginalized people, giving rise to so-called “Charitees,” the “Charity,” i.e., groups of women who put their time and property available to more marginalized. Among these volunteers, some chose to devote themselves completely to God and the poor, and thus, along with St. Louis de Marillac, St. Vincent founded the “Daughters of Charity,” the first female congregation to live their consecration “in the world,” among all the people, the sick and needy.”

Strive to live content in the midst of those things that
cause your discontent. Free your mind from all that troubles you, God will take
care of things. You will be unable to make haste in this [choice] without, so
to speak, grieving the heart of God, because he sees that you do not honor him sufficiently
with holy trust. Trust in him, I beg you, and you will have the fulfillment of
what your heart desires (St. Vincent de Paul, Letters).