St. Vincent de Paul

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”

Although Vincent de Paul was a spiritual director of diocesan priests, a peasant on intimate terms with nobility, part of the vanguard of a wave of Church renewal, a creative genius at organizing social welfare programs and a master preacher, he was most of all a person who found and served God in the anawim, the poor, sick, abandoned outcasts in the countryside and the city.

Vincent drew other people into his projects and made them his co-workers. Many priests and laymen joined him, but he broke new ground by inviting women to serve poor and sick people out in society.

Today Vincent’s mix of praying and doing, of bringing the resources of the well-off to the most vulnerable, of serving the poor and being blessed by the poor has appealed to tens of thousands of believers over the last three centuries. Vincent is a good companion to anyone who seeks balance between action and contemplation. Worldwide, many women and men follow in Vincent’s footsteps.

– from Praying with Vincent de Paul by Thomas McKenna

“It is not enough to give soup and bread; this the rich can do. It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread that you give them.”
—St. Vincent de Paul