On 6 May 1629, Vincent de Paul sent out on mission the woman who was to be the first Vincentian leader formed at his school– Louise de Marillac. On that day, he sent her to Montmirail to visit, on his behalf, one of the early Confraternities of Charity. These confraternities, which had flourished and expanded since their foundation in 1617, had fallen on hard times in many areas. The spirit of their origins was threatened. Someone had to visit them, study their activities, and revive in the members the zeal that had characterized the beginnings. No one, in the eyes of Vincent de Paul, seemed better suited to undertake this delicate and demanding task than Louise de Marillac…

On that May day, neither Vincent nor Louise was aware of just how far that journey of service leadership would take her nor of its ramifications for the Church and for the service of generations of persons in need. What they surely realized, however, was that Louise de Marillac had reached a turning point in her life and that her heart was now ready to begin the work to which God had called her and for which he had formed her through the dramatic often traumatic events of her life. She was thirty-eight.