Discover the heart and spirit of Father Jean-Émile Anizan through his own words—a priest devoted to the poor and the founder of the Congregation of the Sons of Charity (in 1918) and the Congregation of the Auxiliaries of Charity (in 1926).

The writings of Jean-Émile Anizan (1853-1928) reveal a man of God deeply devoted to the Church and the poor, unafraid to raise his voice to shed the light of the Gospel on the pressing issues of modern society. In them resound his evangelical spirit, his love for justice, and his conviction that genuine faith is always expressed in active charity. To read Anizan is to be challenged and inspired by a rich spiritual legacy that urges us to serve with courage, humility, and hope.

Text of Jean-Émile Anizan:

I began this retreat with considerable sadness, because of the serious events we have just experienced, both myself and the Congregation. There were so many questions! Questions that seemed not only insoluble but at the same time so disturbing, that I felt rather helpless. It seemed to me that God was hiding, and that He remained so impenetrable that I found myself immersed in darkness and in the midst of the storm.

The thought of the lost masses overwhelms and pursues me.

In spirit, I found myself once again among those masses, I prayed and pleaded for them. During the conventual Mass I united myself with Jesus on the cross, I joined to His Passion the crosses I carry at this moment, and, together with Him, I spent the entire Mass crying out the Miserere for those poor people, offering myself to go to them, to pray, suffer, and work for them.

I believe this is the star of my retreat. This morning it seems to rise, and I feel that peace and confidence are reborn in me.

My aspiration has been, and today more than ever, to give myself to the working masses who are untouched by current apostolic efforts. There are immense crowds being lost. Does God want me, in my small measure, to work for them for the rest of my life? Perhaps.

If circumstances confirm this, I will ask to be sent into the mist of one of those completely working-class environments, and there I will devote myself to the great work of creating a workers’ parish. I hope that, besides the local good it may produce, it will also set an example that will inspire others.

Until now, no one has dedicated themselves to this necessary and urgent work, one for which I believe God may have particularly prepared me.

—Jean-Émile Anizan, Notes from the 1914 retreat at the Pleterje monastery.

Commentary:

This text from the retreat at Pleterje, written in 1914, brings us into one of the most decisive moments in the life of Jean-Émile Anizan. He came wounded, almost broken, after having been deposed as Superior General of the Sons of Charity amid a climate of suspicion, misunderstandings, and accusations. The external storm coincided with the inner storm. It was the darkest point of his life, when the mission seemed shattered and the horizon closed. Yet, there, in the solitude of the Carthusian monastery, in the midst of unanswered questions and the dark night, renewal took place: the star of trust began to shine again, and with it, the fire of his vocation was rekindled.

In this text, Anizan describes with raw honesty what he was experiencing: the feeling of an absent God, insoluble questions, darkness, and helplessness. It is the experience of so many men and women of faith who pass through what the mystical tradition calls the “night of the spirit.” There are no certainties or consolations, only the radical nakedness of one who knows himself to be small before an incomprehensible mystery. In this state, the soul can be paralyzed by doubt or fear. But in Anizan something different happened: in the midst of abandonment, during conventual Mass, he united himself with Jesus on the cross. That union with the Crucified changed his perspective: his own crosses ceased to be solitary burdens and became offerings joined to the redemptive Passion.

The result was immediate: a cry of compassion for the “lost masses.” He did not enclose himself in his own pain, he did not withdraw into self-pity; instead, his suffering opened onto the suffering of others. The Mass, lived as a Miserere cried out on behalf of the working poor, became the place where his mission was clarified: to be with the poor, to suffer and work for them, to give his life so that they might come to know the charity of God.

This discovery is what he calls “the star of my retreat.” It was not a spectacular revelation, but an intimate certainty that lit up like a light in the night: God was not abandoning him, He was pointing him toward a path. God did not take away the cross but invited him to carry it with Christ and to transform it into mission … and that certainty returned peace and trust to his soul.

The practical consequence was clear: his vocation was defined with more radicality than ever. Up until that point he had served as a superior, as an organizer, as the animator of a congregation. Now, stripped of everything, what remained was the essential: the call to live among the workers, to build in their midst a “workers’ parish,” a visible sign of a Church that shares the life of the poor. For this he felt particularly prepared, as if his whole life up until then had been a providential school leading him to this moment.

We can see here a parallel with the experience of St. Vincent de Paul. He, too, went through crises and periods of searching until he discovered that the true treasure was in serving the poor, in whom he recognized the presence of Christ. For both men, peace did not come from solving abstract questions but from embodying faith in concrete service. The certainty that salvation passes through the peripheries, through the forgotten working masses, became the compass for their entire existence.

From a spiritual perspective, the text of Pleterje teaches us something fundamental: peace is not the absence of storms, but trust that is born in the midst of them. Anizan began the retreat feeling God distant and impenetrable, but ended by recognizing His presence in the cry of the people, in the cross shared, in the mission entrusted to him. That is the dynamic of faith: from confusion to abandonment, from darkness to trust, from trial to mission.

For us today, there are several lessons here.

• First, not to flee from our own dark nights. Sometimes we feel that God is hiding, that our questions have no answers, that prayer is an emptiness. In such moments we can be tempted to give up or to turn inward. Anizan shows us another way: to unite our crosses with that of Christ, to transform anguish into intercession, God’s silence into a cry for the poor.
• Second, his testimony reminds us that every true spiritual renewal flows into mission. It is not enough to find interior peace: that peace becomes missionary dynamism. The star of his retreat was not limited to consoling him; it propelled him to go to the working-class neighborhoods, to create living parishes, to set an example that would inspire others. God’s peace is never inward-looking; it always sends forth.
• Third, Anizan invites us to believe that the moments of greatest dispossession can also be the most fruitful. Rome had removed him from leadership, had stripped away what seemed to give meaning to his life. And yet, from that emptiness sprang the strength to define himself as a founder, to dream of new forms of apostolate. In God’s logic, human defeats can become the fertile soil of the greatest fruitfulness.

His option for the working world, expressed here with such clarity, also has a prophetic resonance. In 1914 almost no one in the Church was thinking of creating workers’ parishes or of approaching the world of the factories. Anizan perceived that urgency as a particular call. It was as if at Pleterje he had not only received interior peace but also a vision of the future: the Church would only be faithful to Christ if it gave itself to the poor, if it dwelt among them, if it made of its life a shared Eucharist.

The star of his retreat was renewed trust in God and passion for the poor. That combination—contemplation and mission, abandonment and commitment—defines the very heart of Vincentian spirituality. There is no true union with Christ without dedication to the people, and there is no authentic mission without roots in the cross and in prayer.