That bond, God that unites family in distance, comforts Frederic, gives him “strength and courage.” Did you wish family and friends a Merry Christmas?

Help is humiliating when it appeals to men from below, taking heed of their material wants only, paying no attention but to those of the flesh, to the cry of hunger and cold, to what excites pity, to what one succors even in the beasts. [...] It humiliates when there...

[The conferences] are blooming in Livorno and in Pisa, they begin to prosper in Florence, in Pontadera, they settle in Prato, and soon in Volterra and in Porto Ferraio. Very soon there will be seven families of Saint Vincent de Paul in this Tuscan country in which...

At the same time, another thirty conferences formed in the most distant points of the country, celebrated the same solemnity. How can we not have any hope in that force of association, exerted mainly in the big cities, in all the faculties of Law, in all the centers...

May God preserve us in the simplicity of our beginnings, and St. Vincent de Paul will recognize us as his disciples, if we maintain that character. Frederic Ozanam, to the General Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, July 10, 1953. Reflection: In 1853,...

In those times we found ourselves invaded by a avalanche of heterodox doctrines and philosophies that were confronting us all around, and we felt the need to strengthen our faith in the midst of the assaults made upon it by the various false systems of knowledge. Some...

God did not make the poor. […] It is human liberty that makes the poor. […] We have put crushing taxes on salt, meat, and all necessaries of life. […] When it was a question of crushing out the last embers of the insurrection, there was no need of delays and...

I commit my soul to Jesus Christ, my Saviour, frightened at my sins, but trusting in His infinite mercy. I die in the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church. I have known the difficulties of belief of the present age, but my whole life has convinced me that there is...