Citizens of every condition, You, to whom the rigor of the times has taken away you the superfluous, you, who lack...
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People are Generous • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Representatives of the people, Do not plead want of money. If the ordinary resources should come to fail you, if there...
Working Tirelessly for the Impoverished • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Representatives of the people, Do not say that you lack time. Under the shootings of the insurrection, the National...
It Is Better to Do Little than to Do Nothing • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Representatives of the people, Do not say that you lack inspiration. [...] We do not ignore the obstacles or the rivalries, nor the imperfections that stop each project and that perpetuate the debates. But we have never seen that great powers were instituted by easy...
We Never Do Enough • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Representatives of the people, We respect the magnitude and the difficulty of your task. We are not those who, by the temerity of their accusations, have the misfortune to weaken the last power capable of saving society. You continue, with just slowness, your work, by...
Goods are for Everyone • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Rich men, He who taught us to pray for our daily bread nowhere advises us to secure to ourselves ten years of luxury. We live in days without examples, in which it may be wise to sacrifice the future to the present and the economy to necessity. [...] Give the alms of...
Priests Committed to the Poor and the Needy • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Priests, do not be offended at the freedom of speech which a layman uses in appealing to your zeal. [...] Mistrust yourselves, mistrust the habits and customs of a more peaceful period, and have less doubt of the power of your ministry and its popularity. It is true,...
To Grieve with the Evils of the Poor • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
[If so are now] the evils, not of a single district, but of several districts of Paris; not only in Paris but in Lyon, in Rouan, and in all the manufacturing cities of the North, [...] imagine what winter will bring, when the hardness of the station suspends the...
Protecting the Children • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
One is terrified, and rightly, by that multitude of children growing up for disorder and for crime, with no other education than the examples of the theatre and the temptations of the public square. It is not well known that in district 12, four thousand boys and...
The Dignity of the Poor • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
In these foul cellars and garrets, sometimes next door to sloth and vice we have often come upon the loveliest domestic virtues, on a refinement and intelligence that one does not always meet with under gilded ceilings; a poor cooper, of past seventy years of age,...
Being on the Side of the Workers • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Of course, the districts of Saint-Jacques and of Jardin-des-Plantes do not always give the spectacle of the same desolation. We know there shopping streets, poor but livable houses, narrow but well-kept rooms that retain remains of an old slack, waxed furniture, white...
What Rich Man will be Saved? • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
We need not dwell on those amongst them who are better off [at Lyonnais Street]; those who, for six persons, can supply two beds, into which are huddled pellmell the sick and the healthy, boys of eighteen with girls of sixteen. Let's not talk about the ruin of the...
