Truth has no need of me, but I do need Truth. The Cause of Christian Science, the Cause of Faith, is deep in the roots...
formation package
The Sin of Accumulating Goods • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
It is foolish to consume the days accumulating what is not to be enjoyed; it is madness also to pile up for the...
Marriage and Equality of Spouses • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
In Christianity, the primary purpose of marriage is not the birth of children-- St. Augustine says it aptly, and it is...
The Foundation is to Assist the Poor • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
What constitutes the life of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is the home visit to the poor; it is not enough to attend meetings regularly [...]. The visit, in order to obtain from it the fruits that one has the right to expect, must be punctual, respectful and...
Christians in Public Life • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
You may know that in Paris —as in Lyons but for far more plausible reasons— processions are forbidden; but, as some disrupters like Catholicism to be enclosed in the temples of the great cities, this is no reason why young Christians, to whom God has endowed a...
Accompany the Youth in their Faith Journey • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
You have accustomed us to look upon you as the meeting point, the counselor and the friend of the young Christians; your past goodness has given us the right to count on your future goodness; those you have had with me make me expect similar ones for my friends....
Defending the Cause of the Proletariat • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
It's time to share and retrieve our good; I mean: the old and popular ideas of justice, charity, fraternity. It's time to show that we can defend the cause of the proletariat, engage in relief classes suffering, and pursue the abolition of pauperism, without agreeing...
Merry Christmas! • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
That bond, God that unites family in distance, comforts Frederic, gives him “strength and courage.” Did you wish family and friends a Merry Christmas?
Assisting the Poor is Way More than Giving them Bread • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
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...
Simplicity and Cordiality • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
[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...
Vincentians in Public Life • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
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...
On Being Simple • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
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,...
