Texts by Ozanam
Useless Servants • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
We are useless servants: such is the testimony that must give those who unite to serve God and men. [...] Not to show...
The Fundamentals of our Faith • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Our century has forgotten to such an extent the Christian language of our parents that it is difficult to speak...
No One Succors the Poor Better than the Poor Themselves • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Citizens of every condition, You, to whom the rigor of the times has taken away you the superfluous, you, who lack...
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...
The Situation of the Poor in our Cities • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
On either side of a filthy sewer rise houses five stories high, many of which shelter fifty families. Low, damp, and noxious rooms; [...] no paper, often not a single piece of furniture, hides the nakedness of the wretched walls. In a house of the Rue des Lyonnais we...
The Privilege of Serving the Poor • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Those who have the privilege of distributing the public help [...] go, for instance, to the twelfth arrondissement, one of the strongholds of the insurrection, and out of about ninety thousand inhabitants they find eight thousand families inscribed on the list of the...
Responsible for Proclaiming the Word of God • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Dear friend, we have not faith enough; we are always looking for the re-establishment of religion by political means; we dream of a Constantine who, with one blow and one effort, would bring back the nations to the fold. The fact is we don't really know the history of...
Faith: an Act of Will • A Weekly Reflection with Ozanam
Dear friend, you are continually heading out on long and fatiguing journeys that are dangerous to your health (your health has already been severely tested). Bear with me as I express my concern. You say you are seeking to create new sources of interest for yourself...