vincentian spirituality

The Way (John 14:1-12)

Rereading Andre Dodin’s biography of Saint Vincent de Paul recently, I was struck with the phrase he used to weave together the various threads of Vincent’s life.

Get Up and Set Out (John 6:44, Acts 8:26-40)

This homily was preached on the occasion of the taking of Final Vows by a Vincentian seminarian, Alex Palacios, in Philadelphia, PA.

Inside The Fold (John 10:1-10)

Preparing for this Sunday, which is often called Good Shepherd Sunday, I came across a description of the things a shepherd in Jesus’ time would do to care for his — or her — sheep.

Paying It Forward (Acts 2:42-47)

In the Acts of the Apostles, we come across a behavior that is not quite self-explanatory.

Attuned To The Fear of the Lord

Attuned To The Fear of the Lord

Attuned To “The Fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:1-5; Lk. 10: 21) In Isaiah’s description of the special one God will send (“A shoot from the stump of Jesse”), he lists a number of qualities this person will have. Wisdom, understanding, strength, and so forth. But one of...

Counsel for An Anxious Time

Counsel for An Anxious Time

Counsel for An Anxious Time (Lk. 17:20-25) All through Luke’s gospel, the underlying movement is towards Jerusalem. From the beginning that’s where Jesus is heading, and as He gets closer the pace picks up and the tensions rise. This is not only because of the...

Belief Under Pressure

Belief Under Pressure

Belief Under Pressure (2 Maccabees, 7; Luke 20: 38) One of the things that has sharpened inside me on my journey into the senior years is a sense of time passing (where did it go?), and an accompanying wonderment about what happens when it does pass. What’s on the...

Lost and Found

Lost and Found

Lost and Found (Luke 19:1-10; Wisdom 11) Throughout Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells a good number of “lost and found” parables and incidents. There’s the lost and found coin, the lost-found pearl and earlier on the lost-found tax collector, Levi. And last Sunday we come...

Unchain The Word Through Memory

Unchain The Word Through Memory

Unchaining The Word Through Memory One short sentence in Paul’s letter to Timothy (2 Tim 2: 10) caught my attention right off, “The word of God is not chained.” Paul himself is in chains, and it’s the contrast here that’s striking him. The Word of God is the opposite...

Prayer and Management

Prayer and Management

Prayer and Management (Luke 6:12-19) In this section of Luke, we find Jesus continuing a ministry that’s spreading out further into the society, and in the process selecting 12 people from the group around him to be his “apostles”, i.e., the sent-out ones. You might...

Looking Out Through New Eyes

Looking Out Through New Eyes

Looking Out Through New Eyes (Philemon 9-10, 12-17) Some weeks ago, Mother Teresa was raised to the status of a canonized Saint. And though there are many aspects of her life and spirituality to admire and try to imitate, I pick up on one that comes through in this...

Badgering God

Badgering God

Badgering God (Mt 15: 21-28) Recently I came across an interesting take on this incident of the Canaanite woman not letting Jesus up in an argument. I read their interchange as “badgering God for the future.” From many indications it’s clear that in their time, both...

Formation’s Scratchy Side

Formation’s Scratchy Side

Formation’s Scratchy Side (Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13) All of us entering this Vincentian Family have to go through what is known as “formation.” Formation: people being formed, shaped, molded – maybe better, being re-molded, re-shaped, and maybe even...

Pin It on Pinterest

FAMVIN

FREE
VIEW