Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly Photo by Sr. Margaret Egan, SC

From centuries ago, the words of our founders still resound, full of wisdom and insight for today. As we enjoy the last days of summer and prepare for a new season, a new time of grace, Saints Elizabeth Ann Seton and Vincent de Paul and Blessed Frederic Ozanam accompany us. They remind us that a loving God waits to meet us at every moment.

* * * * * * * * *

ST. ELIZABETH SETON
(Birthday, August 28)
28th August [Feast of] Saint Augustine -- and my happy Birthday the first in course of thirty three years in which the Soul has sincerely rejoiced that it exists for Immortality. – …[Hope] exalting exclaims "Thou has drawn me from the mire and clay and set me upon a Rock. Thou hast put a new song in my mouth, the song of salvation to my God." O order my goings in Thy way that my footsteps slip not. (1807)

ST. VINCENT DE PAUL (Feast day September 27)
Let us love God. But let it be with the strength of our arms, and the sweat of our brow.

First of all, God demands the heart, and then the work.“Give me people of prayer and they will be capable of everything. They may say with the apostle, “I can do all things in the God who strengthens me.”

“Grace is given abundantly in beginnings …. [Just as in the early Church], that’s the fervor of beginners who want to serve God wholeheartedly.”

BLESSED FREDERIC OZANAM (Feast day, September 9)
Are we going to be satisfied with complaining about the present-day indifference, when each one of us carries in [our] heart a seed of holiness which, by our merely wanting it, could bloom?

You must not be content with tiding the poor over the poverty crisis; you must study their condition and the injustices which brought about such poverty, with the aim of long term improvement.

In May of 1833, when he was just 20 years old, Frederic Ozanam, with five fellow students at the Sorbonne, laid the foundations of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which became an international association of Catholic laymen engaged systematically in personal service to the poor.

His writings on social justice anticipated the first social encyclical of our modern times, Rerum Novarum (Of New Things). It was issued by Pope Leo XIII on May 15, 1891 and dealt with conditions of the working classes.

Ozanam was beatified by Pope John Paul II on August 22, 1997.

Click for "Charity Wisdom from Our Founders" Archives »