Saint Vincent de Paul on God

Saint Vincent de Paul served the poor, the sick and the downtrodden in imitation of Christ. His insights into the love of God and the wisdom of Divine Providence were given to him through his ministry to the humble, the lowly and the week.

God often delays the conclusion of a holy endeavor so that those involved in it might merit its grace by the length of the work, their patience, and their prayers. This is why I beg you not to grow weary in yours. Although He may delay, He will reveal that it is pleasing to Him, if it is done... in a spirit of resignation regarding the outcome. 

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Our Lord humbles in order to raise up, and allows the suffering of interior and exterior afflictions in order to bring about peace. He often desires some things more than we do, but wants us to merit the grace of accomplishing them by several practices of virtue and to beg for this with many prayers.

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God asks that we never do good in one place to make ourselves look important in others but, rather, that we always regard Him directly, immediately, and without intermediary in all our actions and allow ourselves to be guided by His paternal hand.

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God is pleased to communicate himself to the simple and humble and to use the smallest and lowliest to make them great and exalted. In a word, it is He Himself who has called and approved them and inspired their humble manner of living.

— St. Vincent de Paul

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Prayer for St. Vincent de Paul’s Intercession

Almighty God, who for the relief of the poor and the formation of your clergy endowed the Priest Saint Vincent de Paul with apostolic virtues, grant, we pray, that, afire with that same spirit, we may love what he loved and put into practice his example. Through Jesus Christ your Son who reigns with you forever. Amen.