Happy Feast of St. Vincent de Paul! As we get ready to celebrate the feast day of our Parish's Patron Saint I thought it would be a good time to refresh my knowledge of this great saint.
Did you know that the two miracles attributed to St. Vincent were a nun cured of ulcers and a laywoman cured of paralysis? After reading this I thought to myself, if St. Vincent was here today could he, through Jesus, heal us of COVID? He isn't here with us on earth but he is in heaven with our Father and Creator, let us all ask St. Vincent de Paul to pray for us and to rid this world of COVID.
I also read that St. Vincent de Paul wrote over 30,000 letters. I went online and found some of them. Wow! If only we wrote in that beautiful language today. In correspondence with St. Louise de Marillac, co-founder, with St. Vincent, of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, he begins his letter with "The grace of Our Lord be with you forever!" and ends with "I am, in the love of Our Lord, and his holy Mother, Mademoiselle, your most humble and obedient servant." How very different from todays letters aka texts where we start with "Hey" and end with "TTYL" (talk to you later). I'm pretty sure no one will be putting these "letters" in a book for generations to come to read.
All of the information I found about St. Vincent de Paul told me the same thing, St. Vincent was all about humility and serving the poor.
Humility and charity are the two master-chords: one, the lowest; the other, the highest; all the others are dependent on them. Therefore it is necessary, above all, to maintain ourselves in these two virtues; for observe well that the preservation of the whole edifice depends on the foundation and the roof. – Saint Vincent de Paul
Here at St. Vincent de Paul Parish we follow St. Vincent's teaching by reaching out in our community to help those in need. We do this through our parishioners generous support of our St. Vincent de Paul Society, we will see it this weekend with our yearly food drive for the SVdP Society, we saw it with the "lunch brigade" who brought bag lunches to the homeless, we have hosted the men's shelter in December and every night parishioners were there bringing them a hot meal. These are just a few examples of the many ways our parish groups and parishioners show mercy and compassion to those in need.
Guess what my fellow parishioners, we have a new opportunity for you to "extend your mercy towards others". Beginning in October we will be providing dinner every Monday for the Sacred Heart Family Shelter which is currently in Des Moines. More information about this can be found below under "volunteer opportunities".
I'm proud to be part of this Parish, I see the great things that are being done to help those in our community. I see it being done with love and compassion. I can hear St. Vincent de Paul watching down on us saying "Thank you, my fellow followers of Christ, thank you for continuing my work.
Happy Feast of St. Vincent de Paul!
-Diana Carasa P.A.A.
