Contemplation: Chosen From All Eternity
By Timothy P. Williams National Director of Formation Virtue, our catechism teaches, is a “habitual and firm disposition to do good.” [CCC: 1833] The good deeds themselves are not the…
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Contemplation: To You Alone
To offer the benefit of the doubt is to assume the best of somebody even when you are uncertain of the truth. Is this not what we are called to…
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Contemplation: Happy Travelers
Our Vincentian formation, we are taught, is a lifelong process of becoming. Like all of God’s people, our lives are not simply a series of events, but a journey –…
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Contemplation: Seeking His Will Together
“Life,” the old saying goes, “is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” There is a deeper truth captured in this witticism, one that St. Vincent often…
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Contemplation: Old and Ever New
With the rapid growth of the Society within its first two years, there arose a debate as to whether the first Conference, now grown quite large, ought to split in…
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Contemplation: A Friend of a Friend
Have you ever had a friend with very different interests than your own? Maybe he was a big baseball fan, and you just didn’t follow that sport, or he had…
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Contemplation: To Do a Little Good
In Monsieur Vincent, the 1947 movie about our patron’s life, he is asked near the end of his life if there is anything he wished he had done. His reply…
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Contemplation: Guideposts on the Journey
To boast about our accomplishments in works of charity brings to mind a routine by the comedian Chris Rock, in which he jokes about people who brag when they do…
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Contemplation: Not to Be Forgotten
There are thousands of agencies, organizations, and individuals who offer assistance to the poor. In our Conferences we often get to know them and refer neighbors to them when it…
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Contemplation: Payment for Tears of Joy
“Help …becomes honorable,” Bl. Frédéric taught, “when it may become mutual.” [O’Meara, 177] It is this teaching that inspires our Rule’s call for Vincentians to “form relationships based on trust…
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