contemplation - SVDP USA

Contemplation: Fulfilling His Promise

A young Vincentian, complaining about Conference meetings, noted that the members seemed discouraged, that they were just doing good works “by habit”, and that the meeting “is nearly always concerned…

Contemplation: A Perpetual Expression

One of our essential elements is spirituality, but what is spirituality? How do we express it? How do we live it? What is its goal? Given that the spiritual growth…

Contemplation: Answering God’s Call

Central to the spirituality of St. Vincent de Paul is the importance of fulfilling God’s will. Even more than that, he teaches, we must unite our will with His. In…

Contemplation: To Know Fully

In his 1978 book, God and the Astronomers, astrophysicist Robert Jastrow concludes that the astronomers, following science alone to scale the mountain of ignorance, would, when reaching the truth at…

Contemplation: To Become Better

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is the largest lay Catholic organization in the world, with about a million members and volunteers in 155 countries around the world. As…

Contemplation: What Good Have I Done?

In the course of the works of a busy Conference, we often become overwhelmed. The needs are many, and often are greater than our resources enable us to alleviate. We…

Contemplation: The Wages of Love

Unlike that of humans, God’s judgment, we are taught, is equal to His mercy. This is one reason that we refrain from judging the neighbors we serve; our judgments, sometimes…

Contemplation: Abundance

“Why on earth would they do that?” we sometimes ask ourselves after a Home Visit in which the neighbors explain a decision they’ve made which makes no sense to us.…

Contemplation: Will and Grace

The word vocation, as we know, is from the Latin vocāre, meaning “to call. A vocation, then, such as our Vincentian vocation, is a calling, specifically a call from God.…

Contemplation: A Communion of Friendship

We are called as individuals to the virtue of charity, expressed as complete love of God for His own sake, and love of the neighbor as ourselves for the love…