Vincent de Paul Quotes about Faith - Page 2

He also always blesses humble beginnings much more than those accompanied by a lot of show.

All of you desire to belong entirely to God, and God also wants all of you to belong to Him

I have made to God the offering you made to me of your heart and have asked him to unite mine with yours in that of Our Lord.

I have never come away from you without reflecting that the Spirit of God and His holy workings reside in you.

Your soul will be blessed, Sister, if you bear patiently the troubles of mind and body His Providence sends you, or which come to you from within and without.

I beg Our Lord, Monsieur, that we may be able to die to ourselves in order to rise with Him, that he may be the joy of your heart, the end and soul of your actions, and your glory in heaven. This will come to pass if, from now on, we humble ourselves as He humbled Himself, if we renounce our own satisfaction to follow Him by carrying our little crosses, and if we give our lives willingly, as He gave His, for our neighbor whom He loves so much and whom He wants us to love as ourselves.

God has great plans for you, directed towards helping you do what Jesus Christ did when He was on earth. This requires you do resist temptation vigorously, with special confidence in the assistance of His Divine Goodness. Courage then, Monsieur. Be faithful to Him, and the Divine Goodness will be favorable to you.

[I]n order to raise a soul to the highest perfection, He allows it to pass through dryness, brambles, and combats, causing it thereby to honor the times of weariness in the life of His Son, Our Lord, who suffered various kinds of anguish and abandonment.

The children of our Lord walk gladly in his ways; they have confidence in him, and so when they fall, they rise again; and if, instead of stopping to grumble about the stone they have tripped over, they humble themselves at their fall, this helps them to advance with great strides in his love.

Divine Providence is never wanting in things undertaken at Its command. Even though the whole world should rise up and destroy us, nothing could happen but what is pleasing to God. The less there is of man in affairs, the more there is of God.

Our Lord and the saints accomplished more by suffering than by acting.

Let us reflect that we shall always do God's Will and He will do ours when we carry out that of our Superiors.

[I]t is the maxim of the saints that when a matter has been decided in the presence of God after many prayers and the seeking of advice, we must reject and consider as a temptation whatever is suggested to the contrary.

Far from rejecting such a good man as you, He never even abandons a wicked man who hopes for His mercy.

Things arrange themselves with time. Only God can have everything to His liking; His servants should act as Our Lord did.

We must endeavor to have God reign sovereignly in us, and then in others. The trouble with me is that I take more care to have Him reign in others than in myself.

God has seen fit that, since our services are useful to many persons, everyone approves them, but only when they are carried out in the spirit of Our Lord.

. . . [R]estlessness usually stems from pride and from being discontented with one's lot in life.

A man who behaves poorly in a Community will not do well in a parish.

God's affairs are accomplished gradually and almost imperceptibly and His spirit is neither violent nor tempestuous.

Would that God, Monsieur, had rendered us worthy of spending our lives, as Our Lord did, for the salvation of those poor souls so far removed from all assistance.

I am the only wretch who keeps on heaping new iniquities and abominations on myself. O Monsieur, how merciful God is to put up with me with so much patience and forbearance, and how weak and miserable I am to abuse his mercies so greatly!

Ultimately, Monsieur, we must go to God per infamiam et bonam famam [whether spoken of well or ill], and His Divine Goodness is merciful to us when it pleases Him to allow us to encounter blame and public contempt. I am sure you have borne patiently the embarrassment you experienced because of what has happened. If the glory of the world is nothing but smoke, the contrary is a solid good, when it is accepted in the right way. I hope that great good will come to us from this humiliation.

If we want to find the manna hidden in our vocation, let us restrict and confine all our desires within it.

His Divine Goodness asks that we never do good in any place to make ourselves look important but that we always consider Him directly, immediately, and without intermediary in all our actions.