St. Vincent de Paul | Louisville

By Brother John Baptist Hoang, O.P.
Dominican Province of St. Joseph

You may have seen us on campus: two young men wearing white medieval robes walking around the grounds of St. Vincent de Paul in Louisville, KY. For all those who stopped dead in their tracks with a puzzled look of confusion, let me introduce myself.

My name is Brother John Baptist, and I belong to the Order of Friars Preachers, the Dominicans. We are a Catholic religious order of friars, founded in 1216 by Saint Dominic. We live a common life dedicated to prayer, study, and preaching—modeling our life on the life of Jesus and the Apostles.

he Dominicans are no stranger to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. In fact, when Blessed Frederic Ozanam founded the Society in France in 1833, Ozanam sought the counsel of his good friend, Father Jean-Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire (see photo, below), the great Dominican preacher of the 19^th Century.

Ozanam and Lacordaire were both contemporaries of the period after the French Revolution. The Catholic Church was weakened, and Enlightenment ideas flooded into people’s minds.

Ozanam was a man of the Church, spared from the influence of the growing secularism of his time. He was a man fervent in prayer, who sought only to obey and serve God. It is said of Saint Dominic that he only spoke “with God and about God.” I believe the same was true of Blessed Ozanam. He founded the Society of St. Vincent de Paul because of his relationship with God. He loved God, because God loved him. He loved the homeless, because God loves the homeless. His country told him that God did not exist, but Ozanam faithfully followed God’s command to love his neighbor.

Ozanam’s charity to the homeless was grounded in his passion and love for the Truth. It should be no surprise that Ozanam was a 20-year-old law student when he founded the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Ozanam was a young man in search of the Truth. He studied the law of man in school, but he studied the law of God in his heart. Through his studies, Ozanam was able to see the order of creation: man was created out of love, and this love comes from God.

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was created out of this love.

Pope Benedict XVI writes on the relationship between love and truth in the Introduction of his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”):

Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6).

You’ll often hear Christians say that they see “Christ in the poor.” Frederic Ozanam had this same vision when he looked into the eyes of the homeless in the slums of Paris. He could not help but to speak to others about what he saw. This is why thousands of people have joined the Society of St. Vincent de Paul since its founding. They heard about the Society, and they sought to join Frederic Ozanam in caring for the poor.

He spoke about what he saw. He spoke about Christ.

Ozanam saw Christ in the poor. It was from praying and studying that Ozanam fitfully and joyfully spoke to others about Christ. He was a man who engaged in charitable dialogue with everyone he met. He spoke about God to his peers, to his professors, and in the newspapers.

But Ozanam’s most cherished listeners were to the poor and the homeless whom he met every day of his life. He met Christ every day, and he spoke about Christ every day. This was the greatest gift that Ozanam gave to the poor: the knowledge of God’s love for them. Ozanam, as intelligent and loving as he was, knew this fact, and he wanted to teach it to everyone.

This was the same desire of Saint Dominic 600 years prior to Ozanam’s founding of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Dominic saw the poor people of his time fall into the hands of the Albigensian heresy. They were not living in Charity because they were not living in Truth. Dominic sought to establish the Order of Preachers in order that the preaching of the friars would lead people back to the Truth.  Charity begins in the Truth.  “God is Love”—that’s the Truth!

This is why I became a Dominican: to preach the Truth, the Truth that is my life! I want to share that Truth with others! As a religious friar, I spend a lot of my time in prayer and in study, but out of that prayer and study is the fruit of my preaching.

That is what I did this summer: I prayed, I studied, I preached.

I prayed for all the people I met at the St. Vincent de Paul Society. I learned about the people I met at the St. Vincent de Paul Society. And I spoke to them, telling them my prayers and teaching them what I learned. I spoke to the homeless about God, and the homeless as well spoke to me about God!

There is the Franciscan maxim: “Preach the Gospel at all times, and use words when necessary.”

My Dominican response would be: “Preach the Gospel at all times—that means use words!”

God spoke the most perfect word to us. In one Word, God spoke to us. He spoke to us through His Only-Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

Meeting the people at the St. Vincent de Paul Society was like meeting my best friend. We talked about our lives; we talked about God.

Lacordaire was very influential in the life of Blessed Ozanam: the Dominican life of prayer, study, and preaching is evident in his life. But I think Ozanam was more influential in the life of Lacordaire. Ozanam’s compassion to serve the homeless in Love and Truth sparked in Lacordaire’s heart a deeper union of love with God and with neighbor.

Ozanam and Lacordaire were filled with the Love and Truth of God.

May the work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society continue to serve the homeless in the Love and Truth that is in God!

Holy Father Saint Dominic, pray for us!
Blessed Frederic Ozanam, pray for us!

[Brother John Baptist is studying for the priesthood at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. He entered the Dominican Order in August 2009.]