feast of st vincent de paul

today, 27 sept, my blog anniversary, is also the feast of st vincent de paul. who the heck is he, you ask. yeah you wouldn’t know at all if you are not a catholic, so i guess this is going to be a ‘catholic’ post, so if you are not interested, do make a hasty retreat right now. 🙂 oh no, don’t retreat from me blog completely; i mean retreat from this post.

note: picture above shows the ‘feast-day’ card (both sides – pocket sized) prepared especially for the feast to distribute to people in church.

st vincent de paul is the patron saint of charity. you can read all about him at the catholic encyclopedia site but i warn you it is very ‘technical’ and kind of confusing… well, even for me, a catholic! no fear, wikipedia comes to the rescue – simpler readings there.

why is it that there are so many feasts of saints in the catholic calendar i didn’t highlight but now want to highlight st vincent de paul? for the simple reason that there is a SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL (SSVP) in our church and i’m an old time member.

now, SSVP is not founded by st vincent, mind you, but by a young university french student known as frederic ozanam. yes frederic found the society but he used st vincent de paul as the patron of the society, hence the name of the society. since today i’m talking about st vincent (the saint and the society) and not frederic, let’s leave dear freddie alone for now.

st vincent was picked as the patron saint of SSVP because, well, as i mentioned earlier, he was the patron saint of charity and SSVP society is a charitable society. the SSVP is an international organization of roman catholic lay men and women of all ages, whose primary mission is to help the poor and less fortunate. all over the world, there are SSVP around like in UK, australia, canada and so on.

in churches, where SSVP is set up, it will be known as ‘conference’. therefore, if it is in say st francis xavier church, it will be known as ‘society of st vincent de paul, conference of st francis xavier’. now in malaysia, there are 58 conferences and about 700 members. SSVP malaysia has a website actually (started many years back) but it had not been updated for a long time. a new website had been started in july this year, but again, until now, no update. gee, should have asked me to update their website. see how hard-working am i in updating my own blog! lol.

the structure of the SSVP works this way. first there is the ‘national council’, followed by the ‘diocesan council’ then ‘state council’. finally of course are the conferences. at one time i was the penang state council secretary for many many years. now i’m the penang diocesan council secretary. under conference, i’m also the secretary.

this is the logo of our society in malaysia. our slogan is ‘help us to help the poor’, and we as members are known as ‘vincentians. here’s an explanation of the logo as thus:

==The fish is the symbol of Christianity and, in this case, represents the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

The eye of the fish is the vigilant eye of God seeking to help the poor in our midst.

The crossing at the tail or the tie-knot represents unity and oneness among members and also the union with the poor.

The circle bounding the logo signifies the global or worldwide stature of the SSVP, an international Society.

The words ‘serviens in spe’ mean to serve in hope, the hope that comes from Our Lord Jesus Christ.==

note: you won’t see the words ‘serviens in spe’ at our logo but it appears in other international logo, like you see at the general council.

the basic work of SSVP is to help the poor and marginalised. SSVP ‘adopts’ poor families or individuals and gave them cash aid or rations regularly every month. then some conferences also start projects like tution centre, orphange. the most famous project of SSVP is the ozanam house in KL.

the most well-known fund raising project of SSVP is the ‘flag day’.  many many years back, almost all conferences in malaysia held flag day. however, from a few years back, it seems that only penang has flag day. the other states seemed to have problems with permits (from police dept. and education dept) so flag day was scrapped.

ok i’m going to end my post here with links of our flag day projects carried out.

help us to help the poor (2004)
street collection (2004)

feast of st anne and SSVP (2005)
collecting donations (2005)

i am proud to be a vincentian because i get to reach out to the poor, marginalised and down-trodden. once a vincentian, always a vincentian!

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note:  regarding the picture you see right at the top, the words on the left (inside a white box)m those are words of inspiration from st vincent, which reads as follows:

when we go visit the poor, we should share their feelings so as to suffer with them and adopt the disposition of that great apostle who said "i became all things to all people."

if we identify in this way with the pain of our brothers and sisters, we shall never hear spoken to us the terrible words of the prophet: "i wanted to see if there would be anyone to grieve with me in my sufferings and there was no one."

We should then soften our hearts and make them aware of the sufferings and miseries of our neighbour. we should beg god to give us that spirit of mercy which is the very spirit of god himself.

(taken from ‘on the spirit of mercy and compassion’, 6 aug. 1956)