Celebrate this historical event as a special time of grace and renewal

January 25, 2017 – the Congregation of the Mission of St. Vincent de Paul begins the celebration of the jubilee all around the world – the 400th anniversary of the founding and of the beginning of the Vincentian Charism.

We begin to celebrate this jubilee year – the beginning of the “Way of St. Vincent de Paul” – the beginning of the Vincentian Charism. As the Superior General Fr. Tomaž Mavrič CM said:

Let us then go forward in this Year of Grace with the words of Saint Vincent de Paul: “I wish you a young heart and a love in its first bloom for Him Who loves us unceasingly and as tenderly as if He were just beginning to love us. For all God’s pleasures are ever new and full of variety, although He never changes” (Letter 288, CCD I, 408).

It is time to open the doors to the future, a future of greater prophetic commitment to building up a better and more just society in which all people can live with dignity.

The four hundredth anniversary is a time to dream, to unite our efforts, to create a new era that incarnates Jesus’ preferential love for the poor (and does that in accord with the example and the spirit of Vincent de Paul). It is the time to make a serious effort at discernment in order to guarantee happiness without falling into the temptation of repeating the past or accommodating ourselves and/or becoming caught up in practices and attitudes that are incompatible with the present demands of the Vincentian charism. This is the time to renew and reconfigure the Vincentian mission “in accord with the movement of mercy”. Now, in the midst of a world marked by the end of utopias and marked by the presence of a culture of apathy and individualism and consumerism … now is a privileged time to renew and accept the utopia of the Kingdom which belongs to those who are poor. The celebration of the four hundredth anniversary is not only an historical, chronological moment that is to be celebrated with many activities and then, concluded at the end of the next calendar year. Rather, it is a time of special grace that enables the Vincentian Family to renew and strengthen the primary reason for its existence, that enables the Vincentian Family to build a fruitful future of mission and charity for the well-being of the poor and the glory of God. May this anniversary be a time of growth in creative fidelity for all the members of the Vincentian Family and may they not lose the love that they had at first (Revelation 2:4)! Charles T. Plock, CM

Let the celebration of this anniversary will be a time of renewal and growth in holiness for the missionaries of St. Vincent as well as for the whole Vincentian Family.