Way to Happiness: Vincentian Way (English and Chinese text)

Way to Happiness: Vincentian Way (English and Chinese text)

Advice for students: to serve God and His Church better

May the philosophy you’re going to learn teach you to love and serve God better, to raise you up to Him by love, and... that you may learn the philosophy of Our Lord and His maxims and put them into practice, in such a way that what you’ll learn w on’t make your heart swell, but rather help you to serve God and His Church better. (23 October 1658; SV XII, 57-58)

Advice for students: humility

Don’t desire to be a great success, to walk off with the prize, or to make a show either by supporting by argument, or by defending, or by maintaining, but rather wish, desire, and ask Our Lord to give you the grace to love and practice humility in everything and everywhere, to love your own abjection, and to seek and desire nothing but that; and, above all, to consider that if there’s anything in you that makes you ever so little commendable, you get it from God, and it’s God who has given it to you. (23 October 1658; SV XII, 57)

Availability for any ministry assignment

The man who is not in this state of availability, but in the contrary one, is in a devilish state. In order to keep the vow of obedience we’ve taken, we must be in a state of openness to God’s Will regarding all things... to go to the country, if he’s sent there; to stay at home, if that’s what’s desired of him; to direct a seminary or go to give a mission; to remain in this house or another; to go to foreign lands or not; to obey this Superior or another, since God wills it. (30 August 1658; SV XII, 44-45)

The way to destruction: pride

Pride of life: to want to succeed everywhere, to choose newly-invented words, to seem brilliant in the pulpit, or in talks to the ordinands, and in catechetical instructions. And why? What are we looking for in all that? Do you want to know? It’s ourselves. We want people to talk about us, we’re looking for praise; we want it said that we’re a great success, are working wonders, we want to be exalted. That’s the point. In short, that’s preaching ourselves and not Jesus Christ or souls. (8 June 1658; SV XII, 20-21)

Detachment from the goods of this world

We have given ourselves to God to follow Him, even having taken vows for this, because, by the vow of chastity we’ve promised God to renounce the pleasures of body and mind; by the vow of poverty, the goods and conveniences of this life and the gold, silver, and riches of this earth; and by that of obedience, honors, high positions, and worldly praises. These three vows, namely, chastity, poverty, and obedience, aim at destroying, and are opposed to, the three vices that reign in the world. (8 June 1658; SV XII, 17)

Five enemies against Five Virtues

Those are the five enemies we have to combat, of which the first is prudence of the flesh, the second is a wish to appear to be someone in the eyes of others, the third is the desire to have everyone always submit to our judgment and will; the fourth is to seek our own satisfaction in everything, and the fifth is insensitivity for the glory of God and the salvation of our neighbor. Let’s work courageously to destroy these enemies; let’s arm ourselves with simplicity and candor, let's give ourselves to God to acquire gentleness, humility, mortification, and zeal for souls. (22 August 1659; SV XII, 261)