Happy St. Vincent de Paul Day!
St. Vincent de Paul was born to a poor peasant family in the French village of Pouy on April 24, 1581. His first formal education was provided by the Franciscans. He did so well, he was hired to tutor the children of a nearby wealthy family. He used the monies he earned teaching to continue his formal studies at the University of Toulouse where he studied theology.
He was ordained in 1600 and remained in Toulouse for a time. In 1605, while on a ship traveling from Marseilles to Narbonne, he was captured, brought to Tunis and sold as a slave. Two years later he and his master managed to escape and both returned to France. [Emphasis added].
St. Vincent went to Avignon and later to Rome to continue his studies. While there he became a chaplain to the Count of Goigny and was placed in charge of distributing money to the deserving poor. He became pastor of a small parish in Clichy for a short period of time, while also serving as a tutor and spiritual director.
From that point forward he spent his life preaching missions to and providing relief to the poor.
St. Vincent de Paul is also the patron of charitable societies (like VDARE.com!) and, weirdly, of Richmond VA (which needs him).
And the Catholic church that Lydia and my three youngest children attend in Berkeley Springs WV is dedicated to him!
In my own benighted Episcopalian Church, the day is dedicated to Thomas Traherne, whose almost miraculous literary recognition after more than two hundred years gives me confidence that VDARE.com's writers will one day be similarly acclaimed.
The discipline of writing these blogs has brought home to me how extraordinarily rich, and humane, is the Christian tradition upon which America, and the West, was founded.
Oh, and it's also Yom Kippur. But it has become a multicultural must to step on Christmas by never mentioning it except in connection with Hanukkah and other “holidays." Somehow, however, the MSM neglects to provide the nearest Saint's day in the Christian calendar to each year's Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover—there are a lot of saints! So it has become a VDARE.com service (as so often) to fill the gap.
We wish a Happy to all our readers. We mean it.
