April is such a beautiful month. New life is all around us. We chant the Easter Alleluia and watch spring burst out in the buds that survived winter's cold. April is a month of new life and of renewal.

The birth of our Society took place at a meeting on April 23, 1833, which also happened to be Frederic Ozanam's twentieth birthday. I just read, on www.ssvpglobal.org that this year Easter Sunday, April 5 will see the founding of the first conference in Suriname which brings our Society into a total of 150 countries around the world. That is pretty good growth!

When Frederic and his friends stared their small group, it was Frederic's direction that members go out to the poor. Those young men did it then and we do it now.

I was reading a bit of the book ‘Praying With Frederic Ozanam' by a member of one of St. Vincent de Paul's orders, the Congregation of the Mission. Ronald Ramson, CM wrote about the Society in its early years:

Members of the Society referred to their individual groups as conferences and to themselves as Vincentians. From the beginning the key to their ministry to the poor and needy was home visitation. Members would always go in pairs to the homes of the poor after the exhortation of Jesus who sent his Apostles and disciples two by two to continue his mission.

No form of charity was foreign to the Society. Not only did Frederic and the others take care of the physical and material needs of others, they also involved themselves in tutoring, even setting up libraries for members of the military.
During the bloody revolutionary skirmishes, Vincentians attended to the wounded and the dying...
Frederic insisted that Vincentians not restrict their charity to Catholics, but be servants of all those in need. He also proposed that countries help one another, especially in situations of natural catastrophes...
During Frederic's lifetime he witnessed the establishment of the Society in Italy, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, England, Germany, the United States, Holland, Greece, Turkey, Jerusalem, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico and Canada.

Considering the short life of Frederic (He died at age 40), the expansion of SSVP in its first 20 years was phenomenal. And we are still growing, still thriving and still doing what those original members did.
Our primary contact is home visitation but we do much more. We establish contact with every kind of need in our country and we fill it the best way we can. Whether we serve the homeless, immigrants, or the aged, whether we establish housing initiatives or work with others in social action groups, we are following Blessed Frederic's call "Let us go out to the poor!"

I pray that God will help us learn from those who came before us and, like Frederic, may we find innovative ways to meet the needs of all who seek our help.

Denise