Author’s Preface

The traditional Mass was celebrated in the crypt of the Carmelite Church, rue de Vaugirard, on the loth April, 191o, the second Sunday after Easter, the occasion being the Feast-day and the date of the annual general meeting of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris. The Council General of the Society and a large number of members were present.

The historic crypt contains the body of Frederic Ozanam, which has lain there under a simple monument since 1853. The Abbé Guibert, a priest of St. Sulpice, Superior of the ancient ecclesiastical House of Carmelites, which is now the Seminary of the Catholic Institute, preached a sermon appropriate to the occasion and to the place. He first did honour to the name of the first patron of the Society, St. Vincent de Paul. He then proceeded to refer to the second, whom the place itself brought to the minds of all. Frederic Ozanam became then, and continued to be, the subject of his address.

The priest spoke of him not only “as a model to be imitated, and a patron to be honored, but already a protector to be invoked, if not in public, at least in the secret of one’s heart.” He honoured him as “the principal founder of the Society, a fact which has been ac­credited to him already by tradition, the universal voice which is not-deceived.” He expressed the general desire of Conferences for the day on which, with the sanction of the Church, it would be given to them to worship him solemnly in public. Examining the conditions required by the Church for such elevation, the venerable preacher gave it as his opinion that they were admirably fulfilled by the life and the doctrine and the good works of that just man; by a life of piety and innocence, by a doctrine of propaganda of faith; by good works of corporal and spiritual amelioration, which have together made him an incomparable apostle of truth and charity in the world.

The love of God was his principle, the salvation of souls his aim. The same address did not hesitate to describe the Society of St. Vincent de Paul as “an Association of piety no less than a Congregation of Charity.”

“Now”, the preacher asks himself, “when, within the Church, a Christian Society has sent its roots deep down into souls, and spread afar its branches laden with fruit; when it draws its sap from a pure and intense religious life, is one not right in concluding that that Society is of God, that the heart from which it sprang was filled with God, and that the brow of the founder is worthy to bear the aureola? The vitality and the efficacy of his action are the guarantee and the consecration of his virtues.

“Were those Christian virtues practised by Ozanam in the heroic degree? The Church will decide that. But it is for us, gentlemen, to bring his cause before Her. We may be sure that it will be examined with the liveliest sympathy.”

The sermon closed with two requests. One that the life of our Founder should be more widely studied and more deeply meditated on. The second, that a greater part of all future biographies should be devoted to the interior, Christian, apostolic features of that life; in a word, to the “eminent virtues of that true saint”.

It is in answer to that wish, with which the Council General and the meeting associated themselves, that the present work was undertaken.

Why was I, in my old age, selected as the author of this work? It is not for me to say. I have only to apologise for demurring too long to insistent appeals. While recognising the great honour which was paid me, I looked at the task with dismay. I was in my eighty-third year. I had just published my last work, Le Vieillard. I had only just completed the payment of a great debt of admiration and gratitude in Les deux Freres. Was not that the close of my work? Did I not feel that I had come to the end of my strength? Was this eleventh hour of my life the time to undertake such a work? Was I about to open a new furrow which I should, in all probability, never close?

Therefore I sought to be excused… What was then the incentive which induced me to give way, to submit my weary head, first with resignation and then with joy, to the yoke of obedience, which I now recognised to be sweet and the burden thereof light?

In the first place, I loved Ozanam from my early youth. Was not he, whose life I was about to write, in Pere Guibert’s words, “The great Catholic of his age?” In the second place, I loved the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which can do so much for the Church to-day, by its fidelity to the spirit and to the grace which God had deposited in that Vessel of election. Again, I loved the young men of the schools, whom I served for sixty years, and of whom Ozanam was a perfect model. Lastly, shall I admit it, the selfish thought of passing a year, and that perhaps my last, with such a soul, such a mind, such a heart, in continuous communion with him, enlightening my gloom, stimulat­ing my tepidity, consoling my loneliness, detaching me from this earth, and even, giving me advance glimpses of heaven!… That prospect won the day. Could I shut my door to that guest, to such a friend? No, he shall be welcome. The book shall be written, and written with love. It shall be at least begun; finished, if I can. But that is in God’s hands. Great and good Ozanam, enter!

I entertain the same wish for those who will read this book, that they may live intimately and constantly with him.

Many have written about Frederic Ozanam before me. I place in the forefront his brother, the missionary. He has, in his incomplete biography, given us a store-house of domestic particulars which no other could have furnished. Next come the two illustrious friends, Lacordaire and Ampère, each of whom has woven a beautiful crown, with which to adorn Ozanam’s brow; Lacordaire with eloquence, — Ampère with literary charm, both with love. Many other friends have written obituary notices or literary appreciations: M. de la Ville-marque, Dr. Dufresne of Geneva, chosen disciples in Stanislaus College or in the Sorbonne, M. Caro, the Abbé Perreyve, M. Heinrich, M. Maxime de Montrond, M. Urbain Legeay his former master, a member of the Society, the holy Comte de Lambel, his intimate friend Dufieux, etc…

The important work of M. Charles Huit, Professor in the Catholic Institute of Paris, appeared later, published under the auspices of Cardinal Perraud. There is an original work on La Jeunesse d’Ozanam, written by M. Leonce Curnier, which was crowned by the Academy. There is also a biographical and critical review written by M. Bernard Faulquier, a distinguished member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, with a preface from the hand of Monsignor Baudrillart.

I note particularly the Frederic Ozanam of Kathleen O’Meara, who was an Irishwoman, and in whose accounts I find with pleasure traces of conversation with Ozanam’s widow.

A short biography comes from Canada. A moral study on Ozanam’s correspondence comes to us from a Protestant source! It is the work of a Protestant Pietist lady of Geneva, Madame Humbert, who was edified and inspired by the virtue and by the greatness of soul which she found in his correspondence. Then there are literary ap­preciations, such as the excellent one by M. Poulin, Eloge d’Ozanam, which was crowned in the Floral Fetes in Toulouse, etc.

I desire to mention all such, or nearly all, because I am indebted to all, though in a different degree; and because all are unanimous in venerating and admiring that outstanding superiority of virtue, thus anticipating in their hearts his religious worship.

But I felt that those excellent productions, biographies, notices, articles, detached studies, while useful to consult, were yet only sketches, and that the complete history of Ozanam was yet to be written. If, as the priest had said at his tomb, the exterior man, the man of science, the author, has left an illustrious name; if even the man of good works has left a memory which has been blessed the world over; on the other hand, the interior man, the moral and religious man, the man of God, has not yet been adequately presented to the public. The time is then come to write this history, the history of his soul,—that great soul!—and to show it in each and all the acts of a life which it inspired and animated. We have that soul still living in his speech. Ozanam has left it immortal in his works and in his correspondence. If the interior life of the man is yet to be written, it has no longer to be sought for, it still exists in power and in matter There we shall find it.

We shall find the interior Ozanam firstly in his lectures. Ozanam’s soul is not abstracted from, nor disinterested in the subject matter of his instruction. He is there with all his faculties of judg­ment, admiration and disapproval, of benediction and condemnation. He is to be seen in the beautiful moral deductions which he draws, in the instruction which he provides for the audience and the readers; in his realistic treatment, in the practical application of his lectures to his age and his country, in the homage which he makes all times and places pay to the Eternal King; sometimes too, in the melancholy in­trospection on his life, death, affections, sufferings, which furnish the pathos of his works.

But if the life and soul of Ozanam are to be seen in his written works, his correspondence is, if I may so express it, filled to overflowing with them. His whole existence, his family life, his friend­ships, his life of action, are there reconstituted in the natural sequence of the events, in their order of date, with every surrounding circum­stance of time and place, in their true sense and colour. Likewise, his whole soul is manifested there, showing its development in each phase of its existence. First of his youth: noble aspirations, grandiose designs, the torture occasioned by a choice of life, the call, the ebb and flow of hope and despondency, the sacred intoxication of Science and Faith. Then of his mature age: his struggles on behalf of purity, his pure love, his enthusiasm for Truth and Charity, his all-conquering zeal, his independence of conscience, his delicacy of heart, the cruel deception and false wounds which he had to suffer. Lastly, the de­cline, not of age, but of premature life: a tireless and sanctified activity, a crucifixion to his pen, to his professorial chair, which Lacordaire had indicated to him. Finally, the consummation, the sacrifice: supernatural suffering, the tranquil heroism of sublime sacrifice. To bloom, to ripen, to die; such would be the epigraph of this book, as it is the plan and the development of that crowded, elevated and brief span of life!

The greater part of that Correspondence has been published. Some other letters have been privately shown to me by her who has received the treasure as an inheritance and who guards them religiously as a father’s relics¹. She is to be thanked for that. Some other letters, up to then un-edited, have fortunately been found². There is in all a collection of some two hundred letters, which are the whole basis of this work, the warp and woof of the piece. All my Ozanam is there and always there, not only his traces, but his voice, his speech, his very life; his life in all its truth, his speech in all its frankness, his voice breathing its most beautiful accents, letters which are the most beautiful of his works because they resemble him most closely. It is he who is speaking and writing, not I, who have provided only the wire for this wreath of choice blooms. Nobody, least of all the writer, will lose by that.

What is then the figure which, partly hidden from our eyes, rises over the horizon at this dark hour to light our way with its gentle radiance? “Like St. Vincent de Paul, Ozanam was an apostle: an apostle of Truth, an apostle of Charity.” Everything is comprised in those words, spoken in the crypt of the Carmelites.

Apostle of Truth, that is of Catholic Truth which he always under­took to defend. At the age of seventeen Ozanam drew up his plan; at eighteen he opened the attack against Saint Simonism; at twenty he raised the standard in the Sorbonne against the anti-Catholicity of Jouffroy; at twenty-one he waited on the Archbishop of Paris to appeal for modern instruction in Notre Dame; at thirty he en­throned Truth with eloquence in a professorial chair in the Sorbonne³. He devoted himself to the defence of Truth up to the last breath of his breaking body: “Our life belongs to you, gentlemen. As for me, — if I die, it will be in your service.” That was his farewell.

Apostle of Charity. At twenty years of age he inaugurated with a few students the first Conference of St. Vincent de Paul: “Let us go to the poor.” From Paris, from Lyons, he extended the benefit to France, later to both hemispheres: “I wish,” he said, “to enfold —the whole world with a net-work of charity.” Before closing his eyes for ever in this world he could count two thousand such centres of charity, of which the Lord has said: “I came to bring light into the world; what can I desire but that it should shine everywhere?” Less than a month before his death he dragged his broken frame from Leghorn to Sienna to make straight the path for a little band of students, his last creation. Having accomplished that, he embarked to see France and die.

He died at forty. He had given everything to God by a solemn act: “I come, Lord.” He is to be seen during a long year, dragging himself, stumbling from one station to another of his Calvary. As an ailing son will seek the comfort of his mother, he is to be seen by turns at the feet of Our Lady of Burgos, Our Lady of Betharam, Our Lady of Buglosse, Our Lady of Pisa, and finally resting at the feet of Our Lady de la Garde. It was there that the Queen of Heaven awaited him, to raise him from his death-bed and to take him up beside Her into the Mansion of the Heavenly Father. That was on the Feast of her Nativity, on the 8th September, 1853. I do not know anything grander or greater than that dolorous pilgrimage of a heart sustained by the spirit of a soul filled with Heaven which it was entering. There is no more divine picture in the history of the saints.

Let us not hastily call him by that great name. Let us write the life just as it was, let us show the man just as he existed, under the earthly conditions of our mortality, without any other interest than that of Truth. Ozanam would not have tolerated anything else.’ Let us not celebrate his virtues, let us simply say what they were. Let us not praise his thoughts, let us unfold them. Let us not pro­claim Blessed that man of mercy, of peace, of meekness, who hungered and thirsted for justice; but let us recall his works of mercy, of clemency, of meekness, of justice and of peace. Let us not salute him prematurely as a Confessor of Faith; let us see how he confessed it before friends and enemies. Let us not award him the martyr’s crown, let us see how he suffered for the love of Jesus Christ and died in the burning love of the Heart of Him of Whom he said: “How could I fear Him? I love Him so much.”

After that there remains for us silence and prayer!let us not renounce for one moment our ambition in his regard. But let us cherish it by multiplying the Associations which he promoted, and by practising the virtues that distinguished him. Then, in full con­fidence, let us allow the Church to do its own work, in its wisdom and in its own good time. Did not the preacher in the crypt assure us, “that if the cause of the pious founder were taken to Rome, it would be examined with the liveliest sympathy.”

That is no longer in doubt after the many marks of favour which the Society of St. Vincent de Paul has received in later years from His Holiness Pius X. It is scarcely three years, the 11th April, 1909, since a pilgrimage of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul arrived in Rome at the same time as the Roman ceremonies of the Beatification of Joan of Arc were being celebrated. The official organ of the Vatican, L’Osservatore Romano, seized the opportunity to join Ozanam’s name in the celebrations under the heading: Dopo cento anni: Giovanna d’Arco, Frederico Ozanam. One hundred years after: Joan of Arc and Frederic Ozanam. It continued: “It is not a mere fortuitous coincidence that links up the celebrations in honour of the Blessed Joan of Arc with those of the approaching Centenary celebra­tion of the birth of Frederic Ozanam, one of the heroes and apostles of Charity in France. An intimate bond unites the celebrations of those two glorious children of France, etc.” The Bulletin of the Society noted the comments of l’Osservatore, as follows: “It is the first time, we believe, that our venerated Founder has been placed side by side with a Blessed on the altars. Are we to see in that a fore­taste of a higher and purer glory than that of earthly renown?”

On the 16th April, in the same year, the name of Ozanam was associated by the Sovereign Pontiff himself with that of St. Vincent de Paul in regard to an Association, which he regarded as the younger sister of the second religious family of the great Founder. His Holiness spoke as follows:

“Vincent de Paul, who lives in the Congregation of the Fathers of the Mission, and in the incomparable Sisters of Charity, lives in our day in the admirable Association of Conferences, the inheritors of his faith, of his charity, and of his apostolic spirit. It is a new generation, an unexpected and numerous posterity, which has carried everywhere the choice fruits of benediction. The mustard-seed sown by Ozanam in 1833 is to-day a mighty tree. It extends its branches throughout the entire world and is the rallying centre for all the missions of the earth.”

Yet another address from the same august lips affirms the spiritual affinity of the two apostles of charity, and the union of their souls and their lives, derived one through the other “from the springs of the Saviour,” as the Church expresses it.

His Grace, Dr. Blenk, Archbishop of New Orleans, had just made at that time a report to His Holiness Pius X on the good works performed by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in the Dioceses of Louisiana. Whereupon His Holiness said: “Yes, indeed, it is in that way that the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, and of the great Founder Ozanam is manifested. It is indeed in that way, that the heart of the people will be won to God.” When His Grace requested His Holiness to pray for the general extension of the Society in the New World, the Holy Father replied: “That is my constant prayer. I have no more ardent desire than to see that Society carry to the ends of the earth the spirit and the life of Ozanam, which is the life of that great apostle of Charity St. Vincent de Paul, which is itself the life of the Divine Saviour.”⁴

Let us cherish those words. There is light from them; is it the dawn? I do not desire to see more by their light than the honour in which the person and the work of Ozanam are held in high place. I find encouragement in them for suitable steps to be taken, in full submission to the regulations and conditions which the Church wisely imposes on the most legitimate desires of her children. They are, in fine, a call to prayer until that day of common recollection, which is approaching and which will strengthen our confidence.

The 23rd April, 1913, will see the Centenary of the Birth of Frederic Ozanam. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul proposes to celebrate the event very solemnly, to give a new impetus to his good works, and revivify the apostolic spirit in its members, by making the memory and the example of its Founder more widely known.

Paris will, of course, be the centre of such celebrations. But the eyes of our members will be turned to Rome, as they bear their homage to the feet of Pius X, as formerly Ozanam bore it to the feet of Pius IX, to renew faith, to receive the word of command, to listen to the holy oracle, and to bring back hope and benediction. f I shall not be of the number of those pilgrims to Rome, perhaps not even a spectator of the earthly celebrations; I shall be content at having been per­mitted, if I may so express it, to intone the Vespers. But if the Master of Life deigns to extend mine to that day, I shall receive on bended knees the words of light and strength from the Vicar of Christ, which shall be carried forth to millions and millions of Christians. If Ozanam’s name receives special religious prominence in expressions of gratitude and veneration, I shall draw an augury from that in favour of a still more solemn event. That will indeed be for my old age a final great joy, it will be equally the highest and most precious reward which this world can offer for this Book.

Gruson, Villa Jeanne d’Arc.
Christmas 1911.

1. Madame Laurent Laporte Ozanam died on the 26th June, 1911, immediately after the publication of this Life, to which she had contributed greatly, and which brought her great joy. She died, alas I before the Centenary celebration of her father, which would have been a very dear pleasure to her.
2. Other such letters, which have since come to light, are published in the Appendix (Translator’s note).
3. M. Guibert adds: “Such was his exactitude of conscience that, in all questions touching faith, the Church had no son more submissive to her directions. If he shared certain liberal ideas of his time, it was through the very nobility of his heart and through the very love that he bore to religion and to his brethren, not through any deviation whatever from the teaching of the Church.
4. On his return from Europe in October, Archbishop Blenk presided over an extraordinary general meeting of more than one thousand members, for the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of their foundation in the St. Louis Cathedral. The Bishops of Natchez, Okahama, Natchitoches and Mobile were present. When the evening meeting had been opened with the Veni Creator, tne Arch­bishop announced from the pulpit that he had been charged by the Holy Father with a very special message for them. He quoted the above statement of the Holy Father, word for word, and gave an account of his audience. (Bulletin, January 1910, p. 24).