Goodness and Peace in Man [2]

Goodness and Peace in Man [2]

 Direct your zeal, therefore, first upon yourself; then you may with
justice exercise it upon those about you. You are well versed in
coloring your own actions with excuses which you will not accept from
others, though it would be more just to accuse yourself and excuse
your brother. If you wish men to bear with you, you must bear with
them. Behold, how far you are from true charity and humility which
does not know how to be angry with anyone, or to be indignant save
only against self!
--Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ-- Book II  Ch. 3

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April 29th - St. Joseph Cottolengo
(1786-1842)

One day in 1827 Father Joseph Cottolengo was called upon to give the
last sacraments to a young Frenchwoman who had taken ill in the city
of Turin, Italy, while en route back to France with her family. Amazed
at the fact that this foreign woman was dying uncared for in a
slum--the only place in which she could find lodging--Cottolengo
learned that there was no institution in the whole city where
emergency medical care could be obtained.

Father Joseph was a great devotee of the needy of any sort. Whenever
he saw that aid was necessary, he dropped everything else until
provision had been made. In the 1827 case, he at once rented five
rooms in a house to serve as an emergency hospital. A good local woman
supplied some beds, a doctor and a pharmacist offered their services,
and soon he had five patients under care. What proved the need of such
an institution was the way that the hospital grew. As more rooms were
added, Father Cottolengo gathered and organized a permanent nursing
staff of men and women. He called the men the Brothers of St. Vincent.
The women he formed into a nursing order of nuns, the Vincentian
Sisters.

This “Volta Rossa” hospital suffered a brief setback in 1831. A
cholera epidemic broke out, and the city authorities, fearing that the
hospital would become a breeding ground for the disease, shut it down.
Canon Cottolengo kept his cool, and simply planned to move the
hospital to other quarters. Meanwhile, his nurses took care of the
cholera victims in their own homes.

The place to which the hospital was moved in 1832 was Valdocco,
suburban to Turin. Not only did the transplanted emergency hospital
thrive in its new locale; there soon sprang up alongside it a number
of auxiliary institutions called into being by additional human needs.
There was a nursing school, a building for epileptics, and others for
deaf-mutes, the blind, orphans, homeless kids, prostitutes, the aged,
and the mentally retarded (“My good boys and girls”, he affectionately
termed his retarded children.) In the end, he had a vast complex of
charitable homes.

The most remarkable part of this “Little House of Divine Providence”
is that the founder actually did leave the management completely in
God’s hands. He kept no books, no accounts. What he got he forthwith
spent, never investing it as a cautionary or prudential measure. He
even refused to put his center under royal patronage as a security,
and would allow no endowments. Whenever a need arose, therefore, he
trusted that the God who had allowed it to arise would provide funds
to deal with it.

Some would think it a folly to start and maintain institutions without
knowing where the funds were coming from. But St. Joseph Cottolengo
did know where they were coming from. If he had no source of money, he
had a battery of people praying for it--various organizations and
religious orders that he had founded especially to storm heaven for
aid. His center was not called the Little House of Divine Providence
in vain. He really did challenge God to provide for the good works.
And God never failed him.

Most of this saint’s institutions continue to flourish today. That
says something, doesn’t it, about the wisdom of trusting in a heavenly
Father? Remember, it was He who once said to His people through
Isaiah: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the
child of her womb? Even should she forget I will never forget you!”
(49:15).

St. Joseph Cottolengo, pray that we may always trust bravely in God’s
assistance!
–Father Robert F. McNamara


Reflection:
 The safest correction of vice is the Christian's blameless life. Yet
there are times when silence would make us answerable for the sins of
others. At such times let us, in the name of God, rebuke the offender
without fear.

Saint Quote:
The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he
does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to
defend himself from it.
-- Saint Vincent de Paul

Bible Quote:
Since we have a kingdom nothing can destroy, let us please God by
serving him with thankful hearts, and with holy fear and awe. For our
God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28-29)


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Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee!
By St Bernard (1090-1153)
Father and the Mellifluous Doctor of the Church

Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills the breast!
Yet sweeter far Thy face to see
And in Thy presence rest.

No voice can sing, no heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find,
A sweeter sound than Jesus’ Name,
The Saviour of mankind.

O hope of every contrite heart!
O joy of all the meek!
To those who fall, how kind Thou art!
How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find?
Ah! this nor tongue, nor pen, can show
The love of Jesus, what it is,
None but His loved ones know.

Jesus! our only hope be Thou,
As Thou our prize shall be;
In Thee be all our glory now
And through eternity.
Amen