Before he became a great figure of 19th-century Catholicism, the co-founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, long searched for his vocation.
Indeed, he vacillated between living celibacy in the world, marriage, or life as a religious. He prayed for the Lord to reveal His will.
In search of his own path in life, he wrote a prayer for single men in search of their soulmate. God heard his prayers and the answer to his question came following a meeting with a young woman named Amélie Soulacroix, on June 23, 1841. The two married and on July 24, 1845, they had a daughter, Marie.
They were one of the most beautiful examples of a Christian couple, as their correspondence proves. Today, many single people searching for a similar love can say this prayer of Blessed Frédéric Ozanam and make it their own:
I feel in myself a great emptiness, which neither friendship nor study fill. I do not know who will come to fill it: will it be God? Will it be another creature? If it is a creature, I pray that it will take some time in coming, when I have become worthy.
I pray that it will bring with it the necessary external charms so as not to leave any room for regret. But I especially pray that this creature, she, will come with an excellent soul, will bring great virtue, and will be much better than I am, that she draw me upward, that she not drag me down, that she be generous because I am often timid, that she be fervent because I am lukewarm in the things of God, and, finally, that she be compassionate so that I, in my inferiority, may not have to blush before her.
Do not forsake me, Lord. Grant that I may be loved. You know it is not only sweetness that I seek in Love; it is the contempt for all baseness, it is the strength to fight for the Good, for the True.
Amen.
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And today we celebrate...