WELLINGTON

New Zealand Tablet, 23 July 1908, Page 24

WELLINGTON

(From an Occasional Correspondent.) July 20. On Sunday, July 19 (the feast of St. Vincent de Paul) at St. Mary of the Angels' Church the Very Rev. Father Regnault, S.M. (Provincial), preached a very impressive and appropriate sermon on charity, taking for his text, ' A new commandment I have given unto you that you love one another, even as I have loved you.' He said our Blessed Lord was a practical example and illustration of that new commandment. He was perfect charily ; His whole life was devoted to charity, and through Him are found all the factors of true charity. Father Regnault then proceeded to deal with the life of St. Vincent de Paul, describing his youth and his great works of charity in after life. St. Vincent was known as the great counsellor of kings and the great adviser of bishops, but he would be always known to posterity as the great friend of humanity, the great friend of the poor. St. Vincent travelled much, and everywhere his preachings filled the hearts of his hearers with the same enthusiasm which he possessed, and the desire for doing something for the cause of the poor. It may be said that the religious offspring of the great saint is as numerous to-day as the leaves of that old oak tree in the hollow trunk of which in the days of his youth he placed a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and established for himseli an oratory wherein he celebrated the first Mass for the poor. The self-sacrificing, highminded, and virtuous Christians were the men that would save the world. There was work for them if they will take it up. The Very Rev. Father commended the great work being done at the present day by the St. Vincent de Paul Society in their midst, which practice was once more another proof that the Catholic Church was fulfilling its mission of charity in the world, and every meeting of the brothers of this society is another illustration of that divine mission and that divine charity which is illustrative of the words of our Divine Lord, ' Come to Me all ye that labor and are heavily laden and I will refresh you.'