St. Louise de Marillac discovered God's plan to establish a Company of women dedicated to serving God through serving the poor. Through conversations with St. Vincent de Paul and coming to love the poor, Louise came to experience faith as the fruit of God's love. Louise saw faith as a trusting attitude toward life because of love for God present in the poor. Louise's individual faith grew to a more universal faith as she served the poor, guided by St. Vincent de Paul. Her faith led her to holiness and effective service of those in need.

1. St. Louise de Marillac: Faith experienced through love
Written by Fr. Benito Martínez, C.M.

2. Through her conversations with Vincent,
Louise discovered God’s plan to establish a
Company of women who would dedicate
themselves to God in order to serve him in
the poor. But in order to move from an
individual faith to the more universal faith of
a Daughter of Charity, Louise had to love the
poor-- and thus she came to experience how
faith becomes the fruit and the re
fl
ection of
God’s love.

3. Louise did not focus on the intellect, but
rather on love, that is, she saw faith as a
trusting attitude toward life because we love
God who is in the poor.

4. Because she loved God, she relied on God,
she trusted God, and she believed God.

5. She had faith in God because she loved God,
something that she af
fi
rmed as she re
fl
ected
on the words of John’s letter:
The person who does not love does not know God
[does not have faith], for God is Charity. The
cause of love is esteem for the good in the thing
loved … . The practice of charity is so powerful
that it gives us the knowledge of God … and we
may say that the greater our charity the greater
our participation in this divine light which will
in
fl
ame us with the
fi
re of Holy Love for all
eternity.
- Spiritual Writings of Louise de Marillac
(SWLM):710-711 [A.29]

6. In order to be a true believer, one must be
wholly capable of loving God, and therefore
in love with the poor where God is found. In
this way faith is the fruit of love.
Guided by her spiritual director, Vincent de
Paul, faith would lead Louise to serve God in
the poor.

7. Until she met Vincent, Louise’s faith had an
individual character and perhaps we might
even say there was a sel
fi
sh dimension to her
faith. Her faith enabled her to move beyond
the situations that her life, full of suffering,
had created— and then enabled her to receive
a satisfactory answer as to what to do with
her life, namely, to become holy.

8. Her youthful faith then provided her with a
foundation for another dimension: service of
the poor. Her encounter with God in personal
prayer led Louise to discover union with Our
Lord in her neighbor. Her faith, which until
then had consisted of a personal relationship
with God, was now extended to all the poor,
children of God, her sisters and brothers to
whom she must communicate that which she
had seen and heard in prayer.

9. Referring to Saint Martha, Louise told the
Sisters:
She was fortunate enough to serve the poor in the
person of Our Lord, just as we serve Our Lord in
the person of the poor.
- SWLM:314 [L.276].

10. We could apply to Saint Louise these words
that Henri Bremond wrote when referring to
Saint Vincent:
Love of neighbor did not lead Vincent to holiness,
rather holiness made him truly and effectively
charitable; it was not the poor who gave God to
Vincent, rather it was God, that is, the Incarnate
Word, who gave Vincent the poor.

11. When Vincent met Louise, she was a mystic.
Therefore it was easy for Vincent, who was
also a mystic, to help her to discover and to
serve God in the poor— for Jesus has taught
us charity to make up for our powerlessness to
render any service to his person (SWLM:820
[A.26]) … this was the fruit of Louise’s
meditation during a retreat that she made
near the end of her life.
Mural in provincial house of Daughters of Charity, Havana, Cuba.
Louise blessing her works from heaven

12. Day after day Vincent introduced Louise to
the poor and watched her slowly turn her life
around in such a way that she was no longer
satis
fi
ed with the fact that she and her son
shared a life of faith. If God is active in the
events of life, then God certainly gives
preference to those who serve the poor.
Louise felt that she had to serve the poor and
take on the attitude of seeking that which
was best for them.
This was an effective step forward from an
individual faith to the universal faith of the
gospel.

13. Since the time of his captivity and the dark
night of his soul, Vincent had become
convinced that the poor were a part of his life
and that he had to respond to their situation.
He also convinced Louise of this same reality.
This was not dif
fi
cult to do because in
Louise’s unconscious there was the idea that
God had communicated to her in 1623 during
her mystical night: the poor have touched her
life and she must personally help them in
their situation of need.

14. So, beginning with her encounter with the
Capuchins*, Louise’s faith had given her the
ability to interpret her questions in a new
way,
fi
lling her with hope as she discovered a
new meaning in her life; a new meaning for
her personal life which she had previously
experienced as a life of abandonment and
exclusion.
After her encounter with Vincent, her faith
transformed her into a servant of the poor.
————-
*As a young woman Louise felt attracted by the
Capuchins’ cloistered life of austerity and prayer, but
they rejected her request to enter this religious order,
which deeply wounded Louise

15. If Vincent helped Louise to become the
servant of the poor it was because her faith
was so profound that he was able to convince
and guide her to put on the spirit of Jesus
Christ and to live in a manner that was
demanded by the Kingdom of God which she
proclaimed to the poor.

16. To believe is to commit one’s self, like Jesus,
to the struggle against injustice, to refugees of
war, to emigrants who are looking for work
and a better life. If our faith is not that which
Jesus Christ has transmitted, it is not the faith
of the Church, for as Louise pointed out to
the Daughters:
We must continually have before our eyes our
model, the exemplary life of Jesus Christ. We are
called to imitate this life, not only as Christians,
but as persons chosen by God to serve Him in the
person of his poor. Without that the Daughters of
Charity are the most pitiful creatures in the
world.
- SWLM:261 [L.217]

17. While she was under the direction of Vincent
de Paul, the spirit of Jesus taught Louise that
humanity is composed of one single human
group and that she ought to live in solidarity
with humanity.
In prayer she discovered, like many Ladies of
Charity did (do not forget the deep and
sincere spiritual life that they led), that the
Son of God in becoming man took on a
human nature.
Louise with Ladies of Charity

18. As a result of the Incarnation all people have
been incorporated into the humanity of Jesus
Christ, every poor person has become a
suffering member of Jesus’ humanity, and the
kingdom of heaven proclaimed by Jesus is
meant for all people, including the poor,
therefore she ought to assist the poor.
(SWLM:819-821 [A.26])
Care of prisoners

19. It is true that faith is personal, but
faith is as ecclesial as it is individual,
and if faith is not communicated to
another it will eventually disappear.
Faith must be revealed through the
evangelization of people and we, as
members of the Vincentian Family,
must reveal our faith through the
evangelization of the poor.
Photo: Facebook/
DaughtersOfCharityInternationalProjectServices

20. When Pope Paul VI asked is there any
other way of handing on the Gospel than by
transmitting to another person one’s
personal experience of faith? (Paul VI,
Evangelii Nuntiandi, 46), he was
indicating that the way to respond to
the present-day situation of indifference
is to communicate our experience of
faith.
Photo: Facebook/DaughtersOfCharityInternationalProjectServices

21. Source:
https://vincentians.com/en/the-faith-of-saint-
louise-in-light-of-an-individualistic-society/
By Benito Martínez, C.M., given at the Vincentian
Family Congress which took place in Madrid
from March 5-10, 2010, with about 600 members
of the family.
Images: DePaul Image Archive