If the proverb that states that “charity begins at home” is valid, then it was in this home that human and Christian virtues were forged. If any family lived this richness at home, it was the family of Federico and Amelia, a living and pure source that was passed on to their daughter Maria. Fortunately for us, we have reliable first-hand sources that bear witness to this.
Here is one of them: Ozanam also spent precious time with his daughter, Marie, whom he taught to read. When Maria was two and a half years old, Frederic and Amelia took her with them to visit the poor in rue Mouffetard. There, in the slums of the poor, an exceptional woman, the now Blessed Sister Rosalie Rendu, had shown the way of the poor to Frederick and his companions. Frederic and Amelia never stopped going to the poor, and they took their daughter, little Maria, with them. She helped by giving small things to the poor, including toys of her own to the children. Her parents were teaching her, from an early age, to share.
It is possible that there are more events in the path of holiness of this couple, but this fact of life is enough to corroborate how the ascent towards God took place on the path that these three souls travelled, in the midst of the poor who, in the end, led them to the summit of family holiness.
However, how much we would have liked to see Amelia and Maria on the altars with Federico, as Luis and Celia Martin with their daughter Therese of Lisieux, or Isidro Labrador and Maria de la Cabeza, but it doesn’t matter! Frederick is at the main door and Amelia with Mary, they are the saints at the side door, those who have no niches, flowers or haloes in our temples, but a glorious seat in the House of the Lord.
Married life is the vocation in which most Christians can become saints. God’s will is that the family should walk the Christian path of life together. It is a pilgrimage, it is a common project, although in the end neither husband nor wife can take personal responsibility for the other in responding to God’s call.
The ground is everyday life, where holiness is born, grows and bears fruit. Let us come down from reflection, to land on some ways in which men and women build their holiness together:
How special to see that Vincentian holiness has already blossomed in the Vincentian Missionaries, in the Daughters of Charity and in the immense number of lay people who exercise their Christian vocation from earthly realities, as in such outstanding figures as Frederick, Amelia and Mary… the Ozanam Soulacroix family.
Marlio Nasayó Liévano, c.m.
