VincentWiki:Ephemerides/20 January

January 25 is the day on which we celebrate the foundation of our Congregation. It was on the 25 January 1617 that St. Vincent preached a sermon in a little country church in the north of France, a sermon that moved many of the people present to change their lives through sincerely confessing their sins in the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation. Eight years would pass before St. Vincent would formally establish his Congregation. When he preached his sermon on the 25 January, he had not the slightest idea of founding a Congregation. That would come eight years later. Decades later he would consider that in reality his Congregation owed its origin to that sermon preached in the little country church at Folleville, France, on 25 January 1617.