September 27

Vincent de Paul, Kallen Pokkudan, and Henri-Frederic Amiel

Author

David Barnhart
September 27, 2025

Stourhead, England, 2011. Own photo.

Today is the Feast Day of Vincent de Paul, who died on this day in 1660. He was a French priest who advocated a life of service for clergy. His story of being kidnapped by Barbary Pirates and sold into slavery became widely-known, though its authenticity is debated. In his story, his faith ultimately won the respect of his enslavers, and he eventually escaped with them back to France.

Today also marks the death, in 2015, of Kallen Pokkudan, Indian self-educated teacher and environmentalist, who became an advocate for the importance of mangrove forests and voice against their extinction. 

Today is the birthday, in 1821, of Henri-Frederic Amiel, Swiss poet and philosopher. 

Reflection: 

Henri-Frederic Amiel wrote: 

“There is but one thing needful — to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and soul, all our external resources, are so many ways of approaching the divinity, so many modes of tasting and of adoring God. We must learn to detach ourselves from all that is capable of being lost, to bind ourselves absolutely only to what is absolute and eternal, and to enjoy the rest as a loan, as a usufruct…. To worship, to comprehend, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: this our law, our duty, our happiness, our heaven.”

and

“Christian boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the church which is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her heart timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into him, or as [Meister Eckhart] said, "the eye by which I see God is the same eye by which He sees me."

Prayer: God in whom we live and move and have our being, create in us the awe that leads to courage. Amen.