Fervor is a fire that makes things boil and grow hot, just as fire causes water to boil. It is, properly speaking, charity on fire, and that is what you should have because a Daughter without Charity is like a body without a soul.
Interpretation
Fervor represents passionate love and charity, essential for a fulfilling life.
In this quote, St. Vincent emphasizes the importance of fervor, likening it to a passionate and fiery charity that invigorates life. He suggests that without fervor, represented as charity, one is incomplete, much like a body is lifeless without a soul. This illustrates the profound role that love and compassion play in nurturing and sustaining our existence.
In practice
During a charity event, one could use this quote to inspire volunteers about the importance of charity.
It ought to be considered a great misfortune, not only for individuals, but also for Houses and Congregations, to have everything in conformity with their wishes; to go on quietly, and to suffer nothing for the love of God. Yes, consider it certain that a person or a Congregation that does not suffer and is applauded by all the world is near a fall.
Let us love God my brothers, let us love God. But let it be with the strength of our arms and the sweat of our brow.
It is from your hands that Our Lord, in the person of the sick, seeks relief.
Charity is the cement that unites communities to God and individuals to each other_x000D_ so that he who contributes to the union of hearts in a community_x000D_ binds it indissolubly to God.
We ought to deal kindly with all, and to manifest those qualities which spring naturally from a heart tender and full of Christian charity; such as affability, love and humility. These virtues serve wonderfully to gain the hearts of men, and to encourage them to embrace things that are more repugnant to nature.
However great the work that God may achieve by an individual, he must not indulge in self-satisfaction. He ought rather to be all the more humbled, seeing himself merely as a tool which God has made use of.
If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another. Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.
We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.
Jill told me that when you're really in love, you know right away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it like a flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on the shoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You think you're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up going home with the one who keeps insisting on climbing into your lap.
We have these earthly bodies. We don't know what they want. Half the time, we pretend they are under our mental thumb, but that is the illusion of the healthy and the protected. Of sedate lovers. For the body has emotions it conceives and carries through without concern for anyone or anything else. Love is one of those, I guess. Going back to something very old knit into the brain as we were growing. Hopeless. Scorching. Ordinary.
He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. 'Oh, Jane! my hope - my love - my life!' broke in anguish from his lips.
She let herself love me for three minutes. Can three minutes last forever? I ask myself, but already know the answer. Probably not, I reply. But maybe they last long enough.
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