January 22, 2018
We the Pallottine family, 200 years after the Priestly Ordination of our Founder and teacher in spiritual life and apostolic activity, would like to remember with gratitude his priestly life and his pastorally and spiritual influence which has spread all over the world.
St. Vincent Pallotti welcomed the year 1818 with great joy. It was the year of his Priestly Ordination. Saturday, May 16, he went early in the morning with his family to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, where the Vicegerent of the diocese of Rome, Msgr. Candido Maria Frattini, ordained him a priest. That same day St. Vincent moved to Frascati with his parents and brothers, and on the following day, May 17, Sunday of the Holy Trinity, he celebrated his first mass in the presence of his family and a group of faithful in the church of Jesus.
After the celebration, St. Vincent and his family returned home. Tuesday, May 26, on the feast of St. Philip Neri, he wrote a long letter to St. Gaspare del Bufalo in which he communicated his feelings about the first days of priesthood: “On the 16th of May, the eve of the Blessed Sacrament and the Trinity, the most amiable God deigned by his infinite mercy to lift me from the dust and from nothing and elevate me to the sublime high priestly degree; a dignity which, in the right sense, seems to bring not only admiration, but a holy fear of the Mother of God. I beg you to say and let other people sing Magnificat in gratitude for the benefit received. Oh, what a great dignity priesthood is, what dignity, what dignity”! (OCL I, 24). In fact, the Ordination had produced in the soul of St. Vincent a lively sense of gratitude to the Lord, who urged him to ask St. Gaspar del Bufalo to recite and have the Magnificat recited by others.
For the Pallottine website and video on St. Vincent Pallotti, click here.
