Would you say that the beginnings of our missions were human? God blessed it so greatly that all the inhabitants of the place made their general confession, and in such crowds, that I had to get two Jesuit fathers to come and help me hear confessions, preach and instruct. (…) All three of us went about preaching and giving missions from village to village … That was what we were doing, we three, and yet God was doing what he had foreseen from all eternity. [p. 19]

(St Vincent de Paul. From Jacques Delarue, The Holiness of Vincent de Paul, Geoffrey Chapman Ltd, London 1960, 132 pp)