Vincent was born at Pouy (near Dax in Aquitaine) in France, to a peasant family in 1580. From his youth he was remarkable for his exceeding charity towards the poor. As a child he fed his father’s flock, but afterwards he studied the humanities at Dax, and divinity first at Toulouse, then at Saragossa. Having been ordained a priest in 1600, he took his degree as Bachelor of Theology, but falling into the hands of Turkish pirates in 1605, he was led captive by them to Tunis. While in captivity he won his master back to Christ by the help of the Mother of God, and escaped together with him, and undertook a journey to the shrines of the Apostles. On his return to France he governed in a most saintly manner the parishes first of Clichy and then of Chatillon. The king next appointed him Chaplain of the French galleys, and marvellous was his zeal in striving for the salvation of both officers and convicts. Saint Francis of Sales gave him as superior to his nuns of the Visitation, whom he ruled for forty years with such prudence as to amply justify the opinion the holy Bishop had expressed of him, that Vincent was the most worthy priest he knew.
He devoted himself with unwearying zeal, even in extreme old age, to preaching to the poor, especially to country people, and to this Apostolic work he bound both himself and the members of the Congregation which he founded, the Secular Priests of the Mission, by a special vow which the Holy See confirmed. He laboured greatly in promoting regular discipline among the clergy, as is proved by the seminaries for clerics which he built, and by the establishment, through his care, of frequent Conferences for priests, and of exercises preparatory to Holy Orders. It was his wish that the houses of his institution should always lend themselves to these good works, as also to the giving of pious retreats for laymen. Moreover, with the object of extending the reign of faith and love, he sent evangelical labourers not only into the French provinces, but also into Italy, Poland, Scotland, Ireland, and even to Barbary and to the Indies. On the demise of King Louis XIII, whom he had assisted on his death bed, he was made a member of the Council of conscience by Queen Anne of Austria, the mother of King Louis XIV. In this capacity he was most careful that only worthy men should be appointed to ecclesiastical and monastic benefices, and strove to put an end to civil discord and duels, and to the errors then creeping in, which had alarmed him as soon as he knew of their existence. Moreover, he endeavoured to enforce upon all a due obedience to the judgements of the Apostolic See.
Vincent’s paternal love brought relief to every kind of misfortune. The faithful groaning under the Turkish yoke, destitute children, incorrigible young men, virgins exposed to danger, nuns driven from their monasteries, fallen women, convicts, sick strangers, invalided workmen, even madmen, and innumerable beggars. All these he aided and received with tender charity into his hospitable institutions which still exist. When Lorraine, Campania, Picardy and other districts were devastated by pestilence, famine and war, he supplied their necessities with open hand. He founded other associations for seeking out and aiding the unfortunate, among others the celebrated Society of Ladies, and the now widespread institution of the Sisters of Charity. To him also is due the foundation of the Daughters of the Cross, of Providence, and of Saint Genevieve, who are devoted to the education of girls. Amid all these and other important undertakings his heart was always fixed on God. He was affable to everyone, and always true to himself, simple, upright, humble. He ever shunned riches and honours, and was heard to say that nothing gave him any pleasure except in Christ Jesus, whom he strove to imitate in all things.
Vincent died in Paris, at Saint Lazare, the mother-house of the Congregation of the Mismoniales, in 1660 and was canonised by Pope Clement in 1737. Saint Vincent is the patron of charitable organisations.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Vincent was a man of faith that “works by charity” (Galatians v. 6). At the time he came into the world, viz., at the close of the same century in which Calvin was born, the Church was mourning over many nations separated from the faith, and the Turks were harassing all the coasts of the Mediterranean. France, worn out by forty years of religious strife, was shaking off the yoke of heresy from within, while by a foolish stroke of policy she gave it external liberty. The Eastern and Northern frontiers were suffering the most terrible devastations, and the West and centre were the scene of civil strife and anarchy. In this state of confusion the condition of souls was still more lamentable. In the towns alone was there any sort of quiet, any possibility of prayer. The country people, forgotten, sacrificed, subject to the utmost miseries, had none to support and direct them but a clergy too often abandoned by their bishops, unworthy of the ministry, and well-near as ignorant as their flocks. Vincent was raised up by the Holy Spirit to obviate all these evils. The world admires the works of the humble shepherd of Buglose, but it knows not the secret of their vitality. Philanthropy would imitate them, but its establishments of today are destroyed tomorrow like castles built by children in the sand, while the institution it would fain supersede remains strong and unchanged, the only one capable of meeting the necessities of suffering humanity. The reason of this is not far to seek: faith alone can understand the mystery of suffering, having penetrated its secret in the Passion of our Lord. And charity that would be stable must be founded on faith.
Vincent loved the poor because he loved the God whom his faith beheld in them. “O God!” he used to say, “it does us good to see the poor, if we look at them in the light of God, and think of the high esteem in which Jesus Christ holds them. Often enough they have scarcely the appearance or the intelligence of reasonable beings, so rude and so earthly are they. But look at them by the light of faith, and you will see that they represent the Son of God, who chose to be poor. He in His Passion bad scarcely the appearance of a man. He seemed to the Gentiles to be a fool, and to the Jews a stumbling-block, moreover he calls Himself the evangelist of the poor: evangelizare pauperibus misit me” (Luke iv. 18). This title of evangelist of the poor, is the one that Vincent ambitioned for himself, the starting point and the explanation of all that he did in the Church. His one aim was to labour for the poor and the outcast. All the rest, he said, was but secondary. And he added, speaking to his sons of Saint Lazare: “We should never have laboured for the candidates for priesthood, nor in the ecclesiastical seminaries, had we not deemed it necessary in order to keep the people in good condition, to preserve in them the fruits of the missions, and to procure them good priests.”
That he might be able to consolidate his work in all its aspects, our Lord inspired Ann of Austria to make him a member of the Council of Conscience, and to place in his hands the office of extirpating the abuses among the higher clergy and of appointing pastors to the churches of France. We cannot here relate the history of a man in whom universal charity was, as it were, personified. But from the bagnio of Tunis where he was a slave, to the ruined provinces for which he found millions of money, all the labours he underwent for the relief of every physical suffering, were inspired by his zeal for the apostolate: by caring for the body, he strove to reach and succour the soul. At a time when men rejected the Gospel while striving to retain its benefits, certain wise men attributed Vincent’s charity to philosophy. Nowadays they go further still, and in order logically to deny the author of the works, they deny the works themselves. But if any there be who still hold the former opinion, let them listen to his own words, and then judge of his principles: “What is done for charity’s sake, is done for God. It is not enough for us that we love God ourselves. Our neighbour also must love Him. Neither can we love our neighbour as ourselves unless we procure for him the good we are bound to desire for ourselves, viz.: divine love, which unites us to our Sovereign Good. We must love our neighbour as the image of God and the object of His love, and must try to make men love their Creator in return, and love one another also with mutual charity for the love of God, who so loved them as to deliver His own Son to death for them. But let us, I beg of you, look on this Divine Saviour as a perfect pattern of the charity we must bear to our neighbour.”
The theophilanthropy of a century ago had no more right than had an atheist or a deist philosophy to rank Vincent, as it did, among the great men of its Calendar. Not nature, nor the pretended divinities of false science, but the God of Christians, the God who became Man to save us by taking our miseries on Himself, was the sole inspirer of the greatest modern benefactor of the human race, whose favourite saying was: “Nothing pleases me except in Jesus Christ.” He observed the right order of charity, striving for the reign of is Divine Master, first in his own soul, then in others. And far from acting of his own accord by the dictates of reason alone, he would rather have remained hidden forever in the face of the Lord, and have left but an unknown name behind him. “Let us honour,” he wrote, “the hidden state of the Son of God. There is our centre: there is what He requires of us for the present, for the future, forever, unless His Divine Majesty makes known in His own unmistakable way that He demands something else of us. Let us especially honour this Divine Master’s moderation in action. He would not always do all that He could do, in order to teach us to be satisfied when it is not expedient to do all that we are able, but only as much as is seasonable to charity and conformable to the Will of God. How royally do those honour our Lord who follow His holy Providence and do not try to be beforehand with it! Do you not, and rightly, wish your servant to do nothing without your orders? And if this is reasonable between man and man, how much more so between the Creator and the creature!”
Vincent then was anxious, according to his own expression, to “keep alongside of Providence,” and not to outstep it. Thus he waited seven years before accepting the offers of the General de Gondi’s wife, and founding his establishment of the Missions. Thus, too, when his faithful coadjutrix, Mademoiselle Le Gras, felt called to devote herself to the spiritual service of the Daughters of Charity, then living without any bond or common life, as simple assistants to the ladies of quality whom the man of God assembled in his Confraternities, he first tried her for a very long time. “As to this occupation,” he wrote in answer to her repeated petitions, “I beg of you, once for all, not to think of it until our Lord makes known His Will. You wish to become the servant of these poor girls, and God wants you to be His servant. For God’s sake, Mademoiselle, let your heart imitate the tranquillity of our Lord’s heart, and then it will be fit to serve Him. The Kingdom of God is peace in the Holy Ghost. He will reign in you if you are in peace. Be so then, if you please, and do honour to the God of peace and love.”
What a lesson given to the feverish zeal of an age like ours, by a man whose life was so full! How often in what we can call good works do human pretensions sterilise grace by contradicting the Holy Ghost! Whereas, Vincent de Paul, who considered himself “a poor worm creeping on the earth, not knowing where he goes, but only seeking to be hidden in you, my God, who are all his desire,” the humble Vincent saw his work prosper far more than a thousand others, and almost without his being aware of it. Towards the end of his long life he said to his daughters: “It is Divine Providence that set your Congregation on its present footing. Who else was it, I ask you? I can find no other. We never had such an intention. I was thinking of it only yesterday, and I said to myself: Is it you who had the thought of founding a Congregation of Daughters of Charity? Oh! certainly not. It is Mademoiselle De Gras? Not at all. O my daughters, I never thought of it, your ‘soeur servante’never thought of it, neither did M. Portail (Vincent’s first and most faithful companion in the Mission). Then it is God who thought of it for you. Him therefore we must call the Founder of your Congregation, for truly we cannot recognise any other.”
Although with delicate docility, Vincent could no more forestall the action of God than an instrument the hand that uses it: nevertheless, once the Divine impulse was given, he could not endure the least delay in following it, nor suffer any other sentiment in his soul but the most absolute confidence. He wrote again, with his charming simplicity, to the helpmate given him by God: “You are always giving way a little to human feelings, thinking that everything is going to ruin as soon as you see me ill. O woman of little faith, why have you not more confidence, and more submission to the guidance and example of Jesus Christ? This Saviour of the world entrusted the well-being of the whole Church to God His Father, and you, for a handful of young women, evidently raised up and gathered together by His Providence, you fear that He will fail you! Come, come, Mademoiselle, you must humble yourself before God.”
No wonder that faith, the only possible guide of such a life, the imperishable foundation of all that he was for his neighbour and in himself, was, in the eyes of Vincent de Paul the greatest of treasures. He who compassionated every suffering, even though well deserved, who, by an heroic fraud, took the place of a galley-slave in chains, was a pitiless foe to heresy, and could not rest till he had obtained either the banishment or the chastisement of its votaries. Clement XII in the Bull of Canonisation bears witness to this in speaking of the pernicious error of Jansenism, which our Saint was one of the first to denounce and prosecute. Never, perhaps, were these words of Holy Writ better verified: “The simplicity of the just will guide them: and the deceitfulness of the wicked will destroy them” (Proverbs xi. 3). Though this sect expressed later on a supreme disdain for Monsieur Vincent, it had not always been of that mind. “I am,” he said to a friend, “most particularly obliged to bless and thank God, for not having suffered the first and principal professors of that doctrine, men of my acquaintance and friendship, to be able to draw me to their opinions. I cannot tell you what pains they took, and what reasons they propounded to me. I objected to them, amongst other things, the authority of the Council of Trent, which is clearly opposed to them. And seeing that they still continued, I, instead of answering them, quietly recited my Credo, and that is how I have remained firm in the Catholic faith.”
HOW full a sheaf you bear, O Vincent, as you ascend laden with blessings from Earth to your true country! O you, the most simple of men, though living in an age of splendours, your renown far surpasses the brilliant reputation which fascinated your contemporaries. The true glory of that century, and the only one that will remain to it when time will be no more, is to have seen, in its earlier part, Saints powerful alike in faith and love, stemming the tide of Satan’s conquests, and restoring to the soil of France, made barren by heresy, the fruitfulness of its brightest days. And now, [three] centuries and more after your labours, the work of the harvest is still being carried on by your sons and daughters, aided by new assistants who also acknowledge you for their inspirer and father. You are now in the kingdom of Heaven where grief and tears are no more, yet day-by-day you still receive the grateful thanks of the suffering and the sorrowful.
Reward our confidence in you by fresh benefits. No name so much as your inspires respect for the Church in our days of blasphemy. And yet those who deny Christ now go so far as to endeavour to stifle the testimony which the poor have always rendered to Him on your account. Wield, against these ministers of Hell, the two-edged sword, where with it is given to the Saints to avenge God in the midst of the nations: treat them as you did the heretics of your day. Make them either deserve pardon or suffer punishment, be converted or be reduced by Heaven to the impossibility of doing harm. Above all, take care of the unhappy beings whom these Satanic men deprive of spiritual help in their last moments. Elevate your daughters to the high level required by the present sad circumstances, when men would have their devotedness to deny its Divine origin and cast off the guise of religion. If the enemies of the poor man can snatch from his deathbed the sacred sign of salvation, no rule, no law, no power of this world or the next, can cast out Jesus from the soul of the Sister of Charity, or prevent His name from passing from her heart to her lips: neither death nor Hell, neither fire nor flood can stay him, says the Canticle of Canticles.
Your sons, too, are carrying on your work of evangelisation. And even in our days their apostolate is crowned with the diadem of sanctity and martyrdom. Uphold their zeal. Develop in them your own spirit of unchanging devotedness to the Church and submission to the supreme Pastor. Forward all the new works of charity springing out of your own, and placed by Rome to your credit and under your patronage. May they gather their heat from the Divine fire which you rekindled on the Earth. May they ever seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, never deviating, in the choice of means, from the principle you laid down for them of “judging, speaking, and acting, exactly as the Eternal Wisdom of God, clothed in our weak flesh, judged, spoke and acted.”Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
The birthday of St. Epaphras, whom the blessed Apostle St. Paul calls his fellow-prisoner. By the same Apostle he was consecrated bishop of Colossse, where becoming renowned for his virtues, he received the palm of martyrdom for defending courageously the flock committed to his charge. His body lies at Rome in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
At Seville in Spain, the martyrdom of the holy virgins Justa and Rufina. Arrested by the governor Diogenian, they were stretched on the rack and lacerated with iron claws, then imprisoned, and subjected to starvation and various tortures. Lastly Justa breathed her last in prison, and Rufina had her neck broken while confessing Christ.
At Cordova, St. Aurea, virgin, who repented of a fault she had committed, and in a second combat overcame the enemy by the shedding of her blood.
At Treves, St. Martin, bishop and martyr.
At Rome, Pope St. Symmachus, who for a long time had much to bear from a faction of schismatics. At last, distinguished by holiness, he went to God.
At Verona, St. Felix, bishop.
At Scete, a mountain in Egypt, St. Arsenius, a deacon of the Roman church. In the time of Theodosius he retired into a wilderness, where, endowed with every virtue and shedding continual tears, he yielded his soul to God.
In Cappadocia, the holy virgin Marcina, sister of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
