Monsieur Vincent

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - September 26, 2008

Tomorrow we celebrate the feast day of a saint whose name is known by almost all Catholics but whose remarkable life is known only by a few. In terms of the sheer amount of good done on earth, he must be numbered among the greatest saints — and human beings — of all time.

This saint integrated Mother Teresa's indefatigable love for the poor, with Joseph Cafasso's solicitude for prisoners, Alphonsus Ligouri's passion to bring the Gospel to the uncatechized, Augustine's drive to root out false teaching about God's grace, Charles Borromeo's zeal to reform priestly formation, Gregory VII's eagerness to reform the episcopacy, Peter Claver's commitment to freeing slaves, Dominic's charism for firmly establishing religious congregations, Francis de Sales' reputation for spiritual direction, and John Bosco's almost effortless ability to raise enormous sums of money for charitable works — someone incredibly all in one.

Most Catholics know his name from the society founded a century and a half after his death and placed under his powerful patronage, the 175th anniversary of which we are marking this year. This society happily has been established in most parishes in our diocese and is one of the principal ways the Church carries out her charitable mission: the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

Tomorrow is a day on which all Catholics, and not just members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, can marvel at the wonder of grace that was his life.

Vincent de Paul was born on a tiny farm in southwestern France in 1580, the third of six children. His parents struggled simply to make ends meet, but when Vincent's father recognized how precociously intelligent his son was, he and the family sacrificed to get him an education through the Franciscan Recollects and later the University of Toulouse.

Vincent's ambition at the time was to become a priest, not merely because he thought it was his vocation, but because he knew that if he played his cards right, he might receive benefices for rich Churches and abbeys that would provide him enough income to permanently get his family out of poverty. Because of his genius and motivation, he raced through university and was ordained a priest at the shockingly young age of 20.

He wasted no time in trying to climb the ecclesiastical ladder. He became a chaplain to Queen Margaret of Valois and moved to Paris. As a brilliant "baby priest," he quickly earned the reputation as a talented preacher, which gained him further entrée into French high society.

In 1605, something happened that was the first stage of his priestly conversion. After having gone to Marseilles to acquire an inheritance, he boarded a ship to Narbonne that was captured by African pirates who brought him to Tunis, where he was a slave for two years. God eventually arranged for his escape, but Vincent never forgot the misery these slaves were experiencing. He resolved to help them somehow, someway in the future.

The second stage of his conversion was a further crucifixion of his ego. After he had returned to Paris, his roommate was robbed of 400 crowns. Convinced Vincent was the thief, he maliciously accused him to the police and to everyone else. Whereas earlier Vincent may have trusted in his own abilities to defend his reputation, now he trusted only in divine Providence, who had just freed him from slavery. "God knows the truth," he said calmly, as he bore the calumny for six months until the true thief confessed.

Soon thereafter Vincent was recruited by the powerful Count of Joigny, Philip de Gondi, to become chaplain to his family and tutor to his children. This was the assignment of the former Vincent's dreams, but it was now an assignment that he twice laid down in order to become a pastor in rural areas in great need of conversion. Both times, however, Count de Gondi — who with his family loved Vincent — prevailed upon him to return. The latter time they enticed him by promising him that one of his tasks would be to teach the Gospel to the peasants throughout their expansive territory who were in ignorance and moral disarray. Count de Gondi, who was prefect of the French penal system, also arranged for Vincent to be named almoner and chaplain to the convicts in the galleys, which allowed Vincent to bring not just spiritual but material comfort to these prisoners across France.

The more work he did among the poor and the outcasts, the more he became aware of how much work needed still to be done. He knew that organization was crucial. He began to recruit priests to help him in the work of preaching the Gospel to the poor; these clerics, drawn by Vincent's example, became the first members of the Congregation of the Mission. With the help of St. Louise de Marillac, he established the Daughters of Charity, to work in the many hospitals he was founding to care for the sick, incurable, orphaned, aged and abandoned. To help in the relief of the indigent, he instituted the Ladies of Charity, a group of wealthy women who would use their social connections to raise the funds needed not merely for the immediate care of the poor, but for their long-term education and training. In Paris these Ladies helped to run a soup kitchen that fed a staggering 16,000 hungry people a day.

Vincent saw how much the Church's urgent charitable mission in France had been frustrated by incompetent and often immoral priests and bishops. At that time, it was still not required for candidates to the priesthood to go to seminary. So he began to work with the Archbishop of Paris, Count de Gondi's brother, to ensure that before a man was ordained, he would need to participate in spiritual exercises with Vincent and the priests of his Congregation. At first these retreat courses took two weeks; they eventually extended to two years. Through them Vincent began to form most of the young priests of France. Later, the Vincentians established full-scale seminaries all over France to ensure both that priests knew the Catholic faith well enough to fight against Jansenism and other heresies, but lived it enough to care for the poor and the needy.

His work with priests made him ever more aware of the difference between holy, competent bishops and ecclesiastical disasters. In these years after the Protestant Reformation, it was clear that great bishops were needed and bad appointees with inadequate spiritual qualifications could not be tolerated. He therefore used his considerable influence with the king, who at the time wielded enormous power in the appointment of bishops, to set up a Council of Conscience to ensure that those nominated for the episcopacy were worthy of the office. The king made Vincent the head of the Committee and so Vincent had as big an impact on the formation of the French episcopacy as he did the French priesthood.

Despite his being involved in so many different activities — and authoring over 30,000 letters, many written to give spiritual direction — Vincent never forgot the poor slaves on the Barbary Coast, who chains he once shared. There were about 25,000 of them, mostly Christian. He sent priests and brothers to attend to their spiritual meets and never ceased to raise money to ransom them. By the time of his death in 1680, he had purchased the freedom of over 1,200.

The fuel for all this activity was the same that powered his prayer: deep love for the Lord and, with the Lord, for those for whom the Lord died.

It's altogether fitting that he was named patron saint of all the Church's charitable societies because he has always been an icon of the Lord's burning self-sacrificial love.

St. Vincent de Paul also remains for us a witness of how much good one person, impelled by God's love, can do.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.