Saint
Vincent de Paul
Fondateur
de la congrégation de la Mission et des Filles de la Charité (+ 1660)
Monsieur Vincent n'oubliera jamais que, quand il était petit, il gardait les porcs dans la campagne landaise. Il en rougissait à l'époque et s'il voulut devenir prêtre, ce fut surtout pour échapper à sa condition paysanne. Plus tard, non seulement il l'assumera, mais il en fera l'un des éléments de sa convivialité avec les pauvres et les humiliés. A 19 ans, c'est chose faite, il monte à Paris parce qu'il ne trouve pas d'établissement qui lui convienne. Le petit pâtre devient curé de Clichy un village des environs de Paris, aumônier de la reine Margot, précepteur dans la grande famille des Gondi. Entre temps, il rencontre Bérulle qui lui fait découvrir ce qu'est la grâce sacerdotale et les devoirs qui s'y rattachent. Il appellera cette rencontre "ma conversion". Il renonce à ses bénéfices, couche sur la paille et ne pense plus qu'à Dieu. Dès lors son poste de précepteur des Gondi lui pèse. Il postule pour une paroisse rurale à Châtillon-les-Dombes et c'est là qu'il retrouve la grande misère spirituelle et physique des campagnes françaises. Sa vocation de champion de la charité s'affermit. Rappelé auprès des Gondi, il accepte et enrichit son expérience comme aumônier des galères dont Monsieur de Gondi est le général. Ami et confident de saint François de Sales, il trouve en lui l'homme de douceur dont Monsieur Vincent a besoin, car son tempérament est celui d'un homme de feu. Pour les oubliés de la société (malades, galériens, réfugiés, illettrés, enfants trouvés) il fonde successivement les Confréries de Charité, la Congrégation de la Mission (Lazaristes) et avec sainte Louise de Marillac, la Compagnie des Filles de la Charité. Plus que l'importance de ses fondations, c'est son humilité, sa douceur qui frappe désormais ses contemporains. Auprès de lui chacun se sent des envies de devenir saint. Il meurt, assis près du feu, en murmurant le secret de sa vie: "Confiance! Jésus!".
- Le Pape François rend hommage à saint Vincent de Paul dans un message adressé aux membres de l'Association internationale des Charités, à l'occasion des 400 ans des premières Confréries de Charité, le 15 mars 2017. (Le Pape encourage une 'culture de la miséricorde' à la suite de saint Vincent de Paul)
- Saint Vincent de Paul (1581 - 1660) est un géant de la charité. Sa vie est une synthèse de la prière et de l'action. Elle se résume en un triptyque:
+ Une riche spiritualité propre à approfondir notre foi.
+ Une vie toute donnée à Dieu et aux pauvres.
+ Un amour profond pour le sacerdoce et la mission. Car "l'Amour est
inventif jusqu'à l'infini!"
(Diocèse d'Aire et Dax -
saints et martyrs landais - l'Église dans les Landes)
- Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) Monsieur Vincent, géant de la charité, nous échappera toujours et ne se laissera pas appréhender facilement. Mais il nous dit avec son air malicieux de gascon: «le temps change tout». Alors, que nous dit-il, 350 ans après et toujours vivant? Figures de sainteté - site de l'Eglise catholique en France
- "A Saintes précisément, il établit aussi la Congrégation de la Mission.
De nombreuses lettres qu'il adressa au supérieur de la maison sont conservées :
à Louis Thibault, Claude Dufour, Pierre Watebled et surtout Louis Rivet. Elles
témoignent du soin extrême que Monsieur Vincent apporte au déroulement des
missions dans nos régions charentaises." (diocèse de La Rochelle Saintes -
Saint Vincent de Paul)
- En 1885, le pape Léon XIII le déclare «patron de toutes les œuvres
charitables»... Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660)... (diocèse de Paris)
- ...saint Vincent de Paul devient pour quelques mois curé de Châtillon sur Chalaronne. C'est là qu'il fonde les dames de la Charité, dont le règlement a été conservé dans la chambre qu'il occupait... (Diocèse de Belley-Ars - 2000 ans de vie chrétienne)
- Vidéo: le berceau de Saint Vincent de Paul, reportage réalisé par Le Jour du Seigneur dans un village qui porte son nom près de Dax.
- A lire: Monsieur Vincent «La vie à sauver», prix 2011 de la Bande
Dessinée Chrétienne d'Angoulême.
Un internaute brésilien nous suggère de rendre Saint Vincent de Paul patron du
football, ce sport étant un maillon important de la socialisation, de la paix
et de l'inclusion.
Mémoire de saint Vincent de Paul, prêtre.
Rempli d'esprit sacerdotal et entièrement donné aux pauvres à Paris, il
reconnaissait sur le visage de n'importe quel malheureux la face de son
Seigneur ; pour retrouver la forme de l'Église primitive, éduquer le clergé à
la sainteté et soulager les pauvres, il fonda la Congrégation de la Mission et,
avec l'aide de sainte Louise de Marillac, la Congrégation des Filles de la
Charité. Il mourut, épuisé, à Paris en 1660.
Martyrologe
romain
S'il s'en trouve parmi vous qui pensent qu'ils sont envoyés pour "évangéliser" les prisonniers et non pour les soulager, pour remédier à leurs besoins spirituels et non aux temporels, je réponds que nous devons les assister en toutes manières par nous et par autrui: faire cela, c'est évangéliser par paroles et par œuvres, et c'est cela le plus juste...
Saint-Vincent de Paul
(1581-1660) - (Premier aumônier des prisonniers)
SOURCE : https://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/1927/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.html
SAINT VINCENT de PAUL
Prêtre, Fondateur d'Ordres
(1576-1660)
Ce Saint, dont le nom est devenu synonyme de charité,
est l'une des plus pures gloires de la France et de l'humanité tout entière. Il
naquit à Pouy, près de Dax, le 24 août 1576. Ses parents faisaient valoir une
petite ferme et vivaient du travail de leurs mains. Les premières années de
Vincent se passèrent à la garde des troupeaux. Un jour qu'il avait ramassé
jusqu'à trente sous, somme considérable pour lui, il la donna au malheureux qui
lui parut le plus délaissé. Quand ses parents l'envoyaient au moulin, s'il
rencontrait des pauvres sur sa route, il ouvrait le sac de farine et leur en
donnait à discrétion.
Son père, témoin de sa charité et devinant sa rare
intelligence, résolut de s'imposer les plus durs sacrifices pour le faire
étudier et le pousser au sacerdoce: "Il sera bon prêtre, disait-il, car il
a le coeur tendre." A vingt ans, il étudie la théologie à Toulouse et
reçoit bientôt le grade de docteur.
Un an après son ordination au sacerdoce, il se rend à
Marseille pour recueillir un legs que lui a laissé un de ses amis. Au retour,
voyageant par mer pour se rendre à Narbonne, il est pris par des pirates et
emmené captif en Afrique. Sa captivité, d'abord très dure et accompagnée de
fortes épreuves pour sa foi, se termina par la conversion de son maître, qui
lui rendit la liberté. C'est alors que Vincent va se trouver dans sa voie.
Les circonstances le font nommer aumônier général des
galères, et il se dévoue au salut de ces malheureux criminels avec une charité
couronnée des plus grands succès. La Providence semble le conduire partout où
il y a des plaies de l'humanité à guérir.
A une époque où la famine et les misères de toutes
sortes exercent les plus affreux ravages, il fait des prodiges de dévouement;
des sommes incalculables passent par ses mains dans le sein des pauvres, il
sauve à lui seul des villes et des provinces entières. Ne pouvant se multiplier,
il fonde, en divers lieux, des Confréries de Dames de la Charité, qui se
transforment bientôt dans cette institution immortelle et incomparable des
Filles de la Charité, plus connues sous le nom des Soeurs de
Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. Nulle misère ne le laisse insensible; il trouve le moyen
de ramasser lui-même et de protéger partout des multitudes d'enfants, fruits du
libertinage, exposés à l'abandon et à la mort, et mérite le nom de Père des
enfants trouvés.
Il a formé des légions d'anges de charité; mais il lui
faut des légions d'apôtres, et il fonde les Prêtres de la Mission, destinés à
évangéliser la France et même les peuples infidèles.
Abbé L. Jaud, Vie des Saints pour tous les jours
de l'année, Tours, Mame, 1950.
Mort à Paris le 27 septembre 1660. Canonisé en 1737
par Clément XII, fête fixée comme semidouble au 19 juillet. Benoît XIV l’érigea
en fête double en 1753.
SOURCE : https://livres-mystiques.com/partieTEXTES/Jaud_Saints/calendrier/Vies_des_Saints/07-19.htm
.jpg)
Saint Vincent de Paul s’adresse aux Filles de la
Charité.
Voilà donc, mes chères filles, de fortes raisons pour
vous inciter à faire estime de votre vocation et à vous en acquitter avec
plaisir, puisque cela plaît à Dieu et que le prochain en est secouru, et sans
crainte, puisque Dieu même vous préserve.
Un moyen de le faire comme Dieu veut, c’est de le
faire en charité, en charité, mes filles. Oh ! que cela rendra votre
service excellent ! Mais savez-vous ce que c’est que le faire en
charité ? C’est le faire en Dieu, car Dieu est charité, c’est le faire pour
Dieu tout purement ; c’est le faire en la grâce de Dieu, car le péché nous
sépare de la charité de Dieu.
Servant les pauvres, on sert Jésus Christ. Ô mes
filles, que cela est vrai ! Vous servez Jésus Christ en la personne des
pauvres. Et cela est aussi vrai que nous sommes ici. Une sœur ira dix fois le
jour voir les malades, et dix fois par jour elle y trouvera Dieu. Comme dit
saint Augustin, ce que nous voyons n’est pas si assuré, parce que nos sens
nous peuvent tromper ; mais les vérités de Dieu ne trompent jamais. Allez
voir de pauvres forçats à la chaîne, vous y trouverez Dieu ; servez ces
petits enfants, vous y trouverez Dieu. Ô mes filles, que cela est
obligeant ! Vous allez en de pauvres maisons, mais vous y trouvez Dieu. Ô
mes filles, que cela est obligeant encore une fois ! Il agrée le service
que vous rendez à ces malades et le tient fait à lui-même, comme vous avez dit.
St Vincent de Paul
Figure majeure du renouveau spirituel du XVIIe
siècle français, saint Vincent de Paul († 1660) a fondé, avec Louise de
Marillac, les Filles de la Charité. Il fut aussi formateur de prêtres et fonda
la société des Prêtres de la Mission (lazaristes). / Correspondance,
entretiens, documents, II – Entretiens, tome IX, Paris, Gabalda, 1923, p.
249-252.
SOURCE : https://fr.aleteia.org/daily-prayer/lundi-27-septembre/meditation-de-ce-jour-1/
[VIDEO] Quand saint Vincent de Paul était esclave
Retour sur un épisode de la vie de saint Vincent de
Paul, patron de toutes les œuvres charitables et des prisonniers, qui changea
le sort de milliers de chrétiens persécutés.
L’humilité de saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660), sa
bonté, sa convivialité, son abandon à la Providence sont bien connus. Des
qualités qui ont fait de lui un géant de la charité auprès des plus pauvres,
des marginalisés, des orphelins, reconnaissant en eux « la face de son
Seigneur ». Cette humilité, cette douceur et cet empressement à soulager
de leur détresse tous les « oubliés de la société » frappent
tous ses contemporains et rayonnent aujourd’hui encore à travers le
monde. Il doit certainement ces facultés à son tempérament naturel et à
son enfance paysanne dans les Landes — dont il rougissait à l’époque mais qu’il
assumera au contact de la misère du monde rural. Mais il la doit aussi très
certainement à ses 23 mois de captivité et de travaux forcés passés en
Barbarie, où il s’est retrouvé en condition d’esclave. Vendu à divers
« maîtres », il prendra conscience de la condition insupportable des
milliers d’esclaves chrétiens en terre d’islam.
Lire aussi :
Saint Vincent de Paul : « Les pauvres sont nos
maîtres »
Nous sommes en 1605, c’est-à-dire cinq ans après son
ordination sacerdotale, lorsque Vincent est fait prisonnier avec tant d’autres
passagers lors d’un voyage en Méditerranée, et emmené à Tunis. À cette époque,
le piratage barbaresque, non loin des côtes européennes, est au plus fort. Les
captifs sont entassés dans les bagnes de Tunis et d’Alger. 36 000 chrétiens
sont alors répartis entre les deux villes. Durant ces deux années, et à son
retour, après une traversée périlleuse à bord d’une simple barque, le jeune
homme déploiera tous les efforts possibles pour les soulager de leurs souffrances.
Des galères aux bagnes d’Alger
Le premier réflexe de Vincent à son retour est d’aller
partager son souci avec les autorités françaises et de venir en aide à tous les
captifs qui, s’aperçoit-il, dans son propre pays, vivent dans des conditions
déplorables. Nommé aumônier général des galères du roi en 1619, il découvre
vite qu’on traite les galériens comme des bêtes. Le sort des
« chiourmes », comme on appelait les équipages d’une galère,
enchainés et fouettés sans arrêt durant les traversées, sont d’une atrocité qui
lui fait honte. Il va alors de port en port, de galère en galère, constater
l’horreur de leur traitement. On raconte même qu’un jour, révolté par la brutalité
d’un gardien, il a voulu prendre la place d’un de ces pauvres malheureux et
ramer à sa place. Grâce à lui et à de bonnes dames charitables, il arrivera peu
à peu à améliorer les conditions de vie des prisonniers en général.
Lire aussi :
« Pour saint Vincent de Paul là où se trouve le pauvre, se
trouve le Christ »
Parallèlement, saint Vincent pense aux bagnes d’Alger
et de Tunis et à tous ces captifs en terre d’islam. Le temps de fonder sa
Congrégation de la Mission, en 1625, puis la Société des prêtres de la Mission
(lazaristes) en 1627, et de les voir grandir, il lance, en 1646, son premier
projet à l’étranger, envoyant plusieurs missionnaires à Constantinople, au
centre de l’Empire ottoman. Il arrivera à faire délivrer plusieurs milliers de
captifs chrétiens en échange de rançons, et à mettre en place une sorte
d’aumônerie pour apporter soulagement et réconfort aux captifs face aux
pressions morales et parfois physiques auxquelles ils étaient soumis dans la
tentative de les faire apostasier.
Pour Vincent, envisager des missions sur ces terres
était comme le prolongement normal des missions en France. Même si la
congrégation de la mission ne prévoyait pas dans ses statuts l’envoi de
missionnaires à l’extérieur, saint Vincent n’eut aucun mal à convaincre la
communauté que le service des pauvres englobe « toutes les missions, même
les plus lointaines ». En revanche il dut braver toutes sortes de
réticences et pressions de l’extérieur pour ne pas devoir arrêter ses missions
en Barbarie.
La cathédrale de Tunis, érigée entre 1893 et 1897, lui rend
hommage en portant son nom. L’un des vitraux retrace la scène du saint apôtre
de la charité présentant à Richelieu des négociants français esclaves à
Tunis, et montrant au cardinal le contrat signé avec le Bey de Tunis pour le
rachat des captifs.
Découvrez les huit plus belles citations de saint
Vincent de Paul :
Lire aussi :Saint Vincent de Paul, discrète star du street-art parisien
Entre Vincent de Paul et Catherine Labouré, une amitié
d’éternité
Anne Bernet - Publié le 26/09/21
Entre Catherine Labouré et Monsieur Vincent fêté le 27
septembre, s’est tissée au fil des années une relation affective et spirituelle
d’autant plus forte que, reniée par son père, la jeune fille se sent orpheline.
Leurs mystérieux échanges sont-ils à l’origine de la visite de la Vierge Marie…
à l’origine de la diffusion de la Médaille miraculeuse ?
Pour les chrétiens, ainsi que le disent les prières
des funérailles, au moment de la mort, « la vie n’est pas ôtée, mais
changée » et les défunts continuent d’exister, dans une autre dimension
que celle où nous nous mouvons. Ce qui est vrai des simples fidèles qui, en
général, ont encore besoin d’un temps de purification, l’est évidemment plus
encore des saints entrés directement dans la gloire céleste. Cette réalité
explique pourquoi certains d’entre eux, après leur trépas, se manifestent
familièrement, d’une manière ou d’une autre, aux vivants, qu’ils se soient ou
non connus sur cette terre. Ce fut le cas, à maintes reprises, pour Martin de
Porrès, Thérèse de Lisieux ou Padre Pio mais savez-vous que saint Vincent de Paul prit en personne, au début du
XIXe siècle, la peine de former à sa mission mariale la future voyante de la rue du Bac ?
Le songe de Zoé
Nous sommes en 1824, à Fain-les-Moutiers, un gros
bourg bourguignon. Depuis 1815, et la mort prématurée de sa mère, Zoé Labouré,
18 ans, s’occupe seule de faire tourner la grosse ferme familiale et d’élever
ses cadets, tâche écrasante dont son père a jugé bon de l’accabler alors
qu’elle n’était encore qu’une enfant. Depuis longtemps, il feint d’ignorer que
sa fille, qu’il aime autant qu’il l’esclavage, a entendu l’appel divin et
aspire au cloître ; d’ailleurs quand, à sa majorité, elle ose le lui dire, elle
se heurte à un refus formel, accompagné de la confiscation de sa dot et de sa
part d’héritage maternel. Pour l’heure, Zoé, comme on l’appelle en famille,
préférant ce prénom, celui du jour de sa naissance, à celui donné à l’état
civil, Catherine, garde son secret pour elle et s’interroge sur l’ordre où elle
doit entrer. Elle n’a qu’une certitude : ce ne sera pas chez les Filles de la
Charité de saint Vincent de Paul, où se trouve déjà sa sœur aînée.
Lire aussi :Saint Vincent de Paul, discrète star du street-art parisien
Et voilà qu’une nuit, Zoé fait un rêve. Elle se voit
dans l’église de Fain assistant à la messe, chose impossible car, depuis la
Révolution, l’église n’est plus desservie, ce qui l’oblige à faire des
kilomètres tous les jours pour s’y rendre et communier. À l’autel, un vieux
prêtre qu’elle ne connaît pas et qui la regarde, avec une attention si
particulière, et tant de bonté, qu’elle en est toute remuée, au point, dès la
dernière bénédiction, de s’enfuir pour échapper à ces yeux qui semblent lire en
elle. Puis Zoé entre dans une maison voisine, pour visiter une malade ; au
chevet de celle-ci, revoici le vieux prêtre ; il lui parle : « Ma fille,
c’est bien de soigner les malades. Vous me fuyez maintenant mais un jour, vous
serez heureuse de venir à moi. Dieu a des desseins sur vous. Ne l’oubliez
pas. »
Elle sait maintenant
Zoé se réveille en proie à un trouble immense, mais,
fille de bon sens, elle cherche où elle a pu rencontrer ce prêtre ou en voir le
portrait. Impossible : elle est sûre de ne pas le connaître, ni de près ni de
loin. Pourtant, son visage amical et souriant reste ancré dans son souvenir.
Un an plus tard, Zoé obtient de son père, qui n’a
jamais jugé utile de scolariser ses filles, de l’autoriser à entrer quelques
mois chez l’une de ses cousines qui tient un pensionnat à Châtillon-sur-Seine,
afin d’apprendre au moins à lire et écrire. Sans quoi, mais elle s’est gardée
de le dire, aucun noviciat ne voudra d’elle analphabète. Ce séjour tourne au
cauchemar : elle est déplacée dans ce milieu d’adolescentes riches qui se
moquent de cette paysanne incapable d’apprendre à lire… Découragée, Zoé ne sait
plus ce que Dieu attend d’elle.
Lire aussi :« Pour saint Vincent de Paul là où se trouve le pauvre, se
trouve le Christ »
Un jour, sa cousine, pour lui changer les idées,
l’emmène chez les Filles de la Charité et là, accroché au mur du parloir, le
portrait d’un vieux prêtre que Zoé reconnaît aussitôt puisque c’est l’inconnu
de son rêve. Quand elle demande de qui il s’agit, les religieuses lui répondent
que c’est saint Vincent de Paul, leur fondateur. D’un coup, tous les doutes et
les réticences de Zoé disparaissent ; elle sait maintenant où Dieu l’appelle.
Ses parents de substitution
En fait, à cause de l’obstination mauvaise de son
père, il faudra presque cinq ans pour que Zoé Labouré réussisse, en avril 1830,
à entrer au noviciat des Filles de la Charité, rue du Bac à Paris. On n’y fait
guère attention à cette « fermière » au fort accent bourguignon,
presque illettrée et dont la dot minimale laisse croire qu’elle est pauvre.
Personne ne devine l’étonnante vertu de cette novice, ni sa familiarité réelle
avec les choses divines.
Comme jadis après la mort de sa maman, elle a élu la
Sainte Vierge pour Mère adoptive, Mademoiselle Labouré a reporté sur Vincent
l’affection dont son père ne veut plus.
Ce 25 avril 1830 est une grande date : cachées durant
la Terreur, les reliques de saint Vincent de Paul seront
solennellement ramenées rue de Sèvres dans l’église des Lazaristes, l’autre
ordre, masculin, fondé par Monsieur Vincent afin d’évangéliser les campagnes et
former le clergé. Cette translation sera suivie d’une octave de prière en
l’honneur du fondateur et les novices pourront chaque jour aller prier devant
les reliques de leur bon père. Zoé, devenue en religion sœur Catherine, n’a
jamais oublié les paroles du vieux prêtre de son rêve : « Un jour, ma
fille, vous serez heureuse de venir à moi. » Entre elle et le saint, au
fil des années, s’est tissée une relation affective d’autant plus forte que,
reniée par son père qui l’a chassée de sa maison parce qu’elle persistait dans
sa vocation, la jeune fille n’a plus d’autre soutien que le saint. Comme jadis
après la mort de sa maman, elle a élu la Sainte Vierge pour Mère adoptive,
Mademoiselle Labouré a reporté sur Vincent l’affection dont son père ne veut
plus. Et elle attend tout de ses parents de substitution.
La vision du cœur de Monsieur Vincent
Toute une semaine, à ses moindres moments de loisir,
Catherine va prier devant les reliques : « Je demandais à saint Vincent
toutes les grâces qui m’étaient nécessaires, et aussi pour les deux familles
(les filles de la Charité et les Lazaristes), et la France entière. Il me
semblait qu’elles en avaient le plus grand besoin. Enfin, je priais Monsieur
Vincent de m’enseigner ce qu’il fallait que je demande avec une foi
vive. » Demander à Dieu ce qu’il faut lui demander et non ce que l’on
souhaiterait obtenir de lui, telle est le secret de la prière des saints. À
chacune de ses stations devant les reliques, Catherine a le sentiment de la
présence quasi physique de Vincent, au point qu’elle souffre de devoir le
quitter. Heureusement, dans la chapelle de la rue du Bac se trouve un autre
reliquaire contenant « des petites reliques » du fondateur. « Et
toutes les fois que je revenais de Saint-Lazare, j’avais tant de peine qu’il me
semblait retrouver à la communauté saint Vincent, ou du moins son cœur, il
m’apparaissait toutes les fois que je revenais de Saint-Lazare. J’avais la
douce consolation de le voir… »
L’annonce de la révolution
La première fois qu’elle a la vision du cœur de saint
Vincent, Catherine le voit « blanc couleur de chair » et elle éprouve
de la douceur et du réconfort ; elle comprend intérieurement que ce blanc
symbolise « la paix, le calme, l’innocence et l’union ». Le
lendemain, nouvelle vision mais cette fois, le cœur du saint est « rouge
feu, ce qui doit allumer la charité dans les cœurs. Il me semblait que toute la
communauté devait se renouveler et s’étendre jusqu’aux extrémités du
monde ». Pourquoi faut-il qu’à ces promesses succède, le troisième jour,
la vision d’un cœur « rouge noir, ce qui me mettait de la tristesse dans
le cœur ; il me venait de la tristesse que j’avais de la peine à surmonter. Je
ne savais ni comment ni pourquoi cette tristesse se portait sur le changement
de gouvernement ». C’est l’annonce de la révolution qui, en juillet,
renversera la monarchie et déclenchera contre le catholicisme de nouvelles
violences en France…
Lire aussi :Apparition mariale : le message de la rue du Bac
Quand, à sa prochaine confession, Catherine s’ouvrira
de ces visions, elle se fera rabrouer de la belle manière par son jeune
confesseur, le père Aladel, avec qui elle aura toute sa vie des rapports
compliqués… Cela ne s’arrangera pas quand elle viendra lui dire, en tremblant
de ses réactions, qu’elle voit aussi le Christ présent dans l’hostie pendant la
messe, qu’Il lui apparaît dans sa royauté bafouée, et ce sera bien pire lorsque
les révélations de Notre-Dame commenceront !
La visite nocturne
À la fin de l’octave, les manifestations de saint
Vincent cessent, mais pas l’affection que Catherine lui porte. Dans le
calendrier de l’époque, la fête du fondateur est au 19 juillet. Le 18, sœur
Marthe, responsable des novices, leur parle de la grande dévotion mariale du
fondateur et, en cadeau, leur partage une relique précieuse du saint, un petit
morceau de son rochet. Catherine a reçu ce présent avec joie, mais elle a une
idée en tête. Si elle se meut à l’aise dans le monde invisible, avec lequel ses
contacts vont croissants, elle éprouve un regret de n’avoir pas encore vu
la Sainte Vierge… Saint
Vincent ne pourrait-il, profitant du regain de grâces occasionnées par sa fête,
lui obtenir celle de rencontrer enfin la Mère qu’elle s’est donnée, dans un
grand élan de tendresse et de confiance, au lendemain de la mort de la sienne ?
« Comme on nous avait distribué un morceau de linge d’un rochet de saint
Vincent, j’en ai coupé la moitié que j’ai avalée, et je me suis endormie dans
la pensée que saint Vincent m’obtiendrait la grâce de voir la Sainte
Vierge. »
Quelques heures plus tard, en pleine nuit, son ange
gardien réveillera sœur Catherine pour l’informer que la Sainte Vierge l’attend
à la chapelle.
Lire aussi :Catherine Labouré, une adoratrice silencieuse qui a vu Jésus
dans l’Hostie
Leçons des Matines avant 1960.
Au deuxième nocturne.
Quatrième leçon. Vincent de Paul, français de nation, naquit à Pouy, non loin de Dax, en Aquitaine, et manifesta dès son enfance une grande charité pour les pauvres. Étant passé de la garde du troupeau paternel à la culture des lettres, il étudia la littérature à Aix, et la théologie à Toulouse et à Saragosse. Ordonné Prêtre et reçu bachelier en théologie, il tomba aux mains des Turcs qui l’emmenèrent captif en Afrique. Pendant sa captivité, il gagna son maître lui-même à Jésus-Christ ; grâce au secours de la Mère de Dieu, il put s’échapper avec lui de ces pays barbares, et prit le chemin de Rome. De retour en France, il gouverna très saintement les paroisses de Clichy et de Châtillon. Nommé par le roi grand aumônier des galères de France, il apporta dans cette fonction un zèle merveilleux pour le salut des officiers et des rameurs ; saint François de Sales le donna comme supérieur aux religieuses de la Visitation, et, pendant près de quarante ans, il remplit cette charge avec tant de prudence, qu’il justifia de tout point le jugement du saint Prélat, qui déclarait ne pas connaître de Prêtre plus digne que Vincent.
Cinquième leçon. Il s’appliqua avec une ardeur infatigable jusqu’à un âge très avancé à évangéliser les pauvres, et surtout les paysans, et astreignit spécialement à cette œuvre apostolique, par un vœu perpétuel que le Saint-Siège a confirmé, et lui-même et les membres de la congrégation qu’il avait instituée, sous le titre de Prêtres séculiers de la Mission. Combien Vincent eut à cœur de favoriser la discipline ecclésiastique, on en a la preuve par les séminaires qu’il érigea pour les Clercs aspirant aux Ordres, par le soin qu’il mit à rendre fréquentes les réunions où les Prêtres conféraient entre eux sur les sciences sacrées, et à faire précéder la sainte ordination d’exercices préparatoires. Pour ces exercices et ces réunions, comme aussi pour les retraites des laïques, il voulut que les maisons de son institut s’ouvrissent facilement. De plus, afin de développer la foi et la piété, il envoya des ouvriers évangéliques, non seulement dans les provinces de la France, mais en Italie, en Pologne, en Écosse, en Irlande, et même chez les Barbares et les Indiens. Quant à lui, après avoir assisté Louis XIII à ses derniers moments, il fut appelé par la reine Anne d’Autriche, mère de Louis XIV, à faire partie d’un conseil ecclésiastique. Il apporta tout son zèle à ne laisser placer que les plus dignes à la tête des Églises et des monastères, à mettre fin aux discordes civiles, aux duels, aux erreurs naissantes, aussitôt détestées de lui que découvertes ; enfin, à ce que les jugements apostoliques fussent reçus de tous avec l’obéissance qui leur est due.
Sixième leçon. Il n’y avait aucun genre d’infortune qu’il ne secourût paternellement. Les Chrétiens gémissant sous le joug des Turcs, les enfants abandonnés, les jeunes gens indisciplinés, les jeunes filles dont la vertu était exposée, les religieuses dispersées, les femmes tombées, les hommes condamnés aux galères, les étrangers malades, les artisans invalides, les fous même et d’innombrables mendiants, furent secourus par lui, reçus et charitablement soignés dans des établissements hospitaliers qui subsistent encore. Il vint largement en aide à la Lorraine et à la Champagne, à la Picardie et à d’autres régions ravagées par la peste, la famine et la guerre. Pour rechercher et soulager les malheureux, il fonda plusieurs congrégations, entre autres celles des Dames et des Filles de la Charité, que l’on connaît et qui sont répandues partout ; il institua aussi les Filles de la Croix, de la Providence, de sainte Geneviève, pour l’éducation des jeunes filles. Au milieu de ces importantes affaires et d’autres encore il était continuellement occupé de Dieu, affable envers tous, toujours semblable à lui-même, simple, droit et humble : son éloignement pour les honneurs, les richesses, les plaisirs, ne se démentit jamais, et on l’a entendu dire que rien ne lui plaisait, si ce n’est dans le Christ Jésus, qu’il s’étudiait à imiter en toutes choses. Enfin, âgé de quatre vingt-cinq ans et usé par les mortifications, les fatigues et la vieillesse, il s’endormit paisiblement, le vingt-septième jour de septembre, l’an du salut mil six cent soixante. C’est à Paris qu’il mourut, dans la maison de Saint-Lazare, qui est la maison-mère de la congrégation de la Mission. L’éclat de ses vertus, de ses mérites et de ses miracles ont porté Clément XII à le mettre au nombre des Saints, en fixant sa Fête annuelle au dix-neuvième jour du mois de juillet. Sur les instances de plusieurs Évêques, Léon XIII a déclaré et constitué cet illustre héros de la divine charité, qui a si bien mérité de tout le genre humain, le patron spécial auprès de Dieu de toutes les associations de charité existant dans l’univers catholique et lui devant en quelque manière leur origine.
Au troisième nocturne. [1]
Lecture du saint Évangile selon saint Luc. Cap. 10, 1-9.
En ce temps-là : Le Seigneur désigna encore soixante-douze autres disciples, et les envoya deux à deux devant lui dans toutes les villes et tous les lieux où lui-même devait venir. Et le reste.
Homélie de saint Grégoire, Pape. Homilía 17 in Evangelia
Septième leçon. Notre Seigneur et Sauveur nous instruit, mes bien-aimés frères, tantôt par ses paroles, et tantôt par ses œuvres. Ses œuvres elles-mêmes sont des préceptes, et quand il agit, même sans rien dire, il nous apprend ce que nous avons à faire. Voilà donc que le Seigneur envoie ses disciples prêcher ; il les envoie deux à deux, parce qu’il y a deux préceptes de la charité : l’amour de Dieu et l’amour du prochain, et qu’il faut être au moins deux pour qu’il y ait lieu de pratiquer la charité. Car, à proprement parler, on n’exerce pas la chanté envers soi-même ; mais l’amour, pour devenir charité, doit avoir pour objet une autre personne.
Huitième leçon. Voilà donc que le Seigneur envoie ses disciples deux à deux pour prêcher ; il nous fait ainsi tacitement comprendre que celui qui n’a point de charité envers le prochain ne doit en aucune manière se charger du ministère de la prédication. C’est avec raison que le Seigneur dit qu’il a envoyé ses disciples devant lui, dans toutes les villes et tous les lieux où il devait venir lui-même. Le Seigneur suit ceux qui l’annoncent. La prédication a lieu d’abord ; et le Seigneur vient établir sa demeure dans nos âmes, quand les paroles de ceux qui nous exhortent l’ont devancé, et qu’ainsi la vérité a été reçue par notre esprit.
Neuvième leçon. Voilà pourquoi Isaïe a dit aux mêmes prédicateurs : « Préparez la voie du Seigneur ; rendez droits les sentiers de notre Dieu » [2]. A son tour le Psalmiste dit aux enfants de Dieu : « Faites un chemin à celui qui monte au-dessus du couchant » [3]. Le Seigneur est en effet monté au-dessus du couchant ; car plus il s’est abaissé dans sa passion, plus il a manifesté sa gloire en sa résurrection. Il est vraiment monté au-dessus du couchant : car, en ressuscitant, il a foulé aux pieds la mort qu’il avait endurée [4]. Nous préparons donc le chemin à Celui qui est monté au-dessus du couchant quand nous vous prêchons sa gloire, afin que lui-même, venant ensuite, éclaire vos âmes par sa présence et son amour.
[1] L’évangile de la Messe reprenant celui des Messes
des Évangélistes, les lectures du 3ème nocturne sont celles de ce Commun.
[2] Is. 40, 3.
[3] Ps 67, 5.
[4] La passion du Christ peut être comparée au couchant parce que la gloire de
cet astre divin y a comme disparu et la mort du Sauveur également puisqu’elle
l’a couché inanimé dans le tombeau.
Vincent Depaul présentant Louise de Marillac et les premières Filles de la Charité à la
reine Anne d'Autriche.
Tableau de frère André, religieux dominicain, dans
l'église de sainte Marguerite à Paris, XVIIIe siècle.
À droite, Anne d'Autriche est assise. Saint-Vincent,
debout, présente à la reine une religieuse agenouillée,
peut-être Mlle Le Gras, qui tient à la main un livre
ouvert, les constitutions des filles de la charité.
Reproduction issue de : Arthur Loth, Saint
Vincent et sa mision locale, Paris, Dumoulin, 1880
Dom Guéranger, l’Année Liturgique
Vincent fut l’homme de la foi qui opère par la charité
[5]. Venu au monde sur la fin du siècle où naquit Calvin, il trouvait l’Église
en deuil de nombreuses nations que l’erreur avait récemment séparées de la
catholicité. Sur toutes les côtes de la Méditerranée, le Turc, ennemi perpétuel
du nom chrétien, redoublait ses brigandages. La France, épuisée par quarante
années de guerres religieuses, n’échappait à la domination de l’hérésie au
dedans que pour bientôt lui prêter main forte à l’extérieur par le contraste
d’une politique insensée. Sur ses frontières de l’Est et du Nord d’effroyables
dévastations promenaient la ruine, et gagnaient jusqu’aux provinces de l’Ouest
et du Centre à la faveur des luttes intestines qu’entretenait l’anarchie. Plus
lamentable que toute situation matérielle était dans cette confusion l’état des
âmes. Les villes seules gardaient encore, avec un reste de tranquillité
précaire, quelque loisir de prier Dieu. Le peuple des campagnes, oublié,
sacrifié, disputant sa vie à tous les fléaux, n’avait pour le relever dans tant
de misères qu’un clergé le plus souvent abandonné comme lui de ses chefs,
indigne en trop de lieux, rivalisant presque toujours avec lui d’ignorance.
Ce fut alors que pour conjurer ces maux et, du même
coup, mille autres anciens et nouveaux, l’Esprit-Saint suscita Vincent dans une
immense simplicité de foi, fondement unique d’une charité que le monde,
ignorant du rôle de la foi, ne saurait comprendre. Le monde admire les œuvres
qui remplirent la vie de l’ancien pâtre de Buglose ; mais le ressort secret de
cette vie lui échappe. Il voudrait lui aussi reproduire ces œuvres ; et comme
les enfants qui s’évertuent dans leurs jeux à élever des palais, il s’étonne de
trouver en ruines au matin les constructions de la veille : le ciment de sa
philanthropie ne vaut pas l’eau bourbeuse dont les enfants s’essaient à lier
les matériaux de leurs maisons d’un jour ; et l’édifice qu’il prétendait
remplacer est toujours debout, défiant la sape, répondant seul aux multiples
besoins de l’humanité souffrante. C’est que la foi connaît seule en effet le
mystère de la souffrance, que seule elle peut sonder ces profondeurs sacrées
dont le Fils de Dieu même a parcouru les abîmes, qu’elle seule encore,
associant l’homme aux conseils du Très-Haut, l’associe tout ensemble à sa force
et à son amour. De là viennent aux œuvres bienfaisantes qui procèdent de la foi
leur puissance et leur durée. La solidarité tant prônée de nos utopistes
modernes n’a point ce secret ; et pourtant elle descend aussi de Dieu, quoi
qu’ils veuillent ; mais elle enchaîne plus qu’elle ne lie : elle regarde plus
la justice que l’amour ; et à ce titre, dans l’opposition qu’on en fait à la
divine charité venue du ciel, elle semble une lugubre ironie montant du séjour
des châtiments.
Vincent aima les pauvres d’un amour de prédilection,
parce qu’il aimait Dieu et que la foi lui révélait en eux le Seigneur. « O
Dieu, disait-il, qu’il fait beau voir les pauvres, si nous les considérons en
Dieu et dans l’estime que Jésus-Christ en a faite ! Bien souvent ils n’ont pas
presque la figure ni l’esprit de personnes raisonnables, tant ils sont
grossiers et terrestres. Mais tournez la médaille, et vous verrez, par les
lumières de la foi, que le Fils de Dieu, qui a voulu être pauvre, nous est
représenté par ces pauvres ; qu’il n’avait presque pas la figure d’un homme en
sa passion, et qu’il passait pour fou dans l’esprit des Gentils, et pour pierre
de scandale dans celui des Juifs ; et avec tout cela il se qualifie l’évangéliste
des pauvres, evangelizare pauperibus misit me [6] ».
Ce titre d’évangéliste des pauvres est l’unique que
Vincent ambitionna pour lui-même, le point de départ, l’explication de tout ce
qu’il accomplit dans l’Église. Assurer le ciel aux malheureux, travailler au
salut des abandonnés de ce monde, en commençant par les pauvres gens des champs
si délaissés : tout le reste pour lui, déclarait-il, « n’était qu’accessoire ».
Et il ajoutait, parlant à ses fils de Saint-Lazare : « Nous n’eussions jamais
travaillé aux ordinands ni aux séminaires des ecclésiastiques, si nous
n’eussions jugé qu’il était nécessaire, pour maintenir les peuples en bon état,
et conserver les fruits des missions, de faire en sorte qu’il y eût de bons
ecclésiastiques parmi eux ». C’est afin de lui donner l’occasion d’affermir son
œuvre à tous les degrés, que Dieu conduisit l’apôtre des humbles au conseil
royal de conscience, où Anne d’Autriche remettait en ses mains l’extirpation
des abus du haut clergé et le choix des chefs des Églises de France. Pour
mettre un terme aux maux causés par le délaissement si funeste des peuples, il
fallait à la tête du troupeau des pasteurs qui entendissent reprendre pour eux
la parole du chef divin : « Je connais mes brebis, et mes brebis me connaissent
» [7].
Nous ne pourrions, on le comprend, raconter dans ces
pages l’histoire de l’homme en qui la plus universelle charité fut comme
personnifiée. Mais du reste, il n’eut point non plus d’autre inspiration que
celle de l’apostolat dans ces immortelles campagnes où, depuis le bagne de
Tunis où il fut esclave jusqu’aux provinces ruinées pour lesquelles il trouva
des millions, on le vit s’attaquer à tous les aspects de la souffrance physique
et faire reculer sur tous les points la misère ; il voulait, par les soins
donnés aux corps, arriver à conquérir l’âme de ceux pour lesquels le Christ a
voulu lui aussi embrasser l’amertume et l’angoisse. On ne peut que sourire de
l’effort par lequel, dans un temps où l’on rejetait l’Évangile en retenant ses
bienfaits, certains sages prétendirent faire honneur de pareilles entreprises à
la philosophie de leur auteur. Les camps aujourd’hui sont plus tranchés ; et
l’on ne craint plus de renier parfois jusqu’à l’œuvre, pour renier logiquement
l’ouvrier. Mais aux tenants d’un philosophisme attardé, s’il en est encore, il
sera bon de méditer ces mots, où celui dont ils font un chef d’école déduisait
les principes qui devaient gouverner les actes de ses disciples et leurs
pensées : « Ce qui se fait pour la charité se fait pour Dieu. Il ne nous suffit
pas d’aimer Dieu, si notre prochain ne l’aime aussi ; et nous ne saurions aimer
notre prochain comme nous-mêmes, si nous ne lui procurons le bien que nous
sommes obligés de nous vouloir a nous-mêmes, c’est à savoir, l’amour divin, qui
nous unit à celui qui est notre souverain bien. Nous devons aimer notre
prochain comme l’image de Dieu et l’objet de son amour, et faire en sorte que
réciproquement les hommes aiment leur très aimable Créateur, et qu’ils
s’entr’aiment les uns les autres d’une charité mutuelle pour l’amour de Dieu,
qui les a tant aimés que de livrer son propre Fils à la mort pour eux. Mais
regardons, je vous prie, ce divin Sauveur comme le parfait exemplaire de la
charité que nous devons avoir pour notre prochain ».
On le voit : pas plus que la philosophie déiste ou
athée, la théophilanthropie qui apporta plus tard à la déraison du siècle
dernier l’appoint de ses fêtes burlesques, n’eut de titre à ranger Vincent,
comme elle fit, parmi les grands hommes de son calendrier. Ce n’est point la
nature, ni aucune des vaines divinités de la fausse science, mais le Dieu des
chrétiens, le Dieu fait homme pour nous sauver en prenant sur lui nos misères,
qui fut l’unique guide du plus grand des bienfaiteurs de l’humanité dans nos temps.
Rien ne me plaît qu’en Jésus-Christ, aimait-il à dire. Non seulement, fidèle
comme tous les Saints à l’ordre de la divine charité, il voulait voir régner en
lui ce Maître adoré avant de songer à le faire régner dans les autres ; mais,
plutôt que de rien entreprendre de lui-même par les données de la seule raison,
il se fût réfugié à tout jamais dans le secret de la face du Seigneur [8], pour
ne laisser de lui qu’un nom ignoré.
« Honorons, écrivait-il, l’état inconnu du Fils de
Dieu. C’est là notre centre, et c’est ce qu’il demande de nous pour le présent
et pour l’avenir, et pour toujours, si sa divine majesté ne nous fait
connaître, en sa manière qui ne peut tromper, qu’il veuille autre chose de
nous. Honorons particulièrement ce divin Maître dans la modération de son agir.
Il n’a pas voulu faire toujours tout ce qu’il a pu, pour nous apprendre à nous
contenter, lorsqu’il n’est pas expédient de faire tout ce que nous pourrions
faire, mais seulement ce qui est convenable à la charité, et conforme, aux
ordres de la divine volonté... Que ceux-là honorent souverainement notre
Seigneur qui suivent la sainte Providence, et qui n’enjambent pas sur elle !
N’est-il pas vrai que vous voulez, comme il est bien raisonnable, que votre
serviteur n’entreprenne rien sans vous et sans votre ordre ? Et si cela est
raisonnable d’un homme à un autre, à combien plus forte raison du Créateur à la
créature ? »
Vincent s’attachait donc, selon son expression, à
côtoyer la Providence, n’ayant point de plus grand souci que de ne jamais la
devancer. Ainsi fut-il sept années avant d’accepter pour lui les avances de la
Générale de Gondi et de fonder son établissement de la Mission. Ainsi
éprouva-t-il longuement sa fidèle coadjutrice, Mademoiselle Le Gras, quand elle
se crut appelée à se dévouer au service spirituel des premières Filles de la
Charité, sans lien entre elles jusque-là ni vie commune, simples aides
suppléantes des dames de condition que l’homme de Dieu avait assemblées dans
ses Confréries. « Quant à cet emploi, lui mandait-il après instances réitérées
de sa part, je vous prie une fois pour toutes de n’y point penser, jusqu’à ce
que notre Seigneur fasse paraître ce qu’il veut. Vous cherchez à devenir la
servante de ces pauvres filles, et Dieu veut que vous soyez la sienne. Pour
Dieu, Mademoiselle, que votre cœur honore la tranquillité de celui de notre
Seigneur, et il sera en état de le servir. Le royaume de Dieu est la paix au
Saint-Esprit ; il régnera en vous, si vous êtes en paix. Soyez-y donc, s’il
vous plaît, et honorez souverainement le Dieu de paix et de dilection ».
Grande leçon donnée au zèle fiévreux d’un siècle comme
le nôtre par cet homme dont la vie fut si pleine ! Que de fois, dans ce qu’on
nomme aujourd’hui les œuvres, l’humaine prétention stérilise la grâce en
froissant l’Esprit-Saint ! Tandis que, « pauvre ver rampant sur la terre et ne
sachant où il va, cherchant seulement à se cacher en vous, ô mon Dieu ! Qui
êtes tout son désir », Vincent de Paul voit l’inertie apparente de son humilité
fécondée plus que l’initiative de mille autres, sans que pour ainsi dire il en
ait conscience. « C’est la sainte Providence qui a mis votre Compagnie sur le
pied où elle est, disait-il vers la fin de son long pèlerinage à ses filles.
Car qui a-ce été, je vous supplie ? Je ne saurais me le représenter. Nous n’en
eûmes jamais le dessein. J’y pensais encore aujourd’hui, et je me disais :
Est-ce toi qui as pensé à faire une Compagnie de Filles de la Charité ? Oh !
Nenni. Est-ce Mademoiselle Le Gras ? Aussi peu. Oh ! Mes filles, je n’y pensais
pas, votre sœur servante n’y pensait pas, aussi peu Monsieur Portail (le
premier et plus fidèle compagnon de Vincent dans les missions) : c’est donc
Dieu qui y pensait pour vous ; c’est donc lui que nous pouvons dire être
l’auteur de votre Compagnie, puisque véritablement nous ne saurions en
reconnaître un autre ».
Mais autant son incomparable délicatesse à l’égard de
Dieu lui faisait un devoir de ne le jamais prévenir plus qu’un instrument ne le
fait pour la main qui le porte ; autant, l’impulsion divine une fois donnée, il
ne pouvait supporter qu’on hésitât à la suivre, ou qu’il y eût place dans l’âme
pour un autre sentiment que celui de la plus absolue confiance. Il écrivait
encore, avec sa simplicité si pleine de charmes, à la coopératrice que Dieu lui
avait donnée : « Je vous vois toujours un peu dans les sentiments humains,
pensant que tout est perdu dès lors que vous me voyez malade. O femme de peu de
foi, que n’avez-vous plus de confiance et d’acquiescement à la conduite et à l’exemple
de Jésus-Christ ! Ce Sauveur du monde se rapportait à Dieu son Père pour l’état
de toute l’Église ; et vous, pour une poignée de filles que sa Providence a
notoirement suscitées et assemblées, vous pensez qu’il vous manquera ! Allez,
Mademoiselle, humiliez-vous beaucoup devant Dieu ».
Faut-il s’étonner que la foi, seule inspiratrice d’une
telle vie, inébranlable fondement de ce qu’il était pour le prochain et pour
lui-même, fût aux yeux de Vincent de Paul le premier des trésors ? Lui
qu’aucune souffrance même méritée ne laissait indifférent, qu’on vit un jour
par une fraude héroïque remplacer un forçat dans ses fers, devenait impitoyable
en face de l’hérésie, et n’avait de repos qu’il n’eût obtenu le bannissement
des sectaires ou leur châtiment. C’est le témoignage que lui rend dans la bulle
de sa canonisation Clément XII, parlant de cette funeste erreur du jansénisme
que notre saint dénonça des premiers et poursuivit plus que personne. Jamais
peut-être autant qu’en cette rencontre, ne se vérifia le mot des saints Livres
: La simplicité des justes les guidera sûrement, et l’astuce des méchants sera
leur perte [9]. La secte qui, plus tard, affectait un si profond dédain pour
Monsieur Vincent, n’en avait pas jugé toujours de même. « Je suis, déclarait-il
dans l’intimité, obligé très particulièrement de bénir Dieu et de le remercier
de ce qu’il n’a pas permis que les premiers et les plus considérables d’entre
ceux qui professent cette doctrine, que j’ai connus particulièrement, et qui
étaient de mes amis, aient pu me persuader leurs sentiments. Je ne vous saurais
exprimer la peine qu’ils y ont prise, et les raisons qu’ils m’ont proposées
pour cela ; mais je leur opposais entre autres choses l’autorité du concile de
Trente, qui leur est manifestement contraire ; et voyant qu’ils continuaient
toujours, au lieu de leur répondre je récitais tout bas mon Credo : et voilà
comme je suis demeuré ferme en la créance catholique ».
L’année 1883, cinquantième anniversaire de la
fondation des Conférences de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul à Paris, voyait notre Saint
proclamé le Patron de toutes les sociétés de charité de France ; ce patronage
fut, deux ans plus tard, étendu aux sociétés de charité de l’Église entière.
Quelle gerbe, ô Vincent, vous emportez au ciel [10] !
Quelles bénédictions vous accompagnent, montant de cette terre à la vraie
patrie [11] ! O le plus simple des hommes qui furent en un siècle tant célébré
pour ses grandeurs, vous dépassez maintenant les renommées dont l’éclat bruyant
fascinait vos contemporains. La vraie gloire de ce siècle, la seule qui restera
de lui quand le temps ne sera plus [12], est d’avoir eu dans sa première partie
des saints d’une pareille puissance de loi et d’amour, arrêtant les triomphes
de Satan, rendant au sol de France stérilisé par l’hérésie la fécondité des
beaux jours. Et voici que deux siècles et plus après vos travaux, la moisson
qui n’a point cessé continue par les soins de vos fils et de vos filles, aidés
d’auxiliaires nouveaux qui vous reconnaissent eux aussi pour leur inspirateur
et leur père. Dans ce royaume du ciel qui ne connaît plus la souffrance et les
larmes [13], chaque jour pourtant comme autrefois voit monter vers vous
l’action de grâces de ceux qui souffrent et qui pleurent.
Reconnaissez par des bienfaits nouveaux la confiance
de la terre. Il n’est point de nom qui impose autant que le vôtre le respect de
l’Église, en nos temps de blasphème. Et pourtant déjà les négateurs du Christ
en viennent, par haine de sa divine domination [14], à vouloir étouffer le
témoignage que le pauvre à cause de vous lui rendait toujours. Contre ces
hommes en qui s’est incarné l’enfer, usez du glaive à deux tranchants remis aux
saints pour venger Dieu au milieu des nations [15] : comme jadis les hérétiques
en votre présence, qu’ils méritent le pardon ou connaissent la colère ; qu’ils
changent, ou soient réduits d’en haut à l’impuissance de nuire. Gardez surtout
les malheureux que leur rage satanique s’applaudit de priver du secours suprême
au moment du trépas ; eussent-ils un pied déjà dans les flammes, ces
infortunés, vous pouvez les sauver encore [16]. Élevez vos filles à la hauteur
des circonstances douloureuses où l’on voudrait que leur dévouement reniât son
origine céleste ou dissimulât sa divine livrée ; si la force brutale des ennemis
du pauvre arrache de son chevet le signe du salut, il n’est règlements ni lois,
puissance de ce monde ou de l’autre, qui puissent expulser Jésus de l’âme d’une
Fille de chanté, ou l’empêcher de passer de son cœur à ses lèvres : ni la mort,
ni l’enfer, ni le feu, ni le débordement des grandes eaux, dit le Cantique, ne
sauraient l’arrêter [17].
Vos fils aussi poursuivent votre œuvre
d’évangélisation ; jusqu’en nos temps leur apostolat se voit couronné du
diadème de la sainteté et du martyre. Maintenez leur zèle ; développez en eux
votre esprit d’inaltérable dévouement à l’Église et de soumission au Pasteur
suprême. Assistez toutes ces œuvres nouvelles de charité qui sont nées de vous
dans nos jours, et dont, pour cette cause, Rome vous défère le patronage et
l’honneur ; qu’elles s’alimentent toujours à l’authentique foyer que vous avez
ravivé sur la terre [18] ; qu’elles cherchent avant tout le royaume de Dieu et
sa justice [19], ne se départant jamais, pour le choix des moyens, du principe
que vous leur donnez de « juger, parler et opérer, comme la Sagesse éternelle
de Dieu, revêtue de notre faible chair, a jugé, parlé et opéré ».
[5] Gal. V, 6.
[6] Luc. IV, 18.
[7] Johan. X, 14.
[8] Psalm. XXX, 2 1.
[9] Prov. XI, 3.
[10] Psalm. CXXV, 6.
[11] Prov. XXII, 9 ; Eccli. XXXI, 28.
[12] Apoc. X, 6.
[13] Ibid. XXI, 4.
[14] Jud. 4.
[15] Psalm. CXLIX, 6-9.
[16] Jud. 23.
[17] Cant. VIII, 6-7.
[18] Luc. XII, 40.
[19] Matth. VI, 33.
SOURCE : http://www.introibo.fr/19-07-St-Vincent-de-Paul
Antoine Hérisset. Prédication
de saint Vincent de Paul
27
septembre
Saint Vincent de
Paul
Sommaire :
Lettre à Louise de
Marillac
(entre 1626 et 1629)
Tâchez à vivre contente parmi vos sujets de mécontentement
et honorez toujours le non-faire et l'état inconnu du Fils de Dieu. C'est là
votre centre et ce qu'il demande de vous pour le présent et pour l'avenir, pour
toujours. Si sa divine Majesté ne vous fait connaître, de la manière qui ne
peut tromper, qu'il veut quelque autre chose de vous, ne pensez point et
n'occupez point votre esprit en cette chose-là.
Saint Vincent de Paul
Lettre à Bernard
Codoing
(16 mars 1644)
Au nom de Dieu, Monsieur, retranchez de vos sollicitudes
les choses absentes éloignées et qui ne vous regardent pas, et appliquez tous
vos soins à la discipline domestique. Le reste viendra en son temps. La grâce a
ses moments. Abandonnons-nous à la providence de Dieu et gardons-nous bien de
la devancer. S'il plaît à Notre-Seigneur me donner quelque consolation en notre
vocation, c'est ceci : que je pense qu'il me semble que nous avons tâché de
suivre en toutes choses la grande providence et que nous avons tâché de ne
mettre le pied que là où elle nous a marqué.
Saint Vincent de Paul
Lettre à Claude
Dufour
(18 septembre 1649)
Voilà donc un peu de patience à prendre en cette attente et
de mieux mériter le bonheur d'un si saint emploi par le bon usage des moindres
où vous vous êtes appliqué, qui sont néanmoins très grands, puisqu'en la maison
de Dieu tout y est suprême et royal.
Saint Vincent de Paul
.JPG)
Détail de l'autel dédié
à Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, église Saint Julien, Château-l'Évêque, Dordogne, France
Lettre à un prêtre
de la Mission
qui veut quitter la congrégation sous la pression
affective de son père (probablement de 1649)
Je connais l'état d'anxiété dans lequel vous a mis la
lettre que votre père vous a écrite pour vous presser de venir l'assister. En
conséquence, je suis obligé de vous dire ce que je pense :
1° Qu'il y a grand mal à briser le lien par lequel vous
vous êtes attaché à Dieu dans la Compagnie ;
2° Que, en perdant votre vocation, vous priverez Dieu des
services appréciables qu'Il attend de vous ;
3° Que vous serez responsable devant le trône de Sa justice
pour le bien que vous ne ferez pas et que, neanmoins vous auriez pu faire en
restant dans l'état où vous êtes maintenant ;
4° Que vous risquerez votre salut dans la société de vos
parents et ne leur apporterez sans doute pas le réconfort qu'ils désirent, pas
plus que d'autres qui nous ont quittés sous ce prétexte ne l'ont fait, car Dieu
ne l'a pas permis ;
5° Que Notre-Seigneur, connaissant le mal qui résulte de la
fréquentation de la société des parents pour ceux qui les ont quittés pour Le
suivre, ne désire pas, comme nous le dit l'Evangile, qu'un de ses disciples
l'abandonne pour ensevelir son père, ou vende ses biens afin de les donner aux
pauvres.
6° Que vous donneriez le mauvais exemple à vos confrères,
et seriez une source de chagrin pour la Compagnie, du fait de la perte d'un de
ses enfants qu'elle aime et qu'elle a éduqué avec le plus grand soin.
Tel est, Monsieur, ce à quoi je désire que vous
réfléchissiez devant Dieu. Vous invoquez, comme motif, pour vous retirer, le
besoin qu'a votre père de vos soins. Mais il est essentiel de connaître les
circonstances qui, selon les casuistes, obligent les enfants à quitter leur
communauté. Quant à moi, je pense que c'est seulement valable quand les pères
ou les mères subissent des afflictions naturelles et non les fluctuations de
leur condition sociale, comme, par exemple, lorsqu'ils sont très vieux ou
lorsque, par suite de quelque infirmité, ils ne peuvent plus gagner leur pain.
Or ce n'est pas le cas de votre père qui n'a que quarante ou quarante-cinq ans,
qui se porte parfaitement bien, qui est capable de travailler et qui, en fait,
travaille. Autrement, il ne se serait pas remarié, comme il l'a fait tout
récemment avec une jeune femme de dix-huit ans, une des plus belles personnes
de la ville. Il me l'a dit lui-même afin que je puisse donner à cette dernière
une introduction auprès de la Princesse de Longueville[1] pour s'occuper de son fils. Je crois qu'il n'est
pas très à l’aise, mais qui ne souffre, de nos jours, de la misère des
temps ? En outre, ce n'est pas la détresse qui l'oblige à vous rappeler,
car elle n'est pas, en fait, très grande, c'est seulement l'appréhension qu'il
en a par manque de confiance en Dieu, quoique jusqu'à présent il n'ait manqué
de rien et qu'il aurait toute raison d'espérer en la bonté de Dieu qui ne
l'abandonnera jamais.
Vous pensez sans doute que c'est par votre entremise que
Dieu désire en réalité l'aider et que pour cette raison Sa Providence vous
offre une cure valant six cents livres par l'entremise de cet excellent homme.
Mais vous verrez qu'il n'en est pas ainsi si vous considérez seulement deux
choses : d'abord que Dieu vous ayant appelé à un état de vie qui honore
celui de Son Fils sur terre et qui est si utile à votre prochain, ne peut
désirer vous en retirer au moment présent afin d'aller prendre soin d'une
famille qui vit dans le monde, qui ne cherche que son propre confort, qui vous
importunera continuellement, qui vous accablera de difficultés et de
désagréments, si vous ne pouvez la satisfaire. D'autre part, il est incroyable
que votre père ait reçu pour vous la promesse d'une cure valant 600 livres
l'an, étant donné que celles du diocèse de Bruges sont les plus pauvres du
royaume. Mais, même si cela était vrai, combien resterait-il après en avoir
déduit votre entretien ?
Je ne vous dis pas cela par crainte que la tentation puisse
avoir raison de vous ; non, je connais votre fidélité envers Dieu ;
mais afin que vous puissiez écrire une fois pour toutes à votre père et lui
dire vos motifs de suivre la volonté de Dieu plutôt que la sienne. Croyez-moi,
Monsieur, sa disposition naturelle est de telle sorte qu'elle vous donnera très
peu de repos lorsque vous serez auprès de lui, pas plus qu'elle ne vous en
donne maintenant alors que vous en êtes éloigné. Les tourments qu'il a causés à
votre pauvre sœur qui est auprès de Mademoiselle Le Gras[2], sont inimaginables. Il veut qu'elle abandonne le service
de Dieu et de Ses pauvres, comme s'il devait recevoir d'elle une aide
considérable. Vous savez qu'il est d'un tempérament naturellement inquiet et
cela à un point tel que tout ce qu'il a lui déplaît, et tout ce qu'il n'a pas
excite en lui de violentes convoitises. Finalement, le plus grand bien que vous
puissiez lui faire est de prier Dieu pour lui, gardant pour vous cette seule
chose nécessaire qui sera un jour votre récompense et fera descendre sur vos
parents les bénédictions divines. Je prie de tout mon cœur pour que la grâce de
Notre-Seigneur soit avec vous.
Saint Vincent de Paul
Notes :
[1] Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, dite Mademoiselle
de Bourbon, fille de Henri II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, et sœur du grand
Condé (Louis II) et du prince de Conti (Armand). Née au château de Vincennes le
27 août 1619, elle épousa (2 juin 1646) Henri II d’Orléans, duc de Longueville,
d’Estouville et de Coulommiers, prince souverain de Neufchâtel et de Valengin,
comte de Dunois, Tancarville et Saint-Paul, pair et prince du sang de France
(1595-1663). Elle mourut le 15 avril 1679 à Paris, au couvent des Carmélites du
faubourg Saint-Jacques où elle fut inhumée. Après s’être beaucoup agitée
pendant la Fronde et avoir fait scandale pour ses liaisons avec La
Rochefoucauld et Turenne, elle fit pénitence aux Carmélites du faubourg Saint-Jacques.
[2] Sainte Louise de Marillac, née le 12 août 1591, à
Ferrières-en-Brie, est la fille naturelle de Louis de Marillac, enseigne
d’une compagnie de gendarmes aux ordonnances du Roi (nièce du
chancelier Michel de Marillac et du maréchal Louis de Marillac). Elle épouse
Antoine Le Gras, secrétaire des commandements de Marie de Médicis,
écuyer, homme de bonne vie, fort craignant Dieu et exact à se rendre
irréprochable (6 février 1613). Antoine Le Gras n’étant
pas noble, on ne lui dira pas Madame, mais, comme à une bourgeoise
de ces temps-là, Mademoiselle. Après la mort de son mari (21
décembre 1625), elle fait vœu de viduité et mène dans le monde une vie toute
religieuse où elle conjugue à un règlement très strict, la prière et le secours
des pauvres, sans cesser d'être attentive à l'éducation de son fils. Elle
s’installe rue Saint-Victor, près du collège des Bons-Enfants que Mme. de Gondi
vient de donner à Vincent de Paul qui l’emploie dans les Charités,
ces groupements de dames et de filles pour l’assistance des malades dans les
paroisses et les visites à domicile. En 1628, lorsque son fils est entré au
séminaire Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, elle dispose de davantage de temps pour
se consacrer aux œuvres et Vincent de Paul la charge de surveiller les Charités,
de modifier leur règlement et de visiter celles des provinces. Elle persuade
Vincent de Paul que les Dames associées ne peuvent rendre aux
malades les services pénibles qu’exige leur état, et qu’il faut songer à réunir
des personnes zélées pour se dévouer entièrement à l’œuvre sans autres devoirs
et préoccupations au dehors. C’est ainsi que naissent les Filles de la Charité.
Lettre à Louise de
Marillac (2)
La
grâce de Notre-Seigneur soit toujours avec vous ! Je n’ai jamais vu une femme
comme vous pour prendre certains événements au tragique. Vous dites que le
choix de votre fils est une manifestation de la justice de Dieu à votre égard.
Vous avez certainement tort d’entretenir de pareilles idées et plus encore de
les exprimer. Je vous ai souvent prié de ne point parler de la sorte.
Au
nom de Dieu, Mademoiselle, corrigez cette faute et apprenez une fois pour toutes
que les pensées amères procèdent du démon, les douces et aimables de
Notre-Seigneur. Souvenez-vous aussi que les fautes des enfants ne sont pas
toujours imputables à leurs parents, spécialement lorsqu’ils les ont fait bien
instruire et qu’ils leur ont donné le bon exemple, comme, grâce à Dieu, vous
l’avez fait. En outre, Notre-Seigneur, dans sa merveilleuse Providence, permet
aux enfants de briser le cœur de leurs pieux parents. Celui d’Ahraham le fut
par Ismaël et celui d’Isaac par Esaü, celui de Jacob par la plupart de ses
enfants, celui de David par Absalon, celui de Salomon par Roboam et celui du
Fils de Dieu par Judas.
Je
puis vous dire que votre fils a dit à Fr. de la Salle qu’il n’embrassait cette
carrière que parce que c’était votre désir, qu’il aurait préféré mourir que de
le faire et qu’il ne prendrait les ordres mineurs que pour vous plaire. Eh bien
! Est-ce là vraiment une vocation ? Je suis certain qu’il aimerait mieux mourir
lui-même que vous faire mourir de déplaisir. Quoiqu’il en soit, sa volonté
n’est pas libre dans le choix d’une carrière si importante et vous ne devriez
pas le désirer envers et contre tout. Il y a quelque temps de cela, un
excellent jeune homme de cette ville entra comme sous-diacre dans des
conditions à peu près similaires, il n’a pas été capable de poursuivre
jusqu’aux ordres superieurs ; désirez-vous exposer votre fils aux mêmes dangers
? Laissez-le suivre la voie que Dieu lui suggérera ; Il est son père plus que
vous n’êtes sa mère, et Il l’aime plus que vous ne l’aimez. Laissez-Le en
décider. Il pourra l’appeler une autre fois si telle est Sa volonté, ou lui
donner quelque autre emploi qui le mènera à son salut. Je me souviens d’un
prêtre qui se trouvait ici et qui avait été ordonné tout en ayant l’esprit très
anxieux ; Dieu seul sait ce qu’il est devenu !
Je
vous prie de faire votre prière en pensant à la femme de Zébédée à qui
Notre-Seigneur répondit, lorsqu’elle voulait établir ses fils : « Vous ne savez
Pas ce que vous demandez ».
Saint Vincent de Paul
_(14580196359).jpg)
Lettre II de
Bossuet à St Vincent
A Metz, ce 12 janvier 1658[3]
Monsieur,
J'ai
appris de M. de Champin[4] la
charité que vous aviez pour ce pays, qui vous obligeait à y envoyer une mission
considérable ; que vous l'aviez proposé à la Compagnie [5],
et que vous et tous ces Messieurs aviez eu assez bonne opinion de moi pour
croire que je m'emploierais volontiers à une œuvre si salutaire. Sur l'avis
qu'il m'en a donné, je le supliais de vous assurer que je n'omettrais rien de
ma part, pour y coopérer dans toutes les choses dont on me jugerait capable. Et
comme Monseigneur l'évêque d'Auguste et moi devions faire un petit voyage à
Paris, je le priais aussi de savoir le temps de l'arrivée de ces Messieurs,
afin que nous pussions prendre nos mesures sur cela ; jugeant bien l'un et
l'autre que nous serions fort coupables devant Dieu, si nous abandonnions la
moisson dans le temps où sa bonté souveraine nous envoie des ouvriers si
fidèles et si charitables. Je ne sais, Monsieur, par quel accident je n'ai reçu
aucune réponse à cette lettre : mais je ne suis pas fâché que cette occasion se
présente de vous renouveler mes respects, en vous assurant avant toutes choses
de l'excellente disposition en laquelle est Monseigneur l'évêque d'Auguste pour
coopérer à cette œuvre.
Pour
ce qui me regarde, Monsieur, je me reconnais fort incapable d'y rendre le
service que je voudrais bien : mais j'espère de la bonté de Dieu que l'exemple
de tant de saints ecclésiastiques, et les leçons que j'ai autrefois apprises en
la Compagnie [6],
me donneront de la force pour agir avec de si bons ouvriers, si je ne puis rien
de moi-même. Je vous demande la grâce d'en assurer la Compagnie, que je salue
de tout mon cœur en Notre-Seigneur, et la prie de me faire part de ses oraisons
et saints sacrifices.
S'il
y a quelque chose que vous jugiez ici nécessaire pour la préparation des
esprits, je recevrai de bon cœur et exécuterai fidèlement, avec la grâce de
Dieu, les ordres que vous me donnerez. Je suis, Monsieur, votre très humble et
très obéissant serviteur,
Bossuet, prêtre, grand-archidiacre de Metz
Notes :
[3] La Reine mère ayant fait en 1657 un voyage à Metz,
fut sensiblement touchée du triste état de cette ville. De retour à Paris, elle
témoigna à saint Vincent de Paul, qu'elle honorait de sa confiance, le désir
qu'elle aurait de faire instruire son peuple de Metz ; et pour cet effet, il
fut conclu que saint Vincent y enverrait une mission. Il en choisit les
ouvriers, principalement parmi les ecclésiastiques qu'on appelait Messieurs
de la Conférence des Mardis, parce qu'ils s'assemblaient ce jour-là
pour conférer entre eux sur les matières ecclésiastiques. Saint Vincent avait
formé cette espèce d'association, dans laquelle l'abbé Sossuet était entré. La
mission fut ainsi composée de vingt prêtres d'un mérite distingé, qui avaient à
leur tête M. l'abbé de Chandenier, neveu de M. le cardinal de La Rochefoucauld.
[4] C'était un docteur de la Conférence des
Mardis.
[5] A Messieurs de la Conférence des Mardis.
[6] Il parle de la Compagnie de Messieurs de la
Conférence des Mardis, dont il était membre.
RESTOUT (d'après), HERISSET (graveur), JEAURAT Edme
(graveur), BONNART (dessinateur). Rencontre de Saint Vincent de Paul et de
Louis XIII sur un trirème, illustraion de la nomination de saint Vincent de
Paul comme aumonier royal des galères, vers 1740, Musées départementaux de la
Haute-Saône
Lettre IV de
Bossuet à St Vincent
A
Metz, ce 1er février 1658.
J'ai
été extrêmement consolé que celui de vos prêtres qui est venu ici ait été M. de
Monchy : mais j'ai beaucoup de déplaisir qu'il y ait fait si peu de séjour. Il
pourra, Monsieur, vous avoir appris que les lettres de la Reine ont été reçues
avec le respect dû à Sa Majesté, et que M. l'évêque d'Auguste et M. de la
Contour ont fait leur devoir en cette rencontre.
Je
rends compte à M. de Monchy de l'état des choses depuis son départ ; et je me
remets à lui à vous en instruire, pour ne pas vous importuner par des redites :
mais je me sens obligé, Monsieur, à vous informer d'une chose qui s'est passée
ici depuis quelque temps, et qui sera bientôt portée à la Cour.
Une
servante catholique, qui est décédée chez un huguenot, marchand considérable et
accommodé, a été étrangement violentée dans sa conscience. Il est contant par
la propre déposition de son maître, qu'elle avait fait toute sa vie profession
de la religion catholique : il paraît même certain qu'elle avait communié peu
de temps avant que de tomber malade. Elle n'a jamais été aux prêches, ni n'a
fait aucun exercice de la religion prétendue réformée. Son maître préten que
cinq jours avant sa mort elle a changé de religion : Il lui a fait, dit-il,
venir de sministres pour recevoir sa déclaration, sans avoir appelé à cette
action ni le curé, ni li magistrat, ni aucun catholique qui pût rendre
témoignage du fait. Le jour que cette pauvre fille mourut, un jésuite averti
par un des voisins de la violence qu'on lui faisait, se présente pour la
consoler. On lui refuse l'entrée ; et il est certain qu'elle était vivante. Il
retourne quelque temps après avec l'ordre d magistrat, et il la trouve décédée
dan cet intervalle. Tous ces faits sont constants et avérés : il y a même des
indices si forts qu'elle a demandé un prêtre, et les parties ont si fort varié
dans leur réponses sur ce sujet-mà, que cela peut passer pour certain.
Je
ne vous exagère pas, Monsieur, ni les circonstances de cette affaire, ni de
quelle conséquence elle est ; vous le voyez assez de vous-m^me, et quelle est
l'imprudence de ceux qui, ayant reçu par grâce du Roi la liberté de conscience
dans son Etat, la ravissent dans leurs maisons à ses sujets leurs serviteurs.
Certainement cela crie vengeance : cependant les ministres et le consistoire
soutiennent cette entreprise ; et M. de la Contour m'a dit aujourd'hui qu'un
député de ces Messieurs avait bien eu le front de lui dire que cet homme
n'avait rien fait sans ordre. Bien plus, ils ont ajouté qu'ils allaient se
plaindre à la Cour, de la procédure qui a été faite par le lieutenant-général :
le tout sans doute à dessein, Monsieur, d'évoquer l'affaire au conseil, afin de
la tirer du lieu où l'on en a plus connaissance, et de l'asoupir par la
longueur du temps. Dieu ne permettra pas que leur mauvais dessein réussisse ;
et je vous supplie, Monsieur, d'employer en cette rencontre tous les moyens que
vous avez, pour empêcher qu'on n'écoute pas ces députations séditieuses, et
faire que les choses demeurent dans le cours ordinaire de la justice, selon
lequel ils ne peuvent pas éviter d'être châtiés de cet attentat contre les
édits et la liberté des consciences. La Reine étant en cette ville, a témoigné
tant de piété et tant de zèle pour la religion, que je ne doute pas qu'étant
avertie de cette entreprise, elle ne veuille que la justice en soit faite.
Outre
cela, Monsieur, le roi leur ayant accordé, de grâce, deux pédagogues pour leurs
enfants, à condition que ces maîtres seraient catholiques, ils vont demander
des gages pour eux. Cela n'a ni justice ni apparence, et ils veulent en charger
cette pauvre ville. Mais comme il savent qu'apparemment on ne leur accordera
pas leur demande, je me trompe bien fort si leur dessein n'est d'obtenir, que
si on ne veut pas les gager, on leur donne la liberté de les mettre tels qu'il
leur plaira, et par conséquent de leur religion. La riene seule empêcha ici
qu'on ne leur donnât bon dessein. Je ne vous dis pas, Monsieur, maintenant ce
que vous avez à faire sur ce sujet : c'est assez que vous soyez averti ; Dieu
vous inspirera le reste. J'attends avec impatience les excellents ouvriers
qu'il nous envoie par votre moyen ; et suis, avec un respect très profond,
Monsieur, votre très humble et très obéissant serviteur,
Bossuet, prêtre ind.
Nous savons par expérience que les fruits des missions sont
très grands, parce que les besoins des pauvres gens des champs sont extrêmes, constatait par expérience saint Vincent de Paul. Ces fruits
si abondants sont-ils durables ? Or les missions ne sont souvent que des feux
de paille qui s'éteignent dès que les missionnaires ont disparu : Les
évangélisés, dit encore M. Vincent, oublient facilement les
connaissances qu'on leur a données et les bonnes résolutions qu'ils ont prises,
s'ils n'ont de bons pasteurs qui les entretiennent dans le bon état où on les a
mis ; les missions seront toujours fragiles et passagères, si l'action
des missionnaires n'est pas soutenue par l'action du Clergé, parce que,
souligne-t-il, la déprévation ecclésiastique est la cause principale de
la ruine de l'Eglise. .. Si un bon prêtre peut faire beaucoup de grands biens,
oh ! qu'un mauvais prêtre apporte de mal. Le succès même des missions qu’il
engagea posait le problème de la réforme du Clergé, et c'est de l'expérience
des missions que sont nés les exercices d'ordinands pour préparer les futurs
prêtres aux saints ordres.
Bossuet
suivit ces exercices et fut un si bon élève que, dans les quatre dernières
années de la vie de saint Vincent de Paul, il les prêcha. Quand il rencontra
saint Vincent de Paul, Bossuet qui avait vingt-cinq ans, regarda cette
rencontre comme l'élément capital de sa jeunesse, tant il y gagna
spirituellement ; son art oratoire bénéficia des conseils d'un homme qui
n'avait certes pas son talent, mais qui, d'instinct ennemi de la rhétorique
sacrée, lui apprit à éviter ce que M. Vincent appelait les périodes
carrées, l'éloquence cathédrante, le ton déclamatoire et chantant .
Dans une lettre adressée au pape Clément XI, Bossuet écrira : Quand
attentifs, nous l'écoutions parler dans quelque conférence, nous sentions
s'accomplir en lui ce mot de l'apôtre : Si quelqu'un parle, que ses paroles
soient comme des paroles de Dieu.
Convaincu
que huit jours à dix jours de retraite, sont bien peu de chose pour se préparer
au sacerdoce, saint Vincent de Paul partageait cette conviction avec le
cardinal de Richelieu, et grâce à leur collaboration, on obéit enfin au
décret Cum adolescentium aetas publié en 1563 par le Concile
de Trente qui n'avait reçu en France qu’un commencement d'exécution. En accord
avec saint Vincent de Paul qu’il estimait au plus haut point, le cardinal de
Richelieu pratiquait avec obstination la politique de l'unité française si
compromise par les guerres de religion, et s’il voulait la conversion des
protestants, il n’entendait pas les convertir par la force : les
voies les plus douces, disait-il, sont celles qu'il estime les plus
convenables pour tirer les âmes de l'erreur, l'expérience nous faisant
connaître que souvent aux maladies de l'esprit les remèdes ne servent qu'à les
aigrir davantage.
Saint
Vincent de Paul représentant au Cardinal que, dans le diocèse de Luçon,
il y a quantité d'hérétiques faute d'avoir jamais ouÏ parler de Dieu dans l'Eglise
catholique, lui montra la nécessité d'établir des séminaires ; Richelieu
l'exhorta à ouvrir un établissement et, pour l'y encourager, lui envoya mille
écus, avec quoi M. Vincent ouvrit le collège des Bons-Enfants (février
1642), en même temps qu'il créait pour les jeunes clercs le Petit
Saint-Lazare. En 1647, saint Vincent de Paul proposa à l'évêque de Dax,
Jacques Desclaux, la fondation d'une maison pour la formation des clercs
: Si vous, Monseigneur, ordonnez que nul ne sera reçu aux saints
ordres, qui n'ait passé six mois pour le moins dans votre séminaire, dans
quinze ans vous aurez la consolation de voir que votre clergé aura changé de
face.
Toute
la vie religieuse en dépend et, dans son Encyclique sur le sacerdoce, le Pape
Pie XI cite saint Vincent de Paul : Nous avons beau penser, affirmait
l'aimable saint de la charité, saint Vincent de Paul, nous trouverons toujours
que nous n'aurons jamais pu contribuer à quelque chose de plus grand qu'à faire
un bon prêtre.
A
la misère du peuple il a fait don de la Fille de charité.
A
la misère du clergé il a fait don des Prêtres de la Mission et des Séminaires.
Quel
est le don le plus merveilleux ? C'est aux yeux de la foi, le don d'un prêtre
selon le coeur du Christ.
Ecoutons
saint Vincent : Le caractère des prêtres est une participation du
sacerdoce du Fils de Dieu... C'est un caractère tout divin et incomparable, une
puissance sur le corps de Jésus-Christ que les Anges adorent et un pouvoir de
remettre les péchés des hommes.
Contribuer à former de bons ecclésiastiques, c'est
l'ouvrage le plus difficile, le plus relevé, le plus important. Et ici nous
retrouvons la spiritualité de saint Vincent : Former des prêtres c'est imiter
le Christ qui pendant sa vie mortelle semble avoir pris à tâche de faire douze
bons prêtres qui sont ses apôtres, ayant voulu pour cet effet demeurer
plusieurs années avec eux pour les instruire et pour les former à ce divin
ministère.
Si,
au quinzième siècle, un Vincent de Paul avait paru et réalisé cette réforme
capitale du Clergé par les Séminaires, l'Eglise eût fait l'économie d'un
schisme dont la Semaine d'Unité, nous rappelle chaque année le souvenir
douloureux.
Extraits de la
lettre que S.S. Paul VI
adressa au Révérend Père Richard McCullen,
supérieur général de la Congrégation de la Mission,
pour le quatre centième anniversaire
de la naissance de saint Vincent de Paul
(datée du 12 mai 1981)
Voici
quatre cents ans, c'était le 24 avril 1581 au village de Pouy dans les Landes,
que naissait saint Vincent de Paul (…)
L'itinéraire
spirituel de Vincent de Paul est fascinant. Après son ordination sacerdotale et
une étrange aventure d'esclavage à Tunis, il semble tourner le dos au monde des
pauvres en montant à Paris dans l'espoir d'acquérir un bénéfice ecclésiastique.
Il réussit à obtenir une place de répartiteur des aumônes de la reine
Marguerite. Cette charge lui fait côtoyer la misère humaine, spécialement dans
le nouvel Hôpital de la Charité. C'est alors que le Père de Bérulle, fondateur
de l'Oratoire en France et choisi comme guide spirituel par le jeune prêtre
landais va lui donner (par une série d'initiatives apparemment peu cohérentes)
l'occasion des découvertes qui seront à l'origine des grandes réalisations de
sa vie. Bérulle envoie d'abord Vincent exercer les fonctions de curé dans la
banlieue parisienne, à Clichy-la-Garenne. Quatre mois plus tard, il le fait
venir dans la famille de Gondi comme précepteur des enfants du Général des
galères. La Providence avait ses desseins. Accompagnant toujours les Gondi dans
leurs châteaux et domaines de province, Vincent de Paul y fait la découverte
bouleversante de la misère matérielle et spirituelle du « pauvre peuple
des champs ». Dès lors, il se demande s'il a encore le droit de
réserver son ministère sacerdotal à l'éducation d'enfants de bonne famille
tandis que les paysans vivent et meurent dans un tel abandon religieux.
Confident des inquiétudes de Vincent, Bérulle le dirige vers la cure de
Châtillon-des-Dombes. Dans cette paroisse fort négligée, le nouveau pasteur
fait une expérience déterminante. Appelé un dimanche d'août 1617 auprès d'une
famille dont tous les membres sont malades, il entreprend d'organiser le
dévouement des voisins et des gens de bonne volonté : la première « Charité »,
qui servira de modèle à tant d'autres, était née. Et la conviction que le
service des pauvres devait être sa vie l'habitera desormais jusqu'à son dernier
souffle. Ce bref rappel du « cheminement intérieur » de
Vincent de Paul durant les vingt premières années de son sacerdoce nous montre
un prêtre extrêmement attentif à la vie de son temps, un prêtre qui se laisse
conduire par les événements ou plutôt par la Providence divine, sans « enjamber
sur elle », comme il aime à le dire. Une telle disponibilité
n'est-elle pas, aujourd'hui comme hier, le secret de la paix et de la joie
évangéliques, la voie privilégiée de la sainteté ?
Afin
de mieux servir les pauvres, Vincent voulut « s’adjoindre des
ecclésiastiques libres de tous bénéfices pour pouvoir s'appliquer entièrement,
sous le bon plaisir des évêques, au salut du pauvre peuple des champs, par la
prédication, les catéchismes et les confessions générales, sans en prendre
aucune rétribution en quelque sorte ou manière que ce soit ». Ce groupe
de prêtres, rapidement appelés « lazaristes » du nom du
célèbre prieuré Saint-Lazare acquis vers 1632, se développa rapidement et
s'implanta dans une quinzaine de diocèses pour donner des missions paroissiales
et y fonder des « Charités ». La Congrégation de la Mission
s'étendit même à l'Italie, à l'Irlande, à la Pologne, à l'Algérie, à
Madagascar. Vincent ne cesse d'inculquer à ses compagnons « l'esprit de
Notre Seigneur », qu'il condense en cinq vertus fondamentales, la
simplicité, la douceur à l'égard du prochain, l'humilité à l'égard de soi, et
puis, comme conditionnement de ces trois vertus, la mortification et le zèle
qui en sont en quelque sorte les aspects dynamiques. Ses exhortations à ceux
qu'il envoie prêcher l'Evangile sont pleines de sagesse spirituelle et de
réalisme pastoral : il ne s'agit pas d'être aimé pour soi-même, mais de
faire aimer Jésus-Christ. Et en un temps où trop de prêtres mêlaient grec et
latin à des sermons compliqués, il exige la simplicité, le langage imagé et
convaincant, au nom de l'Evangile (…)
Vincent
de Paul acquit également l'évidence que cette méthode d'évangélisation ne
porterait ses fruits que s'il y avait sur place un clergé instruit et zélé.
C'est ainsi que les lazaristes se consacrèrent très tôt à la formation des
prêtres comme aux missions populaires et fondèrent des séminaires conformément
aux appels pressants du Concile de Trente. La première retraite d'ordinands,
donnée par saint Vincent lui-même en 1623 à la demande de l'évêque de Beauvais,
fut le point de départ d'exercices préparatoires aux ordinations et aussi d'une
certaine formation permanente du clergé grâce aux conférence ecclésiastiques du
mardi à Saint-Lazare. Ces initiatives, qui enthousiasmaient M. Olier, donnèrent
à l'Eglise des prêtres exemplaires, parmi lesquels plusieurs, dont le célèbre
Bossuet, furent appelés à l'épiscopat. A ce clergé de Paris et de la province,
Vincent de Paul communiqua son esprit évangélique et son souffle missionnaire,
et il l'orienta vers la hantise de la fraternité sacerdotale et de l'entraide
au service des plus pauvres, dans la dépendance filiale des évêques. Comment
révéler l'amour de Dieu au monde, aimait-il répéter, si les messagers de cet
amour ne sont pas très unis entre eux ? (…)
Un
autre aspect du dynamisme et du réalisme de Vincent de Paul fut de donner aux
« Charités », qui s'étaient multipliées, une structure d'unité
et d'efficacité. Louise de Marillac, veuve d'Antoine Le Gras, d'abord initiée à
la vie spirituelle par M. de Sales, guidée ensuite par M. Vincent lui-même, fut
engagée par celui-ci dans l'inspection et le soutien des « Charités ».
Elle y fit merveille et son rayonnement contribua beaucoup à décider plusieurs
« braves filles de la campagne » qui aidaient aux « Charités »
à suivre son exemple d'oblation totale à Dieu et aux pauvres. Le 29 novembre
1633, la Compagnie des Filles de la Charité voyait le jour. Et Vincent de Paul
lui donnait un règlement original et fort exigeant : « Vous aurez
pour monastère, la chambre des malades ; pour cellule, une chambre de
louage ; pour chapelle, l'église paroissiale ; pour cloître, les rues
de la ville ; pour clôture, l'obéissance ; pour grille, la crainte de
Dieu ; pour voile, la sainte modestie ». L'esprit de la Compagnie
est ainsi résumé : « Vous devez faire ce que le Fils de Dieu a
fait sur la terre. Vous devez donner la vie à ces pauvres malades, la vie du
corps et la vie de l'âme » (...)
SOURCE : http://missel.free.fr/Sanctoral/09/27.php
Statue de Saint-Vincent de Paul à Clichy (Hauts de
Seine)
formerly 19
July
Profile
Born to a peasant family.
A highly intelligent youth,
Vincent spent four years with the Franciscan friars
at Acq, France getting
an education. Tutor to children of
a gentlemen in Acq. He began divinity studies in 1596 at
the University of Toulouse. Ordained at
age 20.
Taken captive by
Turkish pirates to Tunis, and sold into slavery.
Freed in 1607 when
he converted one
of his owners to Christianity.
Returning to France,
he served as parish priest near Paris where
he started organizations to help the poor, nursed the sick,
found jobs for the unemployed,
etc. Chaplain at
the court of Henry
IV of France.
With Louise
de Marillac, founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity.
Instituted the Congregation of Priests of the Mission (Lazarists).
Worked always for the poor,
the enslaved,
the abandoned,
the ignored, the pariahs.
Born
24
April 1581 near
Ranquine, Gascony near Dax, southwest France
the town is now known as Saint-Vincent-de-Paul,
Landes, France
27
September 1660 at Paris, France of
natural causes
body found incorrupt when exhumed in 1712
body defleshed by a flood; skeleton encased in a wax
effigy in the house of the Vincentian fathers in Paris
heart incorrupt; displayed in a reliquary in
the chapel of
the motherhouse of the Sisters
of Charity in Paris
13
August 1729 by Pope Benedict
XIII
16
June 1737 by Pope Clement
XII
charitable
societies (given on 12
May 1885 by Pope Leo
XIII)
Saint
Vincent de Paul Societies
Richmond, Virginia, diocese of
San
Vincente, Misiones, Argentina
Readings
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. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
We must love our neighbor as being made in the image
of God and as an object of His love. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
God, to procure His glory, sometimes permits that we
should be dishonored and persecuted without reason. He wishes thereby to render
us conformable to His Son, who was calumniated and treated as a seducer, as an
ambitious man, and as one possessed. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
The Church teaches us that mercy belongs to God. Let
us implore Him to bestow on us the spirit of mercy and compassion, so that we
are filled with it and may never lose it. Only consider how much we ourselves
are in need of mercy. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
Extend your mercy towards others, so that there can be
no one in need whom you meet without helping. For what hope is there for us if
God should withdraw His Mercy from us? – Saint Vincent
de Paul
The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is
humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he
know how to defend himself from it. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
Free your mind from all that troubles you; God will
take care of things. You will be unable to make haste in this (choice) without,
so to speak, grieving the heart of God, because he sees that you do not honor
him sufficiently with holy trust. Trust in him, I beg you, and you will have
the fulfillment of what your heart desires. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
It is our duty to prefer the service of the poor to
everything else and to offer such service as quickly as possible. If a needy
person requires medicine or other help during prayer time, do whatever has to
be done with peace of mind. Offer the deed to God as your prayer…. Charity is
certainly greater than any rule. Moreover, all rules must lead to
charity. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
Human nature grows tired of always doing the same
thing, and it is God’s will that this because of the opportunity of practicing
two great virtues. The first is perseverance, which will bring us to our goal.
The other is steadfastness, which overcomes the difficulties on the way. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
We should strive to keep our hearts open to the
sufferings and wretchedness of other people, and pray continually that God may
grant us that spirit of compassion which is truly the spirit of God. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
Humility and charity are the two master-chords: one,
the lowest; the other, the highest; all the others are dependent on them.
Therefore it is necessary, above all, to maintain ourselves in these two
virtues; for observe well that the preservation of the whole edifice depends on
the foundation and the roof. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
As it is most certain that the teaching of Christ
cannot deceive, if we would walk securely, we ought to attach ourselves to it
with greatest confidence and to profess openly that we live according to it,
and not to the maxims of the world, which are all deceitful. This is the
fundamental maxim of all Christian perfection. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
We have never so much cause for consolation, as when
we find ourselves oppressed by sufferings and trials; for these make us like
Christ our Lord, and this resemblance is the true mark of our
predestination. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
Perfection consists in one thing alone, which is doing
the will of God. For, according to Our Lord’s words, it suffices for perfection
to deny self, to take up the cross and to follow Him. Now who denies himself
and takes up his cross and follows Christ better than he who seeks not to do
his own will, but always that of God? Behold, now, how little is needed to
become as Saint? Nothing more than to acquire the habit of willing, on every occasion,
what God wills. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
He who allows himself to be ruled or guided by the
lower and animal part of his nature, deserves to be called a beast rather than
a man. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
Whoever wishes to make progress in perfection should
use particular diligence in not allowing himself to be led away by his
passions, which destroy with one hand the spiritual edifice which is rising by
the labors of the other. But to succeed well in this, resistance should be
begun while the passions are yet weak; for after they are thoroughly rooted and
grown up, there is scarcely any remedy. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
The first step to be taken by one who wishes to follow
Christ is, according to Our Lord’s own words, that of renouncing himself – that
is, his own senses, his own passions, his own will, his own judgement, and all
the movements of nature, making to God a sacrifice of all these things, and of
all their acts, which are surely sacrifices very acceptable to the Lord. And we
must never grow weary of this; for if anyone having, so to speak, one foot
already in Heaven, should abandon this exercise, when the time should come for
him to put the other there, he would run much risk of being lost. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
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. – Saint Vincent de Paul
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. – Saint Vincent de Paul
Even though the poor are often rough and unrefined, we
must not judge them from external appearances nor from the mental gifts they
seem to have received. On the contrary, if you consider the poor in the light
of faith, then you will observe that they are taking the place of the Son of
God who chose to be poor. Although in his passion he almost lost the appearance
of a man and was considered a fool by the Gentiles and a stumbling block by the
Jews, he showed them that his mission was to preach to the poor: “He sent me to
preach the good news to the poor.” We also ought to have this same spirit and
imitate Christ’s actions, that is, we must take care of the poor, console them,
help them, support their cause. Since Christ willed to be born poor, he chose
for himself disciples who were poor. He made himself the servant of the poor
and shared their poverty. He went so far as to say that he would consider every
deed which either helps or harms the poor as done for or against himself. Since
God surely loves the poor, he also love whose who love the poor. For when on
person holds another dear, he also includes in his affection anyone who loves
or serves the one he loves. That is why we hope that God will love us for the
sake of the poor. So when we visit the poor and needy, we try to be
understanding where they are concerned. We sympathize with them so fully that
we can echo Paul’s words: “I have become all things to all men.” Therefore, we
must try to be stirred by our neighbors’ worries and distress. It is our duty
to prefer the service of the poor to everything else and to offer such service
as quickly as possible. Charity is certainly greater than any rule. Moreover,
all rules must lead to charity. With renewed devotion, then, we must serve the
poor, especially outcasts and beggars. They have been given to us as our
masters and patrons. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
Among those who make profession of following the
maxims of Christ, simplicity ought to be held in great esteem; for, among the
wise of this world there is nothing more contemptible or despicable than this.
Yet it is a virtue most worthy of love, because it leads us straight to the
Kingdom of God, and, at the same time, wins for us the affection of men; since
one who is regarded as upright, sincere, and an enemy to tricks and fraud is loved
by all, even by those who only seek from morning till night to cheat and
deceive others. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
MLA Citation
“Saint Vincent de Paul“. CatholicSaints.Info. 21
April 2020. Web. 27 September 2020.
<https://catholicsaints.info/saint-vincent-de-paul/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-vincent-de-paul/
Kath. Pfarrkirche hl. Vinzenz mit Kapelle der
Barmherzigkeit
A Year with the Saints – 4 December
Entry
Conformity to the Divine Will is a most powerful means
to overcome every temptation, to eradicate every imperfection, and to preserve
peace of heart. It is a most efficacious remedy for all ills, and the treasure
of the Christian. It includes in itself in an eminent degree mortification,
abnegation, indifference, imitation of Christ, union with God and in general
all the virtues, which are not Virtues at all, except as they are in conformity
with the will of God, the origin and rule of all perfection. – Saint Vincent
de Paul
Saint Vincent
de Paul was himself so much attached to this virtue that it might be
called his characteristic and principal one, or a kind of general virtue which
spreads its influence over all the rest, which aroused all his feelings and all
his powers of mind and body and was the mainspring of all his actions. If he
placed himself in the presence of God in his prayers or other exercises, his
first impulse was to say with Saint Paul, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me do?” If
he was very attentive in consulting and hearkening to God, and showed great
circumspection in distinguishing between true inspirations proceeding from the
Holy Spirit and false ones which come from the devil or from nature, this was
in order to recognize the will of God with greater certainty and be in a better
position to execute it. And, finally, if he rejected so resolutely the maxims
of the world and attached himself solely to those of the Gospel, if he
renounced himself so perfectly; if he embraced crosses with so much affection,
and gave himself up to do and suffer all for God – this, too, was to conform
himself more perfectly to the whole will of his Divine Lord.
The blessed Jacopone being astonished that he no
longer felt any disturbances and evil impulses, as he did at first, heard an
interior voice saying: “This comes from your having wholly abandoned yourself
to the Divine Will, and being content with all it does.”
MLA Citation
An Unknown Italian.
“4
December“. A
Year with the Saints, 1891. CatholicSaints.Info.
10 November 2019. Web. 27 September 2020.
<https://catholicsaints.info/a-year-with-the-saints-4-december/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/a-year-with-the-saints-4-december/
St. Vincent De Paul
St. Vincent was born of poor parents in the village of
Pouy in Gascony, France, about 1580. He enjoyed his first schooling under the
Franciscan Fathers at Acqs. Such had been his progress in four years that a
gentleman chose him as subpreceptor to his children, and he was thus enabled to
continue his studies without being a burden to his parents. In 1596, he went to
the University of Toulouse for theological studies, and there he was ordained
priest in 1600.
In 1605, on a voyage by sea from Marseilles to
Narbonne, he fell into the hands of African pirates and was carried as a slave
to Tunis. His captivity lasted about two years, until Divine Providence enabled
him to effect his escape. After a brief visit to Rome he returned to France,
where he became preceptor in the family of Emmanuel de Gondy, Count of Goigny,
and General of the galleys of France. In 1617, he began to preach missions, and
in 1625, he lay the foundations of a congregation which afterward became the
Congregation of the Mission or Lazarists, so named on account of the Prioryof
St. Lazarus, which the Fathers began to occupy in 1633.
It would be impossible to enumerate all the works of
this servant of God. Charity was his predominant virtue. It extended to all
classes of persons, from forsaken childhood to old age. The Sisters of Charity
also owe the foundation of their congregation to St. Vincent. In the midst of
the most distracting occupations his soul was always intimately united with
God. Though honored by the great ones of the world, he remained deeply rooted
in humility. The Apostle of Charity, the immortal Vincent de Paul, breathed his
last in Paris at the age of eighty in 1660. His feast day is September
27th. He is the patron of charitable societies.
St. Vincent De Paul is among the Incorruptibles. The
Incorruptibles are Catholic Saints who’s bodies show no decay after their
death. The Incorruptibles are a consoling sign of Christ’s victory over death,
a confirmation of the dogma of the Resurrection of the Body, a sign that the
Saints are still with us in the Mystical Body of Christ, as well as a proof of
the truth of the Catholic Faith – for only in the Catholic Church do we find
this phenomenon.
SOURCE : http://www.ucatholic.com/saints/saint-vincent-de-paul/
Reliquaire de Saint Vincent de Paul, Paris
St. Vincent de Paul
Born at Pouy, Gascony, France,
in 1580, though some authorities have said 1576; died at Paris,
27 September, 1660. Born of a peasant family,
he made his humanities studies at Dax with
the Cordeliers, and his theological studies,
interrupted by a short stay at Saragossa,
were made at Toulouse where
he graduated in theology. Ordained in
1600 he remained at Toulouse or
in its vicinity acting as tutor while continuing his own studies.
Brought to Marseilles for
an inheritance, he was returning by sea in 1605 when Turkish pirates
captured him and took him to Tunis.
He was sold as a slave, but escaped in 1607 with his master, a renegade
whom he converted. On returning to France he
went to Avignon to
the papal vice-legate,
whom he followed to Rome to
continue his studies. He was sent back to France in
1609, on a secret mission to Henry IV; he became almoner to the Queen
Marguerite of Valois, and was provided with the little Abbey of
Saint-Léonard-de-Chaume. At the request of M.
de Berulle, founder of the Oratory, he took charge of the parish of Clichy near Paris,
but several months later (1612) he entered the services of the Gondi, an
illustrious French family,
to educate the
children of Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi. He became the spiritual
director of Mme de Gondi. With her assistance he began giving missions
on her estates; but to escape the esteem of which he was the object he left the
Gondi and with the approval of M.
de Berulle had himself appointed curé of
Chatillon-les-Dombes (Bresse), where he converted several Protestants and
founded the first conference of charity for the assistance of
the poor. He was recalled by the Gondi and returned to them (1617) five
months later, resuming the peasant missions. Several learned Paris priests,
won by his example, joined him. Nearly everywhere after each of these missions,
a conference of charity was founded for the relief of the poor,
notably at Joigny, Châlons, Mâcon,
Trévoux, where they lasted until the Revolution.
The good wrought everywhere by these
missions together with the urging of Mme de Gondi decided Vincent to
found his religious institute of priests vowed to
the evangelization of country people--the Congregation
of Priests of the Mission.
Experience had quickly revealed to St.
Vincent that the good done by the missions in country places
could not last unless there were priests to
maintain it and these were lacking at that time in France.
Since the Council
of Trent the bishops had
been endeavoring to found seminaries to
form them, but these seminaries encountered
many obstacles, the chief of which were the wars of religion.
Of twenty founded not ten had survived till 1625. The general assembly of
the French clergy expressed
the wish that candidates for Holy
Orders should only be admitted after some days
of recollection and retreat. At the request of the Bishop of Beauvais,
Potierdes Gesvres, Vincent undertook to attempt at Beauvais (September,
1628) the first of these retreats. According to his plan they
comprised ascetic conferences and instructions on the knowledge of
things most indispensable to priests.
Their chief service was that they gave rise to the seminaries as
these prevailed later in France.
At first they lasted only ten days, but in extending them by degrees to fifteen
or twenty days, then to one, two, or three months before each order, the bishops eventually
prolonged the stay of their clerics to
two or three years between philosophy and the priesthood and
there were what were called seminaries d'ordinands and later grands
seminaries, when lesser ones were founded. No one did more
than Vincent towards this double creation. As early as 1635 he
had establish a seminary at
the Collége des Bons-Enfants. Assisted by Richelieu,
who gave him 1000 crowns, he kept at Bons-Enfants only ecclesiastics studying theology (grand
seminarie) and he founded besides Saint-Lazare for young clerics studying
the humanities a lesser seminary called
the Seminary of St. Charles (1642). He had sent some of
his priests to
the Bishop of Annecy (1641)
to direct his seminary,
and assisted the bishops to
establish others in their dioceses by
furnishing priests to
direct them. At his death he had thus accepted the direction of eleven seminaries.
Prior to the Revolution his
congregation was directing in France fifty-three
upper and nine lesser seminaries,
that is a third of all in France.
Vincent de Paul had established
the Daughters of Charity almost at the same time as
the exercises des ordinands. At first they were intended to assist the
conferences of charity. When these conferences were established at Paris (1629)
the ladies who joined them readily brought their alms and
were willing to visit the poor,
but it often happened that they did not know how
to give them care which their conditions demanded and they sent their
servants to do what was needful in their stead. Vincent conceived
the idea of
enlisting good young women for
this service of the poor. They were first distributed singly in the
various parishes where
the conferences were established and they visited the poor with
these ladies of the conferences or when necessary cared
for them during their absence. In recruiting, forming, and directing these
servants of the poor, Vincent found
able assistance in Mlle Legras. When their number increased he grouped then
into a community under her direction, coming himself every week to hold a
conference suitable to their condition. (For further
details see Sisters of Charity.) Besides the Daughters of Charity Vincent de
Paul secured for the poor the services of the Ladies of Charity,
at the request of the Archbishop of Paris.
He grouped (1634) under this name some pious women who
were determined to nurse the sick poor entering
the Hotel-Dieu to the number of 20,000 or 25,000 annually; they also
visited the prisons.
Among them were as many as 200 ladies of the highest rank. After
having drawn up their rule St. Vincent upheld and stimulated
their charitable zeal.
It was due to them that he was able to collect the enormous sums
which he distributed in aid of all the unfortunates. Among the works, which
their co-operation enabled him to undertake, that of the care
of foundlings was one of the most important. Some of the foundlings at
this period were deliberately deformed by miscreants anxious to exploit public
pity. Others were received into a municipal asylum called "la
couche", but often they were ill-treated or allowed to die of hunger. The
Ladies of Charity began by purchasing twelve children drawn by lot.
who were installed in a special house confided to
the Daughters of Charity and four nurses. Thus years later
the number of children reached 4000; their support cost 30,000 livres;
soon with the increase in the number of children this reached 40,000 livres.
With the assistance of a generous unknown who placed
at his disposal the sum of 10,000 livres, Vincent founded
the Hospice of the Name of Jesus, where forty old people of both
sexes found a shelter and work suited to their condition. This is the
present hospital of
the uncurables. The same beneficence was extended to all
the poor of Paris but
the creation of the general hospital which
was first thought of by several Ladies of Charity, such as the Duchesse
d'Aiguillon. Vincent adopted the idea and
did more than anyone for the realization of what has been called one of the
greatest works
of charity of the seventeenth century, the sheltering of
40,000 poor in an asylum where they would be given a useful
work. In answer St. Vincent's appeal the gifts poured
in. The king granted the lands of the Salpétriere for the erection of the hospital,
with a capital of 50,000 liveres and an endowment of
3000; Cardinal
Mazarin sent 100,000 livres as first gift, Président
de Lamoignon 20,000 crowns, a lady of the Bullion family 60,000 livres. St.
Vincent attached the Daughters of Charity to the work
and supported it with all his strength.
St. Vincent's charity was not restricted
to Paris,
but reached to all the provinces desolated by misery. In that period of
the Thirty
Years War known as the French period, Lorraine,
Trois-Evechés, Franche-Comté, and Champagne underwent for nearly a quarter of a
century all the horrors and scourges which then more than ever war drew
in its train. Vincent made urgent appeals to the Ladies
of Charity; it has been estimated that at his reiterated requests he
secured 12,000 livres equivalent to $60,000 in
our time (1913). When the treasury was empty he again sought alms which
he dispatched at once to the stricken districts. When contributions began to
fail Vincent decided to print and sell the accounts sent him from
those desolated districts; this met with great success, even developing
a periodical newspaper called "Le magasin charitable". Vincent took
advantage of it to fund in the ruined provinces the work of the potages
économiques, the tradition of which still subsists in our
modern economic kitchens.
He himself compiled with minute care instructions concerning the manner of
preparing these potages and the quantity of fat, butter,
vegetables, and bread which should be used. He encouraged
the foundation of societies undertaking
to bury the dead and to clean away the dirt which was a
permanent cause of plague. They were often headed by
the missionaries and the Sisters of Charity. Through them
also Vincent distributed to their land. At the same time, in order to
remove them from the brutality of the soldiers, he brought to Paris 200
young women whom
he endeavored to shelter in various convents.
and numerous children whom he received at St-Lazare. He even founded a
special organization for the relief of the nobility of Lorraine who
had sought refuge in Paris.
After the general peace he directed his solicitude and his alms to
the Irish and English Catholics who
had been driven from their country.
All these benefits had rendered the name
of Vincent de Paul popular in Paris and
even at the Court. Richelieu sometimes
received him and listened favorably to his requests; he assisted him in his
first seminary foundations
and established a house for his missionaries in the village
of Richelieu. On his deathbed Louis XIII desired to be assisted by him:
"Oh, Monsieur Vincent", said he, "if I am restored to
health I shall appoint no bishops unless
they have spent three years with you." His widow,
Ann of Austria,
made Vincent a member of the council of conscience charged
with nominations to benefices.
These honors did not alter Vincent's modesty and
simplicity. He went to the Court only through necessity, in
fitting but simple garb. He made no use of his influence save for the welfare
of the poor and in the interest of the Church.
Under Mazarin,
when Paris rose
at the time of the Fronde (1649) against the Regent, Anne of Austria, who was
compelled to withdraw to St-Fermain-en-Laye, Vincent braved all
dangers to go and implore her clemency in behalf of the people of Paris and
boldly advised her to sacrifice at least for a time
the cardinal minister in order to avoid
the evils which the war threatened
to bring on the people. He also remonstrated with Mazarin himself.
His advice was not listened to. St. Vincent only redoubled his
efforts to lessen the evils of the war in Paris.
Through his care soup was distributed daily to 15,000 or 16,000 refugees or
worthy and poor; 800 to 900 young women were
sheltered; in the single parish of
St. Paul the Sisters of Charity made and distributed soup every day
to 500 poor, besides which they had to care for 60 to 80 sick. During this
time Vincent, indifferent to dangers which he ran, multiplied
letters and visits to the Court at St-Denis to
win minds to peace and clemency; he even wrote a letter to the pope asking
him to intervene and to interpose his mediation to hasten peace
between the two parties.
Jansenism also
made evident his attachment to the Faith and the use to which he put
his influences in its defense. When Duvergier
de Hauranne, later celebrated as the Abbé de St-Cyran, came
to Paris (about
1621), Vincent de Paul showed some interest in him as in a
fellow countryman and a priest in
whom he discerned learning and piety.
But when he became better acquainted with the basis of his ideas concerning grace,
far from being misled by them, he endeavored to arrest him in the path of error.
When the "Augustinus" of Jansenius and
"Frequent Communion" of Arnauld revealed the true ideas and
opinions of the sect, Vincent set
about combating; he persuaded the Bishop of
Lavaur, Abra
de Raconis, to write against them. In
the Council of Conscience he opposed the admission to benefices of
anyone who shared them, and joined the chancellor and the nuncio in
seeking means to stay their progress. Stimulated by him some bishops at St-Lazare took
the initiative in relating these errors to
the pope. St.
Vincent induced 85 bishops to
request the condemnation of the five famous propositions, and persuaded Anne of
Austria to write to the pope to
hasten his decision. When the five propositions had been condemned by Innocent
X (1655) and Alexander
VII (1656), Vincent sought to have
this sentence accepted by all. His zeal for
the Faith, however, did not suffer him to forget his charity; he gave
evidence in behalf of St-Cyran,
whom Richelieu had imprisoned (1638),
and is said to have assisted at his funeral. When Innocent
X had announced his decision he went to
the solitaries of Port-Royal to congratulate them on
the intention they had previously manifested of submitting fully; he
even begged preachers renowned for their anti-Jansenist zeal to
avoid in their sermons all that might embitter their adversaries.
The religious orders
also benefited by the great influence of Vincent. Not only did he
long act as director to the Sisters of the Visitation,
founded by Francis de Sales, but he received at Paris the Religious of
the Blessed
Sacrament, supported the existence of the Daughters
of the Cross (whose object was to teach girls in the country), and
encouraged the reform of the Benedictines, Cistercians,
Antonines, Augustinians, Premonstratensians,
and the Congregation of Grandmont; and Cardinal de
Rochefoucault, who was entrusted with the reform of the religious orders
in France,
called Vincent his right hand and obliged him
to remain in the Council of Conscience.
Vincent's zeal and charity went
beyond the boundaries of France.
As early as 1638 he commissioned his priests to
preach to the shepherds of the Roman Campagna; he had them give
at Rome and Genoa the exercices
des ordinands and preach missions on Savoy and Piedmont.
He sent others to Ireland, Scotland,
the Hebrides, Poland,
and Madagascar (1648-60). Of all the works carried on abroad none
perhaps interested him so much as the poor slaves of
Barbary, whose lot he had once shared. These were from 25,000 to 30,000 of
these unfortunates divided chiefly between Tunis, Algiers,
and Bizaerta. Christians for
the most part, they had been carried off from their families by
the Turkish corsairs.
They were treated as veritable beasts of burden, condemned to
frightful labour, without
any corporal or spiritual care. Vincent left
nothing undone to send them aid as early as 1645 he sent among them a priest and
a brother, who were followed by others. Vincent even had one of these
invested with the dignity of consul in order that he might work more
efficaciously for the slaves. They gave frequent missions to them, and
assured them the services of religion. At the same time
they acted as agents with their families,
and were able to free some of them. Up to the time of St.
Vincent's death these missionaries had ransomed 1200 slaves,
and they had expended 1,200,000 liveres in behalf of
the slaves of Barbary, not to mention the affronts
and persecutions of all kinds which they themselves had endured from
the Turks.
This exterior life so fruitful in works had its source in a
profound spirit of religion and in an
interior life of wonderful intensity. He was
singularly faithful to the duties of
his state, careful to obey the suggestions of faith and piety,
devoted to prayer, meditation,
and all religious and ascetic exercises. Of practical
and prudent mind, he left nothing to chance; his distrust of himself
was equalled only by his trust in Providence; when he founded the Congregation
of the Mission and the Sisters of Charity he refrained from
giving them fixed constitutions beforehand; it was only after tentatives,
trials, and long experience that he resolved in the last years of his life to
give them definitive rules. His zeal for souls knew no
limit; all occasions were to him opportunities to exercise it. When he died
the poor of Paris lost
their best friend and humanity a benefactor unsurpassed in modern
times.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for
New Advent by Claudia C. Neira.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October
1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal
Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Copyright © 2020 by Kevin
Knight. Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
SOURCE : http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15434c.htm
Light from the Altar – Saint Vincent of Paul, 19 July
Is there any saint more popular than Saint Vincent of
Paul! By popular I mean loved by the people. His name stands for Christian
kindness, for active charity. You see the picture of a benevolent old priest
with a baby waif in his arms and you say at once: “Ah, Saint Vincent of Paul.”
Of course, every one knows him, and if they did not they would at least be
acquainted with his spiritual daughters, a Congregation which has spread all
over the world, Sisters with large flapping bonnets, looking like white birds
of passage. They are found in the battlefield, in the hospitals, in the hovels,
in the poor schools, in the workroom, in the reformatory, and they have made
the name of their Founder a word of exchange for charity.
Vincent of Paul was a peasant of Gascony; his father
cultivated a little farm, and Vincent and his brothers tended the sheep and
drove the plough. But as the boy showed unmistakable signs of a vocation to the
priesthood, he was sent to school, from thence to the University, and then was
ordained priest in 1600.
From this point Vincent’s life reads like a romance,
and brings forcibly to our minds the perilous times in which he lived.
Travelling from Marseilles to Narbonne, he was seized by Mahometan pirates,
carried a captive to Barbary, and exposed for sale in the slave market at
Tunis. There this priest of God was examined, overhauled, handled like an
animal, and sold for the worth of his muscles. A fisherman bought him, but sold
him again, as the Gascon peasant could not bear the sea. His next master was a
doctor who had spent fifty years in search of the philosopher’s stone. He was a
kind man, and soon learned to love his gentle slave. He gave him lectures in
alchemy, made him tempting offers of riches, friendship, and domestic happiness
if he would renounce Christ and swear to the Koran. At the end of a year the
old doctor died, and Vincent was again in the market. This time he was bought
by a renegade Christian, who sent him to labor in the fields. With the spade in
his hand and the hot African sun overhead Vincent sang Gascon canticles and the
Salve Regina. His audience were the dumb beasts, the birds of the air – and
none other. The renegade’s wife used to come to listen to his singing, and in
her talks with the saint was fascinated with his doctrine. She upbraided her
husband for his infidelity to his God, and so wrought upon the poor sinner,
that, with Vincent’s help, she persuaded him to fly from temptation, leave
Africa, and begin a new life. In Vincent’s company he embarked in a frail
vessel and landed safely at Aigues-Mortes. Thence, the penitent went to Rome,
and lived and died a fervent Brother of Saint John of God.
Vincent journeyed alone to Paris, and lived as
chaplain with a gentleman. But his trials were not yet ended. A theft was
committed in the house and Vincent was accused. For six years he bore the
slander with sweet patience. Then the thief confessed and Vincent was
acquitted. From that time forth the saint’s wonderful virtue seems to have been
recognized by those amongst whom he lived. He entered the household of the
Count de Joigny, and left it only to devote himself more exclusively to the
poor, whom he passionately loved. He founded a Congregation of secular priests,
who take simple vows and dedicate themselves and all their powers to their own
sanctification and that of their neighhors. They give themselves up to the
training of priests in seminaries, to the giving of missions, and to parish
work of all kinds. During the Founder’s life twenty-five Houses of the
Congregation were founded. Besides this great work,Vincent set on foot in-
numerable charities of the most extensive kind; foundling hospitals were built,
the sick and the fallen were helped with untiring charity, funds for the
terrible war waging in the south were collected. Thousands and thousands of
pounds passed through Vincent’s hands. He, the poor farmer’s son, dispensed
princely sums to needy soldiers, orphaned children, and widowed mothers. We,
who need money so much for our good works, what can we make of this prodigy? We
sigh as we look at our empty hands, and say: “If only we had money!” Ah! I
think if we have the right heart, the prayerful mind, the trust in God, and a
good cause, our Lord will not hold us back for a paltry sum. What is gold to
Him? He will give it if we will prove ourselves worthy stewards. No; it is not
money we want so much as the burning zeal for souls, the mortification of self,
the heart united to God, Dear great-hearted saint! teach us thy secrets – the
confidence that asks aright, the patience that waits, the courage that dares.
At eighty years of age, when his back was bent and his
pace was slow and his eye dim, Vincent rose at four every morning and spent the
first three hours of the morning in prayer. Is not this a voucher for his early
years and his later prime? We do not acquire such habits in old age; they are
got in the vigor of youth. Vincent knew the necessity of prayer, and could find
no time in the day, so he stole the hours of the night and drew strength as
well as refreshment from Our Lord Himself.
One day when the saint was eighty-five he was found
dead in his chair – gone home noiselessly, sweetly; home, to be met by
thousands whom he had helped and comforted in this life; to be met by Him Who
said: “What you do for the least of these. My brethren, you do unto Me.” Saint
Vincent of Paul, pray for us!
MLA Citation
Father James J McGovern. “Saint Vincent of Paul, 19
July”. Light from the Altar, 1906. CatholicSaints.Info.
31 October 2019. Web. 27 September 2020.
<http://catholicsaints.info/book-of-saints-/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/light-from-the-altar-saint-vincent-of-paul-19-july/
Vincent de Paul, Priest (RM)
September 27
While serving in the poverty-stricken Clichy district
of Paris, St. Vincent said to Cardinal de Retz, "I think the pope himself
is not so happy as a parish priest in the midst of such kind-hearted
people." He spent his life in self-giving ministry with and to the poor.
St. Vincent said that such ministry liberates the one who serves as much or
more than it sustains, relieves, and liberates the served. He didn't begin his
priesthood with this attitude but rather grew into it. St. Vincent was ordained
in 1600. In 1605 he was captured by pirates and taken to Tunis, sold as a
slave, and remained there for two years. He convinced his second master, a former monk, to
return to France for absolution.
In France, St. Vincent found a patron in the papal
vice-legate, who took Vincent back to Rome with him. He was sent back to France in 1609 and became the
almoner (person who gives out alms) to the former wife of King Henry
IV--Marguerite de Valois--and dispensed alms on a grand scale.
After serving in various other privileged posts, in
1617 he began a new life while in Chatillon-des-Domes near Lyons, where he
founded the Confraternity of Charity to encourage ladies to minister "as
if she were dealing with her son, or rather with God, who refers to Himself
whatever good is done to the poor." There primary role was nursing the
sick. The Confraternity served as the seed for the Sisters of Charity
(co-founded with Louise de Marillac with pontifical approval in 1668) and the
Ladies of Charity. The book says
that he gave women their first public role in the Church in 800 years.
For St. Vincent social commitment and the spiritual
life were united. He founded seminaries to mold missionary priests for rural
France. He integrated acts of corporal and spiritual mercy. He combined unselfish commitment to the poor with his
connections to the rich and powerful.
St. Vincent said, "I will set out to serve the
poor. I will try to do so in a gay and modest manner, so as to console and
edify them; I will speak to them as though they were my lords and masters. . .
. Even when one scolds me and
finds fault with me, I will not omit the fulfillment of my duty but pay . . .
the respect and the honor due."
From G. Markus. The Radical Tradition:
Revolutionary Saints in the Battle for Justice and Human Rights. NY:
Doubleday, 1993, pp. 116-125.
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0927.shtml
Little Lives of the Great Saints –
Saint Vincent de Paul, The Apostle of Charity
Article
Died A.D. 1660.
What land has not been blessed by the labors, what
person has not heard of the Sister of Charity? –
The noble woman, the Daughter of Charity whose heroism
is thus pictured by the poet’s pen, honors Vincent de Paul as the father and
founder of her society. Let us glance at the career of that immortal benefactor
of humanity.
He was born at a little village in the south of
France, not far from the shadow of the famous Pyrenees Mountains, in the year
of 1576. His parents were good, simple, country people, who owned a small farm.
Vincent was the third of a family of four sons and two daughters, who were
brought up in innocence and inured to hard labor. He was a bright, thoughtful
boy, and gave such early promise of greatness that his father, at much
sacrifice, determined to give him a superior education.
But after some time he resolved to be no longer a
burden to his poor parents, and, with that manly energy which usually
accompanies true genius, he took the matter into his own hands. At twenty years
of age we find Vincent entering the University of Toulouse, where, after a long
course of study, he graduated Bachelor of Theology. He was raised to the
dignity of priesthood in 1600.
The young priest was already a man of virtue and
learning; but he had not yet finished his studies. He was shortly to become
well versed in a new science. By a very rugged road he was soon to reach the
mountain-heights of virtue. As gold through a furnace, so Vincent was to pass
through the fire of affliction.
In 1605 the Saint was called to Marseilles on
business, and while crossing the Gulf of Lyons on his way back the boat was
captured by African pirates. A few of the prisoners were killed; the others
were put in chains. Vincent and some companions were carried to Tunis, and
placed for sale in the slave market.
Mahometan merchants came to look at the unfortunate
captives as they would at oxen or horses. They examined who could eat well,
looked at their teeth, felt their sides, probed their wounds, forced them to
lift burdens and wrestle, and made them run up and down a given space – all to
judge of their strength.
Vincent was bought by a fisherman, who soon sold him
to an old physician, at whose death he again changed masters. The poor priest
finally fell into the hands of a renegade Christian, whom he converted after a
time. They made their escape together, crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a
little boat, and, after many adventures, landed near Marseilles in the Summer
of 1607. The converted apostate became a true penitent, and passed the
remainder of his days in a severe monastery at Rome.
Paris was now to be the chief field of our Saint’s
labors – a field where his zeal was to be blessed with the glory of marvellous
success. The slave was to become the counsellor of bishops and princes. But the
holy toiler began to labor in an obscure corner. Near the gay capital of France
there was a parish so miserably poor that for years no pastor could be found to
take charge of it. It was Clichy. At his own request Vincent was placed over
this forsaken district. Soon there was a great change. We are told that under
his rule the people of Clichy “lived like angels.” He built a new church, and
left everything in a flourishing condition when, at the advice of Cardinal De
Berulle, he became preceptor to the noble family of De Gondi.
It was while in this position that an incident is
related of the Saint’s firmness and Christian charity. A quarrel had arisen
between Count De Gondi and a nobleman of the court. It could only be settled by
blood. The morning came. After De Gondi had finished a prayer in the family
chapel, Vincent approached and said:
“I know on good authority that you are going to fight
a duel. I declare to you in the name of my Saviour, whom you have just adored,
that if you do not relinquish this wicked design He will exercise His justice
upon you and all your posterity.” These words were uttered with such force and
kindly earnestness that they had the desired effect. No duel was fought.
The Saint now began to devote his services to the
instruction of the people in various country villages. And greatly they stood
in need of it. It was chiefly to carry on this sublime work that he founded the
Priests of the Congregation of the Mission. The new congregation was approved
by Pope Urban VIII. in 1632. Saint Vincent lived to see twenty-five houses
established.
Boundless was the zeal of this apostolic man. His kind
heart went out to suffering humanity in every form He was one day returning
from a mission, as he noticed in a retired spot near the walls of Paris one of
those fiendish vagrants who have recourse to the most wicked schemes in order
to excite compassion. The wretch was in the act of mutilating the tender limbs
of an unfortunate foundling. Filled with horror and indignation, the great
priest rushed towards the heartless vagabond and tore the child from his grasp.
“Barbarian!” he exclaimed, “at a distance I took you for a man, but I was
grievously mistaken.” He then bore away the little creature in his arms to one
of those asylums which he had established for the reception of abandoned and
helpless infancy.
He founded the Sisters of Charity, established
hospitals for little orphans, poor old men, and galley-slaves; and he settled
all these homes of mercy under such excellent regulations that they had
abundant means of support.
At one time, however, the foundling asylum at Paris
was about to be discontinued through want of funds. The Saint called together
the charitable ladies who had hitherto kept it alive by their liberal
contributions. Standing near were five hundred little orphans, born in the arms
of the Sisters of Charity. It was a sight truly touching.
“Remember, ladies,” said Vincent, “that compassion and
charity have caused you to adopt these little creatures as your children. You
have been their mothers according to grace, since they were abandoned by their
natural mothers. Now, decide whether you also will abandon them Cease to be
their mothers, that you may be their judges; in your hands are their life and
death. I am going to take the votes. The time has come to pronounce their
sentence and to know whether you will no longer have pity on them If you
continue your charitable care of them, they will live; if, on the contrary, you
abandon them, they will surely die. Experience does not allow you to doubt it.”
This beautiful appeal – one of the most eloquent in
the annals of oratory – was answered by tears and sobs. It gained a great
victory. The good work was not abandoned.
Our Saint assisted Louis XIII at his death, which was
marked by piety and resignation. The queen regent nominated him a member of the
young king’s council, and consulted him on all ecclesiastical affairs. The
history of the Church in France bears witness to his great and holy influence.
He made some enemies, however, in the discharge of his
duties, and they basely undertook to injure him by calumny. It was maliciously
whispered around that he had, in exchange for a library and a sum of money,
procured a benefice for an ambitious man. The story finally came to Vincent’s
ears. He was deeply affected on hearing the atrocious falsehood. His first
impulse was to seize a pen in order to repel the base attack. But he threw it
down, exclaiming:
“Ah! unhappy man that I am What was I about to do?
What! I desire to justify myself, and I have only now heard that a Christian –
falsely accused at Tunis – passed three days in torments, and at last died
without a word of complaint! And I would excuse myself! No, no; it shall not
be.”
He allowed the calumny to take its course, and soon it
spent itself and went the way of all iniquity. Public opinion was in his favor.
And, last of all, the untimely death of the slanderer was a solemn hint that
God punishes the calumniator and vindicates the character of His servants
sooner or later.
Under the Saint’s fatherly guidance the Priests of the
Congregation of the Mission grew in number and usefulness. He was especially
careful to insist on a deep, sincere humility. When two persons, famous for gifts and learning,
presented themselves to be admitted into his Congregation, he gave a refusal,
saying:
“Your abilities
raise you above our low state. Your talents may be of good service in some
other place. As for us, our highest ambition is to instruct the ignorant, to
bring sinners to a spirit of penance, and to plant the Gospel-spirit of
charity, humility, meekness, and simplicity in the hearts of all Christians.”
He laid it down as
a rule of humility that, if possible, a man should never speak of himself – as
all such references usually proceed from vanity and self-love.
The hardy frame
and intrepid energy of Saint Vincent carried him to a ripe old age. In his
eightieth year, however, he was seized by a violent intermittent fever. But he
still bore up for a time, and to the end he was active. His last thoughts
turned to his dear spiritual children, and his last words referred to them –
“He who hath begun will complete the good work.” And when he gently passed away
on the 27th of September, 1660, at the age of eighty-five years, the world and
religion felt that a truly great man was gone – that the apostle of charity,
the friend of the orphan, the cripple, the foundling, the helpless, and
galley-slave was no more on this earth.
MLA Citation
John O’Kane
Murray, M.A., M.D. “Saint Vincent de Paul, The Apostle of Charity”. Little Lives of the Great Saints, 1879. CatholicSaints.Info. 25 September 2018. Web. 27
September 2020.
<https://catholicsaints.info/little-lives-of-the-great-saints-saint-vincent-de-paul-the-apostle-of-charity/>
Butler’s Lives of the Saints – Saint
Vincent of Paul, Confessor
Article
A.D. 1660.
[Founder of the
Lazarites, or Fathers of the Mission] Even in the most degenerate ages, when
the true maxims of the gospel seem almost obliterated among the generality of
those who profess it, God fails not, for the glory of his holy name, to raise
to himself faithful ministers to revive the same in the hearts of many. Having,
by the perfect crucifixion of the old man in their hearts, and the gift of
prayer, prepared them to become vessels of his grace, he replenishes them with
the spirit of his apostles that they may be qualified to conduct others in the
paths of heroic virtue, in which the Holy Ghost was himself their interior
Master. One of these instruments of the divine mercy was Saint Vincent of Paul.
He was a native of Pouï, a village near Acqs in Gascony, not far from the
Pyrenæan mountains. His parents, William of Paul and Bertranda of Morass,
occupied a very small farm of which they were the proprietors, and upon the
produce of which they brought up a family of four sons and two daughters. The
children were brought up in innocence, and inured from their infancy to the
most laborious part of country labour. But Vincent, the third son, gave
extraordinary proofs of his wit and capacity, and from his infancy showed a
seriousness, and an affection for holy prayer far beyond his age. He spent
great part of his time in that exercise when he was employed in the fields to
keep the cattle. That he might give to Christ in the persons of the poor all
that was in his power, he deprived himself of his own little conveniences and
necessaries for that purpose in whatever it was possible for him to retrench
from his own use. This early fervent consecration of himself to God, and these
little sacrifices which may be compared to the widow’s two mites in the gospel,
were indications of the sincere ardour with which he began to seek God from the
first opening of his reason to know and love him; and were doubtless a means to
draw down upon him from the author of these graces other greater blessings. His
father was determined by the strong inclinations of the child to learning and
piety, and the quickness of his parts, to procure him a school education. He
placed him first under the care of the Cordeliers or Franciscan friars at Acqs,
paying for his board and lodging the small pension of sixty French livres, that
is, not six pounds English, a year.
Vincent had been
four years at the schools when Mr. Commet, a gentleman of that town, being much
taken with his virtue and prudence, chose him sub-preceptor to his children,
and enabled him to continue his studies without being any longer a burden to
his parents. At twenty years of age, in 1596, he was qualified to go to the
university of Toulouse, where he spent seven years in the study of divinity,
and commenced bachelor in that faculty. In that city he was promoted to the
holy orders of sub-deacon and deacon in 1598, and of priesthood in 1600, having
received the tonsure and minor orders a few days before he left Acqs. He seemed
already endowed with all those virtues which make up the character of a worthy
and zealous minister of the altar; yet he knew not the full extent of heroic
entire self-denial, by which a man becomes dead and crucified to all inordinate
self-will; upon which perfect self-denial are engrafted the total sacrifice of
the heart to God, perfect humility, and that purity and ardour of divine
charity which constitute the saint. Vincent was a good proficient in theology
and other sciences of the schools, and had diligently applied himself to the
study of the maxims of Christian virtue in the gospel, in the lives of the
saints, and in the doctrine of the greatest masters of a spiritual life. But
there remained a new science for him to learn, which was to cost him much more
than bare study and labour. This consists in perfect experimental and feeling
sentiments of humility, patience, meekness, and charity; which science is only
to be learned by the good use of severe interior and exterior trials. This is
the mystery of the cross, unknown to those whom the Holy Ghost has not led into
this important secret of his conduct in preparing souls for the great works of
his grace. The prosperity of the wicked will appear at the last day to have
often been the most dreadful judgment, and a state in which they were goaded on
in the pursuit of their evil courses; whilst, on the contrary, it will then be
manifested to all men, that the afflictions of the saints have been the
greatest effects of divine mercy. Thus, by a chain of temporal disasters, did
God lay in the soul of Vincent the solid foundation of that high virtue to
which by his grace he afterwards raised him.
The saint went to
Marseilles in 1605, to receive a legacy of five hundred crowns which had been
left him by a friend who died in that city. Intending to return to Toulouse, he
set out in a feluca or large boat from Marseilles to Narbonne, but was met on
the way by three brigantines of African pirates. The infidels seeing the
Christians refuse to strike their flag, charged them with great fury, and on
the first onset killed three of their men, and wounded every one of the rest;
Vincent received a shot of an arrow. The Christians were soon obliged to
surrender. The first thing the Mahometans did was to cut the captain in pieces
because he had not struck at the first summons, and in the combat had killed
one of their men and four or five slaves. The rest they put in chains; and
continued seven or eight days longer on that coast, committing several other
piracies, but sparing the lives of those who made no resistance. When they had
got a sufficient booty they sailed for Barbary. Upon landing they drew up an
act of their seizure, in which they falsely declared that Vincent and his
companions had been taken on board of a Spanish vessel, that the French consul
might not challenge them. Then they gave to every slave a pair of loose
breeches, a linen jerkin, and a bonnet. In this garb they were led five or six
times through the city of Tunis to be shown; after which they were brought back
to their vessel, where the merchants came to see them, as men do at the sale of
a horse or an ox. They examined who could eat well, felt their sides, looked at
their teeth to see who were of scorbutic habits of body, consequently unlikely
for very long life; they probed their wounds, and made them walk and run in all
paces, lift up burdens, and wrestle, to judge of their strength. Vincent was
bought by a fisherman, who, finding that he could not bear the sea, soon sold
him again to an old physician, a great chemist and extractor of essences, who
had spent fifty years in search of the pretended philosopher’s stone. He was
humane, and loved Vincent exceedingly; but gave him long lectures on his
alchemy, and on the Mahometan law, to which he used his utmost efforts to bring
him over; promising on that condition to leave him all his riches, and to
communicate to him, what he valued much more than his estate, all the secrets
of his pretended science. Vincent feared the danger of his soul much more than
all the hardships of his slavery, and most earnestly implored the divine
assistance against it, recommending himself particularly to the intercession of
the Blessed Virgin, to which he ever after attributed his victory over this
temptation. He lived with this old man from September 1605 to August 1606,
when, by this physician’s death, he fell to the share of a nephew of his
master, a true man-hater. By resignation to the divine will, and confidence in
providence, he enjoyed a sweet repose in his own heart under all accidents,
hardships and dangers; and by assiduous devout meditation on the sufferings of
Christ, learned to bear all his afflictions with comfort and joy, uniting
himself in spirit with his Divine Redeemer, and studying to copy in himself his
lessons of perfect meekness, patience, silence and charity. This new master
sold him in a short time to a renegado Christian who came from Nice in Savoy.
This man sent him to his temat or farm situate in a hot desert mountain. This
apostate had three wives, of which one, who was a Turkish woman, went often to
the field where Vincent was digging, and out of curiosity would ask him to sing
the praises of God. He used to sing to her with tears in his eyes, the psalm,
Upon the rivers of Babylon, etc., the Salve Regina, and such like prayers. She
was so much taken with our holy faith, and doubtless with the saintly
deportment of the holy slave, that she never ceased repeating to her husband,
that he had basely abandoned the only true religion, till, like another
Caiphas, or ass of Balaam, without opening her own eyes to the faith, she made
him enter into himself. Sincerely repenting of his apostacy, he agreed with
Vincent to make their escape together. They crossed the Mediterranean sea in a
small light boat which the least squall of wind would overset; and they landed
safe at Aigues-Mortes, near Marseilles, on the 28th of June, 1607, and thence
proceeded to Avignon. The apostate made his abjuration in the hands of the
vice-legate, and the year following went with Vincent to Rome, and there
entered himself a penitent in the austere convent of the Fate-Ben-Fratelli, who
served the hospitals according to the rule of Saint John of God.
Vincent received
great comfort at the sight of a place most venerable for its pre-eminence in
the church, which has been watered with the blood of so many martyrs, and is
honoured with the tombs of the two great apostles SS. Peter and Paul and many
other saints. He was moved to tears at the remembrance of their zeal,
fortitude, humility, and charity, and often devoutly visited their monuments,
praying earnestly that he might be so happy as to walk in their steps, and
imitate their virtues. After a short stay at Rome, to satisfy his devotion, he
returned to Paris, and took up his quarters in the suburb of Saint Germain’s.
There lodged in the same house a gentleman, the judge of a village near
Bourdeaux, who happened to be robbed of four hundred crowns. He charged Vincent
with the theft, thinking it could be nobody else; and in this persuasion he
spoke against him with the greatest virulence among all his friends, and
wherever he went. Vincent calmly denied the fact, saying, “God knows the
truth.” He bore the slander six years, without making any other defence, or
using harsh words or complaints, till the true thief being taken up at
Bourdeaux on another account, to appease his own conscience and clear the
innocent he sent for this judge, and confessed to him the crime. Saint Vincent
related this in a spiritual conference with his priests, but as of a third
person; to show that patience, humble silence, and resignation are generally
the best defence of our innocence, and always the happiest means of sanctifying
our souls under slanders and persecution; and we may be assured that providence
will in its proper time justify us, if expedient.
At Paris Vincent
became acquainted with the holy priest Monsieur de Berulle, who was afterwards
cardinal, and at that time was taken up in founding the congregation of the
French oratory. A saint readily discovers a soul in which the spirit of God
reigns. Berulle conceived a great esteem for Saint Vincent from his first
conversation with him; and to engage him in the service of his neighbour, he
prevailed with him first to serve as curate of the parish of Clichi, a small
village near Paris; and soon after to quit that employ, to take upon him the
charge of preceptor to the children of Emmanuel de Gondy, count of Joigny,
general of the galleys of France. His lady, Frances of Silly, a person of
singular piety, was so taken with the sanctity of Vincent, that she chose him
for her spiritual director and confessor. In the year 1616, whilst the Countess
of Joigny was at a country seat at Folleville, in the diocess of Amiens,
Vincent was sent for to the village of Gannes, two leagues from Folleville, to
hear the confession of a countryman who lay dangerously ill. The zealous
priest, by carefully examining his penitent, found it necessary to advise him
to make a general confession, with which the other joyfully complied. The
penitent by this means discovered that all his former confessions had been
sacrilegious for want of a due examination of his conscience; and afterwards,
bathed in tears, he declared aloud, in transports of joy before many persons,
and the Countess of Joigny herself, that he should have been eternally lost if
he had not spoken to Vincent. The pious lady was struck with dread and horror
to hear of such past sacrileges, and to consider the imminent danger of being
damned in which that poor soul had been; and she trembled lest some others
among her vassals might have the misfortune to be in the like case. Far from
the criminal illusion of pride by which some masters and mistresses seem
persuaded that they owe no care, attention, or provision to those whose whole
life is employed only to give them the fruit of their sweat and labours; she
was sensible from the principles both of nature and religion, that masters or
lords lie under strict ties of justice and charity towards all committed to
their care; and that they are bound, in the first place, as far as it lies in
their power, to see them provided with the necessary spiritual helps for their
salvation. But to wave the obligation, what Christian heart can pretend to the
bowels of charity, and be insensible at the dangers of such persons? The
virtuous countess felt in her own breast the strongest alarms for so many poor
souls, which she called her own by many titles. She therefore entreated Vincent
to preach in the church of Folleville, on the feast of the conversion of Saint
Paul, in 1617, and fully to instruct the people in the great duty of repentance
and confession of sins. He did so; and such crowds flocked to him to make
general confessions that he was obliged to call in the Jesuits of Amiens to his
assistance. The congregation of the mission dates its first institution from
this time, and in thanksgiving for it, keeps the 25th of January with great
solemnity.
By the advice of
Monsieur de Berulle, Saint Vincent left the house of the countess in 1617, to
employ his talents among the common people in the villages of Bresse, where he
heard they stood in great need of instruction. He prevailed upon five other
zealous priests to bear him company, and with them formed a little community in
the parish of Chatillon in that province. He there converted by his sermons the
Count of Rougemont and many others from their scandalous unchristian lives to a
state of eminent penance and fervour, and in a short time changed the whole
face of the country. The good countess, his patroness, was infinitely pleased
with his success, and gave him sixteen thousand livres to found a perpetual
mission among the common people in the place and manner he should think fit.
But she could not be easy herself whilst she was deprived of his direction and
advice; she therefore employed Monsieur de Berulle, and her brother-in-law,
Cardinal de Retz, to prevail with him to come to her, and extorted from him a
promise that he would never abandon the direction of her conscience so long as
she lived, and that he would assist her at her death. But being extremely desirous
that others, especially those who were particularly entitled to her care and
attention, should want nothing that could contribute to their sanctification
and salvation, she induced her husband to concur with her in establishing a
company of able and zealous missionaries, who should be employed in assisting
their vassals and farmers. This project they proposed to their brother, John
Francis of Gondi, the first archbishop of Paris, and he gave the college of
Bons Enfans for the reception of the new community. All things being agreed on,
Saint Vincent took possession of this house in April, 1625. The count and
countess gave forty thousand French livres to begin the foundation.
Saint Vincent
attended the countess till her pious death, which happened on the 23d of June
the same year; after which he joined his Congregation. He drew up for it
certain rules or constitutions, which were approved by Pope Urban VIII in 1632.
King Lewis XIII. confirmed the establishment by letters patent, which he
granted in May the same year; and, in 1633, the regular canons of Saint Victor
gave to this new institute the priory of Saint Lazarus, which being a spacious
building was made the chief house of the Congregation, and from it the Fathers
of the Mission were often called Lazarites or Lazarians. They are not religious
men, but a Congregation of secular priests, who after two years’ probation make
four simple vows, of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. They devote
themselves to labour, in the first place, in sanctifying their own souls by the
particular holy exercises prescribed in their institute; secondly, in the
conversion of sinners to God; and thirdly, in training up clergymen for the
ministry of the altar and the care of souls. To attain the first end, their
rule prescribes them an hour’s meditation every morning, self-examination
thrice every day, spiritual conferences every week, a yearly retreat of eight
days, and silence except in the hours allowed for conversation. To comply with
the second obligation, they are employed eight months every year in missions
among the country people, staying three or four weeks in each place which they
visit, every day giving catechism, making familiar sermons, hearing
confessions, reconciling differences, and performing all other works of
charity. To correspond with the third end which Saint Vincent proposed to
himself, some of this Congregation undertake the direction of seminaries, and
admit ecclesiastics or others to make retreats of eight or ten days with them,
to whom they prescribe suitable exercises; and for these purposes excellent
rules are laid down by the founder. Pope Alexander VII, in 1662, enjoined by a
brief, that all persons who receive holy orders in Rome, or in the six
suffragan bishoprics, shall first make a retreat of ten days under the
direction of the fathers of this Congregation, under pain of suspension. Saint
Vincent settled his institute also in the seminary of Saint Charles in Paris,
and lived to see twenty-five houses of it founded in France, Piedmont, Poland,
and other places.
This foundation,
though so extensive and beneficial, could not satisfy the zeal of this
apostolic man. He by every other means studied to procure the relief of others
under all necessities, whether spiritual or corporal. For this purpose he
established many other confraternities, as that called Of Charity, to attend
all poor sick persons in each parish; which institute he began in Bresse, and
propagated in other places where he made any missions; one called Of the Dames
of the Cross, for the education of young girls; another of Dames to serve the
sick in great hospitals, as in that of Hotel Dieu in Paris. He procured and
directed the foundation of several great hospitals, as in Paris that of
foundlings, or those children who, for want of such a provision, are exposed to
the utmost distress, or to the barbarity of unnatural parents; also that of
poor old men; at Marseilles the stately hospital for the galley-slaves, who,
when sick, are there abundantly furnished with every help both corporal and
spiritual. All these establishments he settled under excellent regulations, and
supplied with large sums of money to defray all necessary expenses. He
instituted a particular plan of spiritual exercises for those who are about to
receive holy orders; and others for those who desire to make general
confessions, or to deliberate upon the choice of a state of life. He also
appointed regular ecclesiastical conferences, on the duties of the clerical
state, etc. It must appear almost incredible that so many and so great things
could have been effected by one man, and a man who had no advantages from
birth, fortune, or any shining qualities which the world admires and esteems.
But our surprise would be much greater if we could enter into a detail of his wonderful
actions, and the infinite advantages which he procured others. During the wars
in Lorrain, being informed of the miseries to which these provinces were
reduced, he collected charities among pious persons at Paris, which were sent
thither, to the amount of fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand livres, says
Abelly; nay, as Collet proves from authentic vouchers, of two millions, that
is, according to the value of money at that time, considerably above one
hundred thousand pounds sterling; and he did the like on other occasions. He
assisted King Lewis XIII. at his death, and by his holy advice and exhortations
that monarch expired in perfect sentiments of piety and resignation. Our saint
was in the highest favour with the queen regent, Anne of Austria, who nominated
him a member of the young king’s Council of Conscience, and consulted him in
all ecclesiastical affairs, and in the collation of benefices; which office he
discharged ten years.
Amidst so many and
so great employs his soul seemed always united to God; in the most distracting
affairs it kept, as it were, an eye always open to him, in order to converse
continually with him. This constant attention to him he often renewed, and
always when the clock struck, by making the sign of the cross (at least secretly
with his thumb upon his breast) with an act of divine love. Under all crosses,
disappointments, and slanders, he always preserved a perfect serenity and
evenness of mind, which it did not seem in the power of the whole world to
disturb; for he considered all events only with a view to the divine will, and
with an entire resignation to it, having no other desire but that God should be
glorified in all things. Whether this was to be done by his own disgrace and
sufferings, or by whatever other means it pleased the divine majesty, he
equally rejoiced. Not that he fell into the pretended apathy or insensibility
of the proud Stoics, or into the impious indifference of the false Mystics,
afterwards called Quietists, than which nothing is more contrary to true piety,
which is always tender, affectionate, and most sensible to all the interests of
charity and religion. This was the character of our saint, who regarded the
afflictions of all others as his own, sighed continually with Saint Paul after
that state of glory in which he should be united inseparably to his God, and
poured forth his soul before him with tears over his own and others’ spiritual
miseries. Having his hope fixed as a firm anchor in God, by an humble reliance
on the divine mercy and goodness, he seemed raised above the reach of the
malice of creatures, or the frowns of the world; and he enjoyed a tranquillity
within his breast which no storms were able to ruffle or disturb. So perfect
was the mastery which he had gained over his passions, that his meekness and
patience seemed unalterable, whatever provocations he met with. He was never
moved by affronts, unless to rejoice secretly under them, because he was sure
to find in them a hidden treasure of grace, and an opportunity of vanquishing
himself. This is the fruit of the victory which perfect virtue gains over
self-love; and it is a more perfect sacrifice to God, a surer test of sincere
virtue, a more heroic victory, and a more glorious triumph of the soul to bear
a slander, an injurious suspicion, or an unjust insult, in silence and
patience, than the most shining exterior act of virtue; a language often
repeated, but little understood or practised among Christians. Perfect
self-denial, the most profound humility, and an eminent spirit of prayer were
the means by which Saint Vincent attained to this degree of perfection: and he
most earnestly recommended the same to his disciples. Humility he would have
them to make the basis of his Congregation, and it was the lesson which he
never ceased to repeat to them, that they ought to study sincerely to conceal
even their natural talents. When two persons of extraordinary learning and
abilities once presented themselves, desiring to be admitted into his
Congregation, he gave them both a repulse, telling them, “Your abilities raise
you above our low state. Your talents may be of good service in some other
place. As for us, our highest ambition is to instruct the ignorant, to bring
sinners to a spirit of penance, and to plant the gospel-spirit of charity, humility,
meekness, and simplicity in the hearts of all Christians.” He laid it down also
as a rule of humility, that, if possible, a man ought never to speak of himself
or his own concerns, such discourse usually proceeding from, and nourishing in
the heart, pride and self-love. This indeed is a rule prescribed by Confucius,
Aristotle, Cato, Pliny, and other philosophers; because, say they, for any one
to boast of himself is always the most intolerable and barefaced pride, and
modesty in such discourse will be suspected of secret vanity. Egotism, or the
itch of speaking always of a man’s self, shows he is intoxicated with the
poison of self-love, refers every thing to him self, and is his own centre,
than which scarce anything can be more odious and offensive to others. But
Christian humility carries this maxim higher, teaching us to love a hidden
life, and to lie concealed and buried, as being in ourselves nothingness and
sin.
Saint Vincent
exerted his zeal against the novelties concerning the article of divine grace
which sprang up in his time. Michael Baius, doctor and professor of divinity at
Louvain, advanced a new doctrine concerning the grace conferred on man in the
two states before and after Adam’s fall, and some other speculative points; and
Pope Pius V, in 1567, condemned seventy-six propositions under his name. Some
of these, Baius confessed he had taught, and these he solemnly revoked and
sincerely condemned with all the rest in 1580, in presence of F. Francis
Toletus, afterwards cardinal, whom Gregory XIII had sent for that very purpose
to Louvain. Cornelius Jansenius and John Verger, commonly called Abbé de Saint
Cyran, contracted a close friendship together during their studies, first at
Louvain, afterwards at Paris, and concerted a plan of a new system of doctrine
concerning divine grace, founded, in part, upon some of the condemned errors of
Baius. This system Jansenius, by his friend’s advice, endeavoured to establish
in a book, which from Saint Austin, the great doctor of grace, he entitled, Augustinus.
After having been bishop of Ipres from 1635 to 1638, he died of the pestilence,
having never published his book, in the close of which he inserted a
declaration that he submitted his work to the judgment of the Church. Fromond,
another Louvain divine, an abler scholar, and a more polite writer, polished
the style of this book, and put it in the press. Verger became director of the
nuns of Port-Royal, had read some ancient writers on the books of devotion, and
wrote with ease. But his very works on subjects of piety, however neatly
written, betray the author’s excessive presumption and forbidding
self-sufficiency. He became the most strenuous advocate of Jansenism, and was
detained ten years prisoner in the castle of Vincennes. He died soon after he
had recovered his liberty, in 1643. This man had by his reputation gained the
esteem of Saint Vincent; but the saint hearing him one day advance his errors,
and add that the Church had failed for five or six hundred years past, he was
struck with horror, and from that moment renounced the friendship of so
dangerous a person. When these errors were afterwards more publicly spread
abroad, he strenuously exerted himself against them; on which account Gerberon,
the Jansenistical historian, makes him the butt of his rancour and spleen; but
general and vague invectives of the enemies to truth are the commendation of
his piety and zeal. Our saint’s efforts to destroy that heresy, says Abelly,
never made him approve a loose morality, which on all occasions he no less
avoided and abhorred than the errors of the Jansenists. He was particularly
careful in insisting on all the conditions of true repentance to render it
sincere and perfect; for want of which he used to say with Saint Ambrose, that
some pretended penitents are rendered more criminal by their sacrilegious
hypocrisy in the abuse of so great a sacrament, than they were by all their
former sins.
In the year 1658
Saint Vincent assembled the members of his Congregation at Saint Lazarus, and
gave to every one a small book of rules which he had compiled. At the same time
he made a pathetic exhortation, to enforce the most exact and religious
observance of them. This Congregation was again approved and confirmed by
Alexander VII and Clement X. Saint Vincent was chosen by Saint Francis of Sales
director of his nuns of the Visitation that were established at Paris. The
robust constitution of the zealous servant of God was impaired by his
uninterrupted fatigues and austerities. In the eightieth year of his age he was
seized with a periodical fever, and with violent, night sweats. After passing
the night almost without sleep, and in an agony of pain, he never failed to
rise at four in the morning, to spend three hours in prayer, to say mass every
day (except on the three first days of his annual retreat, according to the
custom he had established), and to exert, as usual, his indefatigable zeal in
the exercises of charity and religion. He even redoubled his diligence in
giving his last instructions to his spiritual children; and recited every day
after mass the prayers of the Church for persons in their agony, with the
recommendation of the soul, and other preparatory acts for his last hour.
Alexander VII, in consideration of the extreme weakness to which his health was
reduced, sent him a brief to dispense him from reciting his breviary; but
before it arrived the servant of God had finished the course of his labours.
Having received the last sacraments and given his last advice, he calmly
expired in his chair, on the 27th of September, 1660, being fourscore and five
years old. He was buried in the church of Saint Lazarus in Paris, with an
extraordinary concourse and pomp. An account of several predictions of this
servant of God, and some miraculous cures performed by him whilst alive, may be
read in his life written by Collet, with a great number of miracles wrought
through his intercession after his death at Paris, Angiers, Sens, in Italy,
etc. Mr. Bonnet, superior of the seminary at Chartres, afterwards general of
the Congregation, by imploring this saint’s intercession, was healed
instantaneously of an inveterate entire rupture, called by the physicians
enteroepiplo-celle, which had been declared by the ablest surgeons absolutely
incurable; this miracle was approved by Cardinal Noailles. Several like cures
of fevers, hemorrhages, palsies, dysenteries, and other distempers were
juridically proved. A girl eight years old, both dumb and lame, was cured by a
second Novena or nine days’ devotion performed for her by her mother in honour
of Saint Vincent. His body was visited by Cardinal Noailles in presence of many
witnesses, in 1712, and found entire and fresh, and the linen cloths in the
same condition as if they were new. The tomb was then shut up again. This
ceremony is usually performed before the beatification of a servant of God,
though the incorruption of the body by itself is not regarded as a miraculous
proof at Rome or elsewhere, as Collet remarks. 8 After the ordinary rigorous
examinations of the conduct, heroic virtues, and miracles of this saint at
Rome, Pope Benedict XIII. performed with great solemnity the ceremony of his
beatification in 1729. Upon the publication of the brief thereof, the
archbishop of Paris caused the grave to be again opened. The lady marechale of
Noailles, the marshal her son, and many other persons were present; but the
flesh on the legs and head appeared corrupted, which alteration from the state
in which it was found twenty-seven years before, was attributed to a flood of
water which twelve years before this had overflowed that vault. Miracles
continued frequently to be wrought by the relics and invocation of Saint
Vincent. A Benedictin nun at Montmirel, afflicted with a violent fever,
retention of urine, ulcers, and other disorders, her body being swelled to an
enormous size, and having been a long time paralytic, was perfectly cured all
at once by a relic of Saint Vincent applied to her by Monseigneur Joseph
Languet, then bishop of Soissons. Francis Richer, in Paris, was healed in a no
less miraculous manner. Miss Louisa Elizabeth Sackville, an English young lady
at Paris, was cured of a palsy by performing a novena at the tomb of Saint
Vincent; which miracle was attested in the strongest manner, among others, by
Mrs. Hayes, a Protestant gentlewoman, with whom she lodged. Miss Sackville
became afterwards a nun in the French abbey called of the Holy Sacrament, in
Paris, lived ten years without any return of her former disorder, and died in
1742. Saint Vincent was canonized in 1737 by Pope Clement XII.
This saint could
not display his zeal more to the advantage of his neighbour than by awaking
Christians from the spiritual lethargy in which so many live. He set before
their eyes the grievous disorder of lukewarmness in the divine service, and explained
to them, like another Baptist, the necessity and obligations of sincere
repentance; for those certainly can never be entitled to the divine favour who
live in an ambiguous, divided, and distracted state of sinning and repenting;
of being heathens and Christians by turns. Still more dreadful is the state of
those who live in habitual sin, yet are insensible of their danger, and
frightful miseries! Into what extravagance, folly, spiritual blindness, and
sometimes incredulity, do men’s passions often plunge them! To what a degree of
madness and stupidity do men of the finest natural parts sink, when abandoned
by God! or rather when they themselves abandon God, and that light which he has
set up in the world! Let us by tears and prayers implore the divine mercy in
favour of all blind sinners.
MLA Citation
Father Alban
Butler. “Saint Vincent of Paul, Confessor”. Lives
of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints, 1866. CatholicSaints.Info. 14 July 2013. Web. 27
September 2020.
<https://catholicsaints.info/butlers-lives-of-the-saints-saint-vincent-of-paul-confessor/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/butlers-lives-of-the-saints-saint-vincent-of-paul-confessor/
_-_Foto_G_Dall'Orto.jpg)
Giovanni Pandiani, "San Vincenzo de' Paoli e Santa Luisa Marillac"
(1858/1860).
Rilievo nella cappella di San Vincenzo della chiesa
di San Carlo al Corso a Milano.
Foto di Giovanni Dall'Orto, 22-6-2007
Weninger’s Lives of the Saints –
Saint Vincent of Paul, Confessor
Article
In the year of Our
Lord, 1660, Saint Vincent of Paul ended his laborious and virtuous life at
Paris, in the house of Saint Lazarus. He was born in a small village of
Gascony, in France, and was the son of poor but God-fearing parents. After
having for some time kept the herds of his father, he devoted himself to study,
and became so proficient, that he was soon raised to the dignity of a teacher
of Theology. During several years he instructed the young in order to gain the
means of subsistence. One day, when, on account of some business, he had to go
to Marseilles, he fell, wounded by an arrow, into the hands of the Turks, who
robbed him of his clothes, put him in chains, and took him to Africa, where he
endured great suffering on account of his faithfulness to the Christian Faith.
He was the slave of three different masters, of whom the last was a Mameluke, a
renegade Christian. The Saint succeeded in convincing him of his error, and
escaping with him, happily reached France, where Vincent became pastor of two
Churches, which he administered with truly holy zeal. Saint Francis of Sales
having heard of the virtues and holiness of Vincent, requested him to become
the spiritual director of the Convent which he had founded at Paris, a function
which the Saint faithfully discharged during forty years. Saint Francis of Sales
gave a short but most honorable testimony to his sanctity, by saying that he
had never known a priest more worthy of esteem than Vincent.
In the year 1625,
the Saint founded a congregation of secular priests, who, living like those of
a religious order, were bound by a vow to do missionary work, especially in
villages and other country places. He himself was a model to all, for he was
occupied the greater part of his life of 85 years in instructing the country
people and the lower classes. He formed the priests in his charge in every
thing needful to apostolic missionaries, that their sermons and teachings might
have the desired result. Besides this there scarcely existed a class of
distressed men for whose temporal and spiritual welfare he was not solicitous.
To this end he erected several houses of charity, and also founded large
hospitals, that the poor, the sick, the orphans, the old, and those disabled
and in misery, might have a home as well as the necessaries of life. He also
founded several societies or congregations, whose members had the care of these
charitable institutions. All his thoughts, all the faculties of his mind seemed
constantly employed in finding ways and means to help the distressed, and he
feared no pains, no toil, no danger. It once happened that he saw several
soldiers pursuing a laborer, sword in hand. Without a moment’s hesitation he
was in the midst of them, conjuring them to let him suffer the punishment they
intended to inflict upon the poor man. Awed and surprised by his appearance,
the soldiers sheathed their swords and allowed the man to escape.
The Saint’s life,
as far as he himself was concerned, was passed in great poverty and extreme
austerity. He kept a rigorous fast, and employed as much time in prayer as it
was possible to give. If any one requested his advice, before answering he
would raise his eyes to heaven and in a short prayer beg the Almighty to
enlighten him. He never left the house before he had, on bended knees, asked,
in a short prayer, that God might be with him; and on his return, he would
examine his conscience very minutely, to see if he had done anything amiss, or
had neglected anything which pertained to the welfare of others. The least
fault, even inadvertently committed, he punished most severely on his body. A
mortal sin never burdened his soul, and he kept his innocence and purity
undefiled, although surrounded by many dangers. When yet very young, he was an
enemy to all frivolous speeches, and of such acts as he considered wrong in the
sight of God. He endeavored constantly to prevent others from offending the
Most High, and it grieved him exceedingly when he heard that one had tempted
another to sin, or otherwise assisted him to do evil. Against such he spoke
most severely from the pulpit, as he was convinced that the most horrible sin
of which men can become guilty, is to lead each other to vice and crime, and by
it to eternal perdition. He exhorted all not only to promote their own, but
also their neighbors’ spiritual welfare, as nothing is more pleasing to God
than when we lead others to the path of virtue, and by it to everlasting joy.
For this reason,
he sent the priests who were under him, whom he had instructed, not only into
the neighboring villages, but also into Poland, Scotland, Ireland, and even
into the far-off Indies, with orders to use all their efforts to convert the
infidels, and to admonish the faithful to keep the Commandments of the Most
High. He himself did the same wherever he was. There were many during his time,
who endeavored to scatter secretly the seeds of the Jansenist error among the
Catholics, pretending that it contained high spiritual perfection. Many
Catholics began to listen to the false doctrines, and thus imperceptibly
imbibed the heretical poison. But it was then that Saint Vincent displayed his
holy zeal for the purity of the true faith and the salvation of souls. He laid
bare, in their whole deformity, the errors of the Jansenists, admonished all
priests and spiritual directors to guard their flocks against these heretical
wolves, and persuaded the .bishops to assemble and denounce the pernicious
heresy to the Apostolic See, and endeavor to obtain its condemnation. To the
Catholics in general he represented the danger in which they stood of losing
eternal happiness, if they approved only one single point of the new heresy,
and thereby renounced the old, true, Catholic Faith. The great moral benefit he
thus conferred on mankind will become known to the world cn the great day of
Judgment when the Lord will reward every one according to his deserts.
To this short
sketch of his life, we will add a few words concerning his happy death. At
length, weakened by his incessant labors and great austerity to himself, he was
seized by his last sickness. Having requested and received with great devotion
the holy sacraments, he admonished those under him for the last time, to
continue in their pious zeal, and occupied the remaining moments of his life in
devout meditations. When those around him, in their prayers for him, came to
the words: “Oh, God, come to my assistance!” he answered distinctly: “Oh, Lord,
make haste to help me!” after which, full of days and merits, he tranquilly
expired. At the hour of his death, his countenance showed the comfort and
happiness that filled his heart. The many and great miracles which were wrought
after his death by his intercession, confirmed the general opinion of him
during his life; namely, that he was a truly holy man, gifted with an apostolic
heart Hence he was highly esteemed and honored as a great servant of God, both
by ecclesiastics and laymen, high and low. Louis XIII, King of France, desired,
when he was lying on his death-bed, to have the Saint near him. His consort,
the Queen, chose him for her spiritual director, which duty the holy man
accepted only under the condition that he should continue his works of love and
charity, as well as his other ecclesiastical labors. This being granted, he
continued to labor unweariedly, without allowing himself the slightest repose,
until God called him to rest in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Practical
Considerations
1. The continual
labors and cares of Saint Vincent had only one aim: the spiritual welfare of
others and the prevention ot all offences to God. He declaimed against those
who incited others to sin and vice, and thus led them to eternal destruction.
He fully comprehended the truth of the words of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite:
“Among all divine works none is more divine than laboring with God for the
salvation of souls. Have you no opportunity to perform a work which is so
agreeable in the sight of the Lord? Think well, and do not neglect it. Saint
Vincent was also convinced that among all evil works, there is none more evil
and displeasing to God than when we incite others to sin and thus assist the
devil in gaining souls. Those who do this are called by the Holy Fathers of the
Church messengers, representatives, vicars of the devil, because they are sent
and incited by him to execute his plans for the destruction of men. They are
his vicars, because they do that which is really the devil’s work. Still more severely
speaks Saint James of Nisibis: “All those,” says he, a deserve the name of
devils, who prevent others from keeping those commandments, which appear hard
to keep, and who advise them to follow the devices of the flesh.” He means to
say that such people may be regarded as real devils; but I add that they are
worse, more hurtful and more to be feared than the devils themselves, as many a
person whom Satan cannot tempt, is incited to sin by their flatteries,
promises, and still more by their bad example, and, hence is led to
destruction. If you, therefore, desire to be a representative of the devil, or
his vicar, you ought to be informed that his abiding place belongs also to you.
According to the words of Christ, hell is prepared for the devil and his angels:
“Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the
devil and his angels” (Matthew 25). Angel means a messenger, a representative.
For you and your equals, as angels and messengers of the devil; for you,
deceiver, as a representative of the devil, for you is hell, and in hell the
eternal fire, if you do not leave your wicked ways. Endeavor to repair the evil
you have occasioned, and do penance. What will you do?
2. The countenance
of the dying Saint Vincent expressed the comfort and happiness that filled his
soul. This was probably because he thought of his innocent life, his zeal in
the service of God, his constant endeavor to do good. You may well believe me
when I say that you will not be thus consoled in your last hour, when you
remember your sinful, unchaste life, your negligence in the service of the
Almighty, your idleness in performing good works. The recollection of them will
cause you inexpressible fear and horror. Before all, will the thought of those
sins torment you which you committed so wantonly, and which you have not even
confessed rightly, much less expiated. “They shall come with fear at the
thought of their sins,” says the Holy Ghost, “and their iniquities shall stand
against them to convict them.” (Wisdom 4). The wicked Antiochus did not heed
his sins during the time that his health was unimpaired; he gave them not even
a thought: but when his last hour approached, he said: “But now I remember the
evils that I did in Jerusalem.” (1st Maccabees 6) Now, not before: now that I
am called into eternity, to appear before the judgment-seat of the Most High,
now I remember them against my will. But what resulted from this remembrance?
“Into what tribulation am I come, and into what floods of sorrow.” (1st Maccabees
6) If you would not experience equal woes, but die comforted and happy, lead a
Christian life after the example of Saint Vincent. Avoid evil, and practice
good works. Should your conscience be stained with sin, expiate it by sincere
penance, without losing another day.
MLA Citation
Father Francis
Xavier Weninger, DD, SJ. “Saint Vincent of Paul, Confessor”. Lives of the Saints, 1876. CatholicSaints.Info. 17 March 2018. Web. 27
September 2020.
<https://catholicsaints.info/weningers-lives-of-the-saints-saint-vincent-of-paul-confessor/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/weningers-lives-of-the-saints-saint-vincent-of-paul-confessor/
Miniature Lives of the Saints –
Saint Vincent of Paul
Article
Saint Vincent was
born A.D. 1576. In after years, when adviser of the Queen and oracle of the
Church in France, he loved to recount how, in his youth, he had guarded his
father’s pigs. Soon after his ordination, he was captured by corsairs, and
carried into Barbary. He converted his renegade master, and escaped with him to
France. Appointed chaplain-general of the galleys of France, his tender charity
brought hope into those prisons where hitherto despair had reigned. A mother
mourned her imprisoned son. Vincent put on his chains and took his place at the
oar, and gave him to his mother. His charity embraced the poor, young and old,
provinces desolated by civil war, Christians enslaved by the Infidel. The poor
man ignorant and degraded was to him the image of Him who became as ‘a leper
and no man.’ “Turn the medal,” he said, “and you then will see Jesus Christ.”
He went through the streets of Paris at night, seeking the children who were
left there to die. Once robbers rushed upon him, thinking he carried a treasure,
but when he opened his cloak, they recognised him and his burden, and fell at
his feet. The Society of Saint Vincent, the Priests of the Mission, and 25,000
Sisters of Charity still comfort the afflicted with the charity of Saint
Vincent of Paul He died a.d. 1660.
Most people who
profess piety ask advice of directors about their prayers and spiritual
exercises. Few inquire whether they are not in danger of damnation from neglect
of works of charity.
Those who love the
poor in life shall have no fear of death. – Saint Vincent of Paul
Not only was Saint
Vincent the saviour of the poor, but also of the rich, for he taught them to do
works of mercy. Like Saint Philip, he knew the power ofassociation. He made
them do good in the sight of others to spread the sacred contagion of charity.
When the work for the foundlings was in danger of failing from want of funds,
he assembled the ladies ofthe Association of Charity. He bade his most fervent
daughters be present to give the spur to the others. Then he said: “Compassion
and charity have made you adopt these little creatures as your children. You
have been their mothers according to grace, when their own mothers abandoned
them. Cease to be their mothers, that you may become their judges; their life
and death is in your hands. I shall now take your votes: it is time to
pronounce sentence.” The tears of the assembly was his only answer, and the
work was continued.
Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of
these My least brethren, you did it to Me. – Matthew 25:40
MLA Citation
Henry Sebastian Bowden. “Saint Vincent of Paul”. Miniature Lives of the Saints for Every Day of the Year, 1877. CatholicSaints.Info.
27 February 2015. Web. 27 September 2020.
<https://catholicsaints.info/miniature-lives-of-the-saints-saint-vincent-of-paul/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/miniature-lives-of-the-saints-saint-vincent-of-paul/
Pictorial Lives of the Saints –
Saint Vincent of Paul
Article
Saint Vincent was born A.D. 1576. In after-years, when
adviser of the Queen and oracle of the Church in France, he loved to recount
how, in his youth, he had guarded his father’s pigs. Soon after his ordination,
he was captured by Corsairs, and carried into Barbary. He converted his
renegade master, and escaped with him to France. Appointed chaplain-general of
the galleys of France, his tender charity brought hope into those prisons where
hitherto despair had reigned. A mother mourned her imprisoned son. Vincent put
on his chains and took his place at the oar, and gave him to his mother. His
charity embraced the poor, young and old, provinces desolated by civil war,
Christians enslaved by the infidel. The poor man, ignorant and degraded, was to
him the image of Him who became as “a leper and no man.” “Turn the medal,” he
said, “and you then will see Jesus Christ.” He went through the streets of
Paris at night, seeking the children who were left there to die. Once robbers
rushed upon him, thinking he carried a treasure, but when he opened his cloak,
they recognized him and his burden, and fell at his feet. Not only was Saint
Vincent the saviour of the poor, but also of the rich, for he taught them to do
works of mercy. When the work for the foundlings was in danger of failing from
want of funds, he assembled the ladies of the Association of Charity. He bade
his most fervent daughters be present to give the spur to the others. Then he
said, “Compassion and charity have made you adopt these little creatures as your
children. You have been their mothers according to grace, when their own
mothers abandoned them. Cease to be their mothers, that you may become their
judges; their life and death are in your hands. I shall now take your votes: it
is time to pronounce sentence.” The tears of the assembly were his only answer,
and the work was continued. The Society of Saint Vincent, the Priests of the
Mission, and 25,000 Sisters of Charity still comfort the afflicted with the
charity of Saint Vincent of Paul. He died A.D. 1660.
Reflection – Most people who profess piety ask
advice of directors about their prayers and spiritual exercises. Few inquire
whether they are not in danger of damnation from neglect of works of charity.
MLA Citation
John Dawson Gilmary Shea. “Saint Vincent of
Paul”. Pictorial Lives of the Saints, 1922. CatholicSaints.Info.
12 December 2018. Web. 27 September 2020.
<https://catholicsaints.info/pictorial-lives-of-the-saints-saint-vincent-of-paul/>
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/pictorial-lives-of-the-saints-saint-vincent-of-paul/
Saint Vincent de Paul, by Frank
Murphy
It is the dawn of
the seventeenth Century and it is Marseilles!
Picture, then, the quayside; the blue waters of the
Mediterranean lapping at the steps and rocking gently the boats. There is
bustle at the quay, for a ship is about to sail. A little ship, it is true, for
it goes but a day’s journey; but still, it is a ship, and it goes a-sailing, so
there is bustle. A young Gascon steps down the cobbles, talking volubly with a
chance friend, whom he has persuaded to accompany him to Narbonne, across the
water.
The friend, it happens, is a priest. We see that from
his black cassock. Rather worn it is, and, as the young Gascon thinks, in
places a trifle shabby. Timid, too, of the sea he is, but so fair it is this
day that he makes the journey.
Vincent, for that is the young priest’s name, would
soon have done with reverie as the shore receded into the haze. He would say
his prayers and talk to the sailors and listen to the prattle of his Gascon
companion. A calm crossing, and Narbonne should be made in good time.
But now a new interest arises. A ship coming up
a-port. Too far distant at first to distinguish, but gradually to the eyes of
the watchers it breaks into a trio of brigantines. Interest changes to anxiety,
for they are of a foreign figure. And then, a sudden chill. Turkish pirates,
and three to one. There are sharp orders, a running to and fro, feverish
preparation for battle. The few weapons are handed out; there is hurried
confession in the face of death. The ship is boarded. “Ruffians, worse than
tigers,” as Vincent tells us, swarm the deck. The crew put up a gallant fight.
The captain kills one of the pirate chiefs, and is himself cut into “a hundred
pieces.” Others are killed, all the rest wounded, Vincent included. For them
the slave market, and so, with wounds roughly bandaged, they are carried off to
Barbary on the Tunisian coast.
There they are sold. They are led through the streets
of Tunis to the market-place. Merchants open the mouths and look at the teeth,
prod the ribs, and make the captives walk, trot and run, carry loads and
wrestle.
Vincent de Paul is sold. A succession of masters, one
an old alchemist, for whom Vincent stokes furnaces; another is a renegade from
the Faith.
Finally, Vincent escapes in a skiff, carrying with him
a memory of irons that not only cut into the flesh, but which leave a festering
mark upon a man’s soul.
Vincent finds himself again in France, in a poor
lodging under the shadow of a Hospital. He visits the sick, ministering to
their spiritual and bodily needs, and holding the dying in his arms. Obscurely
he lives, yet his virtue cannot remain hidden. Hard by the hospital are the
terraced gardens round the palace of the former Queen Margot, who strives to
live down the scandals of her past. But she maintains a court, and into its
brilliance Vincent is introduced as chaplain by her secretary. Here is all the
fastidious splendour of costume. Vincent must have thought of the rags upon his
poor. Here, too, the glitter of jewels — not a fair contrast to the ulcers of
the leg iron. Luxury for lap-dogs, perfume in plenty for poodles, and blue-birds
in gilt cages! Could Vincent forget the lashing of backs and the stench of
prisons? Strange company for Saint Vincent de Paul, you might say. But it has
its lessons. He makes a vow to devote his life to the poor, and we find him
shortly with a few villagers for a flock.
But he is recalled. Again that contrast which marks
his life. Not to the court once more, but to the mansion of Philip de Gondi,
General of the Galleys. Vincent’s work is to care, mainly, for the education of
the young de Gondis. Madame de Gondi herself, renowned for her beauty, her
elegance and her wit, who shines among the stars of the fashionable firmament,
seeks for the spiritual direction of the saintly tutor.
But Vincent flees. He steals quietly to the town of
Chatillon. A dreadful spot! No priest worthy of the name to minister to its
people; filthy, unhealthy, its houses fallen into ruin, an asylum and lurking
place for the robber and the footpad. Passion and outrage stalk the streets. To
it, Vincent and a companion give example of a regular life, according to the
laws of God. The Sacraments are administered, the village church restored, the
gospel preached, and in less than a year chaos gives way to order.
In his pastoral work at Chatillon, Vincent reflects
upon what might be done further afield. We find him again with the de Gondis,
but with a purpose. To Madame de Gondi he tells his ambition. She agrees to
assist him. Confraternities, associations, must be established, that assistance
be given to the needy. Bodies and souls must be fed.
The confraternities are established, of women at
first. Madame de Gondi and other women of wealth, wives of merchants and of
soldiers, ladies of court and servant girls walk the sewers of Paris, kneel by
the pallets of the sick poor, feed the hungry, scrub the floors. Silver plate
is sold that the hungry might eat, and that running sores be stemmed. Carriages
are abandoned that rough straw give way to a decent sick-bed. Confraternities
of men are set up also; homes for the aged, where they may rest, and workshops
for the young, where they may learn a trade. In underground cellars, in leaking
attics, in dark alleys moves Vincent de Paul, and where he is not, there are
his confraternities ‘himself again’. He finds his way into the hospitals.
Disease rages; filthy, obstructed sewers propagate infection. No wonder men
sicken. But where are they taken? We have a description.
“Tumbled-down, tottering beds, dirty bed clothes
riddled with holes, sticky with spittle and slobber, harder than sailcloth from
dirt and dust; broken pots that were never scoured; the timber infested with
bugs; foul, cast-off dressings strewn in all directions, oozing out on the
floor. The wounded, pregnant women, and those who had just been delivered,
small-pox cases, and those afflicted with scurvy were all heaped together,
close to the Mortuary chamber and dissecting-room. Beds intended to hold two
contained six, piled together, attacked by fearful and various diseases, which
they communicated to each other.”
In these ghastly scenes is Vincent, planning for his
poor.
He thought much about the hospitals, but he had still
another thought, a memory. He remembered that de Gondi was General of the
Galleys, and so, in the deep, underground cellars, green-coated with slime, he
visits his fellow-beings, chained in their living tombs. He washes their sores
and brushes off the vermin. He sees the scars upon the heads of those who have
tried to end their earthly misery by dashing out their poor brains against the
stones. He sees the rats and the spiders running and crawling over these ghosts
of human beings.
Vincent goes to de Gondi. Vincent is authorised to
take what means he thinks fit to improve the lot of the unhappy convicts. He
acquires a special home for them wherein he can not only look after them, but
raise, educate and transform them. “No more lost souls in the next world,” he
says, “or miserable ones in this.” At last, by Royal assent, he is given
jurisdiction over the convicts not only of Paris, but of the whole kingdom. His
convicts! He goes to the galleys.
No space here to tell of the horrors of the
galley-slaves, or of Vincent’s care for them. You must read it for yourself.
The number of priests who wish to help Vincent in his work leads to the
realisation of another of his dreams, the foundation of a community. A few at
first, then numbers, until their small house is inadequate. The old leper
hospital of Saint Lazarus, which shelters lepers no longer, is offered them. In
1632, Vincent takes possession. Hence, his missionaries are known as Lazarists.
Saint Lazare Hospital becomes famous overnight. Crowds flock to it. The centre
of Vincent’s work, it hums with activity. It holds assistance to the poor,
counsel for the troubled, retreat for the weary, conferences for the clergy,
and Christianity for the world. Twenty five houses of the new institute are
founded in Vincent’s lifetime. Additions are made to Saint Lazare, which,
though plundered by the Revolution, remain, though turned by the whirligig of
irony into convict cells.
His congregation of men set up, Vincent founds a
congregation of women, the famous Daughters of Charity, they of the quaint
cornette. The sick are soothed by kindly hands; into orphanages and schools,
the Daughters of Charity gather the little children. Much work done, but for
Vincent not enough. What of children stifled at birth, thrown from the window,
flung to the rats, or deformed into monstrosities, that they might earn a
horrible livelihood for their torturers!
A foundling hospital then! It is established. But, how
to get the children! If they are called foundlings, it is Vincent who does the
finding. Slipping out by night from Saint Lazare into the dark streets of
Paris, that figure, familiar to the lurking cut-throat and garrotter by the
unusual, large cloak which it wears, makes its way along the narrow pavements
and crooked alleys. Quarter after quarter he searches, picking up from the
rubbish heap and the dunghill, from the gutter and the sewer the newborn,
gasping its small breath in the fetid air. Back to Saint Lazare he goes, the
folds of his great cloak wrapped warmly about him, back to the watchers who
wait to take from his arms the struggling wisps of humanity and fan into life
the faint flicker that remains.
Back to a few hours of sleep for the weary body of
Saint Vincent de Paul. Sleep he has need of, but it is little rest. He suffers
torture in his limbs, racked by continuous activity. Age creeps on, hand in
hand with suffering, but he works to the last. At his poor desk, on his knees
in prayer, thumbing his worn breviary, this is his respite. And so, on the 27th
of September 1660, sitting in his chair, a crucifix at his lips, quietly he
dies.
Saint Lazare is his tomb. About it Paris,
grief-stricken, mourns the loss of the Father of the Poor. It becomes a place
of pilgrimage, where strong men come to pray. Yet by that odd irony, which we
see again today, the resting place of him who has earned his rest by a life for
the people, is shaken by the Revolution. Twice is Saint Lazare plundered by the
mob; the blood of its priests spilt upon its stones. History repeats itself.
They shout, “Liberty!” and rage against the Truth, which alone can make men
free, they yell, “Equality!” and fetter those who have lived in the conviction
that men are equal. They cry, “Fraternity!” and trample the confraternities of
Saint Vincent de Paul.
But their cries are but cries, and cries are lost in
the wind.
A saint-endures, for sanctity is of God. Nothing else
stands!
– from the booklet Five
Figures of the Faith, by Frank Murphy; published by the Australian
Catholic Truth Society in 1937
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-vincent-de-paul-by-frank-murphy/
Saint Vincent de Paul rooms at en:Wangaratta, Victoria
Stories of the Saints for Children –
Saint Vincent de Paul
In the humble
little farm-house of a village in the south of France, Vincent de Paul was
born, in the year 1576. They were six children in all, and, like
the rest, Vincent had to look after the sheep, carry grain to the mill, and
help his parents in many ways. But as he grew older, he showed such signs of
talent that his father, with some difficulty, placed him at school in Acqs,
where he made such progress that he was afterwards engaged as tutor to the
little sons of a gentleman there, whilst he still continued many of his own
studies.
Vincent went next to Toulouse, where he remain seven
years, and was then ordained a priest, but where he said his first Mass is not
known; all that he tells is, that he was obliged to do so in a private chapel,
because the sense of his own unworthiness overwhelmed him with timidity. After
this he was appointed to a parish, but as another claimed the place Vincent
gave it up, and went to live near Toulouse, where he received several pupils,
who grew very warmly attached to him. Business took him from here to Bordeaux,
and on his return by sea he was captured by some African pirates, and taken as
a prisoner to Tunis, where he was exposed for sale. A fisherman bought Vincent,
and sold him again, to a chemist, who treated him very kindly, and. tried to
persuade him to turn to the same occupation, promising to bequeath him his
money. But the Saint only desired to regain his liberty, and every day implored
the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, in whom he placed his trust, that he
should be delivered.
However, at the death of his owner, Vincent was again
sold to a man who had three wives, and one of these would go and watch him
digging in the fields, and ask him questions about the Christian’s God. At last
she wanted him to sing, and when he began the Salve Regina, she listened with
great delight. It came out that the husband had been a Christian, but turned
from his faith, and, impressed by what she heard from Vincent, this Turkish
wife reproached him for giving up such a beautiful religion, and her words took
such an effect upon him that he escaped with his slave to France, where he was reconciled
to the Church, while Vincent made his way to Rome. From Rome he travelled to
Paris; where he was received at the royal palace for a time, and then sought
lodgings in another quarter of the city.
Whilst staying there, a magistrate accused Vincent of
robbing him of a large sum of money, and drove him from the room which they
shared, declaring him publicly to be a rogue and thief; he even carried his
complaint to the superior of the Oratorians, whom Vincent was visiting, and
there accused him of this robbery. In spite of all this, the Saint was calm and
quiet, never seeking to excuse himself, but simply replying, “God knows the
truth.”
He teaches us in this a beautiful lesson of patience
under false accusations, and though he was content to be suspected of this
wrong, God brought his innocence to light some years later, and then the
magistrate begged most humbly to receive his pardon.
About this time Vipcent, by the advice of his
director, gave up the many high offices which were open to him, to be a priest
in the parish of Clichy. Here he laboured unwearyingly amongst his people –
never in a hurry, never too busy to have a kind word for those who needed it,
and yet his duties were constant. God gave him a wonderful power of
understanding the different characters of those with whom he had to deal, so
that he could win the timid by his gentleness, as well as repress the bold by
his severe words.
For three years Saint Vincent pursued this way of
life, and then, by the advice of his director, gave up his much-beloved work
amongst the poor of Christ to be chaplain and tutor to a family of high
position. But, staying there, lie lived as much as possible in retirement, and
under his beautiful influence the whole family became pious and devoted to good
works.
But the heart of this holy man was drawn to labour
amongst the poor, and whenever the family went to their country residence, he
set about instructing and catechizing the ignorant, and hearing confessions, in
which he had very great success. For a few months Vincent left his position of
chaplain, and during that absence the first thought of founding the Order of
Charity occurred to him.
A pious lady, named Louisa de Marillac, asked the
Saint to direct her in charitable employments, and he found others who willingly
joined her in the duties of visiting the sick and relieving the poor. This was
the first beginning of the congregation of the Sisters of Charity, which has
now spread to every part of the Christian world, for the assistance of all who
suffer, and the instruction of the ignorant.
The next work of kindness which Saint Vincent
attempted was amongst the galley slaves, having obtained the office of their
chaplain from the king, Louis XIII. When he paid his first visit, he was
shocked by the suffering in which he found them; and, what was still more
terrible to him was the foul language which was heard amongst the prisoners.
But he did not shrink from these wretched creatures. To him they were souls for
whom Jesus had shed His precious Blood, souls whom He loved so dearly that it
was worth the work of a lifetime to reclaim even one from sin. So, by sweet
persuasive words he won hearts which had been hardened by punishment, and those
who had cursed and blasphemed, learned to kneel humbly as earnest prayers came
from the lips ‘they reverenced. For some time Vincent visited these prisoners
daily, instructing and preparing them for the Sacraments, and when he was
obliged to be absent he placed some of his friends in charge of them.
During this period the Saint once met with a man who
was in a state of despair at the thought of the misery of his family during his
separation from them, upon which Vincent went to the chief authority, offering
to take this prisoner’s place if he could be released. The offer was accepted,
and for several weeks the good man wore the chains of the galley slave, until
the affair was discovered by his absence.
Another of Saint Vincent’s great works was the
foundation of a hospital for poor deserted infants, which he thought of through
finding a little child left in the cold, snowy streets one night without a
home, whom he picked up and carried to some charitable ladies, who assisted him
in forming a place for such cases to be received.
The principal undertaking of the holy Vincent’s life
was not begun until he was forty years of age – this was the congregation of
the Mission. It began with himself and two others, who went from village to
village catechizing, preaching, and hearing confessions; and God blessed their
work, so that other priests came to join them, and the prior of a house in
Paris, called “Saint Lazarus,” resigned his possessions to the use of these
humble missioners. At first Vincent was frightened at the thought of being
established at the priory. In his humility he deemed it far above hira and his
brethren, and it was more than a year before the offer was accepted and the
congregation removed there. Immediately some disputes and opposition were
aroused, but they soon came to an end, and Vincent remained in possession of
the priory of Saint Lazarus.
Meanwhile Louisa de Marillac, or “Madame Le Gras,” was
toiling on in works of mercy amongst the poor surrounding her, clothing the
destitute, nursing the sick, gathering little ignorant children around her,
assisted by a company of devout women, who busied themselves thus in different
towns and villages. Then Saint Vincent formed a little community under her
control, which became dear to all hearts from their self-denying love and
untiring zeal. As time went on, they began to receive orphans under their
charge, and attend hospitals and sick convicts. Twenty-eight of these houses
were founded in Paris alone during the Saints life, and the good work spread
throughout France and even to Poland.
It would not be possible to describe all the wise and
holy works of Vincent’s commencement. His was a long life, all given to God and
his fellow-creatures, and during its close he preached more powerfully by his
patient sufferings than even by his fervent words. For some years he was not
able to walk, but he afterwards lost the use of his limbs, so that he could no
longer stand at the altar. What a sacrifice this was could be known only to
God, but his consolation was to hear Mass and communicate daily. Those who went
to see him found him always cheerful and uncomplaining, directing those works
of charity which he could no longer actively perform. Every morning after Mass,
he would repeat the prayers of the Church for the dying, and thus he awaited
the call of his Lord. On the 26th of September, 1660, he was able to hear Mass
and receive Communion, but he had scarcely been carried back before he fell
into a heavy sleep, from which he was roused by the visit of the doctor, who
pronounced him dying.
Then the priests of the Mission gathered round and
besought his blessing, and Vincent raised his hand, beginning the words of
benediction, but his voice failed, and he sank back exhausted. That night he
received Extreme Unction, and early in the morning of the 27th September he
died in the chair from which he had not been removed for twenty-four hours, so
peacefully that he only seemed asleep. For nearly eighty-five years he had
lived in the world, bearing its trials, fulfilling its duties – now the time
for rest and reward had come.
Many hearts grieved when they heard that the grave had
closed over Vincent de Paul. But his work did not die with him; it lives still
in his sons, who preach the faith of Christ amongst the heathen in far-off
regions; in his daughters, who serve Jesus in the persons of His poor; and
every Catholic heart blesses the honoured name of the simple, humble Saint who
worked wonders through the love of souls which he had learned at the foot of
the crucifix, and sinking deeply within his heart, kindled there the holy fire
which made him the great apostle of charity to the world.
– from Stories of the
Saints for Children, by Mary F Seymour
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/stories-of-the-saints-for-children-saint-vincent-de-paul/
Roma, san Vincenzo de Paoli a Ripa
The Founder of Hospitals, by Leonora
Blanche Lang
The man whose name
has for three hundred years been bound up with the hospitals and nursing orders
of France was born, in 1576, in the little village of Poy, not far from the
Pyrenees. He had three brothers and two sisters, and when they
were big enough they all went to work on their father’s small farm. Vincent,
who was the third son, was sent to keep the sheep. This was considered the
easiest task to which a child could be put, and Vincent liked wandering after
his flock through the green meadows or sitting under a tree while they were
feeding, watching the shadows of the clouds on the distant mountains. When he grew
older a younger brother took his place, and Vincent helped to sow the corn, to
toss the hay, and to chop the wood for the winter. His father, Guillaume de
Paul, was a good man and saw that his children went regularly to church, and
were not behindhand in doing anything they could for a poor or sick neighbour;
but of the whole six, none was so often found on his knees or so ready to carry
some of his own food to his suffering friends as Vincent.
You ought to send that boy to school, said the cure of
the parish one day to the farmer. Perhaps who knows? he may by and by become a
priest.
Yes, father, I have been thinking of that, answered
Guillaume; and before many weeks had passed, Vincent’s life in the fields was a
thing of the past, and he was being taught to read and write, to study Latin,
and all that had to do with religion, at the monastery of the Cordeliers in the
town of Acqs. He loved his lessons and worked harder than any boy hi the
school, but, happy though he was, he must sometimes have longed for his old
home and a ramble with his brothers and sisters in the meadows of Poy.
In four years his masters declared that he now knew
enough to be able to earn his own living, and obtained for him a place as tutor
to the children of Monsieur de Commet, a lawyer in Acqs. His pupils were very
young, and he had a good deal of time to himself, and this he spent in the
study of religious books, for by this time he had resolved to be a priest. At
twenty he bade farewell to Monsieur de Commet, and set out for Toulouse, where
after two years he was ordained deacon, and later entered the priesthood. But
he did not give up his whole life to praying either in church or in his cell.
As of old he went about among the sick, hearing their troubles both of mind and
body, and easing both when he was able. Thus he grew to know their needs in a
way he could never have done had he always remained within the walls of a
monastery.
The young priest’s life flowed on peacefully for the
next five years, and then a startling adventure befell him. An old friend of
his died at Marseilles, and Vincent received news that he had been left in the
will a sum of fifteen hundred livres, which in those days was a considerable
deal of money. Vincent’s heart was full of gratitude. What could he not do now
to help his poor people. And he began to plan all the things the legacy would
buy till it struck him with a laugh that ten times the amount could hardly get
him all he wanted. Besides, it was not yet in his possession, and with that
reflection he set about his preparations for his journey to Marseilles.
He probably went the greater part of the way on foot,
and it must have taken him about as long as it would take us to go to India.
But he was a man who had his eyes about him, and the country which he passed
through was alive with the history he had read. Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, and
the scandal, now two hundred years old, of the two popes, would be brought to
his mind by the very names of the towns where he rested and the rivers which he
crossed, but at length they were all left behind, and Marseilles was reached.
His business was soon done, and with the money in his
pocket he was ready to begin his long walk back to Toulouse, when he received
an invitation from a friend of the lawyer’s to go in his vessel by sea to
Narbonne, which would cut off a large corner. He gladly accepted and went on
board at once; but the ship was hardly out of sight of Marseilles when three
African vessels, such as then haunted the Mediterranean, bore down upon them
and opened fire. The French were powerless to resist, and one and all refused
to surrender, which so increased the fury of the Mohammedans that they killed
three of the crew and wounded the rest. Vincent himself had an arm pierced by
an arrow, and though it was not poisoned, it was many years before the pain it
caused ceased to trouble him. The Infidels boarded the ship, and, chaining
their prisoners together, coasted about for another week, attacking wherever
they thought they had a chance of success, and it was not until they had
collected as much booty as the vessel could carry that they returned to Africa.
Vincent and his fellow-captors had all this while been
cherishing the hope that, once landed on the coast of Tunis, the French
authorities would hear of their misfortunes and come to their aid. But the
Mohammedan captain had foreseen the possibility of this and took measures to
prevent it by declaring that the prisoners had been taken on a Spanish ship.
Heavy were their hearts when they learned what had befallen them, and Vincent
needed all his faith and patience to keep the rest from despair. The following
day they were dressed as slaves and marched through the principal streets of
Tunis five or six times hi case anyone should wish to purchase them. Suffering from
wounds though they were, they all felt that it was worth any pain to get out of
the hold of the ship and to see life moving around them once more. But after
awhile it became clear that the strength of many was failing, and the captain
not wishing to damage his goods, ordered them back to the ship where they were
given food and wine, so that any possible buyers who might appear next day
should not expect them to die on their hands.
Early next morning several small boats could be seen
putting out from the shore, and one by one the intending purchasers scrambled
up the side of the vessel. They passed down the row of captives drawn up to
receive them; pinched their sides to find if they had any flesh on their bones,
felt their muscles, looked at their teeth, and finally made them run up and
down to see if they were strong enough to work. If the blood of the poor
wretches stirred under this treatment they dared not show it, and Vincent had
so trained his thoughts that he hardly knew the humiliation to which he was
subjected. A master was soon found for him in a fisherman, who wanted a man to
help him with his boat. The fisherman, as far as we know, treated his slave
quite kindly; but when he discovered that directly the wind rose the young man
became hope lessly ill, he repented of his bargain, and sold him as soon as he
could to an old chemist, one of the many who had wasted his life in seeking the
Philosopher’s Stone. The chemist took a great fancy to the French priest and
offered to leave him all his money and teach him the secrets of his science if
he would abandon Christianity and become a follower of Mohammed, terms which,
needless to say, Vincent refused with horror. Most people would speedily have
seen the hopelessness of this undertaking, but the old chemist was very
obstinate, and died at the end of a year without being able to natter himself
that he had made a convert of his Christian slave.
The chemist’s possessions passed to his nephew, and
with them, of course, Father Vincent. The priest bore his captivity cheerfully,
and did not vex his soul as to his future lot. The life of a slave had been
sent him to bear, and he must bear it contentedly whatever happened; and so he
did, and his patience and ready obedience gained him the favour of his masters.
Very soon he had a new one to serve, for not long
after the chemist’s death he was sold to a man who had been born a Christian
and a native of Savoy, but had adopted the religion of Mohammed for worldly
advantages. There were many of these renegades in the Turkish service during
the sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, and nearly all of them were men of
talent and rose high. Vincent de Paul’s master had, after the Turkish manner,
married three wives, and one of them, a Turk by birth and religion, hated the life
of the town where she was shut up most of the day in the women’s apartments,
and went, whenever she could, to her husband’s farm in the country, where
Vincent was working. It was a barren place on a mountain side, where the sun
beat even more fiercely than in Tunis; but at least she was able to wander in
the early mornings and cool evenings about the garden, which had been made with
much care and toil. Here she met the slave, always busy watering plants,
trimming shrubs, sowing seeds, and generally singing to himself in an unknown
tongue. He looked so different from the sad or sullen men she was used to see
that she began to wonder who he was and where he came from, and one day she
stopped to ask him how he happened to be there. By this time Vincent had
learned enough Arabic to be able to talk, and in answer to her questions, told
her of his boyhood in Gascony, and how he had come to be a priest.
A priest! What is that? she said.
And he explained, and little by little he taught her
the doctrines and the customs of the Christian faith.
Is that what you sing about? she asked again. I should
like to hear some of your songs, and Vincent chanted to her By the waters of
Babylon, feeling, indeed, that he was singing the Lord’s songs in a strange
land. And day by day the Turkish woman went away, and thought over all she had
heard, till one evening her husband rode over to see her, and she made up her
mind to speak to him about something that puzzled her greatly.
I have been talking to your white slave that works in
the garden about his religion the religion which was once yours. It seems full
of good things and so is he. You need never watch him as you do the other men,
and the overseer has not had to beat him once. Why, then, did you give up that
religion for another? In that, my lord, you did not well.
The renegade was silent, but in his heart he wondered
if, indeed, he had done well to sell his soul for that which had given him no
peace. He, too, would talk to that Christian slave, and hear if he still might
retrace his steps, though he knew that if he was discovered death awaited the
Mohammedan who changed his faith. But his eyes having been opened he could rest
no more, and arranged that he and Vincent should disguise them selves and make
for the coast, and sail in a small boat to France. As the boat was so tiny that
the slightest gale of wind would capsize it, it seems strange that they did not
steer to Sicily, and thence journey to Rome; but instead they directed their
course towards France, and on June 28, 1607, they stepped on shore on one of
those long, narrow spits of land which run out into the sea from the little
walled town of Aigues-Mortes. Vincent drew a long breath as after two years
captivity he trod on French soil again. But he knew how eager his companion was
to feel himself once more a Christian, so they only waited one day to rest, and
started early the next morning through the flowery fields to the old city of
Avignon. Here he made confession of his faults to the Pope’s legate himself,
and was admitted back into the Christian religion. The following year he went
with Father Vincent to Rome, and entered a monastery of nursing brothers, who
went about to the different hospitals attending the sick and poor.
It is very likely that it was Father Vincent’s
influence that led him to take up this special work, to which we must now leave
him, for on the priest’s return to Paris, he found a lodging in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, close to the Hopital de la Charité the constant object of his
care for some months.
From Paris he turned south again towards his own
country, but when near Bordeaux he was accused by a judge, who was living in
the same house, of a theft of four hundred crowns. The robbery was due to the
judge’s own carelessness in going out with so large a sum upon him, but this did
not strike him; and though, of course, he could prove nothing, he lost no
opportunity of repeating the falsehood to everyone he met. After denying the
story Vincent let the matter drop, and went quietly about his own work, and, at
the end of six years, his innocence was established. A man of the town was
arrested on some charge and thrown into prison. Here, filled with remorse, the
thief sent for this very judge, and confessed that it was he who had robbed him
as he was passing along the street. Bitterly ashamed of his conduct, the judge,
on his part, proclaimed the facts, and thus Vincent was justified in the belief
that, as he had said from the beginning, God would proclaim the truth when He
thought good.
Humble and unobtrusive as he was, the priest’s fame
had reached far, and he was pressed by one of the most powerful of French
churchmen to accept the care of a village on the outskirts of Paris. While
there he worked hard for the bodies and souls of his people, till the parish
which seems to have been some what neglected was completely changed. Then a
post of another kind was offered him, and though he would much rather have
remained where he was, he would not disobey his superiors.
Sadly he bade his people farewell and went to educate
the children of the Comte de Joigny, General of the French galleys. But he was
only there a few months, during which his time was as much occupied in
preaching to the peasants, by the desire of Madame de Joigny, as in teaching
her children. Great was the good lady’s sorrow when Vincent was snatched away
on a mission to the inhabitants of a wild and ignorant part of France, though
she gave him a considerable amount of money for their benefit. Later she made
him head of a mission-house, founded and endowed by herself and her husband for
the benefit of their own people, so that their poor tenants and peasants might
never be in the state in which they had been discovered by the priest when he
first visited and came to Joigny.
After awhile Vincent returned to the house of the
Joignys, where he chiefly lived when he was not absent on special missions.
The earliest of all the miserable and helpless classes
of beings to attract the attention of Father Vincent were the galley-slaves,
heretics sometimes, and generally the lowest sort of criminals, whose lives
were spent in every kind of iniquity. However wicked they might have been
before they were chained together in the darkness of the galleys, or thrown
together in the horrible prisons (which must have killed many of the weaker
ones), they were for the most part far worse when they came out, from what they
had learned from each other.
Once criminals, they must always be criminals, said
the world, and turned its back on them, but Vincent de Paul thought otherwise.
The first thing he did on returning to the house of their General, the Comte de
Joigny, was to visit these rough men scattered about in the prisons of Paris.
They were riot easy to make friends with, these galley-slaves, and were
suspicious of kind words and deeds, because they had never known them; and the
priest soon understood that if he wished to make an impression on them, he must
collect them all under one roof where he could see them daily, and begin by
caring for their bodily comforts. So, after obtaining leave from Monsieur de
Gondi the Archbishop of Paris, and brother of the Comte de “Joigny, he
collected subscriptions, found a house, and soon, for the first time in their
lives, the galley-slaves knew what it was to feel clean and to have real beds
to sleep in, instead of damp and dirty straw, if not stone floors. Little by
little they were won over; the few rules made by the priest were broken more
and more seldom, and when he felt he had gained their confidence he told them a
few simple things about their souls.
The archbishop looked on with amazement. Obedience
from the worst and most lawless of men, he would never have believed it! But
there it was, an undoubted fact, and the archbishop craved an audience of the
king, Louis XIII, in order to tell him the marvellous tale, and to ask his
permission to establish similar houses all over the country. The king, who was
not easy to interest, listened eagerly to Gondi’s words, and in February 1619
he issued an edict, nominating Father Vincent de Paul royal almoner of the
galleys of France.
His new post compelled Vincent to travel constantly,
and in 1622 he set out for Marseilles to examine into the condition of the
large number of convicts of all sorts in the city. The better to learn the
truth he avoided giving his real name, but he went into all the prisons, and
even, it is said, took the place of one of the most wretched among the
criminals and was loaded with chains in his stead. That may not be true, but at
any rate the story shows what was felt about him, and he did everything
possible to inspire their gaolers with pity and to ensure the prisoners being
kindly treated. When they were ill besides, their state was more dreadful
still, and it was then that he formed the plan of having a hospital for the
galley-slaves, though he was not able to carry it out for many years.
The Comtesse de Joigny died in June 1625, two months
after her mission-house was opened. Father Vincent then went to live with his
priests, the Lazarists, as they came to be called, where, besides teaching and
preaching both in the country and at home, they formed a society for looking
after the sick and poor in every parish. Girls were educated by the Association
of the Dames de la Croix the Ladies of the Cross and the older women served in
the hospitals in Paris, notably in the largest of all, the Hotel Dieu. In
addition to those already in existence, through Vincent’s influence and under
his direction, were founded the hospitals of Pity, of Bicetre, of the
Salpetriere, and the world-famous Foundling Hospital or Enfants-Trouves. These
deserted babies, usually put hastily down at the door of a church or of some
public place, died by hundreds. Some charitable ladies did what they could by
adopting a few, but this only caused them to feel still more terribly the dreadful
fate of the rest. Vincent appealed for help to the queen, Anne of Austria, and
she persuaded the king to add 12,000 livres to the amount privately subscribed
by the friends of the priest, and in the end he made over to them some
buildings near the forest of Bicetre. But the air was too keen for the poor
little creatures, or at any rate it was thought so for in those days fresh air
was considered deadly poison and they were brought to the Faubourg, Saint
Lazare in Paris, and entrusted to the care of twelve ladies till two houses
could be got ready for them.
Once set on foot the hospital of the Enfants-Trouves
was never allowed to drop, and always reckoned the Kings of France among its
supporters.
It was enough for a man to be poor and needy for him
to excite the sympathy of Vincent de Paul, and when he happened to be old also
the priest felt that he had a double claim. Almshouses, as we should call them,
soon followed the hospitals; while the women were placed under the protection
of Mademoiselle le Gras, foundress of the Order of Les Filles de la Charite the
Daughters of Charity a society which also under took the education of the
foundlings.
When one reads of all the work done by Father Vincent
one feels as if each of his days had a hundred hours instead of twenty-four.
The various institutions he established, many of which flourished vigorously
till a few years ago, when they were put down by the State, were always under
his eye and in his thoughts. Nothing was beyond his help in any direction.
While, on the one hand, he was collecting immense sums of money in Paris it is
said to amount to 80,000 for the people of Lorraine who had been ruined by the
wars, and were in the most miserable state, on the other he was trying to
revive in the clergy the love of their religion. This was perhaps the harder
task of the two, for ambition and desire for wealth filled the hearts of many
of the greater ecclesiastics and shut out everything else. But the king and the
queen stood by him, and after Louis XIII’s death, in 1642, when Anne of Austria
became regent, she made him a member of the Council of Conscience, and never
gave away a bishopric or an important benefice without first consulting him.
But strong though he was by nature, the life of
constant activity of mind and body, which Vincent de Paul had led for sixty
years, wore him out at last. At the age of eighty-four a sort of low fever
seized him, and he had no longer power to fight against it, though he still
rose at four every morning to say mass, and spent the rest of the day in prayer
and hi teaching those who gathered round him. He knew he was dying fast,
perhaps he was glad to know it, and in September 1660 the end came. His work
was done. The fire of time has tried it, of what sort it is, and we may feel
sure that it abides, as Saint Paul says, on its foundation, and that when the
day comes he shall receive a reward.
– text and illustrations from The
Book of Saints and Heroes, by Leonora Blanche Lang, 1912
SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/the-founder-of-hospitals-by-leonora-blanche-lang/
San Vincenzo de' Paoli Sacerdote e fondatore
Pouy, Guascogna, Francia, 1581 - Parigi, Francia, 27
settembre 1660
Nato a Pouy in Guascogna il 24 aprile 1581 e fu
ordinato sacerdote a 19 anni. Nel 1605 mentre viaggiava da Marsiglia a Narbona
fu fatto prigioniero dai pirati turchi e venduto come schiavo a Tunisi. Venne
liberato dal suo stesso «padrone», che convertì. Da questa esperienza
nacque in lui il desiderio di recare sollievo materiale e spirituale ai
galeotti. Nel 1612 diventò parroco nei pressi di Parigi. Alla sua scuola si
formarono sacerdoti, religiosi e laici che furono gli animatori della Chiesa di
Francia, e la sua voce si rese interprete dei diritti degli umili presso i
potenti. Promosse una forma semplice e popolare di evangelizzazione. Fondò i
Preti della Missione (Lazzaristi) e insieme a santa Luisa de Marillac, le
Figlie della Carità (1633). Diceva ai sacerdoti di S. Lazzaro: «Amiamo Dio,
fratelli miei, ma amiamolo a nostre spese, con la fatica delle nostre braccia,
col sudore del nostro volto». Per lui la regina di Francia inventò il Ministero
della Carità. E da insolito «ministro» organizzò gli aiuti ai poveri su scala
nazionale. Morì a Parigi il 27 settembre 1660 e fu canonizzato nel 1737. (Avvenire)
Patronato: Società caritatevoli
Etimologia: Vincenzo = vittorioso, dal latino
Martirologio Romano: Memoria di san Vincenzo de’
Paoli, sacerdote, che, pieno di spirito sacerdotale, a Parigi si dedicò alla
cura dei poveri, riconoscendo nel volto di ogni sofferente quello del suo
Signore e fondò la Congregazione della Missione, nonché, con la collaborazione
di santa Luisa de Marillac, la Congregazione delle Figlie della Carità, per
provvedere al ripristino dello stile di vita proprio della Chiesa delle
origini, per formare santamente il clero e per assistere i poveri.
«Il cristianesimo dipende dai preti», questa l’idea-forza di san Vincenzo de’ Paoli, idea condivisa dai riformatori cattolici della prima metà del XVII secolo, quando la Controriforma rispose efficacemente al Protestantesimo. San Vincenzo de’ Paoli è l’autentico ritratto di che cosa sia vivere la terza virtù teologale.
Autore: Cristina Siccardi
Affresco di san Vincenzo nella sala conferenze della Biblioteca regionale di Aosta
I suoi resti mortali, rivestiti dai paramenti sacerdotali, sono venerati nella Cappella della Casa Madre dei Vincenziani a Parigi.
È patrono del Madagascar, dei bambini abbandonati, degli orfani, degli infermieri, degli schiavi, dei forzati, dei prigionieri. Leone XIII il 12 maggio 1885 lo proclamò patrono delle Associazioni cattoliche di carità.
Autore: Antonio Borrelli
SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/24600
Écrits et correspondances de Saint Vincent de Paul
; Biographies de Saint Vincent de Paul et de Sainte Louise de
Marillac : http://jesusmarie.free.fr/vincent_de_paul.html
Saint
Vincent de Paul, A Hunter of Souls, by Father N S Rossiter : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-vincent-de-paul-a-hunter-of-souls-by-father-n-s-rossiter/
Life
of Saint Vincent de Paul, by Mother Frances Alice Monica Forbes, RSCJ : https://catholicsaints.info/life-of-saint-vincent-de-paul/
