Vigils Reading – St Vincent de Paul

ST VINCENT DE PAUL

From the writing of John P McGowan

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St Vincent de Paul has been proclaimed the “Universal Patron of Charity.”

If the changes which he effected in the domain of charity were so radical as to

merit him this title, then we are forced to conclude that the ideas that moved

him were equally as radical. [In this,] he has contributed much to what has been

called the devotional revolution of the Counter-Reformation—the renewed

veneration for the Incarnate Word…

When the Saint arrived in Paris in 1608, after his varied and adventurous

career, he was twenty-eight. Almost immediately, he placed himself under the

direction of Father, later Cardinal, de Bérulle, an eminent ecclesiastic to whom

all the priests of Paris who aspired to a higher degree of perfection instinctively

turned for guidance… De Bérulle maintained that God is the center about which

all religious life should turn.

Spiritual thought had for too long a time preferred to adopt the…

“reformation of self”— the planting of virtues and the uprooting of vices —as the

end of perfection. This made for preoccupation with self and led to an

exaggerated individualism. De Bérulle restored the virtue of religion to its pre-

eminent place by laying down as the cornerstone of his doctrine the principle

that the greatness and majesty of God must be recognized before everything

else, even one’s salvation…

The second principle of this doctrine is that God can only be fittingly

worshiped in the Incarnate Word. The center and bond of all is Christ, God like

the Father, and Man like ourselves, Who united heaven and earth in Himself,

and Who is Himself our Religion. Christ is the great Adorer, the great Sacrificer,

the great High Priest. [What St Vincent did for this doctrine] was reaffirm the

social implications of perfection by insisting that God must be loved in Christ

and that Christ must be loved in all people, and all people [must be loved] in

Him…

To “put on the Spirit of Christ” is in the eyes of St Vincent the primary,

sovereign and all-embracing means of realizing this end. It serves as a guiding

principle by which one can acquire the “Mind of Christ.” St Vincent sees the one

who has put on the “Spirit of Christ” as a christ who will do the work of Christ…

He never tires of teaching that Christ is the Master Whose lessons must be

learned by all who would follow Him…

[St Vincent himself says:] “Our vocation is…to go, not into one parish, or

into one province only, but through the entire earth. For what purpose? To

influence the hearts of all, to do what the Son of God has done; He, Who came to

cast fire on this earth and to overspread it with the flame of His love; what have

we to desire unless His love should burn and consume all?… It is not enough

that I love God, if my neighbor does not also love Him… I ought to love my

neighbor [in order to] cause them to love their most lovable Creator, that by a

return of love they may be inflamed with love of God, who has so loved them as

to deliver His own Son to death for their salvation. This is my obligation.”