Early Life

Vincent de Paul was born the son of a farmer in 1581 at Pouy (now the village of St Vincent de Paul) near Dax in the Gascony region of the South of France. He was ordained a Priest in the year 1600. Only gradually in his thirties did he come to an understanding of how God was calling him.

Ambition was a part of his life as a young priest - the need for a position in the Church to provide security for himself and his family. Yet something happened that caused a change in his life.

Vincent came to acknowledge God's call to serve the poor when he became the pastor of a parish church in 1612. The poor people of the parish of Clichy (just outside Paris, France)  so affected him that he became conscious of a desire to help these abandoned people in the country regain their faith in God and discover their own dignity.

 

Work

On January 25, 1617, the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, Vincent preached a Mission Sermon in the village of Folleville in northern France.  He always regarded this occasion as the beginning of the Congregation of the Mission.  In 1625, at the insistence of a certain Madame de Gondi, he formally set up the Congregation of the Mission, a Community of Priests and Brothers, to give Missions to the poor people in the country and to form Priests in France and elsewhere. This community is known in Australia as the 'Vincentian Fathers and Brothers'.

In 1633 he assisted Louise de Marillac in the founding of the 'Daughters of Charity', a community of women who would live in community without religious habits and who would look after the sick poor. This community is very active in Australia and many other parts of the world today.

During his long life (he died at the age of 79), Vincent organised missions to country people, was heavily involved in the education and formation of Priests, engaged in and organised many charitable activities, and influenced for good many people in powerful positions in the government of the country. His driving force was embodied in the Gospel text "He sent me to preach the Good News to the Poor" (Lk 4:18). This text, rendered in Latin as "Evangelizare pauperibus misit me", is the official motto of Vincentians.

 

Today

He is remembered in the Oceania Region (Australia and the South West Pacific) especially by the Daughters of Charity, the Vincentian Priests and Brothers, and the St Vincent de Paul Society. The St Vincent de Paul Society was founded in France by Frederic Ozanam, a young university student, two hundred years after the time of Vincent himself. This Society, a lay organisation, is often known in Australia simply as 'Vinnies'. It provides much needed care for the poor and marginalised of our own time.

 

Spirituality

Vincent de Paul did not develop a 'Spirituality' in the ordinary sense of the term. Rather, he followed the Spirituality of the Church, and in order to make this Spirituality available to all he developed what is now referred to as his "Way".   A summary of Vincent's "Way" is provided in the next column by Fr Kevin Canty CM

St Vincent de Paul's Spiritual Way

St Vincent doesn't offer us a spirituality, a teaching on prayer or the spiritual life. He offers us a Spiritual Way. He shows us how we can meet our God in our everyday experiences, in the events, the persons, the circumstances of our life. His Way is the way of the Church, a way of experience, of faith, and of practical wisdom .... all embraced in a spirit of love. 

 

A Way of Charity

Vincent experienced true Charity - the Love that led God to send his Son among us... 'to bring the good news to the poor' (Lk 4:18).

 

A Way of Mission

Vincent responded to God's love and call,    and saw himself and his followers as being sent also 'to bring good news to the poor'.

 

A Way of Prayer in Action

For Vincent, Prayer was a way of developing and deepening a personal relationship with God,  with Jesus Christ.      Vincent experienced God in his life.  He had a deep faith and trust in God's providential care for him and for all people, especially the poor. He encouraged his followers to share their faith, their experience of God in prayer and in their life experience. A tradition he left his priests and brothers, and his sisters the Daughters of Charity, was called 'Repetition of Prayer'. This was a simple sharing of the fruits, the insights, the experience of God in one's own time of personal reflective prayer.

 

A Way of Practical Love

Vincent encouraged his followers to be contemplatives in action, to respond to God in practical love both of God and of one's neighbours, practical love especially of the poor.

 

 

Re-constructed De Paul Family House

 

 

Vincent experienced being sent by God to do what Jesus did.  He prayed that the Community he founded - the Vincentian Priests and Brothers -  would be faithful to that call.