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.

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.
 

(Note: Material on this Page has been provided by Fr Kevin Canty CM)