Vincent’s Principles
Principles Grounding Vincent’s Activities
Many principles guided Vincent’s activities, but two especially lay at their ground.
1. He listened to God’s voice in events and people.
Many have pointed out the importance of events for Vincent. In fact, it is commonplace to talk about the “experience of Gannes-Folleville” and the “experience of Châtillon.” His conversion is not narrated in terms of a dramatic experience of grace occurring during prayer, but rather in terms of his realizing that God was speaking to him through tragic human situations: the miserable lot of the country poor, the abysmal education of the clergy, the abandoning of infants on the streets of Paris, the ravaging wars in the provinces.
Vincent also heard God’s voice in persons. The peasant at Gannes, who made a startling deathbed confession to Vincent, became for him the voice of God calling him to found the Congregation of the Mission. The concerns expressed by the Bishop of Beauvais in 1628 were God’s call to Vincent launching him on a lifetime of practical projects for the reform of the clergy.
2. He followed providence step by step.
“Grace has its moments” St. Vincent liked to say. [23] He was deeply convinced that God loves us, that he is father and mother [24] to us, and that he walks with us step by step. [25]
There are few themes that Vincent talks about more frequently than providence. He tells Louise de Marillac in 1634: “Follow the order of providence. Oh! How good it is to let ourselves be guided by it!” [26] At times, speaking of following God’s providence, he urges others to moderate their indiscreet zeal. He tells Philippe Le Vacher:
“The good that God wishes to be done comes about almost by itself, without our thinking about it. That is the way the Congregation was born, that the missions and the retreats to ordinands began, that the Company of the Daughters of Charity came into being…. Mon Dieu! Monsieur, how I desire that you would moderate your ardor and weigh things maturely on the scale of the sanctuary before resolving them!” [27]
But at other times, in the name of the same providence, he urges confreres to act. In 1655 he tells Etienne Blatiron, the superior in Rome: “Do not stop pursuing our business, with confidence that it is God’s good pleasure… Success in matters like this is often due to the patience and vigilance that one exercises… The works of God have their moment. His providence does them then, and not sooner or later… Let us wait patiently, but let us act….” [28]
St. Vincent sums up his esteem for God’s providence in a lovely statement to Jean Barreau: “We cannot better assure our eternal happiness then by living and dying in the service of the poor, in the arms of providence, and with genuine renouncement of ourselves in order to follow Jesus Christ.” [29]
