St. Vincent de Paul is a man who continues to fascinate us as Brothers of Charity, and even more, continues to challenge us.  We therefore rightly and proudly bear his name as our patron saint and do not forget that he was even present in our original name:  Hospital Brothers of St. Vincent.  This was a conscious choice by our Founder, the Venerable Father Triest, who was deeply inspired by this great saint of charity.

There are many things that Vincent can still teach us today: the importance of humility, the radical way in which he expressed his love for the poor, the complete fusion of his prayer with his commitment to the poor, his unconditional trust in divine Providence, hIs ability to inspire others to take up the cause of the poor and to move without distinction among both the poorest and the richest of his time, as well as the manner in which he gave charity a whole new meaning.  These are just a few of the characteristics we draw from the rich life of Vincent de Paul, whom the Church commemorates today.

His unconditional trust in divine Providence was not shared with equal enthusiasm by all his followers in his time, even though he often repeated that one must always walk with Providence, neither too fast nor too slow. This is evidenced by the admonition he gave at the end of his life to a number of missionaries who complained that he was asking too much of them.  He did not mince his words in expressing his holy indignation.  “There will be caricatures of missionaries who put forward false propositions and try to shake the foundations of the Congregation.  A few loose cannons who think only of their own satisfaction, of a well-laid table, and who make no effort for the rest.  They are sheep who are preoccupied with themselves, who remain in their own circle of self, who limit their horizons and their ideals to their own sphere of life and shut themselves up in a single point from which they do not want to emerge… Let us give ourselves to God, that He may grant us the grace to persevere, out of love for Him. He is faithful to His promises.”

At first glance, this is not a text we are immediately accustomed to hearing from Vincent, as he usually found the right words to encourage others to give themselves radically, as he did, to the care of the poor.  But apparently this is the story of many founders, who at the end of their lives have to conclude that the purity of the ideal with which they began is being compromised, weakened and surrendered to purely human considerations.  At the end of his life, St. Francis of Assisi also had to acknowledge the contradictory views that were developing and undermining his radical experience of poverty.

In Vincent’s case, some people explicitly expressed a desire to calculate everything in advance, in the vain hope of eliminating all future risks, but in doing so, they left no room for the power of divine Providence, which was truly Vincent’s driving force to always respond positively when a poor person knocked on his door or when he was subjected to social injustice.  “God will provide” was dismissed by them as a naive pious thought and replaced by what we would call today: sterile management thinking.  However, Vincent was not a reckless adventurer who developed initiatives at random, only to have to slink away in shame.  No, he calculated what the risks might be, but he did not allow himself to be paralyzed a priori by the possible difficulties he thought he discerned.  He counted on finding the appropriate solutions to these difficulties.  That was his concrete interpretation of what he called “walking with Providence.”   He sought out reliable co-workers and people who were willing to support him financially.  He was a man who knew how to organize, who drew up clear rules, who called on others to take responsibility, but his management thinking was never disconnected from Providence.

Vincent was a man who always managed to bring seemingly opposing forces together: his concrete commitment to the individual in need with a more organized care for the poor;  the way he could deal with the poor in the simplest way with the way he moved in the highest circles of society at the time; the way he could encourage others to grow to their full potential with the way he showed his indignation when the poor were not respected.  A man of contradictions, but one who knew how to reconcile all this because action and prayer flowed together and fertilized each other in him.  From his strong relationship with God, he went out to his fellow man and brought him into his prayer. In this way, every encounter with his fellow man also became an encounter with God. Or, as it is so powerfully expressed in our rule of life: “Your prayer as a Brother of Charity takes on a special emphasis.  You bring before God the need for liberation from a distorted world.  You pray with the concerns of so many people who live in painful situations. Often also for those who are with you and cannot pray. Your prayer and your apostolate are inseparable” (no. 59).

On this feast of St. Vincent, we may ask ourselves what he would say to us today as Brothers of Charity in this period of transition in which we find ourselves as a Congregation.  I hope that his words would be encouraging, calling us to remain open to the cries of the poor, not to shut ourselves up in a secure existence where everything can be calculated in advance and which often, too often, leads us to say “no” when asked for help.  An encouragement not to lock ourselves into a sterile management model, where we leave no room at all for the ever-surprising work of the Holy Spirit through divine Providence. An encouragement to maintain humility in all our relationships and to always consider our leadership as a humble service to the community and not as an expression of power, as we so often see in the world.  An encouragement to remain sensitive to the great tragedies unfolding worldwide, alongside our concrete care for the poor, by asking ourselves what contribution we can make to remedy them.  An encouragement, above all, to let our entire existence as brothers, as a community, as a congregation, be guided by an intense prayer life, a prayer that is true to life, through which we develop a living spirituality that radiates in our community and in our apostolate.  This is the true Vincentian spirituality to which we are called today and to which Vincent and, following in his footsteps, Father Triest were and remain our living guides. After all, true Vincentian spirituality is a spirituality that rejects any dichotomy that would drive a wedge between our prayer life, our community life, and our apostolic zeal.  Here, the words of Vincent always sound challenging: “The poor are our lords and masters, whom we must serve with respect and love. The poor are the icons of Christ. When we leave the chapel to serve a poor person, we will meet in him the same Christ whom we have worshipped in the tabernacle.  That is to leave God for God.”  These words sound familiar, but it is up to all of us to make them a reality in our daily lives.  To this end, we ask in our prayers for the special intercession of St. Vincent and, with him, the Venerable Father Triest.

Bro. René Stockman,
September 27, 2025.