4. With a preferential love for the poor.

Vincent and Father Triest  also find common ground  in their preferential love for the poorest.  This made them true pioneers in a society where many were completely marginalized and neglected due to extreme poverty, illness, and disability.  Both lived in a time when society was severely affected by prolonged conflicts and revolutions, causing many to lose all certainty in their lives.

For Vincent, it all began with a concrete encounter with the poor.  It was under the influence of Bérulle that he finally took on active parish work in Clichy in 1612, twelve years after his ordination.  But it was especially from 1617 onward, in the parish of Châtillon-les-Domes, that he became deeply moved by the poverty that prevailed everywhere, both material and spiritual.  It was there, too, that he founded his first charity association.  He would later often reflect on this defining moment in his life.  “One Sunday, as I was preparing for Mass, someone came to tell me that in a remote house, every member of a family was sick and they had nothing left to eat.  I was deeply moved by this and decided to mention it during the homily and make an appeal to help these people.  That afternoon, I went to this family myself with some food, but to my surprise, I saw, as it were, a procession of parishioners all heading to the house to support these poor people.  My words had apparently had a great impact.  This marked the moment when Vincent would devote himself entirely to caring for the poor .   Using the famous saying of Camillus de Lellis, Vincent explained his special love for the poor:  “The poor are our Lords and Masters.”  He clearly wanted to break with the prevailing mindset of helping the poor from a paternalistic stance.  For Vincent, it is we who must become the servants of the poor, and we must respect, love, and serve them as our Masters.  All the words he uses to describe how charity should be practiced express this radical respect: cordiality, gentleness, humility, simplicity—all expressions of an unconditional love for the poor.

Vincent goes to great lengths in his care for the poor; there is truly no limit to his love and care for them.  “Davantage—always more,” is his response when it comes to love for the poor.  “God asks each of us to be of service to the poor.  They are our masters.  Therefore, we must treat them with flexibility and warmth.  Do your utmost to ensure they lack nothing, neither materially nor spiritually.  Treat them with respect as we would treat our Lord.  After all, He says: ‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’  So, in fact, it is the Lord whom you serve when you care for a sick person.  It is therefore not enough to be well-mannered and patient; dealing with a sick person also requires warmth.”

He also regards the poor as his teachers; he literally goes to school with the poor. “True piety is found among the poor.  When we wish to enter into intimacy with the Lord, there is no other attitude than that of the poor.  They live in peace.  Why?  Because they are full of faith.  And why do they believe? Because they are simple. … Just as Christ chose to be born poor, so He also chose the poor as His disciples; He Himself became the servant of the poor.”

For Vincent, the poor are also the icons of Christ. “If you go to the poor ten times a day, you encounter God ten times.  If you go to the galley prisoners, you find God there; if you stand among the children, you find God there.  If you go to the slums, you find God there.  …  I must not judge a poor rural dweller or a poor woman by their appearance, nor by their intellectual development.  Because of their roughness, their physical and intellectual capacities, they cut a poor figure.  But turn the coin over.  In the light of faith, you see the Son of God who chose to be poor and is represented by those poor people.”

There are few exact figures available regarding the number of poor people who were effectively helped by Vincent and his associates, but we know that between 1638 and 1644 he took in no fewer than 1,200 children, foundlings, and sought a solution for them.  And compiling a list of all the groups he helped is also quite difficult.  In fact, there were no poor people to whom Vincent closed his heart, and he always tried, in a generous manner, relying heavily on Providence and the support of others, to find a solution for them.

We see the same pattern in Father Triest: an absolute preference for the poor.  Even as a young priest, he was concerned for the poor, and we know from history how, as a young vicar, he took special care of children of unmarried mothers and how, in Hanswijk in 1795, he truly sacrificed himself to help out in the military hospital where a severe typhus epidemic was raging, until he himself fell victim to this terrible disease, which sidelined him for six months. Even when he had to go into hiding in Ronse for five years, he began taking in poor children and established a first workhouse for them.  But the breakthrough came in Lovendegem, where he arrived as a brand-new parish priest in early 1803 and was struck by the low moral standards of his parishioners, a result of their impoverished existence.  “Drunkenness, blasphemy, and immorality are the three cardinal sins of my parish.”  To address this, he started a first community with a small group of young women who would teach children from poor families.  Thus was born his first religious community: the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary.  What he began in Lovendegem, he would continue for more than 30 years in Ghent, where the bishop asked him to help establish the Commission for the Care of the Poor.  When he travelled to Paris in 1806 in an attempt to have his first congregation recognized by Napoleon, he received letters of recommendation from both the bishop and the mayor, and both expressed the same sentiment: “The good Mr. Triest will not ask for himself, for he is devoted to the poor in all things.  In all he undertakes, he follows in the footsteps of St. Vincent de Paul.  The disabled, the terminally ill, the elderly, the destitute—in short, all who bear suffering—find in him and his sisters a refuge and the comforting help of faith and Christian charity.”  According to the Commission’s statistics, during the period he was active in Ghent, Father Triest found shelter for no fewer than 8,000 people in need in the homes established for them.

In the rules of both the Sisters and the Brothers of Charity, the priority given to caring for the poorest is explicitly stated.  “The Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary, under the protection of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, St. Vincent, and St. Bernard, shall combine the contemplative life, insofar as it is compatible with their duties, with the active life, which consists of serving the poor and sick, the mentally ill, and educating orphans and other poor children, running schools, and all other works of charity, according to the spirit and rule of St. Vincent de Paul.” And for the brothers, it states: “They shall bear in mind that the purpose of the congregation is to serve the elderly and sick people of the hospice, as well as other works of charity in the service of poor and destitute people.”

It is particularly noteworthy that both the Sisters and the Brothers began by caring for the mentally ill, who until then had been among the most marginalized groups.  He thus became a true pioneer in the care of the mentally ill.  In the chronicles of the early days when the Brothers took on the care of these sick people in the cellars of the Gerard Duivelsteen, we read the following story: “There we saw various unsavoury things, including a violent madman who was acting out and had to be shackled; and since he would not comply with the servants’ wishes, a servant struck the madman’s legs with the iron shackles, so that he fell silent; and the next day that sick man had to go to the hospital; his legs had become severely injured, and a few days later he died…  Thus, the brothers whom God had deemed suitable were able to set to work there to perform meritorious deeds for those wretched, poor, and insane people, since our reverend father regarded them as his best friends.”   It was certainly not a pleasant start for those first brothers, but thanks to the encouragement they received from their founder, they bravely carried on and, together with him, became pioneers in the care of the mentally ill.  Or how, thanks to true charity, people who were previously regarded as possessed and led a miserable prison-like existence will now, as the sick, receive appropriate care with respect and love.  Triest calls this allowing these people to already feel the joy of the Resurrection.

Brother René Stockman,
Brother of Charity