8. Walking with Providence.

As a final element, we wish to highlight both Vincent’s and Father Triest’s trust in Divine Providence.  Having established divine love as the foundation for the development of charity, we can now conclude by citing Divine Providence, in which both had a strong trust.

It is impossible to understand all of Vincent’s activities and charity without viewing them in the light of a deep trust in God, which Vincent refers to as Divine Providence.  He tries to perceive the hand of God in everything.  Even his turbulent early days as a wandering priest in search of financial means for himself and his family, he regards in retrospect as the work of Divine Providence, which ultimately brought him to the place where he was meant to be and to the people who needed him.  He is thus able to view setbacks as the path God uses to help him experience something new.  “Praise be to God for everything He allows to happen to us.  It would be difficult for me to endure these things if I did not regard them as a decree of God, who directs all things to good.”  To Louise de Marillac, who could sometimes be very impatient and uncertain, he wrote in 1647: “In God’s name, let us be surprised by nothing.  God will turn all things to good.”

“To will what Providence wills, and not to will what it does not will.  During my humble prayer this morning, I was filled with a great desire: to will everything that happens on earth, the good and the evil, for all and for each one individually, because God wills it so: He sends it to us.  The willingness to bring our will into harmony with God’s will awakens in us a deep peace, from which the strength for acts of charity springs forth.”

He writes to the Daughters of Charity: “O my Sisters, you must have such great devotion, trust, and love for Divine Providence that if Providence itself had not given you that beautiful name of ‘Daughters of Charity,’ you would have had to bear that of ‘Daughters of Providence,’ because Providence has called you into being.”

In several of his letters, he urges his priests and Sisters to walk with Providence, neither too quickly nor too slowly.  This becomes a catchphrase for him.  Another of his sayings is: grace has its own time.  “Grace has its own time.  Let us rely on God’s Providence and refrain from rushing ahead of it.  If it pleases Our Lord to grant me some consolation in our vocation, it is this: I believe we have tried to follow divine Providence in all things and have refrained from rushing ahead of it, and from setting foot in places it had  not designated .”  It is this attitude that explains why Vincent is sometimes very quick to make a decision, and at other times very slow.  According to him, everything depends on Providence.  “The things of God come of their own accord, and the wisdom in this lies in following Providence step by step.  For those who know how to wait, everything will work out.”

Regarding the place of Providence in his life, Father Triest stated the following in a sermon dating from 1813: “Providence sustains us, protects us, guides us by day, and watches over us by night.  It provides us with the bread we eat.  It causes the water we drink to spring forth from the bosom of the earth.  She gives the sap to the fruits and plants and also to the meat we eat, so that it may nourish us.  To put it in a word: she ceaselessly provides for all our needs with endless goodness.”  This strong trust in divine Providence became a source of hope during the five years Father Triest had to live in hiding as a priest in Ronse.  He wrote nothing about it, but from his attitude in retrospect, we can gather that he never gave up hope and continued to trust that everything would eventually turn out well.  He also had to learn to walk with Providence, neither too fast nor too slow.  He also sees Divine Providence actively at work through the apostolate carried out by his religious sisters.  He truly sees them as instruments of Divine Providence.  He writes the following about this: “Serving the sick is a noble vocation; through this service, you become co-helpers and handmaids of God’s Providence, which He has over these sick people.”  It is through their love, care, and concern that they truly bring God’s presence into the world.  They let God’s love shine in this world, through their compassion for those who suffer and who have abandoned all hope.

Without that deep trust in Divine Providence, Father Triest might well have accomplished far less of what we, just as with Vincent, can admire to this day.  For him, too, it was truly walking with Providence, discerning the hand of God in all things, and, like Vincent, being convinced that grace has its time.

Conclusion

From these eight perspectives, we have attempted to sketch how both Saint Vincent de Paul and the Venerable Peter Joseph Triest gave a fairly similar interpretation of the charism of charity they had received from the Holy Spirit.  Both did so in their own time, with their own temperament and character, and with the people they met along the way, whom they inspired to walk a part of life’s journey with them.  Both made the most of their talents and were deeply inspired by the example of Jesus Christ and the message of the Gospel, driven by divine grace through their unshakable trust in God.

Much of what they said, wrote, and did contains elements specific to their time, but it will take little effort to translate this into today’s context and to bring it to life in the way we may bring this charism of charity into the world.  We therefore remain grateful that we may consider both Saint Vincent and Father Triest as our teachers and continue to learn from them to find further inspiration to be brothers and sisters of charity for many, even today.

Brother René Stockman,
Brother of Charity