THE ANGER OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL

A Blessed Feast Day 2024 of our dear founder, St. Vincent!

I, perhaps, join here in this reflection just a few writers and authors who have delved into Vincent’s choleric temperament.

Just as our Lord Jesus showed – and proved – that even the ugliest and deadliest of all symbols, the cross, can become the most beautiful and most restorative symbol of love and life, Vincent himself has transformed his proneness to anger into kindness and gentleness, by the grace of God. Into a practical, organized, and empowering kind of charity France and Europe – and eventually the world – has never seen.

At first glance, it was attributed to how poverty in the persons of the galley slaves stared him in the eye and moved him and changed him irreversibly. The experience similarly included the devastated poor in the cities and countryside of France, no thanks to the civil war then, as well as the dying man from the de Gondi estates who confessed to him. 

Indeed, he advocated with the rich of his time – especially women and ladies – so his charitable works could be sustained, forming the Ladies of Charity, among others. True, he saw the need for more priests so that confessions would be more accessible, and the spiritual needs of the poor could be better addressed, giving birth to the Congregation of the Mission. Yes, he recognized he needed more hands and feet on a steady basis; thus, he founded the Little Company of the Daughters of Charity.

But back to Vincent’s inherently easy irritability. Back to his mean temper. Honestly, I still struggle to personally imagine what one of Vincent’s contemporaries wrote that he was known by nature of a bilious disposition.

Yet, I am convinced that what needs to be appreciated more was the foundation of Vincent’s rather painful conversion to holiness. This was his deep longing to enfold himself with the spirit of Christ, in spite of his character. This, in time, indisputably gave birth to the ever-vital Vincentian Spirituality.

Early in his life as a young priest in 1602, for instance, despite his hankering for wealth and prestige, he invariably sought spiritual mentors and influences. He constantly wanted to have a spiritual compass. These he found in de Berulle. Duval. Francis de Sales, to name some. Such spiritual longing eventually became the very impetus which enabled Vincent in time to distinctly see the very face of God in the poor, no less.

With this solid bedrock, the poor even became instruments through which Vincent struggled – and mightily succeeded – in becoming one of the gentlest and kindest persons to ever walk the face of the earth.

The poor, because he saw God in them, even genuinely taught Vincent to look beyond himself onto the needs of the suffering neighbor and the world. He never attempted to do this without always seeking the grace of God. Without always seeking what the world needed – not what he, nor his family, needed anymore.

To conclude, even Vincent’s volatile temperament becomes a most powerful testimony that the love of Christ evangelizing, and God’s love and grace, are a sure transforming power, truly making all things possible. 

In the end, the poor of Vincent’s time served as his own salvation.

FRANCISCO NICOLÁS P. MAGNAYE JR., CM

VMY International Secretariat