July 26, 2025 • 11 mins
Explore the extraordinary life of St. Vincent De Paul, a man of humility, compassion, and generosity whose impact resonates even today. Born around 1581 and living until 1660, Vincents early life was shaped by his own experience of slavery, having been captured by Turkish pirates and sold in Tunis. His escape in 1607 led him to a life of service, becoming a priest and devoting his ministry to the poor. In 1625, he founded the Congregation of the Mission, a society of missionary priests known as Vincentians or Lazarists. Alongside Louise de Marillac, he established the Daughters of Charity, a group dedicated to nursing the sick, whose work in hospitals during several plagues is well-documented. Listen to the tale of this remarkable individual, and discover the lasting legacy of his profound spiritual journey.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter five of Life of Saint Vincent de Paul. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Life of Saint Vincent de Paul by
Francis Alice Forbes. Chapter five Mission work. The incident which
(00:26):
had given rise to Vincent's first mission at Follville had
never been forgotten by Madame de Gondi. It seemed to
her that there was need to multiply such missions among
the country poor, and no sooner had Vincent returned to
her house than she offered him a large sum of
money to endow a band of priests who would devote
their lives to evangelizing the peasantry on her estates. Vincent
(00:47):
was delighted, but considering himself unfit to undertake the management
of such an enterprise, he proposed that it should be
put into the hands of the Jesuits or the Oratorians.
Madame de Gondi, although convinced in her own mind that
Vincent and Vincent alone was the man to carry out
the enterprise, obediently suggested it to one religious order after another.
(01:08):
In every case some obstacle intervened until the Countess was
more than ever persuaded that her first instinct had been right.
Knowing Vincent's loyalty to Holy Church and his obedience to authority,
she determined to have recourse to her brother in law,
the Archbishop of Paris. An old house called the College
des bon Enfant, was at that moment vacant. She asked
(01:31):
it of the archbishop, whom she had interested in her scheme,
and who proposed to Vincent to undertake the foundation. There
was no longer room for hesitation. The will of God
seemed plain. Indeed, Vincent's love of the poor had been
for some time struggling with his humility. The new congregation
was to consist of a few good priests, who, renouncing
(01:51):
all thought of honor and worldly advancement, were two devote
their lives to preaching in the villages and small towns
of France. They they were to spend themselves in the
service of their neighbor, instructing, catechising, and exhorting, and they
were to take nothing in return for their labors. Nine
months of the year were to be given to this
(02:12):
kind of work, the other three to prayer and preparation.
In March sixteen twenty five, the foundation was made and
Vincent de Paul was named the first Superior. It was stipulated, however,
that he should remain, as he had already promised, in
the house of the Founders, a condition which seemed likely
to doom the enterprise to failure. Vincent could hardly fail
(02:34):
to realize how necessary it was that the superior of
a new congregation should be in residence in his own house.
But he confided the little company to God and awaited
the development of events. The solution was altogether unexpected. Two
months after the signing of the contract of foundation, Madame
de Gondi was suddenly taken ill, and she died a
(02:56):
few days later. Her broken hearted husband not only consent
to Vincent's residence in the College des bon Enfance, but
shortly afterwards, leaving that world where he had shown so brilliantly,
he himself became a postulant at the oratory. The beginnings
of the new congregation were humble enough. Its members were
three in number, Vincent, his friend Monsieur Portail, and a
(03:20):
poor priest who had lately joined them. Before setting out
on their mission journeys, they used to give the key
of the house to a neighbor, but as there was
nothing in it to steal, there was little cause for anxiety.
In the course of their travels. Other priests, realizing the
greatness of the work, asked to be enrolled in the
little company. Its growth, nevertheless, was slow. Ten years after
(03:43):
the foundation, the congregation only numbered thirty three members, but
Vincent had no desire that it should be otherwise. In
sixteen fifty two it was recognized by Pope Urban the
eighth under the name of the Congregation of the Mission.
Vincent lavished the greatest care on the training of his priests.
They were to be simple and frank in their relations
with the poor, modest in manner, friendly and easy of access.
(04:08):
Our sermons must go straight to the point, he would say,
so that the humblest of our hearers may understand. Our
language must be clear and unaffected. The love of virtue
and the hatred of evil were the points to be
insisted on. The people were to be shown where virtue
lay and how to attain it. For fine sermons, Vincent
had the greatest contempt. He would use his merry wit
(04:30):
to make fun of the pompous preachers whose only thought
was to impress their audience with an idea of their
own eloquence. Of what good is a display of rhetoric?
He would ask, who is the better for it? It
serves no purpose but self advertisement. The mission priests did
good wherever they went. Everybody wanted them, and it was
hard to satisfy the appeals for missions which came from
(04:51):
all over the country. In due time, the congregation outgrew
the College des bon Enfants and was transferred to a
large Augustinian friary, which had originally been a leper hospital
and still bore the name of Saint Lazare. Up to
this time, the mission priests had contented themselves with ministering
to the peasantry, but in the course of their travels
(05:12):
it had become painfully apparent that the clergy themselves were
in urgent need of some awakening force. Those of good
family led, for the most part, wardly and frivolous lives,
while the humbler sort were as ignorant as the peasants
among whom they lived. The religious wars had led to
laxity and carelessness. Drunkenness and vice were fearfully prevalent to
(05:32):
vincent with his high ideals of the priesthood. This was
a terrible revelation. The old custom of giving a retreat
to priests who were about to be ordained had fallen
into disuse. With the assistance of some of the French bishops,
he determined to revive it, and retreats of ten or
fourteen days were organized at Saint Lazare for candidates to
(05:52):
the priesthood. Here, in an atmosphere of prayer and recollection,
those who were about to be ordained had every opportunity
of ris realizing the greatness of the step that they
were taking, and of making resolutions for their future lives.
The mission priests were to help in this work more
by example than by precept. They were to preach by
humility and simplicity. It is not by knowledge that you
(06:15):
will do them good vincent often repeated, or by the
fine things you say, for they are more learned than you.
They have read or heard it all before. It is
by what they see of your lives that you will
help them. If you, yourselves are striving for perfection, God
will use you to lead these gentlemen in the right way.
The blessing of God seemed indeed to rest upon the
(06:36):
ordination retreats, nearly all who made them carried away something
of Vincent's noble ideal of the priestly life. Many to
whom they had been the turning point of a lifetime
felt the need of further help and instruction from the
man who had awakened all that was noblest in their natures.
To meet this necessity, Vincent inaugurated a kind of guild
for young priests who desire to live worthy of their vocation.
(07:01):
Weekly gatherings were held at Saint Lazare under the name
of Tuesday Conferences, where difficulties were discussed, debates held in consuls.
Given it was not easy to belong to the conferences,
members were pledged to offer their lives completely to God
and to renounce all self interest. Nevertheless, they increased rapidly
in number, and the conferences were attended by all the
(07:23):
most influential priests in Paris. But Vincent's zeal was boundless,
and one good work grew out of another. The retreats
for ordination candidates having been so successful, he conceived the
idea of giving retreats on the same lines for the laity.
Their work thrived beyond all expectation. All were admitted, without exception,
noblemen and beggars, young men and old, the learned and
(07:46):
the ignorant, priests and laymen. Saint Lazare at such times,
Vincent once said, was like Noah's Ark. Every kind of
creature was to be found in it. The only difficulty
was the expense entailed. For many of the retreatmants could
pay nothing toward their board and lodging, and Vincent would
refuse nobody here. As in so many other cases, it
was the Congregation of the Ladies of Charity, founded by
(08:09):
Vincent in Paris, that came nobly to the rescue. There
was Madame de Manelais, sister of Madame de Gondi, who
left a widow at the age of twenty, devoted herself
and her enormous fortune to the alms and good works.
There was the Duchess de Guillon, niece of the great Richilieu,
Madame de Miramillon, beautiful in pious, Madame Gussault, the first
(08:31):
president of the Dames to Cheritae, and many others whose
purses were always at Vincent's disposal. The Congregation of the
Mission Priests was to inaugurate another good work for which
there was urgent necessity in the world of Vincent's day.
While yet at the College des Bonont, France, he had
realized how great was the need for a special training
for young men destined for the priesthood, and had founded
(08:54):
a small seminary. After the move to Saint Lazare, the
undertaking had grown and prospered. A college of the same
kind had been lately founded by Monsieur Auliers, the zealous
Curee of Saint Sulpice, and these two institutions, the first
of the famous seminaries, which were later to spread all
over France, were powerful for the reform of the clergy.
(09:17):
One hundred and fifty years later, the mission priests of
Saint Lazare alone were at the head of sixty such seminaries.
So the work of the congregation increased and multiplied, until
it seemed almost too much for human capacity. But Vincent
knew wherein lay the strength of the mission priests. How
may we hope do our work? He would ask, How
(09:38):
can we lead souls to God? How can we stem
the tide of wickedness among the people. Let us realize
that this is not man's work at all. It is
God's human energy will only hinder it unless directed by God.
The most important point of all is that we should
be in touch with our Lord in prayer, dearest to
(09:59):
his heart. Of all of his undertakings was the first
and chief work of the congregation, the holding of missions
for the poor. By twos and threes, he would send
out his sons to their labors, bidding them travel to
their destination in the cheapest possible way. They were to
accept neither free quarters nor gifts of any kind. All
their thoughts and prayers were to be concentrated on their work.
(10:22):
They were to live for their mission. Two sermons were
to be preached daily, simple instructions on the great truths,
and those who had not yet made their first communion
were to be catechised. The mission lasted ten or fourteen days,
during which the mission priests were to have as much
personal contact with the people as possible, visiting the sick
(10:43):
and the infirm, reconciling enemies, and showing themselves as the
friends of all. It was no easy task to be
a good mission priest. It meant self, mastery, self, renunciation,
self forgetfulness, total and complete. It meant the laying aside
of much that lies very close to a man's heart.
(11:05):
Unless the congregation of the Mission is humble, said Vincent,
and realizes that it can accomplish nothing of any value,
but that it is more apt to mar than to make.
It will never be of much effect. But when it
has this spirit, it will be fit for the purposes
of God. Yet, in spite of all that such a
vocation meant of self renunciation, year after year the mission
(11:27):
priests increased in number. This work is not human, it
is from God, was Vincent's answer to those who marveled
at the power of the company for good end of
Chapter five.
Chapter five of Life of Saint Vincent de Paul. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Life of Saint Vincent de Paul by
Francis Alice Forbes. Chapter five Mission work. The incident which
(00:26):
had given rise to Vincent's first mission at Follville had
never been forgotten by Madame de Gondi. It seemed to
her that there was need to multiply such missions among
the country poor, and no sooner had Vincent returned to
her house than she offered him a large sum of
money to endow a band of priests who would devote
their lives to evangelizing the peasantry on her estates. Vincent
(00:47):
was delighted, but considering himself unfit to undertake the management
of such an enterprise, he proposed that it should be
put into the hands of the Jesuits or the Oratorians.
Madame de Gondi, although convinced in her own mind that
Vincent and Vincent alone was the man to carry out
the enterprise, obediently suggested it to one religious order after another.
(01:08):
In every case some obstacle intervened until the Countess was
more than ever persuaded that her first instinct had been right.
Knowing Vincent's loyalty to Holy Church and his obedience to authority,
she determined to have recourse to her brother in law,
the Archbishop of Paris. An old house called the College
des bon Enfant, was at that moment vacant. She asked
(01:31):
it of the archbishop, whom she had interested in her scheme,
and who proposed to Vincent to undertake the foundation. There
was no longer room for hesitation. The will of God
seemed plain. Indeed, Vincent's love of the poor had been
for some time struggling with his humility. The new congregation
was to consist of a few good priests, who, renouncing
(01:51):
all thought of honor and worldly advancement, were two devote
their lives to preaching in the villages and small towns
of France. They they were to spend themselves in the
service of their neighbor, instructing, catechising, and exhorting, and they
were to take nothing in return for their labors. Nine
months of the year were to be given to this
(02:12):
kind of work, the other three to prayer and preparation.
In March sixteen twenty five, the foundation was made and
Vincent de Paul was named the first Superior. It was stipulated, however,
that he should remain, as he had already promised, in
the house of the Founders, a condition which seemed likely
to doom the enterprise to failure. Vincent could hardly fail
(02:34):
to realize how necessary it was that the superior of
a new congregation should be in residence in his own house.
But he confided the little company to God and awaited
the development of events. The solution was altogether unexpected. Two
months after the signing of the contract of foundation, Madame
de Gondi was suddenly taken ill, and she died a
(02:56):
few days later. Her broken hearted husband not only consent
to Vincent's residence in the College des bon Enfance, but
shortly afterwards, leaving that world where he had shown so brilliantly,
he himself became a postulant at the oratory. The beginnings
of the new congregation were humble enough. Its members were
three in number, Vincent, his friend Monsieur Portail, and a
(03:20):
poor priest who had lately joined them. Before setting out
on their mission journeys, they used to give the key
of the house to a neighbor, but as there was
nothing in it to steal, there was little cause for anxiety.
In the course of their travels. Other priests, realizing the
greatness of the work, asked to be enrolled in the
little company. Its growth, nevertheless, was slow. Ten years after
(03:43):
the foundation, the congregation only numbered thirty three members, but
Vincent had no desire that it should be otherwise. In
sixteen fifty two it was recognized by Pope Urban the
eighth under the name of the Congregation of the Mission.
Vincent lavished the greatest care on the training of his priests.
They were to be simple and frank in their relations
with the poor, modest in manner, friendly and easy of access.
(04:08):
Our sermons must go straight to the point, he would say,
so that the humblest of our hearers may understand. Our
language must be clear and unaffected. The love of virtue
and the hatred of evil were the points to be
insisted on. The people were to be shown where virtue
lay and how to attain it. For fine sermons, Vincent
had the greatest contempt. He would use his merry wit
(04:30):
to make fun of the pompous preachers whose only thought
was to impress their audience with an idea of their
own eloquence. Of what good is a display of rhetoric?
He would ask, who is the better for it? It
serves no purpose but self advertisement. The mission priests did
good wherever they went. Everybody wanted them, and it was
hard to satisfy the appeals for missions which came from
(04:51):
all over the country. In due time, the congregation outgrew
the College des bon Enfants and was transferred to a
large Augustinian friary, which had originally been a leper hospital
and still bore the name of Saint Lazare. Up to
this time, the mission priests had contented themselves with ministering
to the peasantry, but in the course of their travels
(05:12):
it had become painfully apparent that the clergy themselves were
in urgent need of some awakening force. Those of good
family led, for the most part, wardly and frivolous lives,
while the humbler sort were as ignorant as the peasants
among whom they lived. The religious wars had led to
laxity and carelessness. Drunkenness and vice were fearfully prevalent to
(05:32):
vincent with his high ideals of the priesthood. This was
a terrible revelation. The old custom of giving a retreat
to priests who were about to be ordained had fallen
into disuse. With the assistance of some of the French bishops,
he determined to revive it, and retreats of ten or
fourteen days were organized at Saint Lazare for candidates to
(05:52):
the priesthood. Here, in an atmosphere of prayer and recollection,
those who were about to be ordained had every opportunity
of ris realizing the greatness of the step that they
were taking, and of making resolutions for their future lives.
The mission priests were to help in this work more
by example than by precept. They were to preach by
humility and simplicity. It is not by knowledge that you
(06:15):
will do them good vincent often repeated, or by the
fine things you say, for they are more learned than you.
They have read or heard it all before. It is
by what they see of your lives that you will
help them. If you, yourselves are striving for perfection, God
will use you to lead these gentlemen in the right way.
The blessing of God seemed indeed to rest upon the
(06:36):
ordination retreats, nearly all who made them carried away something
of Vincent's noble ideal of the priestly life. Many to
whom they had been the turning point of a lifetime
felt the need of further help and instruction from the
man who had awakened all that was noblest in their natures.
To meet this necessity, Vincent inaugurated a kind of guild
for young priests who desire to live worthy of their vocation.
(07:01):
Weekly gatherings were held at Saint Lazare under the name
of Tuesday Conferences, where difficulties were discussed, debates held in consuls.
Given it was not easy to belong to the conferences,
members were pledged to offer their lives completely to God
and to renounce all self interest. Nevertheless, they increased rapidly
in number, and the conferences were attended by all the
(07:23):
most influential priests in Paris. But Vincent's zeal was boundless,
and one good work grew out of another. The retreats
for ordination candidates having been so successful, he conceived the
idea of giving retreats on the same lines for the laity.
Their work thrived beyond all expectation. All were admitted, without exception,
noblemen and beggars, young men and old, the learned and
(07:46):
the ignorant, priests and laymen. Saint Lazare at such times,
Vincent once said, was like Noah's Ark. Every kind of
creature was to be found in it. The only difficulty
was the expense entailed. For many of the retreatmants could
pay nothing toward their board and lodging, and Vincent would
refuse nobody here. As in so many other cases, it
was the Congregation of the Ladies of Charity, founded by
(08:09):
Vincent in Paris, that came nobly to the rescue. There
was Madame de Manelais, sister of Madame de Gondi, who
left a widow at the age of twenty, devoted herself
and her enormous fortune to the alms and good works.
There was the Duchess de Guillon, niece of the great Richilieu,
Madame de Miramillon, beautiful in pious, Madame Gussault, the first
(08:31):
president of the Dames to Cheritae, and many others whose
purses were always at Vincent's disposal. The Congregation of the
Mission Priests was to inaugurate another good work for which
there was urgent necessity in the world of Vincent's day.
While yet at the College des Bonont, France, he had
realized how great was the need for a special training
for young men destined for the priesthood, and had founded
(08:54):
a small seminary. After the move to Saint Lazare, the
undertaking had grown and prospered. A college of the same
kind had been lately founded by Monsieur Auliers, the zealous
Curee of Saint Sulpice, and these two institutions, the first
of the famous seminaries, which were later to spread all
over France, were powerful for the reform of the clergy.
(09:17):
One hundred and fifty years later, the mission priests of
Saint Lazare alone were at the head of sixty such seminaries.
So the work of the congregation increased and multiplied, until
it seemed almost too much for human capacity. But Vincent
knew wherein lay the strength of the mission priests. How
may we hope do our work? He would ask, How
(09:38):
can we lead souls to God? How can we stem
the tide of wickedness among the people. Let us realize
that this is not man's work at all. It is
God's human energy will only hinder it unless directed by God.
The most important point of all is that we should
be in touch with our Lord in prayer, dearest to
(09:59):
his heart. Of all of his undertakings was the first
and chief work of the congregation, the holding of missions
for the poor. By twos and threes, he would send
out his sons to their labors, bidding them travel to
their destination in the cheapest possible way. They were to
accept neither free quarters nor gifts of any kind. All
their thoughts and prayers were to be concentrated on their work.
(10:22):
They were to live for their mission. Two sermons were
to be preached daily, simple instructions on the great truths,
and those who had not yet made their first communion
were to be catechised. The mission lasted ten or fourteen days,
during which the mission priests were to have as much
personal contact with the people as possible, visiting the sick
(10:43):
and the infirm, reconciling enemies, and showing themselves as the
friends of all. It was no easy task to be
a good mission priest. It meant self, mastery, self, renunciation,
self forgetfulness, total and complete. It meant the laying aside
of much that lies very close to a man's heart.
(11:05):
Unless the congregation of the Mission is humble, said Vincent,
and realizes that it can accomplish nothing of any value,
but that it is more apt to mar than to make.
It will never be of much effect. But when it
has this spirit, it will be fit for the purposes
of God. Yet, in spite of all that such a
vocation meant of self renunciation, year after year the mission
(11:27):
priests increased in number. This work is not human, it
is from God, was Vincent's answer to those who marveled
at the power of the company for good end of
Chapter five.
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