July 26, 2025 • 10 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 six 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 six, The Gray Sisters. Although many
(00:24):
of the great ladies of Paris had enrolled themselves among
the Ladies of Charity and were ready to help Vincent
to the utmost of their ability, much of the work
to be done in that great town was hardly within
their scope. The care of the sick in the hospitals
alone demanded ceaseless labor in an amount of time which
few wives and mothers could give. There was a gap
(00:44):
which needed filling, as Vincent could not but see, and
he took immediate steps to fill it. The instrument he
required lay close to his hand in the person of
Louise le Gras, a widow lady who had devoted her
life to the service of the poor. She had gathered
in her house a few young working women from the
country to help her in her labors. These were the
(01:04):
people needed to step in where the ladies of charity
fell short. A larger house was taken in on the
outskirts of Paris. Good country girls who were ready to
give their services without payment were encouraged to devote themselves
to the work, and Louise le Gras, with all the
enthusiasm of her unselfish nature, set to work to train
the little company to efficiency of one thing. This holy
(01:26):
woman was absolutely convinced unless the motive with which the
work was undertaken was supernatural, neither perseverance nor success could
be expected. It is of little use for us to
run about the streets with bowls of soup, she would say.
If we do not make the love of God the
object of our effort, if we let go of the
thought that the poor are His members, our love for
(01:48):
them will soon grow cold. To pray, to labor, and
to obey was to be the whole duty of the
members of this little sisterhood. The strength of their influence
was to be the fact that it was Christ to
whom they ministered in the person of his poor. To
many of these girls, rough and ignorant as they were,
for the most part, life in a great town was
(02:09):
full of dangers. Such work as theirs could only be
adequately done by women whose lives were consecrated to God,
who were prepared to spend themselves without stint or measure,
in his service. If you aspire to perfection, you must
learn to die to self, was the teaching of their foundress,
(02:29):
Louise le Gras was a soul of prayer, and she
knew that more was needed than fervent philanthropy and a
heart full of pity to give the sisters courage for
the lives they had undertaken to lead. Uncloistered nuns were
at that time a thing unheard of, and in the
first days of the Little Company, the sisters were often
greeted with insults when they appeared in the streets. In
(02:50):
Vincent's own words, they were a community who had no
monastery but the houses of the sick, no cells but
a lodging of the poorest room, no cloisters but the streets,
no grille but the fear of God, and no veil
but their own modesty. Their life was hard. They rose
(03:10):
at four, their food was of the plainest description. They
spent their days in an unhealthy atmosphere, and were habitually overworked.
The life of a true sister of Charity needed to
be rooted and nourished in the love of God, and
no one realized it more completely than Vincent himself. In
his weekly conferences, when they met together at Saint Lazare,
he would set before them the ideals of their vocation,
(03:33):
bidding them above all things to be humble and simple.
You see, my sisters, he would say to them, you
are only rough country girls, brought up like myself to
keep the flocks. He understood their temptations and knew their weaknesses,
but the standard was never to be lowered. The daughters
of Charity must go wherever they are needed, he said.
(03:56):
But this obligation exposes them to many temptations and their
Therefore they have special need of strictness. They were never
to pay a visit unless it was part of their work.
They were never to receive one. They were not to
stand talking in the street unless it was absolutely necessary.
They were never to go out without leave. What Vincent
(04:17):
makes them say in one of his conferences, do you
ask me to be my own enemy, to be forever
denying myself, to do everything I have no wish to do,
to destroy self altogether? Yes, my sisters, he answered, And
unless you do so, you will be slipping back in
the way of righteousness. Their lives were, of necessity full
(04:38):
of temptations, and only in this spirit could they resist them.
Life in the streets of a great city was full
of interest to these country girls, and it required a
superhuman self control to go about with downcast eyes, noticing nothing.
At the weekly conference, one of the sisters acknowledged that
if she passed a troop of mountebanks or a peep show,
(04:59):
the desire to his look was so strong upon her
that she could only resist it by pressing her crucifix
to her heart and repeating, Oh, Jesus, thou art worth
it all. One day, Vincent appeared among them in great joy.
He just met a gentleman in the street who had
said to him, Monsieur, to day, I saw two of
your daughters carrying food to the sick, and so great
was the modesty of one of them that she never
(05:21):
even raised her eyes. It was many years before he
would allow the sisters, however great their desire, to bind
themselves by vows to the service of Christ in his poor.
When at last the permission was given. The formula of
the vows, which were taken for one year only ran thus,
I the Undersigned, in the presence of God, renew the
(05:42):
promises of my baptism, and make the vow of poverty,
of chastity and of obedience to the Venerable Superior General
of the priests of the Mission, in the company of
the Sisters of Charity, that I may bind myself all
this year to the service bodily and spiritual of the
poor and sick are masters. And this by the aid
(06:03):
of God, which I asked through his son Jesus Christ Crucified,
and through the prayers of the Holy Virgin. Although vows
taken thus annually did not imply a life long dedication,
the sisters of Charity who returned to the world were few.
Many heroic women spent their lives unknown and unnoticed in
the daily drudgery of nursing the sick or trying to
(06:25):
maintain order in country hospitals. The saintliness of a daughter
of Charity, said Vincent, rests on faithful adherents to the rule,
on faithful service to the nameless poor, in love and
charity and pity, in faithful obedience to the doctor's orders.
It keeps us humble to be quite ordinary, for the
(06:47):
great honor of our Lord, their master and patron, runs
a certain passage in their rule. The Sisters of Charity
shall have in everything they do a definite intention to
please him, and shall try to conform their life to his,
especially in his poverty, his humility, his gentleness, his simplicity,
and austerity. Therein was to lie their strength and the
(07:10):
secret of their courage. Before them stood their crucified Lord,
bidding them suffer and be strong. The Gray Sisters, as
they were called by the poor, not only nursed in
the hospitals of Paris, but went far and wide on
their errands of mercy. Scarcely a day passed without an appeal.
(07:31):
After the Siege of Arras in sixteen fifty six, Louise
le Gras was employed to send help to those of
the inhabitants who had survived the horrors of the war.
Only two sisters could be spared to meet the requirements
of eight parishes. Dirt, disease, and famine reigned supreme. Yet
one of them, writing to her superior to tell her
that the other had been obliged to stop working from
(07:53):
sheer exhaustion, says, I have never heard a word of
complaint from her lips, or seen anything in her face
but perfect content. A little later, the sisters were sent
for to nurse the wounded soldiers in the hospitals of Calais.
My dear daughters, said Vincent, as he bade them, farewell,
be sure that wherever you go, God will take care
(08:13):
of you. Only four could be spared, and the soldiers
were dying in scores of an infectious disease. It was
at the risk of their lives that the sisters went
among them, and two out of the four caught the
infection and died. When the news reached Paris, there were
numbers eager to take their place, and the four who
were chosen set off rejoicing. The hospitals all over the
(08:34):
country were in need of reform, and in Paris every
new scheme for the relief of the poor called for
the sisters assistants. In the hospital at Marseilles, they were
attending the convicts when the Home for the aged poor
was instituted. It was under their government. The foundling hospital
was in their hands. Wherever there was need for zeal
and self denial, there these devoted women were to be found,
(08:57):
ready to lay down their lives in the service of
their neighbors. They had renounced what pleasures the world might
hold for them, for a life of toil and discomfort.
Their sacrifice was hidden. They lived and died unnoticed. We
have no knowledge of our way except that we follow Jesus,
writes the mother and foundress of the company, always working
(09:18):
and always suffering. He could never have led us unless
his own resolve had taken him as far as death
on the cross. In sixteen forty one, the Sisters of
Charity had taken up a fresh work, one which lay
very close to Vincent's heart. The teaching of little children,
it should be, he told them, as much a part
of their vocation as the care of the poor and
(09:39):
the sick, And they were to spare no pains to
give these little creatures the solid Christian teaching which nothing
can replace. As the years went on, many ladies of
noble birth enrolled themselves in the Company, working side by
side with their humbler sisters, in the relief of every
kind of misery. But daughter of peer or of peasant,
the Sisters of Charity was and is before all else,
(10:03):
the daughter of God and the servant of the poor.
Louise Lacrosse rejoiced one day when she heard that one
of the sisters had been severely beaten by a patient
and had borne it without a murmur. She their superior,
and a woman of gentle birth, led the way in
that humility which was their strength. She had been trained
by Vincent de Paul and had learned from a living model.
(10:27):
End of chapter six.
Chapter six 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 six, The Gray Sisters. Although many
(00:24):
of the great ladies of Paris had enrolled themselves among
the Ladies of Charity and were ready to help Vincent
to the utmost of their ability, much of the work
to be done in that great town was hardly within
their scope. The care of the sick in the hospitals
alone demanded ceaseless labor in an amount of time which
few wives and mothers could give. There was a gap
(00:44):
which needed filling, as Vincent could not but see, and
he took immediate steps to fill it. The instrument he
required lay close to his hand in the person of
Louise le Gras, a widow lady who had devoted her
life to the service of the poor. She had gathered
in her house a few young working women from the
country to help her in her labors. These were the
(01:04):
people needed to step in where the ladies of charity
fell short. A larger house was taken in on the
outskirts of Paris. Good country girls who were ready to
give their services without payment were encouraged to devote themselves
to the work, and Louise le Gras, with all the
enthusiasm of her unselfish nature, set to work to train
the little company to efficiency of one thing. This holy
(01:26):
woman was absolutely convinced unless the motive with which the
work was undertaken was supernatural, neither perseverance nor success could
be expected. It is of little use for us to
run about the streets with bowls of soup, she would say.
If we do not make the love of God the
object of our effort, if we let go of the
thought that the poor are His members, our love for
(01:48):
them will soon grow cold. To pray, to labor, and
to obey was to be the whole duty of the
members of this little sisterhood. The strength of their influence
was to be the fact that it was Christ to
whom they ministered in the person of his poor. To
many of these girls, rough and ignorant as they were,
for the most part, life in a great town was
(02:09):
full of dangers. Such work as theirs could only be
adequately done by women whose lives were consecrated to God,
who were prepared to spend themselves without stint or measure,
in his service. If you aspire to perfection, you must
learn to die to self, was the teaching of their foundress,
(02:29):
Louise le Gras was a soul of prayer, and she
knew that more was needed than fervent philanthropy and a
heart full of pity to give the sisters courage for
the lives they had undertaken to lead. Uncloistered nuns were
at that time a thing unheard of, and in the
first days of the Little Company, the sisters were often
greeted with insults when they appeared in the streets. In
(02:50):
Vincent's own words, they were a community who had no
monastery but the houses of the sick, no cells but
a lodging of the poorest room, no cloisters but the streets,
no grille but the fear of God, and no veil
but their own modesty. Their life was hard. They rose
(03:10):
at four, their food was of the plainest description. They
spent their days in an unhealthy atmosphere, and were habitually overworked.
The life of a true sister of Charity needed to
be rooted and nourished in the love of God, and
no one realized it more completely than Vincent himself. In
his weekly conferences, when they met together at Saint Lazare,
he would set before them the ideals of their vocation,
(03:33):
bidding them above all things to be humble and simple.
You see, my sisters, he would say to them, you
are only rough country girls, brought up like myself to
keep the flocks. He understood their temptations and knew their weaknesses,
but the standard was never to be lowered. The daughters
of Charity must go wherever they are needed, he said.
(03:56):
But this obligation exposes them to many temptations and their
Therefore they have special need of strictness. They were never
to pay a visit unless it was part of their work.
They were never to receive one. They were not to
stand talking in the street unless it was absolutely necessary.
They were never to go out without leave. What Vincent
(04:17):
makes them say in one of his conferences, do you
ask me to be my own enemy, to be forever
denying myself, to do everything I have no wish to do,
to destroy self altogether? Yes, my sisters, he answered, And
unless you do so, you will be slipping back in
the way of righteousness. Their lives were, of necessity full
(04:38):
of temptations, and only in this spirit could they resist them.
Life in the streets of a great city was full
of interest to these country girls, and it required a
superhuman self control to go about with downcast eyes, noticing nothing.
At the weekly conference, one of the sisters acknowledged that
if she passed a troop of mountebanks or a peep show,
(04:59):
the desire to his look was so strong upon her
that she could only resist it by pressing her crucifix
to her heart and repeating, Oh, Jesus, thou art worth
it all. One day, Vincent appeared among them in great joy.
He just met a gentleman in the street who had
said to him, Monsieur, to day, I saw two of
your daughters carrying food to the sick, and so great
was the modesty of one of them that she never
(05:21):
even raised her eyes. It was many years before he
would allow the sisters, however great their desire, to bind
themselves by vows to the service of Christ in his poor.
When at last the permission was given. The formula of
the vows, which were taken for one year only ran thus,
I the Undersigned, in the presence of God, renew the
(05:42):
promises of my baptism, and make the vow of poverty,
of chastity and of obedience to the Venerable Superior General
of the priests of the Mission, in the company of
the Sisters of Charity, that I may bind myself all
this year to the service bodily and spiritual of the
poor and sick are masters. And this by the aid
(06:03):
of God, which I asked through his son Jesus Christ Crucified,
and through the prayers of the Holy Virgin. Although vows
taken thus annually did not imply a life long dedication,
the sisters of Charity who returned to the world were few.
Many heroic women spent their lives unknown and unnoticed in
the daily drudgery of nursing the sick or trying to
(06:25):
maintain order in country hospitals. The saintliness of a daughter
of Charity, said Vincent, rests on faithful adherents to the rule,
on faithful service to the nameless poor, in love and
charity and pity, in faithful obedience to the doctor's orders.
It keeps us humble to be quite ordinary, for the
(06:47):
great honor of our Lord, their master and patron, runs
a certain passage in their rule. The Sisters of Charity
shall have in everything they do a definite intention to
please him, and shall try to conform their life to his,
especially in his poverty, his humility, his gentleness, his simplicity,
and austerity. Therein was to lie their strength and the
(07:10):
secret of their courage. Before them stood their crucified Lord,
bidding them suffer and be strong. The Gray Sisters, as
they were called by the poor, not only nursed in
the hospitals of Paris, but went far and wide on
their errands of mercy. Scarcely a day passed without an appeal.
(07:31):
After the Siege of Arras in sixteen fifty six, Louise
le Gras was employed to send help to those of
the inhabitants who had survived the horrors of the war.
Only two sisters could be spared to meet the requirements
of eight parishes. Dirt, disease, and famine reigned supreme. Yet
one of them, writing to her superior to tell her
that the other had been obliged to stop working from
(07:53):
sheer exhaustion, says, I have never heard a word of
complaint from her lips, or seen anything in her face
but perfect content. A little later, the sisters were sent
for to nurse the wounded soldiers in the hospitals of Calais.
My dear daughters, said Vincent, as he bade them, farewell,
be sure that wherever you go, God will take care
(08:13):
of you. Only four could be spared, and the soldiers
were dying in scores of an infectious disease. It was
at the risk of their lives that the sisters went
among them, and two out of the four caught the
infection and died. When the news reached Paris, there were
numbers eager to take their place, and the four who
were chosen set off rejoicing. The hospitals all over the
(08:34):
country were in need of reform, and in Paris every
new scheme for the relief of the poor called for
the sisters assistants. In the hospital at Marseilles, they were
attending the convicts when the Home for the aged poor
was instituted. It was under their government. The foundling hospital
was in their hands. Wherever there was need for zeal
and self denial, there these devoted women were to be found,
(08:57):
ready to lay down their lives in the service of
their neighbors. They had renounced what pleasures the world might
hold for them, for a life of toil and discomfort.
Their sacrifice was hidden. They lived and died unnoticed. We
have no knowledge of our way except that we follow Jesus,
writes the mother and foundress of the company, always working
(09:18):
and always suffering. He could never have led us unless
his own resolve had taken him as far as death
on the cross. In sixteen forty one, the Sisters of
Charity had taken up a fresh work, one which lay
very close to Vincent's heart. The teaching of little children,
it should be, he told them, as much a part
of their vocation as the care of the poor and
(09:39):
the sick, And they were to spare no pains to
give these little creatures the solid Christian teaching which nothing
can replace. As the years went on, many ladies of
noble birth enrolled themselves in the Company, working side by
side with their humbler sisters, in the relief of every
kind of misery. But daughter of peer or of peasant,
the Sisters of Charity was and is before all else,
(10:03):
the daughter of God and the servant of the poor.
Louise Lacrosse rejoiced one day when she heard that one
of the sisters had been severely beaten by a patient
and had borne it without a murmur. She their superior,
and a woman of gentle birth, led the way in
that humility which was their strength. She had been trained
by Vincent de Paul and had learned from a living model.
(10:27):
End of chapter six.
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