MISSION WORK
THE incident which had given rise to Vincent's first mission at
Folleville 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 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. 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 Collège des Bons Enfants was at that moment vacant. She
asked 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 all thought of honor and worldly advancement, were to
devote their lives to preaching in the villages and small towns of
France. Their traveling expenses were to be paid from a common fund.
They were to spend themselves in the service of their neighbor,
instructing, catechizing and exhorting; and they were to take nothing
in return for their labors. Nine months of the year were to be given
to this kind of work; the other three to prayer and preparation.
In March, 1625, 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 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 taken suddenly ill,
and she died a few days later. Her broken-hearted husband not only
consented to Vincent's residence in the Collège des Bons Enfants, but
shortly afterwards, leaving that world where he had shone 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 M. Portail, and a 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 the foundation the
Congregation only numbered thirty-three members; but Vincent had no
desire that it should be otherwise. In 1652 it was recognized by Pope
Urban VIII 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.
"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 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 all over the country. In due time the Congregation outgrew the
Collège des Bons Enfants, and was transferred to a large Augustinian
priory which had originally been a leper hospital, and still bore the
name of St. Lazare.
Up to this time the Mission Priests had contented themselves with
ministering to the peasantry, but in the course of their travels 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, worldly 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 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 St. Lazare for candidates to
the priesthood. Here, in an atmosphere of prayer and recollection,
those who were about to be ordained had every opportunity of 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 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 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. Weekly gatherings
were held at St. Lazare under the name of "Tuesday Conferences," where
difficulties were discussed, debates held and counsels 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 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. The work thrived beyond all expectation. All were
admitted without exception: noblemen and beggars, young men and old,
the learned and the ignorant, priests and laymen. St. 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
retreatants 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 Vincent in
Paris, that came nobly to his rescue. There was Madame de Maignelais,
sister of M. de Gondi, who, left a widow at the age of twenty, devoted
herself and her enormous fortune to alms and good works. There was the
Duchesse d'Aiguillon, niece of the great Richelieu; Madame de
Miramion, beautiful and pious; Madame Goussault, the first President
of the Dames de Charité; 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 an urgent necessity in the world of Vincent's
day. While yet at the Collège des Bons Enfants, he had realized how
great was the need of a special training for young men destined for
the priesthood and had founded a small seminary. After the move to St.
Lazare the undertaking had grown and prospered. A college of the same
kind had been lately founded by M. Olier, the zealous curé of St.
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. One hundred and fifty years later the
Mission Priests of St. 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 to do our
work?" he would ask. "How 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 his heart of all 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: 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 catechized. 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 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. "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 Priests increased in number. "This work is
not human, it is from God," was Vincent's answer to those who
marvelled at the power of the company for good.