Some two years ago there was published a book entitled The Times Book of Saints. <\/i>A selection was made of more than 300 saints and the editor gave a brief r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of the life and works of each saint. A distinguishing feature of the volume is the inclusion of a short extract from the writings of each saint, if such writings exist. St Vincent finds his place in the volume and it was with a certain eagerness that I searched out the two pages devoted to our Founder, curious to know what passage the editor would have selected from the writings of M Vincent. It would surely be an extract from one of his impassioned addresses to the community of St Lazare or to his beloved Daughters of Charity on the urgency of evangelisation and the importance of service of the Poor. To my surprise this is what I read:<\/p>\n
Jesus, the Lord, expects us to have the simplicity of a dove (Mt.10:16). This means giving a straightforward opinion about things in the way we honestly see them, without needless reservations. It also means doing things without double-dealing or manipulation, our intentions being focused solely on God. Each of us, then, should take care to behave always in the spirit of simplicity, remembering that God likes to deal with the simple, and that he conceals the secrets of heaven from the wise and prudent of this world and reveals them to little ones.<\/p>\n
However, while Christ recommends a dove\u2019s simplicity, he also tells us to have a serpent\u2019s prudence. He means that we should speak and behave with discretion. We ought, therefore, to keep quiet about matters which should not be made known, especially if they are unsuitable or unlawful. When we are discussing things which it is good and proper to talk about, we should hold back any details which would not be for God\u2019s glory, or which could harm some other person, or which would make us foolishly smug.<\/p>\n
In actual practice this virtue is about choosing the right way to do things. We should make it a sacred principle, admitting of no excep\u00adtions, that since we are working for God we will always choose God-related ways for carrying out our work, and see and judge things from Christ\u2019s point of view and not from a worldly-wise one; and not according to the feeble reasoning of our own mind.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n The choice of this piece as illustrative of the life and mission of St Vincent is interesting. It is, of course, taken from the Common Rules<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> of the Congregation of the Mission which St Vincent had printed in 1658, two years before his death. The choice made by this editor \u2013 Bert Ghezzi, a layman \u2013 is particularly significant. It would seem that he perceived that M Vincent\u2019s grasp and appreciation of the virtue of evangelical simplicity and prudence was the secret of the flowering and growth of that great and dense forest of works which \u2013 as Daniel Rops remarked \u2013 hides the man Vincent de Paul as in a fog. Bert Ghezzi\u2019s perception of the secret of the fecundity of the life of Vincent de Paul is rooted in that virtue which the Saint himself describes as my gospel. God has given me such an appreciation of simplicity that I call it my gospel.<\/i><\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n One of the first references M Vincent makes to the virtue of simplic\u00adity occurs in the Rules drawn up for the Confraternity of Charity in November-December 1617. We read that the members are to take care in practising humility, simplicity and charity, each deferring to her com\u00adpanions and to others, performing all their actions for the charitable intention of persons who are poor and with no human respect.<\/i><\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n That passing reference to the three virtues of humility simplicity and charity is like the first trickling of a river over ground, a river that with the passing of the years would become wide and broad and deep in the mind and heart of M Vincent. The trinity of virtues \u2013 simplicity, humility, and charity \u2013 are those to which the saint most often refers in his conferences to the Daughters of Charity, while to simplicity he assigns the primacy of place in the rule for both the Daughters of Charity and the members of the Congregation of the Mission.<\/p>\n The young Vincent did not imbibe simplicity with his mother\u2019s milk. Indeed being a Gascon – he would have soon learned that a goodly measure of astuteness along with a cultivated shrewdness was necessary if one was to advance one\u2019s interests in society. A later letter of M Vincent point to this indigenous Gascon trait. When a member of his community, Firmin Get, had withheld from M Vincent some rather important details about a financial matter, the saint administered the following rebuke:<\/p>\n I must confess, Monsieur, that this has surprised me more than anything that has happened to me for a long time. If you were a Gascon or a Norman, I would not find it strange. To think, however, that a straightforward man from Picardy, whom I consider one of the most sincere men in the Company, would have hidden that from me -how can I not be surprised at that, and just as surprised at the means used to meet those demands?<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n A flash of the Gascon trait surfaces again when within two weeks of the Saint\u2019s death. M Gicquel who kept a close eye on the Saint during the final days, of his life. He records in his diary that M Vincent, when issuing instructions to M Dehorgny on how he should communicate the news of the appointment of the Sister chosen to succeed Mademoiselle le Gras, remarked;<\/p>\n M Dehorgny, have them (the Sisters) assemble and, after the conference announce to them the choice God has made of Sister (Marguerite Ch\u00e9tif) as Superioress. Tell them beforehand that they will all kiss her hands as a sign of acknowledgement, and she will embrace them; take a look around at the faces and expression of the members of the Community, especially the two or three who were officers and who had it in mind…<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n M Vincent was not one \u2013 to quote Isaiah \u2013 who would forget the rock from which you were hewn, and the quarry from which you were dug.<\/i><\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The Daughters of Charity were the beneficiaries of his reflection on the virtues that he saw in<\/p>\n good village girls, because I know them from experience and indeed by nature, for I am the son of a poor tiller of the soil and I lived in the country until I was fifteen… So I can tell you, dear Sisters, that the spirit of true village girls is extremely simple \u2013 no slyness, nor words of double meaning, they\u2019re not opinion\u00adated nor obstinate because in their simplicity they believe quite simply what they\u2019re told. Daughters of Charity should be like that, Sisters, and you\u2019ll know that you\u2019re really so, if you re truly simple, not attached to your own ideas but accepting those of others: if you\u2019re candid in your speech and if you aren\u2019t thinking one thing while your lips say another. I can well believe that of you, dear Sisters…<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n Through labyrinthine ways Vincent, the newly ordained priest, after leaving the languid lands of the Landes, <\/i>would eventually settle down in the sophisticated world of Paris. Those first ten years of his priesthood, intent as he was on carving out a comfortable niche in the ecclesiastical world by securing a lucrative benefice or even an Episcopal appointment, had ended in failure.<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Disillusioned, he was slowly making the discovery that would be reflected in phrases of the rule he would write some 50 years later. Purely human wisdom avails little in the domain of spiritual principles. Indeed human prudence can prove counterpro\u00adductive in harvesting that genuine fruit which the Lord of the Vineyard guaranteed would remain.<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The young priest Vincent would seem to have only made that discovery after many of those human agents upon whom he had pinned his hopes had failed to procure the ecclesiastical advancement he had dreamed about. There is a ring of deep conviction in a phrase such as this written two years before his death:<\/p>\n Let each of us accept the truth of the following statement and try to make our most fundamental principle: Christ\u2019s teaching will never let us down, while worldly wisdom always will…And that is why the Congregation should always try to follow the teaching of Christ himself and never that of the worldly.<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n The principles of worldly wisdom had failed Vincent, and it would be in Paris through his contacts with a constellation of theological and spiritual luminaries that he would come slowly to the realization that Christ\u2019s teaching will never let us down.<\/i><\/p>\n The eight years that intervened between M Vincent\u2019s first arrival in Paris and the year of the Folleville Mission had brought him into a world in which he saw \u2018worldly wisdom\u2019 <\/i>displayed in the court of Queen Marguerite. Contemporaneously he was beginning to breathe the purer air of the mountain of the Lord to which he had been led by De Berulle and Duval. A refining and purifying of motive for action was taking place. It is the pure of heart who will see God.<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> With a growing purity of heart the vision of M Vincent was being sharpened to see the presence of the crucified and risen Christ in ten thousand places, lovely in eyes, lovely in limbs not his.<\/i><\/span>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> To see Christ particularly where one would least expect to find him -in human minds and bodies that poverty and suffering had broken and distorted.<\/p>\n It was while ascending the mountain of the Lord in the second decade of the 17th century that M Vincent met a bishop whom he would recognise and acknowledge as having a profound and lasting influence on his life. One will find more than 150 references to St Francis de Sales scattered like seed throughout M Vincent\u2019s correspondence and conferences. To judge from the approving warmth of his references to the dicta <\/i>of the gentle bishop of Geneva, M Vincent looked to him as a spiritual role model. In later years the when the memory of St Francis de Sales crossed his mind he liked to designate him as Our Blessed Father. <\/i>The two celebrated works of St Francis de Sales, A Treatise on the Love of God <\/i>and The Introduction to the Devout Life<\/i>, would have been familiar to St Vincent, the latter work being frequently commended by him as spiritual reading.<\/p>\n The importance of the virtue of Simplicity was accepted by authori\u00adties on the spiritual life in 17th century France. St Francis de Sales in his correspondence makes reference to an anonymous Flemish work entitled \u2018La Perle Evangelique\u2019 which <\/i>markedly influenced Benet of Canfield and Francis de Sales.<\/span>14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Although not found in the Annecy edition of the works of Francis de Sales (and hence not accessible to St Vincent) St Francis de Sales wrote:<\/p>\n To understand what simplicity is, it is necessary to know that there are three virtues which are so like one another that it seems there is no difference between them, namely truth, purity and sim\u00adplicity. Truth makes us seem exteriorly what we are interiorly… purity cannot endure any sin however slight, or any impure inten\u00adtion which does not tend to God\u2019s glory but simplicity surpasses these in as much as it has only a simple regard for God.<\/span>15<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n Even though four decades had elapsed, clear echoes of these observa\u00adtions of the Our Blessed Father <\/i>are to be heard when in 1659 St Vincent was addressing his community:<\/i><\/p>\n I know well that simplicity in general is taken as truth, or purity of intention: truth in so far as it make our words and other expres\u00adsions conform to our thoughts; purity of intention, because it makes all our acts tend straight to God. But when one takes sim\u00adplicity as a particular virtue and in the proper sense, it includes not just purity and truth but also the property it has of excluding from our words and actions all deceitfulness, ruses and duplicity.<\/span>16<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n As M Vincent continued to scale ever higher the mountain of the Lord, and to breathe its pure air, his vision of the God of gods in Sion <\/i>became more focused and penetrating. St Thomas Aquinas predicated of the virtue of humility its power to give unhindered access to spiritual and divine goods.<\/i><\/span>17<\/sup><\/a><\/span> M <\/i>Vincent was enlightened by grace to see that through the practice of simplicity the Lord gave unhindered access <\/i>to the hearts of little ones, while at the same time unveiling some of the deep mysteries of God. The short prayer of praise which Jesus offered to the Lord of Heaven and earth for revealing hidden things <\/i>to little ones was often quoted by M Vincent in his conferences and directions to individual correspondents.<\/span>18<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n The virtue of simplicity was to become, what later M Vincent would call, \u2018my gospel<\/i>.\u2019<\/span>19<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n It is the virtue I love most, the one to which in all my actions I pay most heed, so it seems to me; and if it were lawful to say so, the one I may say in which I have by God\u2019s mercy made some progress.<\/span>20<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n This confession from the lips of M Vincent, who was invariably reticent about his personal spiritual experiences, must carry special weight and be valued as a special key to the interpretation of his monu\u00admental life. From later observations made by the Saint about the high place simplicity occupies in the hierarchy of virtues which he proposed to his two communities (and the references are multiple<\/span>21<\/sup><\/a><\/span>) a question could be proposed. Was his strong conviction on evangelical simplicity born solely from his experience of the efficacy of the virtue in attain\u00ading practical and successful results in the ministry of evangelising and serving the Poor?<\/p>\n It must be said that M Vincent\u2019s starting point for presenting simplic\u00adity as one of the faculties of the soul <\/i>of the Congregation of the Mission was based not on sheer pragmatism but on theological foundations.<\/span>22<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Repeatedly the Saint refers to the truth that God likes to communicate with those who are simple.<\/span>23<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In the conference which he gave to his own community on the virtues of Simplicity and Prudence, after citing some relevant Scriptural passages, he recalls the theological truth that God is simple.<\/p>\n God is a simple Being who receives nothing from another. He is a sovereign and infinite essence, excluding all admixture. He is a pure Being never undergoing change. Now this quality of the Creator is to be found in some of his creatures. It is communicated to them and exists after the manner indicated in our Rules.<\/span>24<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n Authentic simplicity makes for direct communication with God. It facilitates a growth in faith which is a created participation in the knowl\u00adedge God has of himself. Faith gives limited vision, until the perfect is come with the direct vision of God.<\/span>25<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Was it the practice of simplicity that enabled M. Vincent to grow stronger in faith, to see with the eyes of Christ, to judge of persons and events with the mind of Christ?<\/span>26<\/sup><\/a><\/span> To M Vincent was given the charism of seeing the features and the person of Jesus Christ beneath the broken bodies and the agitated minds of the Poor. Purity of heart and purity of intention are constitutive parts of the virtue of simplicity. The French writer George Bernanos is credited with the observation: Ask for the only thing you need – a star and a pure heart. <\/i>The star for M Vincent was the living person of Jesus Christ. The gaining of an ever-purer heart was sought through prayer, daily examen of consciousness (as distinct from conscience) and the blood transfusions from the risen Christ in the sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation.<\/p>\n Each one in every single thing he does, especially in preaching or other ministries of the Congregation, should make an effort to have, to the best of his ability, as pure an intention as possible of pleasing God alone.<\/span>27<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n Simplicity presupposes an awareness of the presence of God. To be simple is to focus one\u2019s intentions solely on God.<\/i><\/span>28<\/sup><\/a><\/span> A practice which M Vincent encouraged very frequently, particularly when addressing the Daughters of Charity, was that of recalling the presence of God. In teaching the Sisters how to pray he indicates that at the beginning of prayer it is important to recall the presence of God and that for some Sisters that may be difficult, and may even cause headaches.<\/span>29<\/sup><\/a><\/span> So he proposes four other means of facilitating the centring of the mind and heart on the presence of the living God. It is clear that develop\u00adment of an awareness of the presence of God even outside the times of formal prayer would make the service of the Poor more easy and more single-minded. Hence the numerous references to this practice in the Conferences given to the Daughters of Charity:<\/p>\n Our Sister has given us an almost infallible means of loving God; it is, she says, ever to walking His presence; and that is most true; the more one sees a perfectly good person, the more one loves him. Now, if we have God frequently before our eyes, as God is beauty and perfection itself there is not doubt that the longer we look upon Him the more we shall love Him.<\/span>30<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n It is interesting that M Vincent here evokes the God of beauty, adding that the more we look upon Him the more we shall love him. <\/i>If one is to live in the presence of God and refer one\u2019s activities of thought, word and action to God, what image of God is to be cultivated? A God of beauty, a loving God is the suggestion to M Vincent at that particular conference.<\/p>\n The image of a God as a severe taskmaster, intent on inculcating servile fear, will not favour growth in simplicity. The renowned German-born scriptural expert, Joachim Jeremias, published in the 1960s a small work entitled The Central Message of the New Testament <\/i>in which he highlighted the Fatherhood of God as central in the revelation of Christ. Becoming a true child of our loving Father is an indispensable condi\u00adtion for entering the Kingdom of Heaven.<\/span>31<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Philip the apostle – at once curious and fascinated by the frequent references our Lord made to his Father – asked that Jesus would show them the Father.<\/span>32<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The reply: Philip… whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, \u2018Show us the Father<\/i>\u2019? Only a short time before Philip would have looked at our Lord on his knees before him as he began to wash his feet. So our God is a God who puts on an apron, goes on his knees and washes feet. The God of Jesus Christ is a self-emptying God, a serving God. He is supremely the God of Vincent de Paul. Goodness for M Vincent was not merely something to do but Someone to love. His God was a serving, loving God. And this God had emphasised that greatness comes from within, that the value of actions lies in the intention.<\/span>33<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Hence the really acceptable offering of purification of the spirit is that which is rendered not in a man-made temple but in the temple of the heart, where Christ the Lord is pleased to enter<\/i>.<\/span>34<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n Fear must be considered as one of the obstacles to the growth of the virtue of simplicity. A present-day English contemplative nun has noted that most men and women spend their lives running away from fear or, to express it dramatically but none the less really, from feeling unimportant?<\/i><\/span>35<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Fear that is born of human respect or from an excessive spirit of competitiveness can propel us into inauthentic ways of acting and of speaking. M Vincent would have seen much of it in the Court circles and in the aristocratic stratum of society that he entered after his arrival in Paris:<\/p>\n We hardly meet anyone at the present day who speaks as he thinks… The world overflows with duplicity…It is essential that we be on our guard against appearing crafty, clever, wily and, above all using double-meaning language.<\/span>36<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n When, in August 1659, M Vincent spoke those words, one wonders if he was recalling his experience of working with Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin who were not only familiar with Machiavellian theory but practitioners of it, and would projected themselves to M Vincent as crafty, clever and, wily.<\/i><\/span>37<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n The kingdom of the <\/i>arri\u00e8rre pens\u00e9e is where all human debates occur, <\/i>observed Paul Valery,<\/span>38<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and few must have been as aware as M Vincent of that truth. Not only in Court circles and among the politicos of his day but in the world of ecclesiastics he would have noticed the hollowness and the veneer that often masked the unspoken thought. Nor was the pulpit an artificiality-free zone. The parading of an array of classical learning was frequently substituted for the word of God and basic simple catechesis. The hungry sheep look up and are not <\/i>fed.<\/span>39<\/sup><\/a><\/span> M Vincent was well aware of the artificiality of much preaching in his time. The antidote which he vigorously proposed to his missionaries was simplicity in thought and expression.<\/p>\n Rather like the river Nile which, flowing between its banks, succeeds in irrigating hundreds of hectares of land, making them fertile, so the virtue of simplicity will flower in a variety of forms.<\/span>40<\/sup><\/a><\/span> More than an attitude, simplicity is a spirit that presupposes an ensemble of virtues. In authentic simplicity one will find humility, sincerity, truth, modesty. A constellation of such virtues will generate a certain spontaneity and ease of approach to others that can facilitate greater openness in them. One thinks of Blessed Pope John XIII and his disarming simplicity that put people so much at their ease in his presence. In his Journal of a Soul <\/i>he wrote:<\/p>\n The more mature I grow in years and experience the more I recog\u00adnise that the surest way to make myself holy …lies in the constant effort to reduce everything, principles, aims position, business, to the utmost simplicity and tranquillity; I must always take care to strip my vines of all useless foliage and spreading tendrils, and concentrate on what is truth, justice and charity, above all charity.<\/span>41<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n In an age of consumerism a simplicity of life-style, motivated by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, can be compelling and prophetic. The modern world, for all its complexity and technology, seems to experience a thirst for simplicity in word, in life-style, in action. Such simplicity of life\u00adstyle is silently eloquent of the all- sufficiency of trust in the God who clothes with beauty the lilies of the fields, providing food for the birds of the air and counselling humans not to be anxious for the morrow.<\/span>42<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Such simplicity when lived authentically can radiate a serenity that is a healing therapy for the Poor.<\/p>\n The virtue of evangelical simplicity is indissolubly united in St Vincent\u2019s thought with the virtue of prudence. He sees the marriage of simplicity and prudence as blessed by Jesus Christ who would have his disciples wise as serpents and simple as doves.<\/i><\/span>43<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Were he living in today\u2019s world he would note the popularity of the present-day cult of transparency that flourishes (or often does not!) in the world of business, politics, administration, and accountability. The cult may have arisen as a reaction to the widespread adoption of the tactics of dissemblance and cover-up in our present-day culture. M Vincent\u2019s endorsement of such transparency would not be a full approval of what is known today in some countries as \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d. He would note, too, that in the Western culture there prevails at the present time a certain mercilessness in arriving at the truth through exposure that is not always consonant with the supreme rule of speaking the truth in love.<\/i><\/span>44<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Hence the need of the virtue of prudence which, according to Aquinas, is the mold and mother of all the moral virtues, while charity molds even prudence itself.<\/i><\/span>45<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n That St Vincent was familiar with the teaching of Aquinas on the virtue of prudence is evidenced by a little phrase which he cites in the paragraph devoted to prudence in the Common Rules for his missionar\u00adies: In actual practice this virtue is about choosing the right way to do things.<\/i><\/p>\n This is a clear echo of the recta ratio agibilium (<\/i>the right reason of doing) <\/i>which St Thomas links to the virtue of prudence.<\/span>46<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Immediately St Vincent raises the question to the supernatural plane as he continues:<\/p>\n We should make it a sacred principle, then, that since we are working for God we will always choose God-related ways for carrying out our work, and see and judge things form Christ\u2019s point of view and not from worldly-wise one; and not according to the feeble reasoning of our own mind either.<\/span>47<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n It is clear that St Vincent is here writing of supernatural prudence, and in this context Josef Pieper makes a profound assertion.<\/p>\n The highest and most fruitful achievement of Christian life depends on the felicitous collaboration of prudence and charity… Charity being participation by grace in the life of the Trinitarian God, is in essence a gift ultimately beyond the power of man\u2019s will or reason to bestow… The divine love conferred by grace shapes from the ground up and throughout the innermost core of the most commonplace moral action of a Christian, even though that action may be \u2018outwardly\u2019 without special distinguishing characteris\u00adtics…In proportion to the growth of the theological virtue love there unfolds in the man who has received grace the sevenfold gift of the spirit; in the same proportion human prudence receives, more tangibly and more audibly , the aid of \u2018the gift of counsel, \u2018donum consilii\u2019. The gift of counsel corresponds to prudence, helping and perfecting it<\/span>The rock from which you were hewn…<\/i><\/h2>\n
The City and the Court:<\/i><\/h2>\n
…And the Church…<\/i><\/h2>\n
The virtue I love most…<\/i><\/h2>\n
As the eyes of servants… so too our eyes…<\/i><\/h2>\n
What image of God?<\/i><\/h2>\n
Why are you fearful?<\/i><\/h2>\n
Stripping one\u2019s vines…<\/i><\/h2>\n
The mother and mould of all moral virtues.<\/i><\/h2>\n