The excellent charity work of the St Vincent de Paul Society (Vinnies) is well known throughout the length and breath of Australia.
However, perhaps not so much is known about the person of Vincent, his background and life story. It is an amazing and confronting story and is told in the reflection below.
The reflection was written by Fr Daniel Franklin E. Pilario, C.M. of the St. Vincent School of Theology, Adamson University, Manila.
It was written for Sunday September 27, the Feast of St Vincent de Paul. Fr Danny has given his permission for me to share it
Gospel Reflection: Matthew 21: 28-32
Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people:
“What is your opinion?
A man had two sons.
He came to the first and said,
‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’
He said in reply, ‘I will not,’
but afterwards changed his mind and went.
The man came to the other son and gave the same order.
He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go.
Which of the two did his father’s will?”
They answered, “The first.”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you,
tax collectors and prostitutes
are entering the kingdom of God before you.
When John came to you in the way of righteousness,
you did not believe him;
but tax collectors and prostitutes did.
Yet even when you saw that,
you did not later change your minds and believe him.”
“But afterwards he changed his mind and went” (Matthew 21: 29)
Most translations render conversion or repentance as metanoia or change of mind (i.e., meta= change; noia = something to do with nous or mind). But the word used in the Greek text is μεταμεληθεὶς (pronounced metameletheis), coming from metamelomai. The root word melo has the sense of “to care for”. If we translate, it would mean the first son changed – not only his mind but his actions – regarding what he cared about, what he considered important, what his life priorities were.
Conversion is about a “change of heart”, not understood emotionally, but a change in what we truly care about in our lives. This is what theologians call our “fundamental option”. Understood this way, we all need conversion – a continuing change in our life direction. The Pharisees have hardened hearts. They feel they do not need it. But the prostitutes and tax collectors knew deep within them the need to change and believe.
September 27 is the feast of a man who inspired my life, Vincent de Paul (1581 – 1660). I would like to tell his story today.
We all know him to have helped the poor all his life. For this, he was proclaimed by the Church as the universal patron of charity. He fought poverty in all its forms and facets – working for beggars, prisoners, abandoned children, mentally challenged persons, captives in foreign lands, rural serfs – name them, one can be sure he served them.
But that is the end story. Many do not know who the real Vincent was from the beginning. He certainly needed conversion, needed to change in his basic life options. His conversion was not as dramatic as that of St. Paul or St. Augustine, but it was an authentic conversion just the same – making him closer to many of us and our ordinary lives.
Vincent was not an evil person. He did not kill or defraud anyone. He just wanted himself and his family to survive, to gain a little wealth to pull them out of poverty, “to have a decent retirement”, to use his own words. These are the legitimate desires of many of us. In order to achieve this, he “used” the priesthood. He became a priest to serve himself and his ambitions. He was not a bad man but he was not the St. Vincent that many of us know.
On the outside, like the second son in the Gospel above, he publicly said ‘yes’ – “Yes, I am going to serve the Lord in his vineyard” – but he did not go. He was not serving God. He was serving himself.
He saw priesthood as a good business, that is profitable for his family. After the first year of his priesthood, he wrote to his mother: “Do not worry. Soon, you can stay with me and I will have substantial retirement money.” To think of retirement benefits on the first year of one’s career as a priest is weird, to say the least. He was always on the lookout for where the better financial resources were – a richer parish or chaplaincy, an old lady who could donate to him a large amount, a bishopric (Yes, he wanted to be a bishop, a matter he was ashamed to speak of later in life). This was his basic orientation – the fulfillment of his own selfish ambitions.
But God changed his life. Seldom do we convert ourselves. We are forced into it by surprising life events and unplanned circumstances. It happened with Vincent, too. All his financial adventures and aspirations failed. While pursuing a prospective donor, he was captured by pirates and made to work as a slave in Tunis among the Muslims. He lived in dire poverty which was very far from the luxurious retirement he had imagined.
Following his escape from captivity, and to save at least as little money, he lived in a boarding house with a kababayan (fellow countryman) only to be falsely accused by the later of theft. He was denounced in public as persona non grata. That was an enormous embarrassment and humiliation.
Despite all that happened, he still wanted that “retirement dream”. There was no let-up of his original plans. He grabbed every opportunity that came his way. He landed in the household of the ex-Queen who was living by herself after being divorced by the French King. At least here he had some stable income. But with that security came internal instability. He could not sleep for weeks and months. He could hardly do his duties. He could not even pray or say the Mass for which he was paid. He suffered what some authors call “temptation of faith”. But to be frank about it, he suffered a mental breakdown – for being locked down physically in that small unknown palace, but also for being confined psychologically within himself and his own ambitions.
Who saved him? Who healed his declining mental health? Who converted him from the preoccupation with himself? The poor themselves!
In the midst of his mental breakdown, he visited the sick in an adjacent hospital. There he saw the real suffering of the poor – a place so crowded that dozens of sick people scrambled for a bed vacated by someone who just died. This was an everyday occurrence. The sick were so destitute no one really cared. They were just there waiting for death. Vincent’s complacency was confronted with a situation of people who lived like animals in hell. Quite an eye-opener for one whose life ambition is to live in luxury! The poor revealed to him the truth of himself. It was a painful realization.
On that fateful day, he allowed himself to be confronted by their pain and suffering. He allowed his selfish life to be questioned by their destitute poverty. It was not immediate. He did not fall from the horse to be converted then and there like St. Paul. But he knew something was going on inside himself. In the months that followed, he slowly changed his heart as he encountered other situations that questioned his self-complacency.
He was no longer happy living in the palace. He promised that his life be dedicated fully to these suffering people. He slowly avoided the corridors of power and sought to be assigned among the neglected peasants in the countryside, among beggars on the streets, among the prisoners in the galleys, etc. His life took a real turnaround toward society’s victims, the excluded and suffering others.
Within this personal change there arose a deep realization: that the poor are the source of his liberation. Against all messianic complexes that plague many philanthropists, NGOs and community workers, Vincent realized that it is not him who was saving the poor. In fact, it was the poor who had saved him.
Many do not know this conversion story – from being the second son who initially said yes “for a show” but did not go, to the first son who initially did not want to go but went to the field anyway… and remained there steadfastly.
St. Vincent de Paul, pray for us.
