Saint Vincent

“ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is comprised of 32 islands and cays
People Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Population: 117,193 (July 2004 est.) Age structure: 0-14 years: 27.6% (male 16,463; female 15,872)
15-64 years: 66% (male 39,827; female 37,547)
65 years and over: 6.4% (male 3,247; female 4,237) (2004 est.) Median age: total: 25.8 years
male: 25.7 years
female: 26 years (2004 est.) Population growth rate: 0.31% (2004 est.) Birth rate: 16.77 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) Death rate: 6.04 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.) ”

“ At Paris Vincent became acquainted with the holy priest Monsieur de Berulle, who was afterward cardinal, and at that time was taken up in founding the Congregation of the French Oratory. A saint readily discovers a soul in which the spirit of God reigns. Berulle conceived a great esteem for St. Vincent from his first conversation with him; and to engage him in the service of his neighbor, he prevailed with him first to serve as curate of the parish of Clichi, a small village near Paris ”

“ Just below the hot-well, there rises a noble range of hills, which are not more remarkable for their hight, than for their being equally so on both sides the river, the strata in some places answering on each side for about a mile and a half in a serpentine course. These constitute one of the greatest natural curiosities in England. The rock beyond the hot-well, and on the same side, is named St. Vincent’s, a chapel dedicated to that saint having been formerly built on its summit. ”

“ Every café has its ball at night; if weather permit there is a general ball in the public square." A few yards from the beach on a rock stands a chapel dedicated to S. Vincent, who is traditionally held to have been born at Collioure. He was martyred at Valencia in Spain, 304. But Huesca also claims the honour of his birth. His name is included in the English Church calendar on 22 January. From the rock of S. Vincent on 16 August, annually, at nine o'clock in the evening, starts a procession of boats that brings the relics of the saint to the town. ”

“ We should love the poor with peculiar affection, beholding in them the very person of Christ, and showing them the same consideration that He did.----St. Vincent de Paul
The venerable Monseigneur de Palafox, after he was a bishop, gave a dinner every Thursday to twelve poor men and was present at it himself. But one day, reading the Life of St. Martin, he found that that Saint gave food to the poor with his own hands, and washed their feet. ”

“ Patrick to dedicate Pagan monuments to the honour of the true God. On one occasion, it is related, on the authority of an ancient life of the Saint, that, on coming to the Plain of Magh Solga, near Elphin, he found three pillar stones which had been raised there by the Pagans, either as memorials of events or for the celebration of Pagan rites, on one of which he inscribed the name of Jesus, on another Soter, and on the third Salvator, along probably with the cross, such as is seen on nearly every Christian monument in Ireland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no silver lining to the clouds of darkness and despair settling down upon the world of labor.
This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief from wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery, but where the workers will own the tools which they operate, and the product of which they alone should enjoy. ”

“ As for Vincent, he was completely won by the gentle serenity of St. Francis and took him as model in his relations with others. "I am by nature a country clod," he would say in after years, "and if I had not met the Bishop of Geneva, I should have remained a bundle of thorns all my life."
At last Vincent's desire seemed about to be fulfilled. A friend of de Bérulle's, curé of the country parish of Clichy, near Paris, announced his intention of entering the Oratory, and at de Bérulle's request chose Vincent de Paul as his successor. Here, amidst his beloved poor, Vincent was completely happy. ”

“ As a revolutionary organization the Industrial Workers of the World aims to use any and all tactics that will get the results sought with the least expenditure of time and energy. The tactics used are determined solely by the power of the organization to make good in their use. ”

“ If a cleric wanted to obtain a good living it was well to let people know that he was eligible for it; humility was not a fashionable virtue. People were therefore not a little astonished when Vincent, flatly refusing to allow any outsiders to be present, said his first Mass in a lonely little chapel in a wood near Bajet, beloved by him on account of its solitude and silence. ”

“ At a time when, perhaps, yet greater trials are in store for the Church and for us, and when, perhaps, likewise, yet greater mercies are to reward our faith, God has thought fit to set, as it were, the seal of His Omnipotence on our confidence, and to show by prodigies all the power of S. Vincent's protection at the throne of Divine Goodness. Two astonishing cures have taken place {312} this year before the shrine of S. Vincent, during the 'neuvaine' of the translation of his relics. I do not qualify them as miracles, because the ecclesiastical authority alone has the power so to term them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To carry on such an establishment and to devote oneself to study at the same time was not the easiest of tasks; but Vincent was a hard and conscientious worker, and he seems to have had, even then, a strange gift of influencing others for good. For seven years he continued this double task with thorough success, completed his course of theology, took his degree, and was ordained priest in the opening years of that seventeenth century which was to be so full of consequences both for France and for himself. ”

“ Their life was hard. They rose 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 St. Lazare, he would set before them the ideals of their vocation, bidding them above all things to be humble and simple. ”

“ 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.
Chapter 6 THE GREY SISTERS ALTHOUGH many 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 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." ”

“ No part of the organization is allowed to enter into time contracts with the employers. Where strikes are used, it aims to paralyze all branches of the industry involved, when the employers can least afford a cessation of work—during the busy season and when there are rush orders to be filled.
The Industrial Workers of the World maintains that nothing will be conceded by the employers except that which we have the power to take and hold by the strength of our organization. ”

“ It is evident that so cold and narrow a teaching could not but be repugnant to a man of Vincent's breadth and charity. The monstrous heresy held by the Jansenists that Christ did not die for all men, but for the favored few alone, filled him with a burning indignation. No one could have deplored more than he did the unworthy use of the Sacraments; but he held firmly to the truth that they had been instituted by a loving Saviour as man's greatest strength and as a protection against temptation and sin. ”

“ Nothing would have been easier than to put in a plea for a benefice or a bishopric; but Vincent, who was both humble and unselfish, had no thought of his own advancement. His only desire was to get his business over and to leave the Court as quickly as possible.
The question of how he was to live remaining still unanswered, he took a room in a house near one of the largest hospitals in Paris and devoted himself to the service of the sick and dying. But even the rent of the little room was more than he could afford to pay, and he was glad to share it with a companion. ”

“ The ladies of the parish, to whom before Vincent's arrival the hour of the Sunday Mass had seemed too long for God's service and who had spent it chattering behind their fans, began also to realize that there was something in life besides selfish amusement. Some of them, moved by curiosity, went to see the new preacher, who, receiving them with his usual kindness and courtesy, drew a touching picture of the suffering and poverty that surrounded them and begged them to think sometimes of their less fortunate brothers and sisters. ”

“ His apostolic zeal it was that kept the Faith alive in Eastern Nova Scotia, in the days when, with the exception of a few French missions, it lived only in the hearts of the poor Micmac Indians. Before his death, however, he had the happiness of seeing the Catholic religion firmly rooted in the land he so loved, by the arrival and establishment there of the loyal Highlanders, who by their energy and perseverance have changed the desert through which Father Vincent made his perilous journeys into a beautiful and fertile country. ”

“ Its members were to devote themselves to the service of the poor for the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ, their Patron. They were to tend the sick cheerfully and kindly, as they would their own children, not disdaining to minister to them with their own hands. The work developed quickly; confraternities of charity were soon adopted in nearly all the parishes of France and have since extended over the whole Christian world.
The de Gondis, in the meantime, had discovered the place of Vincent's retreat and had written him several letters, piteously urging him to return. ”

“ He founded the Order of the Sisters of Charity, the Convicts' Mission-Refuge, a refuge for the unfortunate, the Foundling Hospital, and a great general hospital and asylum where twenty thousand men and women were lodged and nourished. To the people of France Père Vincent was a man apart from all others, the impersonation of human love and the manifestation of God's mercy. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The parish church, which was in great disrepair, was rebuilt; old, standing quarrels were made up; men who had not been to the Sacraments for years came back to God. Such was the influence of the Curé of Clichy that priests from the neighboring parishes came to learn the secret of his success and to ask his advice.
Vincent was looking forward to a life spent in earnest work among his people when a summons from Father de Bérulle recalled him suddenly to Paris. ”

“ The youngest of the family, the famous, or rather infamous, Cardinal de Retz, was not yet born, but Vincent's hands were sufficiently full without him. "I should like my children to be saints rather than great noblemen," said Madame de Gondi when she presented the boys to their tutor, but the prospect seemed remote enough. The violent temper and obstinacy of his charges were a great trial to Vincent, who used to say in later life that they had taught him, cross-grained as he was by nature, how to be gentle and patient. ”