It was May 12, 1885—140 years ago—when Pope Leo XIII, at the request of Cardinals, Bishops from all over the world, and Superiors General of religious orders, “in order to contribute to the good of the universal Church, to increase the glory of God, and to inspire a new movement of charitable zeal in hearts of stone,” declared and established St. Vincent de Paul as “patron of all the charity Associations existing in the Catholic world.”

In his Apostolic Brief, Leo XIII described St. Vincent as a shining model of Christian charity in the 17th century and emphasized how many fruits society had received from the Congregation of the Mission, which—two hundred years after its founding—had gained the esteem of all.

Now, 400 years after the foundation of the Congregation of the Mission (April 1617), the memory of St. Vincent de Paul remains vivid among us. Touched by his closeness to the poor, looked at them with a theological gaze, that is, the gaze that God has shown himself to have towards the people of the covenant, reduced to miserable conditions in the history of salvation: the understanding gaze of merciful love, which was unequivocally revealed in the gaze with which Jesus caressed sinners, the unfortunate and the weak.

The poor became for Vincent the most sensitive point of his conscience, in whose contact his spirit vibrated. Jean Calvet (one of his biographers) writes: “He felt and believed that really, without metaphor, the beggar, the ragged one, was his brother. If every day he made two poor people from the street sit at his table and wanted to serve them himself, it was because he saw in them Jesus Christ, but first of all because he saw in them his brothers. And since they were unfortunate brothers, he thought they deserved this particular look: he considered them his “lords and masters”.

To Vincent, each poor person was a face full of history. A face to be deciphered and loved with tenderness and cordiality, recognizing the very mystery of the God who became man and shared human suffering.

Let us not forget that the poor, the people, the “things to do” did not distract Vincent’s heart from his experience of God in prayer: “Dedicated continually to prayer, he was not distracted either by the contemplation of the divine mysteries, or by people, or by affairs, or by happy or sad things: in fact, he always had God present in his mind, and with great effort and holy strategies he had succeeded in making everything that came before his eyes remind him of his Creator; expressing in his own way the glory of God and the divine praises, they impelled him to the contemplation of heavenly beauty. That is why he was always modest, meek, docile and benevolent, preserving in all things a wonderful serenity of spirit: he was neither exalted by happy things nor disturbed by adversities, since he could say with the prophet: “I always have God before my eyes because He is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken”.” (from the Canonization Bull).

The commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the foundation of the Congregation of the Mission and the 140th anniversary of the proclamation of St. Vincent as Patron of Charity Associations becomes—as Fr. Tomaz Mavric, Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission, has reminded us—a fitting opportunity for us, Priests and Brothers of the Mission, for the Vincentian Family, and for all workers of charity around the world, to renew our commitment to walk with the poor, proclaim the Gospel through our lives, be a consoling, accompanying, and serving presence, turn our hearts toward the least, and build bridges of charity and dialogue.

P. Salvatore Farì CM
Director of the Communication Office of the Congregation of the Mission