At the dawn of 27 September 1660, Monsieur Vincent, full of years and merits, ended his missionary journey. It is interesting to know the chronicle of the end of his days, left to us as an invaluable treasure by Father Gicquel, who narrates how our Saint, surrounded by his children and at the request of Father Dehorgny, in his final moments blessed the associations and works that came from his heart. Dehorgny, in his final moments blessed the associations and works that came from his heart: the Priests and Brothers of the Congregation of the Mission, the Daughters of Charity, the Ladies of Charity, the Tuesday conferences, the orphaned children, the elderly, benefactors and friends… And after having invoked “Jesus” evangeliser of the poor, whom he loved so much, he arrived at the gates of Paradise.
If we follow the thinking of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who coined the term “instant”, “is the momentary act of man’s intuition which, rising above the temporal succession of acts and events, grasps at once the unitary meaning of all life, the deepest motives of all in their intentional unity, and penetrates through a sense-knowledge into his true being: what he has willed and made of himself in the course of time, the result of his freedom. When such insight is provoked by God’s action, it is the irruption of eternity into time, the tangency of the eternal into the historical, the descent of the Infinite into existence and the elevation of the latter into the former in a shot only and decisive, cast from the depths of an authentic “present”; Santiago Arzubialde, s. j.j; dare I reflect by saying that Mr. Vincent, meeting Jesus, in his last “instant,” had two faces: contemplating the past and the present, his own and his children’s, and also the future of the work that came out of his hands.
He must have seen how the Lord changed his course as Paul in Damascus, because his existence was no longer “an honorable retreat” but an encounter with Him in the person of the least, the poor and the abandoned of the state and the church. And to bring this work to fruition, he opened up colorful horizons and, in the case that interests us today, the “little Mission Company.” This work, like all his, was not the fruit of an exaggerated narcissism that he wanted to prolong over time, but a gift from God to the Church, and therefore his project was not ephemeral, nor did it end with him. This is how he expressed it to us:
“I never thought about it. God made everything.
Noi uomini non abbiamo avuto alcun ruolo…
Tutto ciò che vedo mi sembra un sogno.
Tutto ciò non è umano, ma di Dio!”
SVP.
XI, 326.
The congregation, being true, has put its talents to carry out the Lord’s designs, doing everything and suffering for the glory of God and the edification of his Church. SVP.VII, 438.
And with an element close to his heart: the Divine Providence, he left our course for us:
“The true missionary should not be concerned about the goods of this world, but places all his trust in the Lord’s providence, certain that as long as he remains in charity and relies on this trust, he will always be under God’s protection; consequently, nothing bad will happen to him, nor will he lack any good, even if he thinks that, according to what appears, everything is going to fail….You must hope that as long as you remain steadfast in this trust, you will not only be free from all evil and all troublesome incidents, but you will be filled with all kinds of good….” SVP. XI, 4. P. 731
Good Vincent walked with his squire Portail and the missionaries who were always with him until the end of his life. He died with the serenity of having accomplished God’s will, he and his faithful missionaries. He was never discouraged by the desertions of his disciples, nor by the persecutions they suffered, much less by the untimely deaths of some of them–as the apostle of Tarsus could exclaim: ” I have fought my battle well, I have run to the goal, I have kept the faith. Now the crown I deserve awaits me, with which the Lord, the righteous judge, will reward me on that day; and not only I, but all who have love at his coming.” Tim. 4, 8. He reached his destination, to be followed by Almerás, Gilguel, Dehorny, etc. And with them, the Society’s journey continued.
And the fledgling but solid Society continued to navigate the shallow waters of missionary life, sometimes in turbulence and persecution in France, China, Spain–even in the most unsuspected corners of the world. Some were unfaithful or rather weak in their vocation, such as the refractory bishops of the French Revolution, or Sapetus the dispatcher of Abyssinia… but yesterday, young men like Monsignor Delaplace, who, as a seminarian at Mother House, in his youthful effervescence, one day jumped down the stairs and when he met the Superior General, Fr. Etienne, who, seeing him, told him that he was a man of faith. Etienne, who, seeing him with a grim look on his face, our future missionary bishop said to him, “Is it true, Father, that one day I will go to China to climb mountains and cross rivers? And there he really went to die,” or Fathers Bernardos, Drug and Koch, who left the comforts of their Germany and died to the bone in the jungles of Costa Rica.
St. Vincent continues with his worn-out shoes beside his missionaries, “Look, we can think of ourselves as the fathers. The Society is still in the cradle; it has just been born; it has only been born for twenty-five or thirty years: what do you mean, it is not yet in the cradle? And those who come after us, three or four centuries from now, will look upon us as fathers… it will be said of those who are now in this company, “In the time of the first priests of the Mission, this is how it was done; this is how we behaved; these and these virtues prevailed,” and so on in everything else. If this is so, my brethren, what example should we leave to our successors, to our children, since the good they do depends in some way on the good we do…?Oh, fathers, what consolation and what joy will we have when God wants us to see the good that the company does, producing an abundant harvest of good works, observing the rules faithfully and exactly, practicing the virtues that constitute its spirit, following the good examples we have given them…? Well, let us put ourselves heartily into God’s hands; let us work, let us work, let us go and help the poor of the countryside who are waiting for us….” Repetition of the prayer of November 25, 1657. SVP. XI, 3. 315.
Truly, today we look with grateful remembrance upon the witness of the Founder and hundreds of Paul’s sons, who did not shirk their commitment and who deliver to us workers of the present hour this glorious legacy of their lives. The missionaries of the dawn, and those who have arrived in the heat of the day, give us a message, like that which the Council Fathers of Vatican II addressed to humanity on December 7, 1965. Let us make our own the exhortation to young people, “… For it is you who will receive the torch from the hands of your elders and live in the world at the moment of the most gigantic transformations in its history. It is you who, gathering the best of the example and teachings of your parents and teachers, will form the society of tomorrow; you will be saved or perish with it.”
We already have in our hands “the torch of our elders,” what a responsibility! The Mission Congregation in the present and future, after Providence, depends on us, we will save it or perish with it. Let us listen to what the Founder said to the missionaries of yesterday and also to those of today:
“Look, my fathers and brothers, we must have in us this disposition, and even this desire, to suffer for God and our neighbor, to consume ourselves for them. Oh, how fortunate are those to whom God gives these dispositions and desires! Yes, Fathers, we must put ourselves totally at the service of God and the people; consume ourselves for it, give our lives for it, undress ourselves, as it were, to put on new clothes; at least, want to be in this disposition, if we are not already; be willing and ready to go and go where God wills, whether in the Indies or elsewhere; in a word, willingly expose ourselves to the service of our neighbor, to extend the dominion of Jesus Christ in souls. I myself, even though I am old and aged, do not stop having this disposition within me, and I am even ready to go to the Indies, to win souls for God there, even if I should die on the way or on the ship.”. SVP. XI, 281.
Today, we, the children of the “giant of charity,” are in more than 160 countries around the world, and among them, we missionaries of the Congregation of the Mission have surpassed the 100 mark. How insistently our current Superior General, Fr. Mavric, insisted that we go to those countries, and even to the poor ones where we are not, to take the good news of salvation to the ends of the earth….
How happy is the condition of a missionary who has no other limits in his missions than the habitable world! Why then limit ourselves to a point and set limits within a parish, if the whole circumference of the circle is ours? SVP X1.828-829.
Now Lord Vincent will remember that the Lord’s promises, in the last “instant” of his agony, are a reality today, 364 years after his earthly end. The Lord, as to Moses, will now say to him again, “Lift up now your eyes and look from where you are to the north, to the south, to the east and to the west. For all the land you see I will give to you and your descendants forever.” Genesis 13:14-16In holy humility and with our Holy Founder, we say to the Good Lord:
O Savior, my good Savior, may Thy divine goodness deliver the Mission from this spirit of idleness, of comfort-seeking, and give it an ardent zeal for Thy glory, that it may embrace everything with joy, never turning down an opportunity to serve Thee! We were made for this; to a missionary, to a true missionary, to a man of God, to a man who has the spirit of God, everything must seem good and indifferent; it embraces everything, it can do everything; all the more so a company: a congregation can do everything when it is animated and carried by the spirit of God. SVP. XI 121-122.
Marlio Nasayó Liévano, c.m. Nátaga, Huila, Colombia, September 2024
