Vincent’s spirituality was not an isolated event. He was part of a broad spiritual revival in France during his time—the “devout France,” as some authors call it. As a man of his time, he was influenced by these currents, particularly through the people with whom he was closely associated: his spiritual directors and friends.
In the next articles in this series, let me introduce the great men and women whose lives and witness greatly influenced St. Vincent’s spirituality.
The first among these great spiritual leaders was St. Francis de Sales, whose spirituality belonged to a movement called “devout humanism.”
The humanist movement of the 16th century left its mark on spirituality well into the 17th century. Humanism is a philosophical and cultural movement that places the human person at the center of the universe. “Human beings are dignified because they are human.”
This era was characterized by the discovery of human potential in the arts and literature through a return to the Greek classics. This humanist trend found its place in spirituality through a special focus on the human person as the center of God’s creation. “Man [sic] is dignified not only because he is man but because he is sanctified.” This is “devout humanism”: a product of, as well as a reaction to, the humanism of the time.
We see this distinctive mark in the teachings of Francis de Sales, one of Vincent’s greatest friends.
Bishop Francis de Sales came to Paris in November 1618 and remained there for a year to attend to some business. During that time, he and Vincent de Paul became close friends. We know that Vincent was quite temperamental. He always referred to St. Francis de Sales as a model of gentleness—something he acknowledged that he lacked in his own personality.
Together with St. Jane Frances de Chantal, St. Francis de Sales organized a group of religious women called the Visitation Sisters. Their original vision was for the sisters to visit poor people rather than remain confined within their cloisters. Rome and the ecclesiastical authorities prevented this.
When St. Francis died, Vincent became the spiritual director of the Visitation nuns in Paris. Later, when St. Vincent and St. Louise organized the Daughters of Charity, they pursued the same vision of religious life. Vincent told his sisters: “Your convent is the homes of the poor; your cells are rented rooms; your chapel is your parish church; and your cloisters are the streets of the city.”
The influence of Francis de Sales on Vincentian spirituality was deep and decisive.
In Francis de Sales’ influential book, Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), he pointed out that true humanism consists in cultivating the interior life within one’s particular state of life. Reacting to a monastic spirituality that catered only to the religious elite of his time, Francis de Sales made holiness possible and available to any ordinary person “in the world”—to any man or woman on the street—“by spinning the thread of little virtues.” This proclaimed that the experience of God was possible within the ordinary circumstances in which every human person lived.
This devout humanism led Vincent to discover God not in the heights of mystical contemplation but in the ordinary events of human experience. Vincent further specified this experience: “God is present in the experience not only of any man but more especially of the poor.”
St. Francis had another monumental work titled Treatise on the Love of God (1616). In it, he pointed out the importance of “charity” in Christian life. Love is the center and recapitulation of all virtues. The Visitation Order he founded offered a new model of religious life, one based not on austerity but on a love that was total, joyful and open-hearted—not so much a life of penance as a life marked by the joy of the Gospel.
In this work, St. Francis made a famous distinction between affective and effective love, which found its way into the words of Vincent de Paul. Vincent emphasized to the missionaries that they should love the Lord, “but let it be with the strength of our arms and the sweat of our brows.”
St. Vincent offered the Daughters of Charity these words about affective love:
“Affective love, this is tenderness in love. You must love the Lord tenderly and affectionately, like a child who cannot be separated from his mother and cries ‘Mama’ as soon as she attempts to absent herself. So a heart which loves our Lord does not wish to suffer His absence and owes it to himself to cling to Him by his affective love, which produces the effective love, which is the exercise of the works of charity, the service of the poor undertaken with joy, courage, steadfastness and love.”
Vincent was not an emotional romantic. Neither was he a Pelagian workaholic.
A great balance between love’s affective and effective dimensions can be found in the words he uttered to Sister Jeanne, the young novice in the movie Monsieur Vincent:
“Jeanne, you will soon discover that charity is a heavy burden to bear—heavier than the soup pot or the basket of bread. But you must always keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not everything to give soup and bread. The rich can do the same.
“You are the little servant of the poor, the Daughter of Charity, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters—terribly sensitive and exacting masters, as you will find out. But the uglier and dirtier they are, the more unjust and vulgar they appear, the more you must show them your love. It is only because of your love—because of your love alone—that the poor will forgive you for the bread you give them.”
It is easy to see the influence of Francis de Sales on Vincent de Paul’s approach to the poor. Vincent’s language regarding the poor often echoed the words used in Francis de Sales’ writings. To serve the poor means freeing them to experience the love of God.
Father Daniel Franklin Pilario, C.M., is the President of Adamson University in Manila. He is a theologian, professor, and pastor of an urban poor community on the outskirts of the Philippine capital. He is also the Vincentian Chair for Social Justice at St. John’s University in New York.
