Let us situate ourselves. The organizers of this Vincentian Week have given very limited yet specific objective to my presentation, namely, they have requested that I focus on the time when Vincent de Paul was pastor at the parish of Clichy. Those who have studied the life of Saint Vincent know that he only spent a little more than a year in this parish. Before attempting to give answers to specific questions let me engage in a journey so that we can situate ourselves in the year … I invite you to travel with me.
At that time Vincent de Paul was thirty-one years old. He had matured and, speaking in religious terms, he had engaged in a process of profound conversion. We can affirm, however, that our saint had experienced pastoral progress as he established relationships with the humble and the poor.
At that time, however, his spiritual situation was by far not the best. He found himself in the midst of incredible temptations against the faith. He found it impossible to make an act of faith. He felt all his childhood beliefs and certainties crumble around him. The only thing that helped him in this time of darkness was the conviction that this trial came from God and that eventually God would have pity on him.
He redoubled his prayers and penances and took the most practical measures he could devise [1]. Thus we find our saint in a situation in which he experienced the dark night of faith. It was also at this time that he rediscovered his priestly vocation. Even though the path was by no means a straight line yet Vincent found himself called to travel along this seemingly strange path.
This fact will be very important for the theme that we are dealing with in this presentation. We are still in the year … and now it is October. The Holy See accepted this document on November 12th of the same year. Until May 2nd, we have no formal record that Vincent de Paul was pastor. The formal decree by which Vincent took possession of this parish the original document is in Latin has been translated and published in the thirteenth volume of Correspondence, Conferences, Documents.
