St. Vincent Ferrer was born at Valencia, in Spain on the 23rd of January, 1350. Excitement foreshadowed the child's birth. His mother, Constance, experienced only joy and painlessness during her expectancy; furthermore, his father had a prophetic dream in which an unknown Dominican preacher appeared to him and told him that he would have a son whose fame would be world-renowned. Also, a poor blind woman predicted that the child Constance bore within her was an "angel who would one day restore her sight" – which he did years later. St. Vincent brought with him into the world a happy disposition for learning and piety, which improved from his cradle by study and a good education. In order to subdue his passions, he fasted rigorously from his childhood every Wednesday and Friday. The passion of Christ was always the object of his most tender devotion. The Blessed Virgin he ever honored as his spiritual mother. Looking on the poor as the members of Christ, he treated them with the greatest affection and charity, which caused his parents to make him dispenser of their bountiful alms. His father having proposed to him the choice of a religious state, an ecclesiastical, or a secular state, Vincent without hesitation said it was his earnest desire to consecrate himself to the service of God in the Order of St. Dominic. His good parents with joy conducted him to a convent of that Order in Valencia, and he put on the habit in 1368, in the beginning of his eighteenth year.
He made a surprisingly rapid progress in the paths of
perfection, taking
St. Dominic for his model. To the exercises of prayer and penance, he
joined
the study and meditation of the Holy Scriptures and the readings of the
Fathers. For three years, he read only the scriptures and knew the
whole
Bible by heart. Soon after his solemn profession, he was appointed to
read
lectures of philosophy, and, at the end of his course, published a
treatise
on Dialectic Suppositions, being not quite twenty-four years old. He
was
then sent to Barcelona, where he continued his scholastic exercises, and
at the same time preached the word of God with great fruit, especially
during a great famine, when he foretold the arrival of two vessels
loaded
with corn the same evening to relieve the city, which happened, contrary
to all expectation. From thence he was sent to Lerida, the most famous
university of Catalonia. There, continuing his apostolic functions and
education, he received his doctorate, receiving the cap from the hands
of Cardinal Peter de Luna, legate of Pope Clement VII, in 1378, being
twenty-eight
years of age. At the earnest requests of the bishop, clergy and the
people
of Valencia, he was recalled to his own country, and pursued there both
his lectures and his preaching with such extraordinary reputation, so
manifestly
attended with the benediction of the Almighty, that he was honored in
the
whole country above what can be expressed. As a humiliation, God
permitted
an angel of Satan to molest him with violent temptations of the flesh,
and to fill his imagination with filthy ideas. The arms which the saint
employed against the devil were prayer, penance, and a perpetual
watchfulness
over every impulse of his passions. As he grew into manhood it was said
that his countenance was beautiful and radiant, which reflected the
beauty of a soul filled with the love of God. Even in his old age, this
radiance never left him. He was most radiant, however, when he gave a
sermon on the Mother of God or the joys of Heaven. He was firmly
devoted to the Passion and enjoyed a childlike devotion to Mary, which
included a faithful observance of praying the Angelus. His heart was
always fixed on God and
he made his studies, labor, and all his actions a continued prayer. The
same practice he proposes to all Christians in his book entitled,
A Treatise on a Spiritual Life, in which he
writes thus: "Do you desire to study to your advantage? Let devotion accompany all your studies
and study less to make yourself learned than to become a saint."
Consider some of the phrases in this marvelous book. "What is
meritorious is not that a man should be poor, but that, being poor, he
should love poverty." "A vain question deserves nothing but silence.
So learn to be silent for a time; you will edify your brethren and silence
will teach you to speak when the hour is come." "Regard yourself
as more vile and miserable in the sight of God because of your faults than
any sinner whatever, no matter what his sins... and consider closely
that any grace or inclination to good or desire of virtue you may have,
is not of yourself but of the sole mercy of Christ." "Try to
convince yourself that there is no crime-laden sinner but would have served
God better than you... if he had received the same graces." "Once
humility is acquired, charity will come to life – a burning flame devouring
the corruption of vice and filling the heart so full that there is no place
for vanity."
Missionary Travels
Before the end of the year 1392, St. Vincent being forty-two years
old, set out from Avignon towards Valencia. He preached in every town with
wonderful efficacy; and the people having heard him in one place followed
him in crowds to others. Public usurers, blasphemers, debauched women,
and other hardened sinners everywhere were induced by his discourses to
embrace a life of penance. He converted a great number of Jews and Mohammedans,
heretics and schismatics. He visited every province of Spain in this manner,
except Galicia. He went thence into Italy, preaching on the
coasts of Genoa, in Lombardy, Piedmont, and Savoy, as he did in part of
Germany, about the Upper Rhine and through Flanders. Numerous wars and
the unhappy great schism in the Church had been productive of a multitude
of disorders in Christendom; gross ignorance and a shocking corruption
of manners prevailed in many places, whereby the teaching of this zealous
apostle, who, like another Boanerges, preached in a voice of thunder, became
not only useful but even absolutely necessary, to assist the weak and alarm
the sinner. The ordinary subjects of his sermons were sin, death, God's
judgments, hell, and eternity. He delivered his discourses with so much
energy that he filled the most insensible with terror. A great number of
his sermons have come down to us, some in Latin and many in the vernacular.
By them one seizes the man and the saint to the life. They are masterpieces
of naturalness, intelligence, picturesqueness and, at moments, poetry.
In their kind there is nothing better. And they all develop one same theme.
First of all, there is sin as he had known it in the
world under its
seven root forms, stripped of all its pretenses and of its false
promises
of delight. After that comes penance, which can drive out sin or at
least
dull the sharpness of its edge, fortifying us against sin's assaults and
uniting with the Blood of Christ to plead for us before the Throne of
God.
Finally is the Judgment with its alternative for those who have done
evil – Purgatory or Hell. That inevitable judgment, which awaits each
one of
us in the moment of death, he made concrete and dramatic by building it
into one thing with the terrible picture of the universal Judgment, the
Last Judgment, when Christ will appear on the clouds of heaven to summon
the living and the dead to that damnation or glory. He showed it in all
its splendor, all its horror – in that light which is beatitude or
torment,
which ravishes the soul or burns it without end. Punishment is certain;
punishment is at hand. It is coming towards us relentlessly. Every day
we live brings it one day closer. It may be upon us in an hour, in a
second.
He felt it so and he made sinners tremble with the feeling. He returned
to
this theme frequently and on great occasions.
"Yes," you will say, "he wanted to frighten them."
He did indeed want to frighten them because he himself was afraid. And
as his fear for himself grew less, his fear for them grew greater. Not,
alas, that he believed himself just. How could he when he still had
life
before him and might still, therefore, fail? And if he failed that
day?
What if God held him responsible for the sins of his brethren because he
had not succeeded in raising and fortifying them in virtue?
At his sermons he was frequently obliged to stop to
give leisure for
the sobs and sighs of the congregation. His sermons were not only
pathetic,
but were also addressed to the understanding and supported with a
wonderful
strength of reasoning and the authorities of scriptures and fathers,
which
he perfectly understood and employed as occasion required. His gift of
miracles and the sanctity of his penitential life gave to his words the
greatest weight. Amidst these journeys and fatigues, he never ate
flesh;
fasted every day except Sundays, and on Wednesdays and Fridays he lived
on bread and water, which course he held for forty years; He lay on
straw
or small twigs. He spent a great part of the day in the confessional,
with
incredible patience, and there finished what he had begun in the pulpit.
We have the testimony of John of Plascenia, who was with him for some
time, that he read souls like an open book.
He had with him five friars of his Order and some other priests to
assist him. Though by his sermons thousands were moved to give their possessions
to the poor, he never accepted anything himself and was no less scrupulous
in cultivating in his heart the virtue and spirit of obedience than that
of poverty, for which reason he declined accepting any dignity in the church
or superiority in his Order. He labored thus nearly twenty years, until
1417, in Spain, Majorca, Italy, and France. During this time, preaching
in Catalonia, among other miracles, he restored the use of his limbs to
John Soler, a crippled boy, judged by the physicians incurable, who afterwards
became a very eminent man and Bishop of Barcelona. In the year 1400 he
was at Aix, in Provence, and, in 1401, he was in Piedmont and the neighboring
parts of Italy, being honorably received in the obedience of each pope.
Returning into Savoy and Dauphine, he found there a valley called Valpute,
or Valley of Corruption, in which the inhabitants were abandoned to cruelty
and shameful lusts. He joyfully exposed his life among these abandoned
wretches, converted them all from their errors and vices, and changed the
name of the valley to Valpur, or Valley of Purity, which name it ever after
retained. He preached two or three times every day, preparing his sermons
while he was on the road. He worked for three months, traveling from village
to village and from town to town in Dauphine announcing the word of God,
making a longer stay in three valleys in the diocese of Embrun, namely,
Lucerna, Argenteya, and Valpute, having converted almost all the heretics
which peopled those parts. Being invited in the most pressing manner into
Piedmont, he, for thirteen months, preached and instructed the people there,
in Montserrat and the valleys, and brought to the Faith a multitude of
Vaudois and other heretics. He says that the general source of their heresy
was ignorance and want of an instructor, and cries out, "I blush and
tremble when I consider the terrible judgment impending on ecclesiastical
superiors who live at their ease in rich palaces, while so many souls redeemed
by the Blood of Christ are perishing. I pray without ceasing the Lord of
the harvest that He send good workmen into His harvest." He adds
that
he had in the valley of Luferia converted a heretical bishop by a
conference,
extirpated a certain infamous heresy in the valley Pontia, converted the
country into which the murderers of St. Peter, the martyr, had fled,
reconciled
the Guelphs and Gibelins, and settled a general peace in Lombardy.
Being
called back into Piedmont by the bishops and lords of that country, he
stayed five months in the dioceses of Aoust, Tarentaise, St. John of
Morienne
and Grenoble. He says he was then at Geneva, where he had abolished a
very
inveterate superstitious festival – a thing the bishop dared not attempt
– and was going to Lausane, being called by the bishop to preach to
many
idolaters who adored the sun and to heretics, who were obstinate,
daring,
and very numerous on the frontiers of Germany.
Conversions of the Moors and Jews
The saint was honored with the gift of tongues.
Preaching in his
own, he was understood by men of different languages, which is affirmed
by Lanzano, who says that Greeks, Germans, Sardes, Hungarians, and
people
of other nations declared they understood every word he spoke, though he
preached in Latin or his mother tongue, as spoken at Valencia. There is
another marvelous fact which is beyond normal explanation. However far
away people might be, everyone heard every syllable. He could make
himself
heard literally about three miles away, when it was of importance that
he should be heard. He also worked many wonders through the Sign of the
Cross and through the Holy Name of Jesus. He warned lazy Christians who
sloppily made a circular sign of the Cross that they were using a sign
of the Devil instead!
The Moorish king had heard of him; the multitude of his miracles was
startling, and for a good Moslem, upsetting. He could not get Vincent out
of his head. Finally he decided he must see the man who worked the miracles.
He sent for him. The saint arrived lame from a great sore in the leg and
rode on his moth-eaten old donkey through all the splendors of the Alhambra
grounds under the fixed stare of the marble lions. The King wanted to hear
him preach. That in itself was a revolution. They murmured, they listened,
and doubtless they understood though he spoke no Arabic. For, after three
sermons, eight thousand Moors asked for baptism. Some of the nobles, fearing
the total subversion of their religion, obliged the king to dismiss him.
He then labored in the kingdom of Aragon and again in Catalonia, especially
in the diocese of Gironne and Vich; in a borough of the latter, he renewed
the miracle of the multiplication of loaves, related at length in his life.
At Barcelona, in 1409, he foretold to Martin, King of Aragon, the death
of his son, Martin, the King of Sicily, who was snatched away in the middle
of his triumphs in the month of July. Vincent comforted the afflicted father
and persuaded him to a second marriage to secure the public peace by an
heir to his crown.
He cured innumerable sick everywhere and, at Valencia, made a dumb
woman speak but told her she should ever remain dumb and that this was
for the good of her soul, charging her always to praise and thank God in
spirit, to which instructions she promised obedience. He converted the
Jews in great numbers in the diocese of Valencia, in the kingdom of Leon,
as Mariana relates. It is difficult to arrive at a figure. The most cautious
of his historians give twenty-five thousand converts among the Jews and
eight thousand among the Moors. "You know," Vincent announced
from the pulpit, "that we have good news. All the Jews and many of
the Moors of Valladolid are converted." There was similar news from
Toledo, Huesca, Saragossa... This was after the Congress of Tortosa
for the conversion of Israel, suggested to Benedict by a former rabbi,
Josua Holuorqui, who had become Friar Jerome of the Holy Faith. It met
in 1414 and was the occasion of interminable arguments – sixty-seven
sessions – between rabbis and religious. Vincent, who took part in the
Congress,
collaborated in a Treatise on the Jews which served as a base for his
further
labors among them; in it all the proofs of the Dogma of the Incarnation
were magisterially set forth. The Pope presided. The populace were
massed
on the river bank; Master Vincent had taken up his stand to preach on
the
roof of a house surrounded by trees on the far side of the Ebro. One
day
he stopped suddenly in his sermon. The people were startled. "Do not
be shocked by this interval," he said, "I must wait upon grace."
As the crowd began to laugh, a party of Jews were seen approaching: Grace
had conquered them. Of sixteen rabbis, fourteen were converted. How he
loved these new children of his; he loved to remind Christians who too
readily forgot the fact that Jesus and Mary were of the Jewish race.
He was invited to Pisa, Sienna, Florence and Lucca in 1409, whence,
after having reconciled the dissensions that prevailed in those parts,
he was recalled by John II, King of Castille. In 1411, he visited the kingdoms
of Castille, Leon, Murcia, Andalusia, Asturias and other countries; in
all of these places the power of God was manifested in His enabling him
to work miracles and effect the conversion of an incredible number of Jews
and sinners. The Jews of Toledo, embracing the faith, changed their synagogue
into a church under the name of Our Lady's. From Valadolid, the saint went to Salamanca in
the beginning of the year 1412. There he met a procession with a bier and the corpse of a
man who had been murdered. In the presence of a great multitude, he commanded the deceased to
arise and the dead man instantly revived. For a monument of this miracle a wooden
cross was erected and is yet to be seen on the spot. In the same city, the
saint entered the Jewish synagogue with a cross in his hand. Filled with the Holy Ghost,
he made so moving a sermon that the Jews,
who were at first surprised, all desired baptism at the end of his discourse
and changed their synagogue into a church to which they gave the title
of the Holy Cross.
Extraordinary Miracles
As a good Dominican, Master Vincent loved to proclaim the all-powerfulness
of the Rosary. "Who observes this practice," he said, "is
beyond the reach of adversity." He told the case of a very pious
merchant who would say the rosary from morning to night, even to the neglect
of his business. One day he was captured by brigands and, knowing that
his hour was come, he humbly asked for a little moment to pray. Hardly
had he begun when the Blessed Virgin came to him accompanied by St. Catherine
carrying a tray of roses and St. Agnes with a needle and a ball of thread.
The brigands, needless to say, opened their eyes wide. At each Ave the
prisoner recited, the Blessed Virgin took a rose from the plate, pierced
it with the needle, slipped it on to the thread. Thus, she made a wreath
which she placed on the prisoner's brow. As he happened to have his eyes
closed, he did not see the wreath, but he smelt its fragrance. The Virgin
and the two saints went off and the merchant offered them his neck, saying,
"Now you can strangle me." "Strangle you?"
said the
brigands. "Who were those beautiful women? You must be a holy man;
remember us in your prayers." Then they restored his goods and went
away converted. When he spoke of the Mother of Men, Vincent was
transfigured. He used to tell the case of a schoolboy who wanted at
all costs to see her.
An angel warned him that if he did so, he would lose an eye. He
accepted
and lost an eye. Then he asked to see her again, though it meant the
loss
of the other eye, which also took place. But when he was thus
completely
blind, the Blessed Virgin restored both eyes.
The people had recourse to him in every difficulty:
The smallest villages
fought to have him. In one place they took his hat, which assured
pregnant
women of a safe and easy delivery; in others, he drove away a cloud of
grasshoppers
and a whole army of weevils with holy water. Once he came to the point
of utter exhaustion. He could go no further. And heaven came to his
aid.
In the very heart of a wild lonely forest an excellent hotel appeared
suddenly from nowhere to shelter him; leaving it the next day, he
happened
to forget his hat. One of the penitents went back to the inn to get
it, but there was no inn – the hat was hanging on the branch of a tree
at the very spot where the inn had stood. The following year he came to
Murcia. According to the Bishop's report, which has come down to us,
almost no one remained untouched by the grace of the Spirit that filled
all the air. In that province there was an end for that time of
gambling, debauchery, conspiracy, quarreling, and murder. How could
anyone fail to follow the example of a Moor who promised to embrace the
faith if the pyre he had lighted in the main square was extinguished at
Vincent's prayer? Vincent prayed; the flames went out.
"It is an immense enterprise," as one historian has noted,
"to write a life of which every incident was a miracle." Yes,
everything in that life, ordinary things as well as extraordinary, was touched
with miracles, and the greatest miracle in his life was that life itself,
in its daily texture, was so burdened, toil-filled, and various; so continuously
under fire, yet so steady and undeviating – in the midst of schism, in
the midst of anarchy, under the sulfurous illumination of the Last Judgment,
which tragic coming his own life may very well have helped to postpone.
Consider the framework of his days. He rose usually at two in the morning
for the night office, recited his psalms, prayed, meditated, went to confession
– each morning – and scourged himself, thus purging his soul and chastising
his body. Mass was at six o'clock, then three hours preaching, visits to
the sick, mediations between parties in lawsuits and families at odds,
final words of advice to souls he had just converted or brought back to
grace: Then once more on the road. Picture him on the road: In rain or
sunshine, his feet in wooden stirrups attached to the saddle by cords which
cut into his legs, the unending dust from the trampling of the crowd, the
chanting of psalms and the never ending crunch of feet, and the incidents
and the accidents and the care he must have for all his vast company. There
was one meal a day – soup and a tiny piece of fish, washed down with wine
liberally watered. He never had an evening meal. Then he arrives at the
next village to be won to our Lord, the next town to be set in order. The
usual tumult and acclamations and idle questions and plain annoyances besieged
him – clipping pieces out of his habit, kissing his hands – and everybody
taking possession of him – a hundred people if there were a hundred, a
thousand if there were a thousand, more if there were more, as many as
there might be. Then there was the usual platform where he must say in
the evening what he had said in the morning, differently phrased but just
as fresh and convincing, and the usual miracles which he must always be
asking of God when his eloquence gained nothing or not enough – for unless
it gained everything, there always remained something still to gain: God
must attend to it – and that meant miracles. The crowd was at last disposed
of, but, before going to bed – five hours sleep, never more, and no siesta,
not even in Spain – he still had to make his meditation, get his office
said, instruct and direct his companions, prepare tomorrow's sermons, deal
with his post, get off answers to bishops, princes, city magistrates, directors
of confraternities, priors of convents, the Pope himself and any number
of mere nuisances – on every conceivable subject, by no means always concerned
with religion. And, in addition, you should reckon the time he loved to
devote to religious ceremonies – for he was a convinced liturgist and would
have his ceremonies as correct and as magnificent as possible. This gives
some idea of the routine of his days – week after week, month after month,
for twenty years. And he held and did not break. He said one day to a group
of priests, "The moment you wake, to God's work! Identify yourselves
with Christ. At such an hour, He was brought before Pilate, at such an
hour the Jews cried out against Him, at such another hour, He gave up the
ghost."
That indeed was the secret of his own resistance. We may be certain
that he followed to the letter the precious counsel he gave others, followed
it hour by hour exactly, passionately and simply. Living the passion of
Christ in his body, heart and mind, he found all things came easily; almost
pleasantly. Christ was the other self within him: His words, works, sufferings,
flowed as freely from Christ as his miracles. Hence the humility that lived
within his awareness of his greatness; hence his patience against all the
difficulties of life, all the trials of faith, and all the disappointments
of Charity; hence the superabundance of gifts which on the human plane
overflowed in achievement and on the divine plane blazed forth in miracles.
He came one time to the bedside of a sinner, to assist him in his last
agony. The sinner clung to the saint; he felt that his tardy remorse, his
imperfect contrition, his absence of penance, were insufficient to save
him unless St. Vincent threw the whole of himself into the scale. He begged
Vincent to make over to him a good share of the treasures of grace he had
compiled. The saint had pity on his despair. He said: "I give God
all my merits to be applied to you." "Is that true?" The
dying man was mistrustful: He did not know that what a saint says is definite.
"Then write it down for me on a slip of paper. The saint cheerfully
did what he was asked and the man died clutching his precious document.
Logically, Vincent had nothing left – he must begin to pile up another
lot of graces to himself. But a few days later, while he was preaching,
a paper whirled in the air above the heads of the crowd, like a dead leaf
blown along by the wind. Finally it settled on the preacher's cloak. I
need not tell you what it was. God had decided to pay for the sinner's
salvation in a different coin. He returned Vincent his merits along with
his check. For you never lose by the gift of one's self unless you only
half give it.
Whoever approached Vincent felt something about him, like the hot breath
of a hidden fire. So it was with the boy at Caen, possessed by devils from
the day when a careless barber had pierced a tumor. The boy had lost the
use of speech, did not eat or drink, and had no bodily motions except the
blood that spurted from his nostrils whenever he was angered. If they beat
him, he felt nothing. He grew physically, but in a frightful solitude of
a human being who knew no human contact or communication, nor pain nor
pleasure. Then Vincent came to him and touched him. "What do you feel,
my son?" he asked. And the child, set free of what had possessed him,
cried: "Father, I feel God's good pleasure which is accomplished at
this moment." God's good pleasure passed through that hand which He
never withheld.
At Pampeluna, they had just condemned an innocent man to death. Vincent
pleaded for him in vain. As he was being led to the scaffold, they passed
a corpse being taken to burial on a stretcher. Vincent suddenly addressed
the corpse: "You who have no longer anything to gain by lying, is
this man guilty? Answer me!" The dead man sat up and affirmed, "He
is not." Then Vincent, to reward him for that service, offered the
dead man, who was settling down again on the stretcher, to give him back
the burden of earthly life. "No, Father," he replied, "for
I am assured of salvation." And he went off to sleep again and was
carried to the cemetery.
There is another episode stranger still if not more marvelous. It happened
at Gerona. In the thick of the crowd stood a man somber, glowering, rage
stamped on every feature: Near him was his wife with an infant in her arms,
still at the breast. The man was devoured by a frenzy of jealousy. Brother
Vincent saw him, saw what fire burned in him, and preached upon Jealousy.
Suddenly he turned to the man. "You doubt your wife's faithfulness,
do you not? You think this child is not yours? Well, watch!" Then
he cried in a great voice to the child: "Embrace your father!"
The infant stirred, stood upright, turned towards the man and held out
its arms. And thus was the man cured and the family peace restored.
It seems that he touched each heart at the point he chose, the point
that charity suggested to him, and invariably at the precise moment. He
knew for example that a shepherd in the heart of the mountains had so great
confidence in him that he came to hear him, leaving his flock, only staying
to draw a circle round them with his staff – counting on the saint to see
that the sheep did not go out of the circle or the wolves come into it.
Vincent knew it, whether he had guessed it or read it in the man's eyes;
or perhaps God revealed to him the poor shepherd's naive arrangement and
let him know that He meant to grant his prayer. At any rate, Vincent told
him before all the crowd: "Your sheep are safe; God is watching over
them." Similarly, we are told that mothers did not hesitate to leave
their babies to come to his sermons: They confided the infants to the angels
– as Vincent advised them to. He doubted nothing, this man – God least
of all.
There was the very famous miracle of the wine cask which would not
run dry while the crowd of Vincent's followers still needed to drink. It
is worth adding that ten years later, the owner of the cask, the Seigneur
Saint-Just, met a man who gave evidence in the canonization process and
assured him that in all those years he had given that miraculous wine to
the sick: That no matter what their malady, they were cured: That the wine
grew no less though he drew from the cask every day. It would seem that
charity once installed in that cask was unwilling to leave it. Charity
indeed he left behind him everywhere, impregnating everything he touched.
Once, for lack of alms – his purse being empty – he gave a poor woman his
hat. "Thank you... But what do you expect me to do with it?"
Anyhow she took it away with her and that evening, at the gates of Valencia,
it struck her to put it on the head of an inn-keeper who was unwilling
to give her lodging. He was in an evil temper, having a raging headache.
"Perhaps Master Vincent's hat will cure it." It did. The inn-keeper
put it aside to use when the need should arise again. The hat was to be
seen for long after but in a pitiable condition – for he had had the notion
of soaking it in water from time to time and it seems that this incredible
hat-broth had cured his customers of all sorts of minor ailments.
Sometimes one asks oneself if it is possible to believe, so enormous
are some of the things we are told he did. The miracle at Morella, for
instance, is an exact reproduction of the famous miracle of St. Nicholas
when he brought back to life the three children in the salting-tub. One
is tempted to think that some unscrupulous biographer made the whole thing
up. Here is the story. There was a certain woman of great virtue but subject
to attacks of nerves, which came very close to madness. One day, in the
absence of her husband who had the preacher lodged in the house and had
gone out to hear him preach, her mental affliction came upon her and she
cut her small son's throat. She then went on to chop him up and roasted
a portion of him. This she gave to her husband on his return from listening
to the sermon. The man found out somehow what had happened, and at the
last point of horror and disgust, rushed out to tell the saint. Vincent
realized at once that heaven could not have allowed a happening so monstrous
save as an occasion for a most signal manifestation of God's power. He
came, prayed, gathered together the bleeding pieces of the child and said
to the father, "If you have faith, God who created this little soul
from nothing can bring him back to life." He fell on his knees and
the impossible happened. The child was alive again, whole and entire.
Consider the story of the two men consumed at Zamora. These were two
criminals before whom Master Vincent preached for three hours in the presence
of an enormous crowd. We know that he brought them to such a horror of
their crime, depicted with such cruel and gripping realism the flames of
hell, that when the guards came to bring them back to prison they found
only two charred corpses. Remorse – and, we may hope, repentance – had
literally consumed them. They were buried in front of the steeple beneath
two stones which stood for centuries to attest the fact. One day a Portuguese
man who passed that way and to whom the story was told, shrugged his shoulders
skeptically. "I will believe it," he cried, "when one of
the immense stones splits." He tapped one with the toe of his boot
and it split clean in two from top to bottom. Since that is the story we
are told, why not? At any rate, when you are dealing with miracles, do
not commit the vulgarity of dragging in the question of likelihood.
Yes, the blind see; the deaf hear; paralytics walk; the plague-stricken
are healed; the faithless believe; sinners repent; the unstable grow steadfast;
the idle find energy; sworn enemies embrace; the hard of heart find their
hearts on fire. And beside the miracles that affect men, storms are stilled,
rain stops, rocks are split, lightning flashes from the sky. Heaven itself
opens and saints, angels, the Mother of God and her Son come forth. What
must be must be – God will have it so. The prayer of a saint is omnipotent
– if God decides to grant it. "Christ can do nothing," cried
an obstinate sinner in Brothers Vincent's face. "I shall lose my soul
if I please." There was the claim of human liberty. "I shall
save you by Him, in spite of yourself," replied the preacher. There
was the claim of the omnipotence of a redemption purchased by the blood
of God. Vincent leaned over the crowd. "Say the Rosary!" The
Creed was said and the Our Father. The Hail Marys followed one another
on the beads. From Heaven, thus stormed by prayer, the Virgin Mother in
person descended, holding in her arms the Child Jesus – sobbing. At that
sight the sinner broke down, surrendered. The will for evil was conquered
without a struggle by the will of Grace.
Last Years
Normandy and Brittany were the theater of the apostle's labors the
two last years of his life. He was then so worn out and weak that he was
scarce able to walk a step without help; yet no sooner was he in the pulpit
but he spoke with as much strength, ardor, eloquence, and unction as he
had done in the vigor of his youth. He restored to health on the spot one
that had been bedridden eighteen years, in the presence of a great multitude,
and wrought innumerable other miracles, amongst which we may reckon as
the greatest the conversion of an incredible number of souls. He inculcated
everywhere a detestation of lawsuits, swearing, lying and other sins, especially
of blasphemy.
As his health started failing, his companions persuaded him to
return to his own country. Accordingly he set out with that view, riding
on an ass, as was his ordinary manner of traveling in long journeys. But
after they were gone, as they imagined, a considerable distance, they found
themselves again near the city of Vannes. Wherefore the saint perceiving
his illness increase, determined to return into the town, saying to his
companions that God had chosen that city for the place of his burial. The
joy of the city was incredible when he appeared again, but it was allayed
when he told them he had come, not to continue his ministry among them,
but to look for his grave. These words, joined with a short exhortation
which he made to impress on the people's mind their duty to God, made many
shed tears, and threw all into an excess of grief. His fever increasing,
he prepared himself for death by exercises of piety and devoutly receiving
the sacraments. On the third day the bishop, clergy, magistrates, and part
of the nobility made him a visit. He conjured them to maintain zealously
what he had labored to establish amongst them, exhorted them to perseverance
in virtue, and promised to pray for them when he should be before the throne
of God, saying he should go to the Lord after ten days. His prayer and
union with God he never interrupted. The magistrates sent a deputation
to him, desiring he would choose the place of his burial. They were afraid
his Order, which had then no convent in Vannes, would deprive the city
of his remains. The saint answered that, being an unprofitable servant
and a poor religious man, it did not become him to direct anything concerning
his burial; however, he begged they would preserve peace after his death,
as he always inculcated to them in his sermons, and that they would be
pleased to allow the prior of the convent of his Order which was the nearest
to that town to have the disposal of the place of his burial. He continued
his aspirations of love, contrition, and penance; and often wished the
departure of his soul from its fleshy prison, that it might the more speedily
be swallowed up in the ocean of all good. On the tenth day of his illness
he caused the passion of our Savior to be read to him, and after that recited
the penitential psalms, often stopping totally absorbed in God. It was
on Wednesday in Passion Week, the 5th of April, that he slept in the Lord,
in the year 1419. When he expired a host of little white butterflies fluttered around his head. These were little "angels"
to take the Angel of Judgment home and to attest to his purity and
holiness. There was even a "piercingly sweet odor" which arose from his
body. Joan of France, daughter of King Charles VI, Duchess
of Brittany, washed his corpse with her own hands. God showed
innumerable
miracles by that water and by the saint's habit, girdle, instruments of
penance, and other relics, of which the details may be read in the
Bollandists.
The death of St. Vincent Ferrer did not check the
flowing of the spring
which his merits and penances and love had opened in the rock of Mercy
inexhaustible. They laid two corpses in his tomb before they sealed it.
Just as the touch of his habit wrought miracles during his life, so did
the touch of his grave: two dead people were brought to life when placed
upon it! Nor is that an isolated
incident. The inquiry set on foot at Vannes for the process of his
canonization
brought to light an incredible mass of miraculous happenings, sudden
conversions,
cures, apparitions, and a surprising number of resurrections from the
dead.
Falls, drownings, murderous assaults, illnesses – he intervened in all
and was always being invoked.
Petition for his canonization was universal and immediate from kings,
bishops, universities, nobles and peasantry. Pope Nicholas V issued a bull
to inquire into the life, heroic sanctity and miracles of Saint Vincent. The
Duke of Brittany even levied a tax to defray expenses for the process.
According to Vincent's own prophecy, Alphonsus Borgia who was elected to the
Papacy and became Callixtus III, did indeed canonize him. The canonization was
held on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 1455, in the Dominican
Church of Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. The body was found to be incorrupt on that day.
During the Mass of canonization, two dead persons were covered with the cloak in which Saint
Vincent had been buried. They were both restored to life. Also, the Duke of Brittany's
relative was cured of leprosy that day and a blind man was restored to sight.
Fifty years after St. Vincent's death, a boy of twelve,
Juan de Zuniga, died at Placenzia. A prayer to St. Vincent brought him
back to life. He lived to be Cardinal Archbishop of Seville. A cathedral
was built in commemoration of the event. On the day they were celebrating
the Saint's feast, the preacher failed to appear – he had suddenly fallen
ill. The embarrassment would have been serious only that a Dominican father,
absolutely unknown, appeared from nowhere and offered to take his place.
He went up into the pulpit, preached and was seen no more. It was St. Vincent
Ferrer, naturally, since he is always present upon earth, in action if
not in person. There seems to be no other possible explanation of the sudden
appearance and disappearance of the preacher.
During his life Saint Vincent freed more than seventy people from the
Devil and many more were freed at his tomb. He raised more than
twenty-eight people from the dead and four hundred sick people were
cured by resting on the couch where he had lain during his illness.
The change of a sinful heart is even a greater miracle than wondrous
temporal benefits. Saint Vincent was not wanting here as we have seen;
thousands of sinners became penitent, including Jews and Moors.
Wherein was the great success of this humble, friar-preacher? First,
he was a living image of the Crucified. He was gentle and patient and
never murmured a word of complaint. He loved poverty and his purity
consisted in excluding all thoughts that did not tend towards God. He
preserved this awesome purity by obedience. As great as he was, he
excelled more than anyone in submitting to his superiors. Second, he
was an imitator of his spiritual father, Saint Dominic. It was said of
Saint Dominic that he was "a light of the word, a dazzling reflection
of Jesus Christ, a rose of patience, another precursor and a master in
the science of souls." Vincent was a worthy disciple who would
himself protest that he was only imitating his holy founder. God is
glorified in His saints!
The Angel of the Apocalypse provides us with some valuable lessons. Of
course, no one knows the day nor the hour of the Second Coming, but we can
imitate Saint Vincent in his penitential life so as to be ready at all times
to meet Our Judge. We will have little to fear if we combine that
penitential life with the humility and love for Jesus and Mary that Saint
Vincent had. His intercession, once so powerful on earth, has surely only
increased in Heaven. Pray to him in confidence and he will no doubt
intercede for you before his beloved Master, Jesus Christ and his most
beautiful Queen, Mary, the Mother of God.
The great humility of this saint appeared amidst the honors and applause
which followed him. He lays down this principle as the preliminary to all
virtue that a person be deeply grounded in humility "For whosoever
will proudly dispute or contradict, will always stand without the door.
Christ, the master of humility, manifests His truth only to the humble
and hides Himself from the proud."
Only through the one, true religion has a dead person ever been brought
back to life. We see the first recorded accounts of the dead being raised
in the Old Testament; the great prophets Elias and Eliseus raised at least
three persons who had died.
In the New Testament, following the example of the Divine Founder of
our Holy Religion, Saints Peter and Paul also raised several persons from
the dead. The fact is that only through the Roman Catholic Church, from
the time of Our Lord until today, has anyone been brought back from the
grave! (Have you ever heard any reports of a Lutheran, Baptist, Jehovah's
Witness, Evangelical Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. making any
such claim?)
The list of Catholic saints who have performed resurrection miracles
appears endless! (St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, St. Martin of Tours, St. Benedict,
St. Bernard, St. Anthony, just to name a few, and the tally goes on). St.
Vincent Ferrer raised at least twenty-eight persons. St. Joan of Arc brought
a stillborn baby back to life long enough for it to be baptized. St. Patrick
of Ireland raised nearly forty people from the dead many of whom had
been dead and buried for years.
Hundreds of these resurrection miracles are well documented and authenticated;
not only by Catholic sources, but also by many secular and historical records
as well.
www.olrl.org/lives/
