Today,
in the 1962 Dominican Rite Calendar, we celebrate the feast of St. Vincent
Ferrer, Confessor, of the Order of Preachers.
The feast is II Class and therefore the semi-festive office is prayed. At Lauds, the Psalms of Sunday are
prayed. At Lauds, a commemoration is
made of the 4th Saturday of Lent…which is a III Class feast.
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I have a
particular devotion to this remarkable saint, for numerous reasons, but he seems to me to be the one Dominican saint who so perfectly exhibited in his life the
true spirit of the Order of Preachers, as envisaged by Our Holy Father St. Dominic. We could surely use the "Angel of the Apocalypse" today, with so many people having fallen away, not just from the Faith, but from belief in God in general. Interestingly, the
Dominican Breviary contains rubrics for the blessing of water for the sick in honor
of St. Vincent Ferrer. You can find a very interesting article about the history of this reserved blessing here, at the website for
the Dominican Province of St. Joseph. St. Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.
From
“Short Lives of the Dominican Saints” (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner
& Co., Ltd., 1901):
THIS
great ornament of the Dominican Order was born about the year 1346 at Valentia
in Spain, of pious and well-to-do parents. Even before his birth wonderful
signs presaged his future sanctity; and, after a childhood of singular
holiness, he took the habit of a Friar Preacher when entering on his eighteenth
year. During the years of study and teaching which followed his profession, he
doubtless practiced the lesson he so beautifully gives to others in his "Treatise
on the Spiritual Life," a book which in its day enjoyed as great a
popularity as the "Imitation of Christ" and the "Spiritual
Combat" in our own times. "When you are reading or studying, you should
often turn to our Lord to converse with Him, and to ask Him to give you
understanding. . . . Hide yourself in the Wounds of Jesus and then resume your
reading."
Never,
perhaps, had Europe stood in such need of being evangelized by a Saint as
during the latter half of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century.
Two terrible scourges, each bringing countless evils in its train, were
desolating the Church and the world. One was the awful pestilence known as the Black
Death, which is said to have carried off one third of the human race; the other
was the Great Schism, during which sometimes as many as three rival Popes divided
the allegiance of Christendom. It was by no means easy at the time to know
which election had been valid; and, whilst England remained faithful to the
true Pope, France and Spain, probably in perfect good faith, supported the
Anti-Pope, who had established himself at Avignon. Saint Vincent Ferrer was for
some time Confessor to the Anti-Pope, Peter de Luna (Benedict XIII.). The
anxieties of this office caused the Saint a severe illness, but our Lord
appeared to him and cured him, at the same time bidding him quit the Pontifical
Court and go forth to preach throughout the length and breadth of France and
Spain the approach of the Last Judgment. With extreme difficulty the Saint at
length obtained from Benedict permission to obey the command, and entered upon
his commission with ample powers as Legate of the Apostolic See. The Divine
Head of the Church, who was thus providing for her needs in her hour of trial,
endowed this messenger with miraculous gifts almost unparalleled in history.
The
remaining twenty years of Saint Vincent's life were spent in evangelizing the
countries which our Lord had assigned to him as his field of labor. He also
preached in Savoy and Italy. In Christian art he is depicted with wings, in
allusion to the passage in the Apocalypse relating to the "angel flying
through the midst of heaven, having the eternal gospel, to preach unto them
that sit upon the earth, and over every nation, and tribe, and tongue and
people," bidding them "fear the Lord, and give Him honor, because the
hour of His judgment is come." For the common theme of Saint Vincent's
preaching was to exhort men to prepare for the coming of the Judge. A large
multitude of people was accustomed to accompany the Saint from place to place,
the number amounting to many thousands. These often followed him either simply
from devotion and to have the advantage of his daily sermon, or they were
penitents, great sinners converted by him and anxious to atone for their past
life. It was calculated that more than 100,000 persons, who were considered
hopelessly obstinate in an openly wicked life, were brought to sincere and
lasting repentance by the preaching of Saint Vincent. Wherever he appeared,
heresy was put to flight, enemies were reconciled, and deadly feuds extinguished.
God was pleased by his means to convert 25,000 Jews and 8000 Moors in various parts
of Spain. By his persuasion a large number of churches, monasteries, and
hospitals were erected in various places and he also caused many bridges to be built
over rivers for the benefit of the people. He loved to collect children around
him and would teach them how to make the sign of the cross and to say the Our
Father, Hail Mary, and Creed, instructing them in the simplest words how to
show their love for God, to obey their parents, and to do good to others. He is
regarded in Spain as the special patron of orphans and was the founder of some
celebrated orphanages, which were placed under the care of Dominican Tertiaries.
After
his daily sermon, Saint Vincent, to satisfy the devotion of the people, was
obliged to allow them to kiss his hand in token of reverence and to bring the sick
that he might lay his hand upon them with prayer. An immense multitude, whose
number is known only to God, were thus perfectly cured of every kind of disease.
On more than one occasion he raised the dead to life and he may be considered
the great Thaumaturgus of the Dominican Order. In the midst of these
astonishing signs of the Divine power working through him, Saint Vincent's
humility remained ever his most distinguishing virtue. To a Franciscan friend,
who, in the midst of a public ovation, said to him, "Brother Vincent, how
is pride now?" the Saint replied with a smile, "It comes and it goes,
Brother, but it never stays;" and no one was ever more sincere in
acknowledging himself an unprofitable servant.
Worn out
with age and labor, Saint Vincent was attacked by his last illness at Vannes,
in Brittany, and happily departed to our Lord on Wednesday, April 5, A.D.
1419, at the age of seventy-three. He was canonized by Pope Callixtus III in
the year 1455.
Prayer
O God through the wondrous preaching of your confessor, the blessed Vincent, you granted that a multitude of peoples should come to acknowledge your name; grant, we beseech you, that we may be worthy to be rewarded in heaven by him whom he announced on earth as the Judge who is to come, our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who with you lives...