Saint Vincent and Mental Prayer

Few things were as important as prayer in Saint Vincent's mind. Speaking to the Missionaries, he declares:

Give me a man of prayer and he will be capable of everything. He may say with the apostle, "I can do all things in him who strengthens me." The Congregation will last as long as it faithfully carries out the practice of prayer, which is like an impregnable rampart shielding the missionaries from all manner of attack (SV XI, 83).

It is interesting to note that the word he uses here is oraison. He is speaking about the importance of mental prayer. Saint Vincent states quite forcefully on a number of occasions, moreover, that the failure to rise early in the morning to join the community in prayer will be the reason why missionaries fail to persevere in their vocation.

To encourage his sons and daughters to pray, he used many of the similes commonly found in the spiritual writers of his day. He tells them that prayer is for the soul what food is for the body (SV IX, 416). It is a "fountain of youth" by which we are invigorated (SV IX, 217). It is a mirror in which we see all our blotches and begin to adorn ourselves in order to be pleasing to God (SV IX, 417). It is refreshment in the midst of difficult daily work in the service of the poor (SV IX, 416). He tells the missionaries that it is a sermon that we preach to ourselves (SV XI, 84). It is a resource book for the preacher in which he can find the eternal truths that he shares with God's people (SV VII, 156). It is a gentle dew that refreshes the soul every morning, he tells the Daughters of Charity (SV IX, 402).

He urged Saint Louise to form the young sisters very well in prayer (SV IV, 47). He himself gave many practical conferences to them on the subject. It is evident from these conferences that many had difficulties in engaging in mental prayer (cf. SV IV, 390; IX, 216). He assures them that it is really quite easy! It is like having a conversation for half an hour. He states, with some irony, that people are usually glad to talk with the king. We should be all the more glad to have a chance to talk with God (SV IX, 115). He gives numerous examples of those who have learned to pray, in all classes of society: peasant girls, servants, soldiers, actors and actresses, lawyers, statesmen, fashionable women and noblemen of the court, judges. In the various conferences that he gave upon the occasion of the death of Daughters of Charity, he often alluded to their prayerfulness. Speaking of Joan Dalmagne on January 15, 1645 he observed: "She walked in the presence of God" (SV IX, 180).

He defines oraison as "an elevation of the mind to God by which the soul detaches itself, as it were, from itself so as to seek God in himself. It is a conversation with God, an intercourse of the spirit, in which God interiorly teaches it what it should know and do, and in which the soul says to God what he himself teaches it to ask for" (SV IX, 419).

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Among the dispositions necessary for prayer he lists principally humility, indifference, and mortification. The humble recognize their absolute dependence on God. They come to prayer filled with gratitude for God's gifts and a recognition of their own limitations and sinfulness (SV X, 128-29). Indifference enables the person to live in a state of detachment and union with the will of God, so that in coming to prayer he or she seeks only to know and to do what God will reveal (SV XII, 231). Saint Vincent often returns to the need for mortification in order to pray well, particularly in getting out of bed promptly in the morning. He tells the Daughters on August 2, 1640 that our bodies are jackasses: accustomed to the low road, they will always follow it (SV IX, 28-29).

The principal subject of prayer, for Vincent, is the life and teaching of Jesus (SV XII, 113). He emphasized that we must focus again and again on the humanity of Jesus. He meditated on what Jesus did and taught in the scriptures (CR I, 1), calling special attention, among Jesus' teachings, to the Sermon on the Mount (SV XII, 125-27). Most of all, however, he recommended the passion and cross of Jesus as the subject of prayer.

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Contemplation is a gift from God. While we engage in mental prayer and affective prayer by our own choice, we engage in contemplation only when grasped by God (SV IX, 420). In contemplation we "taste and see" that the Lord is good. Such contemplation, while a pure gift from God, is for Saint Vincent the normal issue of the spiritual life. It is quite evident from his conferences that he regarded some of the Daughters of Charity as contemplatives. He encouraged them to become other Saint Teresas (SV IX, 424). On July 24, 1660, when he spoke about the virtues of Louise de Marillac, he rejoiced at a sister's description of Louise: "As soon as she was alone, she was in a state of prayer." (SVV X, 728).

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Another teaching of Saint Vincent, frequently found in his conferences to the Daughters of Charity, is the practice of "leaving God for God" (SV IX, 319,; X, 95, 226, 541, 542, 595, 693). The poor often arrived unexpectedly and made urgent demands on the Daughters. Saint Vincent encouraged them to respond, telling them that they would be leaving God whom they were encountering in prayer in order to find him in the person of the poor. At the same time, Saint Vincent urged the Daughters and the Vincentians never to miss prayer (SV VIII, 368-69; IX, 426). It is striking that, though he was very firm about the rule of rising early in the morning and never missing prayer, Saint Vincent brings his usual common sense to the application of the rule. He tells the Daughters; "You see, charity is above all the rules and it is necessary that everything be related to it. She is a noble woman. You should do what she orders. In such a case it is to leave God for God. God calls you to prayer, and at the same time he calls you to the poor sick person. That is called leaving God for God" (SV X, 595).

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Saint Vincent was very concerned about liturgy. He noted that priests often celebrated Mass badly and that they hardly knew how to hear confessions. As part of the retreats for ordinands, he prescribed that they receive instruction on celebrating the liturgy well. But, within this positive context, he was still very much a man of his time. The emphasis of the era was on the exact observance of rubrics. There was little stress on liturgy as "communal celebration," with the active participation of all the individual Masses, perhaps with a server. Liturgical celebrations were often regarded more as part of the priest's "personal piety," rather than of his leadership of a local community in prayer.

The liturgical movement, Vatican II, and the implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy have changed attitudes and practices dramatically. The Constitution on the Liturgy proclaimed liturgy as the summit toward which the action of the Church tends and at the same time the fountain from which all virtue emanates. Of course, this implies liturgy is not all of prayer. As a "summit", it must rest on a solid foundation. Nonetheless, as is evident from the enormous energy that the Church has invested in liturgical reform over the last thirty years, liturgy plays an extremely important part in the life of the Christian community. Today we speak of a "liturgical piety."