27 September 1983
Guatemala

My dear Friends in Jesus Christ,

It was on this day 323 years ago that Saint Vincent de Paul died. He drew his last breath at the time of the day when he was accustomed to rise and to give himself to prayer for an hour before he celebrated the Sacrifice of the Mass. He died, sitting in his armchair, surrounded by a few of his priests and Brothers, shortly before dawn broke over Paris on the 27th of September, 1660.

Among those who watched Saint Vincent die was Father Jean Gicquel. He has left us a detailed account of those last few hours because Father Gicquel kept a diary. There are entries into his diary for the early days of June, and then no more until early September. Perhaps the intervening months have been lost, or perhaps Father Gicquel took a long vacation that year. Anyway, he resumed his diary entries in September and we have a pretty clear picture of what St. Vincent was doing during the last two weeks of his life. Until a few days before he died, he was doing routine business. Then he grew weaker, and Father Gicquel was in and out of his room, and was present with St. Vincent when he died.

St. Vincent's death was not dramatic. What he said of the death of his faithful associate and Confrere, Father Portail, who had, like St. Louise, predeceased him some months earlier, was true of St. Vincent. "He died as he had lived ... . " St. Vincent lived in faith and hope and love, and at the end his faith and hope and love surfaced. "Credo " . . . ~Confido?. These words were on his lips during the last hours of his life. And his love, well, there were demands on it to the end: "Do you bless the confreres?" "Yes. " "And the benefactors?" "Yes. " "And the Daughters of Charity?" "Yes." "And the Foundlings?" "Yes." Then when those around him were pushing in prayers to his ear, there is a delightful touch. "That's enough," (Coste XIII, Fr. ed., pp. 190-191) the Saint said with that practicality that characterized his life. You can have too much of a good thing, even of such a good thing as vocal prayer. Silence. In the silence was he reflecting on that passage of the Gospel to which we have listened? "When did I see Thee hungry . . . As long as you gave it to one of these least of My brethren, you gave it to Me .... " (Mt 25:44). The last word they saw shape on his lips was that of Jesus.

What happened after that we can only guess, for we see now in a dark manner. We do know that years later the Church gave us an infallible assurance that Vincent de Paul enjoys today the vision of God. And that means that he possesses and is possessed by the Source of all that is good and true and beautiful. We know, too, that he shares intensely with Jesus Christ His prayer that "where I am now, you also may be." (Jn 14:3). Meantime, we live on to express the quality, the tint, the tone of the love of God which was in the heart of Vincent de Paul and which found such deep expression in his love for the poor. Our vocation is to preserve for the present-day world the quality of that love which graced the person of St. Vincent de Paul.

During his long life St. Vincent could never have imagined that three centuries later a very popular film would be made about his life. In that film there is a marvelous scene towards the end of it, where Queen Anne of Austria is talking to St. Vincent. He is an old man and the Queen is reminding him of all that he achieved during his lifetime. St. Vincent keeps shaking his head and saying that he has done nothing. The Queen insists further and St. Vincent repeats again: "I have done nothing." Finally the Queen gets somewhat impatient with the Saint and says to him: "If you say you have done nothing in your lifetime for God, what must we do?" St. Vincent's eyes light up and he turns to the Queen and looks directly into her eyes and speaks one word: "More".

If St. Vincent were speaking here tonight and he had just time to say one word to this large, representative gathering of people who draw inspiration from his life, he might just pronounce that one word to us all: More. Not more for ourselves, but more for the poor, more justice for the poor, more time for the poor, more food for the poor, more medicine for the poor, more education for the poor. The reason why St. Vincent would ask us to give more to the poor is because he himself recognized the presence of Jesus Christ in the poor. He would ask us, not only to give more to the poor because of Jesus Christ, but he would also ask us that, in all we would do for the poor, we would do it after the manner and with the gentleness of Jesus Christ. Let us never forget that, in all that St. Vincent did for the poor, he was Jesus Christ. One of his most celebrated sayings is: "Nothing pleases me but in Jesus Christ."