Many people ask us who St. Vincent is and we usually talk about the saint, dates, acts, even phrases, but rarely about the person, about the one who, with his experience of God and the poor, marked our lives and made us get to the place where we are today, that is, we rarely talk about “our” St. Vincent, the one who made us fall in love with him.
Knowing who Vincent is for us helps us to go back to our sources, to our first love and thus live in a special way some particular characteristic of the charism, to focus our attention on the details and this allows us to transform concrete ideas into action.

Faced with this same question, my answer focuses on three ideas:

– A creative man: I have always been amazed by the capacity he has had to be able to give an answer to everything, to every need of the poor and of the Church. A man capable of seeing beyond in spite of all the social, economic and even religious difficulties. He lived through war, economic crisis, inequality, exploitation of people, corruption and he knew how to find an answer to everything.
– Friend of all: he had in his life the ability to relate to everyone, from the King to the last beggar. This characteristic amazes me, especially in these times in which we live in a society that constantly divides one from another by social condition, race, political color or nation. Vincent knew how to reach intimacy with each one, he even knew how to unite some with others in spite of their differences because he had transformed himself into that which was common to all.
– Trusting in God: Vincent would not have been what he was without that trust in God that he had within him, even in the worst moments of crisis of faith. His driving force was God. He did something because he was convinced that God was leading him to it, just as he knew that, if something was not of God, it would simply culminate soon. And this gave him absolute freedom because he knew who was directing his life and his work.

Surely I have other answers to this same question, but this is mine, the most intimate, the one I try to live it day by day and make it not only word but action and I am convinced that it is the vocational answer, not only for me but also for others, for those young people who today are wondering what to do with their lives. For adults who, at times, their life needs something more. For those who disbelieve in everything, in the system, in man himself, who are looking for something that will make them transcend. It is even the answer for the poor.
On this day, let us dare to ask ourselves the same question again, but above all to answer it from within, from that place that is no longer simple knowledge but experience and encounter, where the words no longer matter, but the words that are felt.
On this day let us ask ourselves again… Who is St. Vincent for me?

Fr. Hugo Vera CM