Christ's touch cures the dying St. Vincent Ferrer and sends him preaching

AVIGNON, October 3, 1396 AD — Saint Vincent Ferrer was thought to be dying on October 3, 1396 AD. He was a Dominican friar and the confessor of Benedict XIII, the Avignon claimant to the papacy. It was the eve of the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Vincent Ferrer had had a fever for twelve days, and that night he became so much worse that the people around his bed did not expect him to live. He recovered. Years later he described the recovery in one paragraph of a letter to Benedict XIII. He did not give his name there; he called the man who recovered “a religious of the Dominican Order.”

The Church had been divided since 1378 AD, when the cardinals declared the election of Pope Urban VI void and elected a second claimant, who moved his court to Avignon. St. Vincent Ferrer was convinced that the Avignon line was the lawful one. Benedict XIII, whom the Avignon cardinals elected in 1394 AD, called him to Avignon, made him his confessor and gave him offices in the palace. St. Vincent Ferrer wanted Benedict XIII to give up his claim so that the Church could have one Pope again. Benedict XIII meant to keep both his claim and his confessor, and the friar could not leave the court to preach unless Benedict XIII allowed it.

Every day St. Vincent Ferrer asked Benedict XIII to give up his claim. Benedict XIII answered him graciously and avoided any talks that could have ended the division. St. Vincent Ferrer came to find living at the palace hard to bear, and he was allowed to move to a Dominican convent in Avignon. There his grief over the divided Church made him ill, and no remedy brought the fever down.

The letter was written in July 1412 AD, and it put the recovery “just over fifteen years” earlier. Benedict XIII had ordered St. Vincent Ferrer to explain what he was preaching “in regard to the time of Antichrist and the end of the world.” He answered that the end would come “exceedingly quickly.” He called that his conclusion. As a proof of it he told what had been revealed to a sick friar of his order. He called the revelation “a most certain one to my mind.” The letter ended by leaving the judgment to Benedict XIII. St. Vincent Ferrer wrote that this was what he preached “subject to the correction and determination of Your Holiness.”

Catholic Tradition holds that what the letter describes happened on the night of October 3, 1396 AD, in the convent at Avignon. The friar “was very ill indeed and was praying lovingly to God for his recovery,” St. Vincent Ferrer wrote, and the reason he asked was “that he might again preach the word of God as he had been wont to do with great fervor and ardor.”

The letter had just named St. Dominic and St. Francis. St. Vincent Ferrer wrote of them: “At last, while he was at prayer, these two saints appeared to him as in a dream, at the feet of Christ making great supplication.” They prayed for a long while. Then, St. Vincent Ferrer wrote, “Christ rose and, with one on either side, came down to this same religious lying on his bed. Then Christ, touching him caressingly with the finger of His most holy hand, gave him a most definite interior comprehension that, in imitation of these saints, he must go through the world preaching as the Apostles had done, and that He, Christ, would mercifully await this preaching for the conversion and correction of mankind, before the coming of Antichrist.”

“At once, at the touch of Christ’s fingers,” St. Vincent Ferrer wrote, “the aforesaid religious rose up entirely cured of his sickness.”

St. Vincent Ferrer added that God gave the friar “numerous signs” and the backing of Scripture for his preaching, “because of the difficulty of this mission and the slight weight of his own unaided testimony.”

The morning after the cure, St. Vincent Ferrer went to Benedict XIII and asked permission to leave Avignon and preach through the kingdoms of Europe. Benedict XIII refused, because the friar’s popularity was useful to his cause, and kept him at court. St. Vincent Ferrer obeyed and served there two more years. To keep him loyal to the Avignon cause, Benedict XIII offered to make him bishop of Lérida and a cardinal. St. Vincent Ferrer turned both down, saying: “It behoves me to execute the order which I have received from God, for God has commanded me to preach the judgment to all nations.” Benedict XIII then let him go, and authorised him to preach throughout Europe.

“Since then,” St. Vincent Ferrer wrote to Benedict XIII in 1412 AD, “the aforesaid religious has been traveling for thirteen years over the world, and is still journeying, preaching every day and in many labors, and though he is now an old man, more than sixty years old, he still holds this conclusion as most certain.”