St. Vincent de Paul takes on a priest's doubts for four years

PARIS, about 1610 AD — In his first years in Paris, Saint Vincent de Paul asked God to free a priest he knew from doubts about the faith, and offered to carry the doubts in the priest’s place. The priest was freed at once. The doubts passed to St. Vincent, who carried them for four years, until the day he vowed to spend the rest of his life serving Jesus Christ in the poor.

The priest was a doctor of theology, and he was suffering a temptation against faith: thoughts of doubt and unbelief that filled his mind against his will. The doubts had become so violent that he could no longer say Mass.

St. Vincent had come to Paris about the beginning of 1609 AD. He rented a room near one of the city’s largest hospitals and looked after the sick and dying there. Queen Marguerite of Valois, the former wife of King Henry IV, made him her chaplain.

The doctor lived in the queen’s household while St. Vincent was her chaplain. His doctorate was from the Sorbonne and he had made his name arguing against heretics in public debates, and the doubts came to him late in life. He could not say the prayers a priest says every day, or go into a church. Anything that turned his mind to God brought on an urge to blaspheme, even the first words of an Our Father, so he was advised to stop praying altogether.

The doctor told St. Vincent what was happening to him. St. Vincent answered that being tempted to doubt was not unbelief, and that the doctor was safe as long as his will held firm. St. Vincent also gave the doctor something to do when the doubts came: declare his belief with a simple gesture, bowing his head or raising a finger towards Rome or the nearest church. It did not work. The doctor fell ill and the doubts grew stronger.

St. Vincent was afraid that the doctor would stop resisting the doubts and accept them, and prayed for him constantly. Then he asked God to free the doctor from the doubts and offered, in exchange, to carry the same doubts or whatever else God chose to send him. The prayer was granted. The doctor’s doubts left him at once and his peace returned, and the same doubts took hold of St. Vincent. Bishop Émile Bougaud, who wrote St. Vincent’s life in the nineteenth century, called the offer “one of those sublime movements of grace of which history furnishes but few examples.”

The more St. Vincent prayed and did penance, the harder the doubts pressed. He took the doubts as the answer to his prayer, not as a sin to blame himself for.

He copied the Creed onto a small sheet of parchment and wore it over his heart. Then he made an agreement with God: whenever he laid his hand on that spot, the gesture would count as rejecting the doubts and declaring that he held the whole faith, without his having to say anything. When the doubts came, he put his hand on the parchment.

During those years St. Vincent moved to be near his spiritual director, Father Pierre de Bérulle, because he needed Bérulle’s guidance more than ever once the doubts began. St. Vincent called Bérulle his “visible angel.” Bérulle was then founding the Oratory, a new community of priests in Paris. St. Vincent asked the priests for permission to live in their house, and they gave it.

Four years passed. Then one day the doubts were almost more than he could bear, and he felt he was about to stop resisting them. He fell on his knees. He vowed to give the rest of his life to Jesus Christ by serving him in the poor. As soon as he had made the vow the doubts left him and he was at peace again, and they never came back. St. Vincent said afterwards that from that day he seemed to see the truths of the faith with perfect clarity.