Why St. Vincent de Paul wore the Creed over his heart

PARIS, about 1610 AD — Saint Vincent de Paul knew a priest in Paris who could no longer go into a church. He couldn’t say Mass, and he couldn’t say the prayers a priest says every day.

Anything that turned his mind to God brought on an urge to say terrible things against God. Even starting to say the Our Father did it. He was told to stop praying completely.

The priest was a doctor of theology. He was suffering a temptation against faith: thoughts of doubt and unbelief that filled his mind against his will. The doubts had come to him late in life.

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 had once been married to King Henry IV. She made St. Vincent her chaplain. The priest with the doubts lived in the queen’s household at the same time.

The priest told St. Vincent what was happening to him. St. Vincent answered that being tempted to doubt wasn’t the same as not believing. The priest was safe, he said, as long as his will held firm.

St. Vincent also gave the priest something to do whenever the doubts came. He could bow his head, or raise a finger towards Rome or the nearest church, as a way of saying he believed. That didn’t help. Then the priest fell ill, and the doubts grew stronger.

He asked for the doubts

St. Vincent was afraid the priest would stop fighting the doubts and give in to them. He prayed for him constantly. Then St. Vincent asked God to free the priest. In exchange, he offered to carry the same doubts in the priest’s place, or anything else God chose to send him.

The prayer was granted, and the priest’s doubts left him at once. His peace came back, and the same doubts took hold of St. Vincent.

A hand on the parchment

The more St. Vincent prayed, the harder the doubts pressed. He took them 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 about it. Each time he laid his hand on that spot, it would count as rejecting the doubts and saying he believed the whole faith. He wouldn’t have to say a word out loud. When the doubts came, he put his hand on the parchment.

During those years St. Vincent needed his spiritual director, Father Pierre de Bérulle, more than ever. So he moved to live near him. Father Bérulle was starting a new group of priests in Paris. St. Vincent asked those priests if he could live in their house. They said yes. St. Vincent called Father Bérulle his “visible angel.”

Four years passed. Then came a day when the doubts were almost more than St. Vincent could bear. He felt he was about to give in to 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. They never came back. St. Vincent said afterwards that from that day on, the truths of the faith seemed perfectly clear to him.