HOW ST VINCENT DE PAUL BROUGHT A YOUNG MAN BACK TO THE FAITH

 

Paris, 1600s. The hook-nosed St Vincent de Paul was at a loss: he had tried his best to convert a young man who was far from the sacraments. The man had very much given himself over to sin. Vincent decided on a new approach, he gave the young man a picture of the Holy Face and asked one thing of him, "I entreat you to look at this picture for one moment every evening before you retire." The young man sniggered, "Is that all?" Vincent replied, "Nothing more, that will suffice." When the young man went home, he did as he had promised, but felt indifferent. The next night he felt the tiniest twinge of empathy when he beheld Our Lord's Face so lined with pain. He made it a practice to look at the picture every night, just to keep his word, but he nonetheless found it boring.

On the 13th day he performed the exercise of letting his eyes drink in Our Lord's Visage, but to his utter shock he found he was filled with contrition for his sins. He searched the streets of Paris for Vincent and when he found the priest, he exclaimed, "I wish to go to Confession. I can bear it no longer! The Countenance of my Savior, streaming with Blood and tears, reproaches me too bitterly! I will return to God and make my peace with Him."

Vincent's approach may seem that of one who did not have very good arguments to win someone to the Faith by reason, and had to resort to a simple-seeming stratagem. But St Vincent de Paul was very highly educated and he was a man of the cloth who placed education on a high pedestal. When he died, among his armful of few belongings were two parchments, his graduate diploma from the University of Toulouse and his graduate diploma from the University of Paris that he had kept as his most treasured secular possessions. But in the case just described, Vincent did not persuade the young man with clever, erudite apologetics, rather Vincent allowed the Holy Face of Jesus to win the man's heart.

This month of January 2020 The Path Less Taken is dedicated to devotion to the Holy Face, that my readers and I may begin the new decade, the roaring 20s, by first going to Our Lord face-to-face and turning our faces to adore His Most Holy Face. I was led to devote this month's blogs to the Holy Face after time spent in Eucharistic Adoration. In December, I decided to do this series on the Holy Face and ordered the right books to help me research this devotion. And just yesterday I went to Adoration and I found a little pile of leaflets on devotion to the Holy Face that someone had left for the adorers.

Like the man in vignette above, there is a need to behold Our Lord's Face and come to greater and greater conversion of heart continually.