His advice was religiously kept. By mutual assistance his family might have risen above its original obscurity. Some of his mother’s family were advocates at the parliament of Bordeaux, and it would have been easy to obtain offices that would have given them, at least, prominence in their own village; but they clung to their rural pursuits. The advice of their sainted relative was too precious a legacy to be renounced.
Not that S. Vincent was insensible to their condition or unambitious by nature, but he knew the value of the hidden life and the perils of worldly ambition. We have on this occasion another glimpse of his struggles with nature. Hardly had he left his relatives before he gave vent to his emotion in a flood of tears, and he almost reproached himself for leaving them in their poverty. But let us quote his own words: “The day I left home I was so filled with sorrow at separating from my poor relatives that I wept as I went along--wept almost incessantly. Then came the thought of aiding them and bettering their condition; of giving so much to this one, and so much to that. While my heart thus melted within me, I divided all I had with them. Yes, even what I had not; and I say this to my confusion, for God perhaps permitted it to make me comprehend the value of the evangelical counsel. For three months I felt this importunate longing to promote the interests of my brothers and sisters. It constantly weighed on my poor heart. During this time, when I felt a little relieved, I prayed God to deliver me from this temptation, and persevered so long in my prayer that at length he had pity on me and took away this excessive tenderness for my relations; and though they have been needy, and still are, the good God has given me the grace to commit them to his Providence, and to regard them as better off than if they were in an easier condition.”
S. Vincent was equally rigid as to his own personal necessities, as may be seen by the following words from his own lips: “When I put a morsel of bread to my mouth, I say to myself: Wretched man, hast thou earned the bread thou art going to eat--the bread that comes from the labor of the poor?”
Such is the spirit of the saints. In these days, when most people are struggling to rise in the world, many by undue means, and to an unlawful height, it is well to recall this holy example; it is good to get a glimpse into the heart of a saint, and to remember there are still many in the world and in the cloister who strive to counterbalance all this ambition and love of display by their humility and self-denial.