St. Vincent Ferrer, Confessor
A.D. 1419.
ST. VINCENT FERRER was born at Valentia, in Spain, on the 23rd of January, 1357. His parents were persons distinguished for their virtue and alms-deeds. They made it their rule to distribute in alms whatever they could save out of the necessary expenses of their family at the end of every year. Two of their sons became eminent in the church. Boniface, who died general of the Carthusians, and St. Vincent, who brought with him into the world a happy disposition for learning and piety, which were improved from his cradle by study and a good education. In order to subdue his passions he fasted rigorously from his childhood every Wednesday and Friday. The passion of Christ was always the object of his most tender devotion. The Blessed Virgin he ever honoured as his spiritual mother. Looking on the poor as the members of Christ, he treated them with the greatest affection and charity, which being observed by his parents, they made him the dispenser of their bountiful alms. They gave him for his portion the third part of their possessions, all which he in four days’ time distributed amongst the poor. He began his course of philosophy at twelve years of age, and his theology at the end of his fourteenth year. His progress was such that he seemed a master in both studies at the age of seventeen; and by his affectionate piety he had obtained an eminent gift of tears in that tender age. His father having proposed to him the choice of a religious, an ecclesiastical, or a secular state, Vincent, without hesitation, said, it was his earnest desire to consecrate himself to the service of God in the Order of St. Dominick. His good parents with joy conducted him to a convent of that Order in Valentia, and he put on the habit in 1374, in the beginning of his eighteenth year. 1 Continue reading
