In his memoir Father Vincent speaks of having bought a large tract of land near the sea in Nova Scotia, and of having built a house thereon. This was in Tracadie, where he resided for some years previous to his return to France in 1823. In 1824 he came again to Tracadie with another worthy priest of his Order, Father Francis, a native of Freiburg, together with three lay brothers, and the house above referred to became thenceforth the monastery of Petit Clairvaux. A few years later three other lay brothers were admitted, two of them from Halifax, and one from the United States.
Until the Rev. John Quinn was appointed parish priest of Tracadie, (1837) Father Vincent had pastoral charge of the three missions of Tracadie, Havre au Boucher, and Pomquet, and the old people of the place still recount his innumerable acts of extraordinary zeal and devotion. "He scarcely ever had the stole off his neck during Lent," is the remark of one of them. He also made frequent excursions to Cheticamp, Arichat, and other parts of Cape Breton, to preach missions there, and to assist the dying. In his memoir he speaks of that sublime pilgrimage of the heart, the admirable devotion of the Way of the Cross, as one especially acceptable to God; and no wonder it bore marvellous fruit as conducted by him. At each station this holy servant of God did not content himself with reading the usual prayers: he gave expression to heavenly thoughts inspired by his own burning love of his crucified Saviour, producing a mysterious and lasting echo in all hearts. The church was always crowded on those occasions. To prepare children for their first communion, he devoted six entire weeks of instruction each year. His capacity for work was immense; and while hurry never appeared in his actions, he managed to glide through them with a masterly ease far out-stripping the speediest progress of ordinary mortals. A supernatural light seemed to supersede the necessity of recourse to the usual slow and laborious process of reasoning in seeing one's way, and to endow him with an intuition excluding all doubt, and with an instinct ever ready in performance. Thus for everything he found ample time, because no particle of his time was lost. He was a living, palpitating, breathing, vocal, acting temple of the Holy Ghost, and this Divine indwelling was, in a manner, visible to all. At the altar, during the holy sacrifice which he daily offered, it seemed to transfigure his countenance so as to impress his heavenly citizenship upon all beholders. In administering the sacrament, in instructing the people, in his incessant endeavors to keep or win them from sin, and to provide for all their spiritual wants, the same irradiation of holiness imparted the most extraordinary efficacy to his charity and zeal.
So palpable was this impress of sanctity in his every-day-life, that no one could come in contact with him without perceiving it and feeling its inherent power. Such being the rare effulgence of Father Vincent's sanctity as seen amid the dust and darkness of the world, one can more readily realize the transcendent perfection and purity of his soul as nurtured and revealed in his divine communing in his own beloved cloister. No wonder, then, that when this admirable servant of God, fall of days and merits, was called away to his reward on the morning of New Year's Day, 1853, all felt that they had one intercessor more in heaven. No wonder that miraculous cures wrought through his mediation began soon to multiply. Nor was Father Vincent's reputation for sanctity confined to Catholics. Even Protestants not only acknowledged the heroism of his virtues, but also sought to possess some earth from his grave, and one of them, J. H., still living, was restored to health and usefulness by the application of this relic to his diseased and disabled limbs.
The next Prior of Petit Clairvaux was the dauntless and holy Father Francis, whose advanced age obliged him in 1858 to resign his office into the hands of the sweet Father James, a native of Belgium, and a religious eminently qualified for the position. Such was the success of his administration that in 1876 the community was raised by Pius IX of blessed memory to the dignity of an abbey—an abbey, which, with its forty-one fervent religious, now wisely governed by the worthy Abbot Dominic, presents an example of heroic abstinence, mortification and prayer, well calculated to put the characteristic dissipation, effeminacy and dissoluteness of the age to blush, and to bring home to our minds that "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." (I Co. 3,19).
JOHN CAMERON, Bishop of Arichat.
MEMOIR
OF
FATHER VINCENT.
[Some account of what befel Father Vincent de Paul, Religious of La Trappe, with observations made by him when in America, where he has spent about ten years, with the permission of his Superior, in obedience to whose orders he writes the following:]
The reverend Father Abbot, of La Trappe, Dom Augustin, (De Lestrange) foreseeing that Bonaparte would seek to destroy the communities existing in Europe, resolved on sending a party of his religious to America, in order that they might establish themselves there and preserve their monastic state.