Religious Gifts and Missionary Work
Vincent later claimed that the Great Schism had such a depressing effect on his mind that it caused him to be seriously ill at the age of forty. He claimed that God healed him and instructed him to go out and convert many. For twenty-one years he was said to have traveled to England, Scotland, Ireland, Aragon, Castile, France, Switzerland, and Italy, preaching the Gospel and converting many. Many biographers believe that he could speak only Catalan, but was endowed with the gift of tongues.
He preached to St. Colette of Corbie and to her nuns, and it was she who told him that he would die in France. Too ill to return to Spain, he did, indeed, die in Brittany. Breton fishermen still invoke his aid in storms. In Spain, he is also the patron of orphanages.
Read more about this topic: Vincent Ferrer
Famous quotes containing the words religious, missionary and/or work:
“Pray for the Liberty of the Conscience to revive among us.... Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
“We’d like to fight but we fear defeat,
We’d like to work but we’re feeling too weak,
We’d like to be sick but we’d get the sack,
We’d like to behave, we’d like to believe,
We’d like to love, but we’ve lost the knack.”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)