The readings for the Memorial of Saint Vincent de Paul invite a reimagining of what protection, glory, and power look like when God draws near. They press into the paradoxes that mark every serious life of faith: an unmeasured city guarded by fire, a shepherd who gathers the scattered, and a Messiah who conquers by being handed over. On this day we also remember a saint who allowed those very paradoxes to reorder his ambitions and unseal his compassion.
The Unmeasured City and the Wall of Fire (Zechariah 2:5-9, 14-15a)
Zechariah sees a young man trying to measure Jerusalem, only to hear an urgent correction from heaven: do not reduce the city of God to your measuring line. Jerusalem will be “as though in open country” because God himself will be “an encircling wall of fire” and “the glory in her midst” (Zec 2:5-9). The vision overturns anxious calculus—scarcity, border, quota—and replaces it with divine presence. The future city is spacious because people and life will overflow its imagined limits; its security will not come from fortifications but from the nearness of the Lord.
This speaks poignantly into a world of gated hearts and gated neighborhoods. Many try to measure their lives into safety: budgeting hope, rationing trust, counting only what can be controlled. But the Gospel’s geometry is different. St. Gregory of Nyssa taught that the soul’s journey is an endless stretching toward the Infinite—epektasis—because God cannot be contained or exhausted. If God is our wall of fire, then the boundaries that truly protect are those of love that purifies and illumines, not fear that fences others out. The more God dwells in our midst, the more our lives become “open country” where many can find room.
“Sing and rejoice,” the prophet adds, “for I am coming to dwell among you” and “many nations shall join themselves to the LORD” (Zec 2:14-15a). The city of God is inclusive not because of a fashionable tolerance, but because the Holy One has set up his tent among the poor, the stranger, and the sinner, and where he dwells, welcome follows.
The Shepherd Who Gathers the Scattered (Jeremiah 31:10-13)
Jeremiah’s song is for those who have known scattering: migration, estrangement, addiction, the fracture of relationships, or the quiet dislocation of a life that went off-script. “He who scattered Israel, now gathers them together; he guards them as a shepherd guards his flock” (Jer 31:10). The promise is not sentimental. It includes ransom and redemption, ascent and return, mourning turned to dancing (Jer 31:11-13). This is God’s pattern: he enters exile with his people and leads them home.
For anyone navigating burnout, grief, or anxiety, the psalm’s refrain is medicine: the Lord guards as a shepherd. Shepherding is not surveillance; it is presence, provision, and guidance. It is the patient art of keeping frightened hearts from bolting, and weary bodies moving toward rest. The encircling fire in Zechariah becomes here the encircling care that refuses to let loss have the last word.
The Hidden Word and the Courage to Ask (Luke 9:43b-45)
Against a backdrop of amazement at his works, Jesus speaks a harder word: “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men” (Lk 9:44). The disciples do not understand; “its meaning was hidden from them,” and they “were afraid to ask” (Lk 9:45). The Gospel names a familiar experience: we welcome God’s power, hesitate before his paradox, and fear our questions. Yet the hiddenness is not a dead-end. In God’s economy, understanding ripens at the pace of love, and love matures beneath the shadow of the cross.
St. Ignatius of Antioch, on his own road to martyrdom, insisted on the real flesh and real suffering of Christ because only a real cross can bear real sins, and only a real resurrection can heal real despair. The Lord is not conquering from above the world but from within it. As today’s Alleluia reminds us, “Our Savior Christ Jesus destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel” (2 Tim 1:10). We learn this not by skirting loss, but by letting the cross interpret our losses.
If fear keeps you from asking God the hard questions, notice that the Gospel names that fear without shaming it. The invitation is to bring the question anyway. Faith is not the absence of confusion; it is trust that the One who is handed over will hand himself over to us in the very place we do not yet understand.
Saint Vincent de Paul: Charity as an Open City
St. Vincent de Paul (1581–1660) allowed the Gospel’s fire to burn through his ambitions and reorder his gifts. Early success as a priest did not satisfy him. Encounters with prisoners, the rural poor, and galley slaves reshaped his vision. He founded the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians) to evangelize and serve the poor, and, with St. Louise de Marillac, the Daughters of Charity, pioneering a form of religious life that moved out of cloisters and into streets, hospitals, parishes, and homes.
Vincent learned to see the Church not as a fortress to be measured and secured, but as Zechariah’s open city—expansive, practical, and warm with the fire of divine charity. His wisdom was strikingly modern: he organized networks, trained clergy, reformed seminaries, and made collaboration across social lines a hallmark of Christian life. He did not romanticize poverty; he addressed it with tenderness and structure, prayer and planning. In the hiddenness of Christ’s Passion he discovered the courage to face human suffering without turning aside, making space for the shepherding God to gather the scattered into real communities of care.
Practicing an Unmeasured Charity Today
- Pray the promise: Repeat the psalm’s refrain in moments of anxiety—“The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock” (Jer 31:10). Let it interrupt spirals of fear.
- Ask the hidden question: Name one place where you are “afraid to ask” God for light (Lk 9:45). Bring the question to Scripture, to spiritual direction, or to a trusted friend, and wait with the cross, not apart from it.
- Make your life open country: Identify a boundary that has become a fence of fear rather than a fire of love—a schedule that leaves no room for other people, a budget with no alms, a mindset that excludes. Loosen it for one concrete act of hospitality.
- Join a Vincentian work: Volunteer with parish outreach, a St. Vincent de Paul conference, a food bank, or prison ministry. Charity that lasts requires community and structure—precisely Vincent’s gift to the Church.
- Keep the center bright: Build a small daily habit that keeps “the glory in the midst” (Zec 2:9)—a short examen at day’s end, a weekly visit to the Blessed Sacrament, or a monthly confession. When God is present at the center, life can remain open at the edges.
The city God is building in and through us cannot be contained by human measuring lines. Its safety is God’s own nearness; its music is the shepherd’s gathering call; its gate is the cross of Christ; and its saints, like Vincent de Paul, show that the fire of divine love is both warmth for the poor and light for our own next step. May we rejoice because he dwells among us (Zec 2:14-15a), and may we allow that indwelling to turn our mourning into joy (Jer 31:13) as we follow the One who brings life to light (2 Tim 1:10).