It is our duty to prefer the service of the poor to everything else and to offer such service as quickly as possible. If a needy person requires medicine or other help during prayer time, do whatever has to be done with peace of mind.
Charity is certainly greater than any rule.
Moreover, all rules must lead to charity. There was never a more many-faceted man among the saints than Vincent de Paul. He is thought of by most people, and rightly, as the great organizer of charity in a day when charity, though widely exercised, was usually too haphazard to accomplish a great deal. It was he who revolutionized the hospitals of France, for though shortly before this time St. Camillus de Lellis had founded a nursing order of men in Italy, this was a work that could, after all, be best performed by women. It was Vincent who placed foundling hospitals upon something like a systematized basis, and it was he who may almost be said to have begun the humane treatment of lunatics, when he found that some of these unfortunates were confined in the grounds of the priory of Saint-Lazare that he took over.