St John Vianney

  August 4: Feast of St John Vianney

St John Vianney aka Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney (1786-1859), fondly remembered as the 'Curé of Ars', is the patron saint of parish priests. 

 

His extraordinary witness shows us the powerful healing that comes through God's mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. By dedicating his entire life to the salvation of souls, the Curé of Ars proved that true wisdom and holiness stem from humility and total trust in the Lord.
 

Vianney’s remarkable sanctity and commitment to his small rural parish of 230 people in Ars, France (near Lyon) drew over tens of thousands of pilgrims each year - many sought to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation from him. So great was the number of people who came to Fr. Vianney that a railroad was laid with a special track to his parish to accommodate trains full of pilgrims.

Soon people journeyed from all over Europe to attend his Masses or sit in his confessional where he spent at least 11 or 12 hours a day in the confessional during winter, and up to 16 in the summer. Fr Vianney’s gift as a confessor is what drew thousands of penitents to line up, sometimes three days in advance, to experience what many recalled as his ability to see into the deepest recesses of the soul. In the Acts of Canonizationthere are countless testimonies of penitents being astounded by Vianney’s poignant insights into their personal struggles with sin. He reportedly knew remarkable details about their lives without ever having met them before. Fr Vianney saw the Sacrament of Reconciliation as integral to true conversion and one of the most powerful roads to reconciliation with God.

But it was not always easy. He was expelled from school due to difficulties in learning Latin, yet he persisted in completing schooling with a private tutor. As a child he received the sacraments clandestinely during the anti-clerical phase of the French Revolution. His religious studies were interrupted in 1809 when he was drafted into Napoleon’s armies. On the battlefront he fell ill and was led by a stranger deep in the mountains where he joined a group of deserters and opened a school for children in the village of Les Noes. He was only able to return 14 months later when an amnesty was declared in 1812, and on completing his religious studies was ordained a deacon in June 1815.  

As pastor of the parish at Ars in 1818, Fr Vianney encountered people who in the aftermath of the French Revolution were indifferent to religion and quite comfortable with their worldly style of living - working in the fields on Sunday and drinking and carousing at night. His vision led him through severe fasts and short nights of sleep. Fr. Vianney spent much time in confession and often delivered homilies against blasphemy and debauchery. Finally, if parishioners did not give up their sinful ways, he refused them absolution.

St. John Vianney was a man with vision who overcame obstacles and performed deeds that seemed impossible. At the end of the Napoleonic Era, France’s grave economic woes gripped the country. Countless women and girls roamed the streets selling themselves as prostitutes. In the true spirit of Saint Vincent de Paul, St. John Vianney set up La Providence, a modest two storey French country house that served as an orphanage for numerous young teenage and orphan girls in need of spiritual direction and shelter learned skills such as housekeeping. He loved his noontime catechism to the orphans. The alms to support this orphanage were often insufficient and due to St. John Vianney’s prayers the cook was able to make ten 20-pound loaves of bread out of only several pounds of flour.

Fr. Vianney advised on the love of the cross: “My children, it is in loving the cross that we find true peace, not running from it.” And he encouraged a love of the Eucharist: “There is no better way to experience the good God than to find him in the perfect sacrifice of the Mass.” He praised the beauty of prayer: “The soul should move toward prayer the way a fish should move toward water; they are both a purely natural state.” He would often say: "Private prayer is like straw scattered here and there: If you set it on fire, it makes a lot of little flames. But gather these straws into a bundle and light them, and you get a mighty fire, rising like a column into the sky; public prayer is like that."

Prayer of St. John Vianney

I love You, O my God, and my only desire is to love You until the last breath of my life.

I love You, O my infinitely lovable God, and I would rather die loving You, than live without loving You.

I love You, Lord and the only grace I ask is to love You eternally...

My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love You, I want my heart to repeat it to You as often as I draw breath.

Amen.

He was quoted as saying “I owe a debt to my mother. Virtue goes easily from mothers into the hearts of their children, who willingly do what they see being done.”

St (Pope) John Paul II visited Ars at the 200th birth anniversary of St John Vianney's birth and and referred to the great saint as a “rare example of a pastor acutely aware of his responsibilities ... and a sign of courage for those who today experience the grace of being called to the priesthood.”