On this day, August 4th, in 1859 – the same year that Darwin published his specious Origin of Species, and one year after Marx’s Communist Manifesto, both of which, sadly, shook the faith of many – the world witnessed the quiet passing into eternity of a most remarkable man, a simple country priest who lived and worked at the same parish of Ars in northeastern France for 41 years, never taking a holiday, nor much of a break at all. He slept little, and ate even less, totally devoted to his parish and the souls of his parishioners; when he was not saying Mass, or visiting the sick, or teaching catechism, he was hearing confessions in the sweltering heat and frigid cold in a small wooden box, with a hard wooden seat, for up to 16 hours a day.
When as a young curate he arrived in the out-of-the-way village of Ars in 1818, he asked a boy to show him the way to the parish, and that if lad did so, he would show him the way to heaven. Just what a priest should do. Père Jean-Marie Vianney ended up showing an untold number of souls the ‘way to heaven’. Sacrificing for his flock in a way that seemed well beyond human nature, the ‘CurĂ© d’Ars’ – as he came to be known – produced miraculous spiritual fruits: He could read souls, tell people their secret sins and sins they had forgotten, and spoke with God and His Mother like they were right there (for, of course, they always are, if we had but eyes to see!) The Devil, appeared to the CurĂ©, often in the form of a big, black toad whom the priest nicknamed ‘le Grappin‘, was especially enraged when a ‘big sinner’ was about to arrive, growling and making noises. At one point, the devil burned a perfect rectangle around his bed – but left the priest unscathed. He confessed to the good CurĂ© that if there were but three priests like him, ‘my kingdom would be destroyed tomorrow!’.
Jean-Marie had an inauspicious beginning. He felt a call to the priesthood from his earliest days, but he had to help out on his impoverished family’s farm, and with little proclivity to academia, he seemed to have no hope. With the help of a local priest, however, he eventually made his way to the seminary, quite a bit older than his confreres, but by that point could not handle the Latin he had never really been taught, so was dismissed.
He was briefly conscripted into Napoleon’s ‘grand army’, which ended up in an unwitting, unintentional and providential ‘desertion’. A family hid him, after which a friendly priest, AbbĂ© Balley offered to tutor him, in French, and Jean-Marie then took much more to his studies, but far more to his prayer. He was never what might be termed an ‘intellectual’, and probably for the better. The Vicar General said that his piety would make up for his ignorance.
Pere Vianney was not so ignorant as people surmised – he had a solid grasp of moral theology to match even the ‘academics’ – and lived its truths far more than they. Sent to the backwater village of Ars, where the Faith was also ignored, the young priest soon reformed his parish, by prayer, sacrifice, fasting, and an utter devotion to duty – he was enraptured at Mass, and soon had people coming in droves just to see him. His preaching, rather ordinary in the written form, enraptured his listeners, his holiness making his simple words shine, with people not only reflecting, but openly weeping and and repenting. And then there the priest would be, waiting in the confessional. As he put it, the Lord is more anxious to forgive our sins than a woman is to carry her baby out of a burning building.
Soon, people flocked from all over France and beyond to seek out the soon-famed priest, with line-ups for confession lasting three days. He would sometimes come out of the confessional to speak to waiting penitents, who needed counsel. Father Vianney once told a foppish young man that he was supposed to be a Carthusian, and to another aunt fretting about the upcoming marriage of her nephew to ‘let them marry, and they will be happy’. Would that we all could receive such counsel! But is it not there, already, in some way?
Father Vianney urged his people to pray, and especially to attend Mass, daily if they could, and receive the Holy Eucharist, to which he had the greatest of devotion. There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us.Â
As he put it, all good works, taken together, do not equal the sacrifice of the Mass, since they are human works, while the Holy Mass is the work of God.
He was quite practical in the reality of this greatest of divine Gifts: Upon receiving Holy Communion, the Adorable Blood of Jesus Christ really flows in our veins and His Flesh is really blended with ours.Â
As his contemporary, Don Bosco, was to say, the Eucharist is intimately tied in with devotion to the Mother of God. As the Curé exhorted: If you invoke the Blessed Virgin when you are tempted, she will come at once to your help, and Satan will leave you.
Finally, our whole life, and each moment thereof, should be a sacrifice, in some way: All that we do without offering it to God is wasted.
Sweet, simple, clear and to the point, just as all theology and all holiness should be.
The government had to put in a train station to handle all the ‘pilgrims’, a fruit of the holiness of the simple and humble CurĂ©. Miracles abounded, which Father Vianney always attributed to the intercession of the early virgin martyr, Saint Philomena, to whom he himself was greatly devoted. Other priests were envious, and signed a petition for his removal. Father Vianney added his own name, claiming that indeed he was unworthy of his vocation. He was always tempted to run off to a monastery to ‘weep for his sins’ – which should give us all of us pause – but the parishioners would lead him back, and he stayed faithful to the end where God had put him.
Saint Jean-Marie Vianney died peacefully on this sweltering summer day in August. He gave until the day he died, still hearing confessions from his sickbed up to the very end, entering eternity in great joy at the age of 73 – his death mask shows his serene face – worn out in body and soul. His funeral, said by the bishop, had 300 priests in attendance, including many who had once demanded his removal, along with 6000 of the faithful. To this day, his shrine at Ars, outside Lyons, attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually.
There are two ways the sacraments work: Ex opere operato, by the very fact of the sacraments being performed, with all the grace being present as the fruit of Christ’s work. And ex opere operantis, from the devotion of the recipient, who opens himself more or less to this grace.
In the first way, the Cure’s sacraments, his Masses and Confessions, were the same as any other priest, good, bad or indifferent. But in the second way, the holiness of the priest can elicit a great, even a miraculous, devotion in those who receive the sacraments from his hands.
Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, themselves holy and zealous pastors, in their own way called for such holiness in priests, as the primary hallmark of their vocation, to devote themselves to souls without stint, to form their own souls by prayer, a spirit of sacrifice and performing the duty of the moment, without delay and grumbling. A gift-of-self in the very image of Christ.
Saint Jean-Vianney, the humble CurĂ© d’Ars, was canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, and declared the patrons saint of parish priests in 1929. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI dedicated a Year for Priests under his patronage, describing him as a true example of a pastor at the service of Christ’s flock, and the patron of all priests, everywhere.
If the Marines get by with a few good men, look at what God can do with just one. What might happen if just a few (even two!) more followed the example of this hidden and now glorified priest, whose only desire was to serve the God he loved so much?
Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, ora pro nobis!
