St.
John Vianney Patron of priests
St. John Vianney, Priest (Patron of priests)
Curé of Ars, born
at Dardilly, near Lyons, France, on 8 May, 1786; died at Ars, 4 August,
1859; son of Matthieu Vianney and Marie Beluze.
Universally known as the "Cure of Ars)," son of
a poor farmer in
Dardilly, France. He
worked as a shepherd and didn't begin his education until he was 20.
In 1806, the curé at Ecully, M. Balley,
opened a school for
ecclesiastical students, and Jean-Marie was sent to him. Though he was
of average intelligence and his masters never seem to have doubted his
vocation, his knowledge was extremely limited, being confined to a
little arithmetic, history, and geography, and he found learning,
especially the study of Latin, excessively difficult. One of his
fellow-students, Matthias Loras, afterwards first Bishop of Dubuque,
assisted him with his Latin lessons. A man with vision overcomes
obstacles and performs deeds that seem impossible. John Vianney was a
man with vision: He wanted to become a priest. But he had to overcome
his meager formal schooling, which inadequately prepared him for
seminary studies.
He was called for military
service while an ecclesiastical student, and became a "delinquent
conscript" more or less because of
illness, and hid to escape Napoleon's police during war with Spain and
the urgent need of recruits. This caused Napoleon to withdraw the
exemption enjoyed by the ecclesiastical students in the diocese of his
uncle, Cardinal Fesch.
Matthieu Vianney tried unsuccessfully to procure
a substitute, so his
son was obliged to go. His regiment soon received marching orders. The
morning of departure, Jean-Baptiste went to church to pray, and on his
return to the barracks found that his comrades had already left. He was
threatened with arrest, but the recruiting captain believed his story
and sent him after the troops.
At nightfall he met a young man who volunteered
to guide him to his
fellow-soldiers, but led him to Noes, where some deserters had
gathered. The mayor persuaded him to remain there, under an assumed
name, as schoolmaster. After fourteen months, he was able to
communicate with his family. His father was vexed to know that he was a
deserter and ordered him to surrender but the matter was settled by his
younger brother offering to serve in his stead and being accepted.
Upheaval was also felt within the Church in
France. In the wake of the
Revolution, the faithful were often confused about the relationship
between faithfulness to the Church and allegiance to the State. The
State had sought to subsume the Church, going so far as to force the
clergy to take an oath to the State, effectively making the priest more
of an employee of the State than a servant of the Gospel. The faithful,
moreover, were scandalized when many priests succumbed to this
pressure, including the then pastor of Ars, Father Saunier. Educated at
the Sorbonne, Ars’s pastor took the oath in 1791 and the spiritual
unraveling of the parish in Ars began. The next year the parish church
was looted and Father Saunier left the priesthood. The sanctuary of the
parish church was converted into a club where the “free thinkers” of
the area held their meetings. Though restoration of the Church in
France began in 1801, tension and confusion about the clergy still
existed. Which priests could one trust? What of the priests who took
the oath? What about those priests who refused and suffered or were
even killed?
His failure to comprehend
Latin lectures forced him to discontinue. But
his vision of being a priest urged him to seek private tutoring. After
a lengthy battle with the books, John was ordained. Jean-Baptiste now
resumed his studies at Ecully. In 1812, he was sent to the seminary at
Verrieres; he was so deficient in Latin as to be obliged to follow the
philosophy course in French. He failed to pass the examinations for
entrance to the seminary proper, but on re-examination three months
later succeeded.
Father Vianney arrived at his parish a generation after
unparalleled
cultural and political upheaval in France. The Revolution and
subsequent Terror, the hardships under Napoleonic rule, the widespread
devastation of churches, religious communities and practices, and the
outright attack on the Church in France herself, were still fresh in
the minds of many. The Revolution’s spawn of secularism had permeated
much of French society, with even the smaller villages feeling its
reverberations. God and the Church were relegated more and more to the
margins of French life.
On 13 August, 1815, he was ordained priest by Mgr. Simon,
Bishop of
Grenoble. His difficulties in making the preparatory studies seem to
have been due to a lack of mental suppleness in dealing with theory as
distinct from practice -- a lack accounted for by the meagreness of his
early schooling, the advanced age at which he began to study, the fact
that he was not of more than average intelligence, and that he was far
advanced in spiritual science and in the practice of virtue long before
he came to study it in the abstract.
He was finally ordained at the age of 30,
but was thought to be so incompetent he was placed under the direction
of Fr. Balley, a holy priest in a neighboring village, for further
training in 1815.
Into this cultural milieu stepped the little priest from the
village of
Ecully, and he gave the people of Ars something they had never seen
before. How did he do it? Our group detected eight basic features to
his pastoral plan: 1) the conversion of his own life as a priest; 2)
manifesting an approachable and available demeanor; 3) prayer and
ascetical living; 4) channeling initial energy into those families
already faithful; 5) giving special attention to the liturgy, preaching
and catechesis; 6) addressing problems at their roots and not in their
symptoms; 7) planting good habits of prayer and the works of mercy; and
8) doing it all with a strong priestly identity.
He was sent to Ecully as assistant to M. Balley, who had
first
recognized and encouraged his vocation, who urged him to persevere when
the obstacles in his way seemed insurmountable, who interceded with the
examiners when he failed to pass for the higher seminary, and who was
his model as well as his preceptor and patron.
In 1818, after the death of M. Balley, M. Vianney was made
parish
priest of Ars, a village not very far from Lyons, where his reputation
as a confessor and
director of souls made him known throughout the Christian world. It
was in the exercise of the functions of the parish priest in this
remote French hamlet that as the "curé d'Ars" he became known
throughout France and the Christian world .
St. John Vianney did not
come down from Mount Olympus to reform and
save the poor parishioners of Ars. He first of all set out to save his
own soul, and by example drew others into this path of holiness. In
this he followed the spiritual maxim from the Desert Fathers and from
the Lord himself: If you want to sanctify others, begin with yourself.
Vianney’s conversion of the parish started with his own, and his
deepened along with theirs. One deacon in the group observed that early
on, the Curé of Ars made the conscious decision to become a
saint. Yet he did not arrive in Ars already a saint. He became one at
Ars by being a priest for his flock, and gained sanctity over time
through much grace and struggle.
The religious ignorance and indifference spawned by the
Revolution had
their effect on the life of Ars.
People frequently missed Sunday Mass, and work dominated the
lives of
most. The tiny settlement boasted of four taverns where the livelihoods
of many families were squandered. The very people who could not find
time for Sunday Mass spent themselves in festivities, lasting far into
the night and ending in the usual evils. Religious ignorance was
rampant in both children and adults.
Ironically the efforts of the Revolution to replace worship
of the
living God with the goddess “Reason” reaped the fruit of widespread
illiteracy, and only a minority in Ars could read. Ars, however, was no
better or worse off than the other villages in France. Remnants of
faith and morals were still found scattered about among some of the
families. The faith and the priesthood were not despised, just ignored.
The impact of the Revolution and Terror, and the poor example or lack
of stable clergy left the parish unsettled, ignorant, confused and at
best lukewarm.
Jansenism, with its harshness, scrupulosity and anxiety, was
still felt
within the faithful. The heresy had been put down, but its bitterness
could still be tasted in the spiritual groundwater.
Situations calling for “impossible” deeds followed him
everywhere. As
pastor of the parish at Ars, John encountered people who were
indifferent and quite comfortable with their style of living. His
vision led him through severe fasts and short nights of sleep. (Some
devils can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.)
A few years after he went to Ars, with Catherine Lassagne
and Benedicta
Lardet, he established La Providence, a home for girls. Only a man of
vision could have such trust that God would provide for the spiritual
and material needs of all those who came to make La Providence their
home. It was called "The Providence" and was the model of similar
institutions established later all over France. M. Vianney himself
instructed the children of "The Providence" in the catechism, and these
catechetical instructions came to be so popular that at last they were
given every day in the church to large crowds. "The Providence" was the
favourite work of the "curé d'Ars", but, although it was
successful, it was closed in 1847, because the holy curé thought
that he was not justified in maintaining it in the face of the
opposition of many good people. Its closing was a very heavy trial to
him.
His
life was one of extreme mortification.
Accustomed to the most severe austerities, beleaguered by
swarms of
penitents. He allowed himself 2 hours of sleep each night, and besieged
by the devil, who assaulted him with deafening noises,
insulting conversation, and physical abuse. These diabolical
visitations were occasionally witnessed with alarm by the men of the
parish, but the pious Cure accepted the attacks as a matter of course
and often joked about them: this great mystic manifested a
imperturbable patience. He ate potatoes he boiled, and learned to keep
suspended by a rope from the ceiling, so the rats wouldn't get to them.
He was a wonderworker loved by the crowds, but
he retained a childlike simplicity, and he remains to this day the
living image of the priest after the heart of Christ.
St. John was given many spiritual gifts, such as the power
of healing
and the ability to read the hearts of his penitents. It was this latter
gift which caused his fame to spread throughout France, and created
large crowds seeking guidance from him. The frail Cure began
hearing confessions at 1 o'clock in the morning, and it has been
reported that he spent from 13 to 17 hours a day in the cramped
confessional. He heard confessions of people from all over the world
each day.
But the chief labour of the
Curé d'Ars was the direction of
souls.
He had not been long at
Ars when people began coming to him from other
parishes, then from distant places, then from all parts of France, and
finally from other countries. As early as 1835, his bishop forbade him
to attend the annual retreats of the diocesan clergy because of "the
souls awaiting him yonder".
During the last ten years of his life, he
spent from sixteen to eighteen hours a day in the confessional. His
advice was sought by bishops, priests, religious, young men and women
in doubt as to their vocation, sinners, persons in all sorts of
difficulties and the sick. In 1855, the number of pilgrims had reached
twenty thousand a year. The most distinguished persons visited Ars for
the purpose of seeing the holy curé and hearing his daily
instruction. The Venerable Father Colin was ordained deacon at the same
time, and was his life-long friend, while Mother Marie de la Providence
founded the Helpers of the Holy Souls on his advice and with his
constant encouragement. His direction was characterized by common
sense, remarkable insight, and supernatural knowledge. He would
sometimes divine sins withheld in an imperfect confession. His
instructions were simple in language, full of imagery drawn from daily
life and country scenes, but breathing faith and that love of God which
was his life principle and which he infused into his audience as much
by his manner and appearance as by his words, for, at the last, his
voice was almost inaudible.
His life was filled with works of charity and love. It
is recorded that even the staunchest of sinners were converted at his
mere word. He died August 4, 1859, and was canonized May 31, 1925.
St. John died peacefully on August 4, 1859. His body was
exhumed
because of his impending beatification, and was found dried and
darkened, but perfectly entire.
St. John Vianney, who as a student
had difficulties being accepted for the priesthood, was canonized in
1925 and was named later the Patron of Parish Priests throughout the
world.
“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” John Vianney.
The miracles recorded by
his biographers are of three classes:
* first, the obtaining of money for his charities and food
for his
orphans;
* secondly, supernatural knowledge of the past and future;
* thirdly, healing the sick, especially children.
The greatest miracle of all was his life. He practised
mortification
from his early youth. and for forty years his food and sleep were
insufficient, humanly speaking, to sustain life. And yet he laboured
incessantly, with unfailing humility, gentleness, patience, and
cheerfulness, until he was more than seventy-three years old.
THE BEST information on St. John Vianney can be
obtained from The
Cure of Ars, Abbe Trochu, 1926
Text (abridged) from The Incorruptibles ©1977, The
Catholic
Dictionary http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08326c.htm.
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