On the Commenorated Feast of Saint John Mary Vianney, August 9, 2026

If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of charity, if any society of the spirit, if any bowels of commiseration: Fulfill ye my joy, that you may be of one mind, having the same charity, being of one accord, agreeing in sentiment. Let nothing be done through contention, neither by vain glory: but in humility, let each esteem others better than themselves: Each one not considering the things that are his own, but those that are other men's. For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth:

And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence,) with fear and trembling work out your salvation. For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will. And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world. (Philippians 2: 1-11)

Although these words of Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Philippians apply to all Catholics, they apply in a very particular way to priests, men whose immortal souls have been conformed to the Priesthood and Victimhood of the Chief Priest and Victim of every Mass, the Logos, the Word Who became Flesh in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. A man ordained to the sacerdotal priesthood that Our Lord instituted at the Last Supper and conferred in all of its fullness, namely, the episcopate, upon the Apostles is called upon to be Christ at all times and in all circumstances.

A priest ordained to be "bothered," if you will, when he least wants to be disturbed, to administer the sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Penance and the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to souls who ask for them at odd hours of the day and night. A priest is called to bear a visible witness to his priestly calling in public so that those who have strayed from the Faith and those who are outside of the true Sheepfold of Christ that is the Catholic Church might be inspired to respond to the Actual Graces being sent to them to seek out the sure path of salvation. There is no such thing as "time-off" for a priest. His rest is meant to be taken only in eternity after he has spent himself to the point of death in the service of the souls for whom the One to Whom he has been configured by means of his priestly ordination shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Some priests, especially those in the diocesan priesthood/presbyterate in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism on the East Coast, treat their priestly calling as a "job," keeping meticulous track of their "duty days" and never answering the door or the parish telephone after a certain hour, something that unfortunately long antedates the conciliar era. Some of these men are true priests, having been ordained before 1968, and they know only too well about the problems of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service and of the whole ethos of conciliarism, but who prefer the creature comforts of their careers, reasoning that their false "bishops" are the ones answerable to God for the orders that they give to them to offer a "Mass" they know to be, at the very least, offensive to God and harmful to souls and for adhering to the conciliarist line in their preaching.

The path to career promotion (a pastorate in a plumb parish, the conferral of the title of monsignor at some point, possibly even being made a "bishop" and thus entering the conciliar "episcopal" "pipeline") rests in silent acquiescence to "orders" that require men who know better to violate their consciences, consoling themselves with the false assurance that they are not answerable to God for continuing to participate in matters that offend God and actually blaspheme Him by altering His truths with the lies and sacrileges of conciliarism. Some of these priests or presbyters are quite gifted and very learned. Their compromise with the prevailing ethos of the day is at odds with the witness given by faithful priests during the Arian heresy and during the Protestant Revolt in England and Ireland, to say nothing of the courage of priests of the Vendee in France and the priests in Mexico who were part of the Cristeros (setting these priests apart from the bishops and priests who sided with the revolutionaries in both countries in order not to "risk" their necks unnecessarily).

Other conciliar priests today are simply indolent, men who either accept the liturgical and doctrinal revolutions without complaint or who just do not want to give a thought to anything other than the perfunctory, slothful performance of the duties assigned to them.

For example, an extern from India, assigned to a conciliar parish on Long Island in 1986, once refused to hear my confession (at a time I was driving between Illinois and Long Island every weekend while teaching at Illinois State University during the week and campaigning for lieutenant governor of New York on the weekends, also teaching a Saturday morning graduate course at Saint John's University in Jamaica, Queens) when I knocked on his rectory door. His excuse? "Oh, I cannot hear your confession now. I am watching the Wheel of Fortune. Vanna is about to turn a letter." As the door closed in my face, I said, "Yes, Father, as Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Himself would have said."

Even more sad to note, though, are those priests or presbyters who despise the pursuit of personal holiness by not only making a mockery of the traditional, devout practices of the Faith and of the Deposit of Faith but by persisting in lives of unrepentant moral perversity. Far more of these priests were elevated to the conciliar "episcopate" by the morally corrupt Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonia Maria Montini/Paul VI, the doctrinally corrupt  Karol Joszef Wojtyla/John Paul II and the dogmatic evolutionist named Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI than defenders of all things conciliar want to admit, and the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio made it his business to do so. Although is now only three months since Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV has already made it clear that a commitmen to normalize perversity is not a disqualification from being appointed as a conciliar "ordinary" (see Boy, If Only Leo Knew, part four).

There is incontrovertible evidence about the manner in which the late Wojtyla/John Paul II repeatedly rewarded the perverts within the hierarchy, refusing entreaties made to him by priests or presbyters well-regarded in the conciliar Vatican who brought him documentation about the corruption and perversity of one "bishop" after another. Not exactly the stuff of personal sanctity, to say nothing of the stuff of canonization, on the part of the perverted "bishops" and "priests" and on the part of the late Karol Jozsef Wojtyla. Joseph Alois "Cardinal" Ratzinger helped to enable this process as the prefect of conciliarism's "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," having distinguished himself as "Benedict XVI" by appointing and promoting men to the conciliar "episcopate" men known to be, at the very least, sympathetic to perversity if not openly supportive of its social agenda of evil, evils that mattered not one whit to Jorge "Social Work First, Social Work Last, Social Work Only, Let's Meet the People Where They are in the Peripheries as we Accompany Them to Hell" Bergoglio.

There remain, however, the unsung numbers of priests, both living in the catacombs and their deceased brethren who offered the same Mass and taught the same things as they do now, who have borne faithful witness Our Lord's Holy Priesthood, bearing with manly courage the crosses of their pastoral service to souls. These priests will indeed hear a confession at any hour of the day or night. They are unflagging in their devotion to the fullness of the Faith and have made great sacrifices to continue to offer the Immemorial Mass of Tradition to the faithful no matter what it has cost them insofar as career security or canonical standing. They are never "off-duty," always wearing a cassock or their priestly garb in public, willing to spend whatever time they need to speak to a soul placed in their paths by the Providence of God to exhort him to embrace the Catholic Faith.

These faithful, selfless priests spend endless amounts of hidden time before Our Lord in His Real Presence, which is the new Mount Thabor on which they can be more and more transfigured into the likeness of the One they image in every aspect of their lives, the One Whom they make incarnate under the appearances of bread and wine each time they offer the ineffable Sacrifice of the Cross that is Holy Mass. These faithful, self-sacrificing priests never consider it a burden to pray their Rosaries on a daily basis, doing so faithfully as they advance into old age. The very fact that any of us have the Catholic Faith is attributable to the fidelity of the priests who have eschewed all worldly honors and fleshly temptations to spend themselves as Our Lord spent Himself during His Passion and Death to redeem us. These priests thus understand that it is up to them to make it possible for us to have access to the life-giving treasures of grace that flow forth from Our Lady's hands and are made present by the working of the Holy Ghost through their own sacramental words and actions. We must commend our priests, both religious and secular, to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary every single day of our lives.

Priestly fidelity and zeal for soul cuts across all of the theological and fault-lines dividing the Church at present, which is why the true Catholic bishops in the catacombs must exhort their brethren yet in the conciliar structures to embrace the fullness of Tradition without compromise and thus to get themselves properly ordained so as to offer the faithful in the catacombs the proven remedies for all of the disorders caused by sin and the vagaries of fallen human nature.

Men who have demonstrated a zeal for souls by maintaining as much fidelity as possible in the conciliar structures--and frequently suffering greatly at the hands of their own bishops or religious superiors and scorned and mocked by their brother priests--must come to realize that their priestly calling can only be exercised in its fullness in the catacombs, to say nothing of coming to grips with the invalidity of their "ordination" at the hands of false "bishops." The faithful need the antidote to Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church provided by the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and by the fullness of the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church that is best expressed and protected therein. Recruiting zealous diocesan and religious priests in the conciliar structures to embrace the Catholic Faith by rejecting reject conciliarism and its false shepherds should be uppermost in our prayers every day, and it should be uppermost in the work of the true bishops and priests who have long defended Tradition and are spending themselves entirely for souls in these truly extraordinary times of revolution and apostasy.

Think of all of the sacrifices made by those priests in the true Catholic Church in the catacombs who drive hundreds of miles and/or fly thousands of miles each and every week just to offer what is the baptismal birthright of every Roman Rite Catholic, the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, in places where Catholics do not have ready access to it. Indeed, the conciliar revolutionaries have taken away our right to assist at this Mass, forcing people to uproot themselves from their native areas to be able to assist at the daily offering of the Traditional Mass without making any concessions to the counterfeit church of conciliarism and the "terms" under which a "priest" may offer the modernized Mass of Tradition in its illegitimate structures.

The traditional priests in the true Catholic Church in the catacombs around the country and the world are the great heroes of the Catholic Faith in these our days. How much are they calumniated by the conciliar revolutionaries as "renegades" and "schismatics" for their fidelity to the fullness of the Catholic Faith, how little they are appreciated frequently by the very people for whom they spend themselves in their priestly lives. We just need to pray more and more that the witness given by these courageous, self-sacrificing priests will inspire those yet in the conciliar structures, including those offering or staging  the Mass of the ages under the terms of Summorum Pontificum, to abandon a false religious sect so as to protect the integrity the entirety of the Sacred Deposit of Faith while being able to resist openly and actively the entire ethos of conciliarism that comes from the devil, who wants Catholics to accommodate themselves to the errors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism as natural and normal in their lives.

Saint John Mary Vianney, whose feast is celebrated on August 9 on the Roman, lived all but three years of his life in the aftermath of the Revolution that would devastate his native country, France, and ultimately serve, along with the Protestant Revolution and the rise of the naturalism associated with Judeo-Masonry, to infect many within the Catholic Church by means of Modernism. Indeed, the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI boasted in Principles of Catholic Theology  that the  text of Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, represented a "reconciliation" between the Church and the "new era inaugurated" in 1789, something explored eight years ago in The Adversary Always Mocks His Revolutions in 2016.

Quite to the contrary, Saint John Mary Vianney sought to protect his people of Ars from the effects of the Revolution so as to help them get home to Heaven. Spending endless hours in the confessional, this humble curate, who had such great difficulties in his studies to become a priest, spent himself as Our Lord spent Himself entirely for the salvation of souls. He pursued personal sanctity for himself and thus became a visible witness to his people as to how to love God as He has revealed Himself exclusively through the Catholic Church and thus have a chance to get home to Heaven by dying in a state of Sanctifying Grace.

Possessing none of the empty sentimentality born of Protestantism or the Hegelian views advanced by the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, Saint John Mary Vianney challenged his flock to abandon their sins and their many compromises with the world. He explained his priestly zeal very well in a sermon entitled, "I Come on Behalf of God." He did not go to "meet the people where they are." Saint John Mary Vianney exhorted his parishioners to quit their sins and to climb the ladder of personal sanctity without delay and without distraction:

Why am I up in the pulpit today, my dear brethren? What am I going to say to you? Ah! I come on behalf of God Himself. I come on behalf of your poor parents, to awaken in you that love and gratitude which you owe them. I come to bring before your minds again all those kindnesses and all the love which they gave you while they were on earth. I come to tell you that they suffer in Purgatory, that they weep, and that they demand with urgent cries the help of your prayers and your good works. I seem to hear them crying from the depths of those fires which devour them: "Tell our beloved ones, tell our children, tell all our relatives how great the evils are which they are making us suffer. We throw ourselves at their feet to implore the help of their prayers. Ah! Tell them that since we have been separated from them, we have been here burning in the flames! Oh! Who would be so indifferent to such sufferings as we are enduring?"

Do you see, my dear brethren, do you hear that tender mother, that devoted father, and all those relatives who helped and tended you? "My friends," they cry, "free us from these pains; you can do it." Consider then, my dear brethren: (1) the magnitude of these sufferings which the souls in Purgatory endure; and (2) the means which we have of mitigating them: our prayers, our good works, and, above all, the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

I do not wish to stop at this stage to prove to you the existence of Purgatory. That would be a waste of time. No one among you has the slightest doubt on that score. The Church, to which Jesus Christ promised the guidance of the Holy Ghost and which, consequently, can neither be mistaken herself nor mislead us, teaches us about Purgatory in a very clear and positive manner. It is certain, very certain, that there is a place where the souls of the just complete the expiation of their sins before being admitted to the glory of Paradise, which is assured them. Yes, my dear brethren, and it is an article of faith: if we have not done penance proportionate to the greatness and enormity of our sins, even though forgiven in the holy tribunal of Penance, we shall be compelled to expiate them. . . . In Holy Scripture there are many texts which show clearly that although our sins may be forgiven, God still imposes on us the obligation to suffer in this world by temporal hardships or in the next by the flames of Purgatory.

Look at what happened to Adam. Because he was repentant after committing his sin, God assured him that He had pardoned him, and yet He condemned him to do penance for nine hundred years, penance which surpasses anything we can imagine. See again: David ordered, contrary to the wish of God, the census of his subjects, but, stricken with remorse of conscience, he recognized his sin and, throwing himself upon the ground, begged the Lord to pardon him. God, touched by his repentance, forgave him indeed. But despite that, He sent Gad to tell David that he would have to choose between three scourges which He had prepared for him as punishment for iniquity: the plague, war, or famine. David said: "It is better that I should fall into the hands of the Lord (for his mercies are many) than into the hands of men." He chose the pestilence, which lasted three days and killed seventy thousand of his subjects. If the Lord had not stayed the hand of the Angel, which was stretched out over the city, all Jerusalem would have been depopulated! David, seeing so many evils caused by his sin, begged the grace of God to punish him alone and to spare his people, who were innocent.

Alas, my dear brethren, what, then, will be the number of years which we shall have to suffer in Purgatory, we who have so many sins, we who, under the pretext that we have confessed them, do no penance and shed no tears? How many years of suffering shall we have to expect in the next life?

But how, then the holy Fathers tell us that the torments they suffer in this pale seem equal the sufferings which our Lord Jesus Christ endured during His sorrowful Passion, shall I paint for you a heart-rending picture of the sufferings which these poor souls endure? However, it is certain that if the slightest torment that our Lord suffered had been shared by all mankind, they would all be dead through the violence of such suffering. The fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of Hell, the difference between them is that the fire of Purgatory is not everlasting. Oh! Should God in His great mercy permit one of these poor souls, who burn in these flames, to appear here in my place, all surrounded by the fires which consume him, and should he give you himself a recital of the sufferings he is enduring, this church, my dear brethren, would reverberate with his cries and his sobs, and perhaps that might finally soften your hearts.

Oh! How we suffer! they cry to us. Oh! You, our brethren, deliver us from these torments! You can do it! Ah, if you only experienced the sorrow of being separated from God! . . . Cruel separation! To burn in the fire kindled by the justice of God! . . . To suffer sorrows, incomprehensible to mortal man! . . . To be devoured by regret, knowing that we could so easily have avoided such sorrows! . . .Oh! My children, cry the fathers and the mother, can you thus so readily abandon us, we who loved you so much? Can you then sleep in comfort and leave us stretched upon a bed of fire? Will you have the courage to give yourselves up to pleasure and joy while we are here suffering and weeping night and day? You have our wealth, our homes, you are enjoying the fruit of our labors, and you abandon us here in this place of torments, where we are suffering such frightful evils for so many years! . . . And not a single almsgiving, not a single Mass which would help to deliver us! . . . You can relieve our sufferings, you can open our prison, and you abandon us. Oh! How cruel these sufferings are! . . .

Yes, my dear brethren, people judge very differently, when in the flames of Purgatory, of all those light faults, if indeed it is possible to call anything light which makes us endure such rigorous sorrows. What woe would there be to man, the Royal Prophet cries, even the more just of men, if God were to judge him without mercy. If God has found spots in the sun and malice in the angels, what, then, is this sinful man? And for us, who have committed so many mortal sins and who have done practically nothing to satisfy the justice of God, how many years of Purgatory!. . .

"My God," said St. Teresa, "what soul will be pure enough to enter into heaven without passing through the vengeful flames?" In her last illness, she cried suddenly: "O justice and power of my God, how terrible you are!" During her agony, God allowed her to see His holiness as the angels and the saints see Him in heaven, which caused her so much dread that her sisters, seeing her trembling and extraordinarily agitated, spoke to her, weeping: "Ah! Mother, what has happened to you; surely you do not fear death after so many penances and such abundant and bitter tears?"

"No, my children," St. Teresa replied, "I do not fear death; on the contrary, I desire it so that I may be united forever with my God."

"It is your sins, then, which terrify you, after so much mortification?"

"Yes, my children," she told them. "I do fear my sins, but I fear still another thing even more."

"Is it the judgment then?"

"Yes, I tremble at the formidable account that it will be necessary to render to God, Who, in that moment, will be without mercy, but there is still something else of which the very thought alone makes me die with terror."

The poor sisters were deeply distressed.

"Alas! Can it be Hell then?"

"No, she told them, "Hell, thank God, is not for me. Oh! My sisters, it is the holiness of God. My God, have pity upon me! My life must be brought face to face with that of Jesus Christ Himself! Woe to me if I have the least blemish or stain! Woe to me if I am even in the very shadow of sin!"

"Alas, cried these poor sisters. "What will our deaths be like!"

What will ours be like, then, my dear brethren, we who, perhaps in all our penances and our good works, have never yet satisfied for one single sin forgiven in the tribunal of Penance? Ah! What years and centuries of torment to punish us! . . . How dearly we shall pay for all those faults that we look upon as nothing at all, like those little lies that we tell to amuse ourselves, those little scandals, the despising of the graces which God gives us at every moment, those little murmurings in the difficulties that He sends us! No, my dear brethren, we would never have the courage to commit the least sin if we could understand how much it outrages God and how greatly it deserves to be rigorously punished, even in this world.

God is just, my dear brethren, in all that He does. When He recompenses us for the smallest good action, He does so over and above all that we could desire. A good thought, a good desire, that is to say, the desire to do some good work even when we are not able to do it, He never leaves us without a reward. But also, when it is a matter of punishing us, if it is done with rigor, and though we should have only a light fault, we shall be sent into Purgatory. This is true, for we see it in the lives of the saints that many of them did not go to Heaven without having first passed through the flames of Purgatory. St. Peter Damien tells us that his sister remained several years in Purgatory because she had listened to an evil song with some little pleasure. It is told that two religious promised each other that the first to die would come to tell the survivor in what state he was. God permitted the one who died first to appear to his friend. He told him that he was remaining fifteen years in Purgatory for having liked his own way too much. And as his friend was complimenting him on remaining there for so short a time, the dead man replied: "I would have much preferred to be flayed alive for ten thousand years continuously, for that suffering could not even be compared with what I am suffering in the flames."

A priest told one of his friends that God had condemned him to remain in Purgatory for several months for having held back the execution of a will designed for the doing of good works. Alas, my dear brethren, how many among those who hear me have a similar fault with which to reproach themselves? How many are there, perhaps, who during the course of eight or ten years have received from their parents or their friends the work of having Masses said and alms given and have allowed the whole thing to slide! How many are there who, for fear of find in that certain good works should be done, have not wanted to go to the trouble of looking at the will that their parents or their friends have made in their favor? Alas, these poor souls are still detained in the flames because no one has desired to fulfill their last wishes! Poor fathers and mothers, you are being sacrificed for the happiness of your children and your heirs! You perhaps have neglected your own salvation to augment their fortune. You are being cheated of the good works which you left behind in your wills! . . . Poor parents! How blind you were to forget yourselves! . . .

You will tell me, perhaps: "Our parents lived good lives; they were very good people." Ah! They needed little to go into these flames! See what Albert the Great, a man whose virtues shone in such an extraordinary way, said on this matter. He revealed one day to one of his friends that God had taken him into Purgatory for having entertained a slightly self-satisfied thought about his own knowledge. The most astonishing thing was that there were actually saints there, even ones who were canonized, who were passing through Purgatory. St. Severius, Archbishop of Cologne, appeared to one of his friends a long time after his death and told him that he had been in Purgatory for having deferred to the evening the prayers he should have said in the morning. Oh! What years of Purgatory will there be for those Christians who have no difficulty at all in deferring their prayers to another time on the excuse of having to do some pressing work! If we really desired the happiness of possessing God, we should avoid the little faults as well as the big ones, since separation from God is so frightful a torment to all these poor souls! (Sermons of Saint John Mary Vianney,  I come on behalf of God.)

Saint John Mary Vianney did not reaffirm sinners in their sins. Unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio and practically every single one of the conciliar "bishops" from the Federal Republic of Germany and each of his commissars, Saint John Mary Vianney did not base his preaching upon what his people did; he based it upon what God had called them to do, namely, to live in accordance with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law by cooperating with the graces won for them by His Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and that flow in their hearts and hearts through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

The Patron of Parish Priests knew much about suffering, including periods of such intense anguish within his soul that he sought to flee from the people of Ars on no less than three separate occasions. Each time, however, he returned to Ars to offer Holy Mass, which he loved to offer as he knew that every Mass he offered added glory unto God and grace unto the world, to visit the sick, to reconcile enemies, to preach fearlessly without regard for human respect, and to spend up to eighteen hours a day in the confessional. Saint John Mary Vianney knew, of course, that suffering was the only path to salvation, and he embraced the cross of his fame as a preacher and confessor with courage while mortifying his senses by eating as little as a stale crumb of bread or a potato that had begun to rot. He cared only about going to Heaven after having acquitted his duties as an alter Christus, which is why the Cure of Ars exhorted his people about the dangers of worldliness over and over again:

If people would do for God what they do for the world, my dear people, what a great number of Christians would go to Heaven! But if you, dear children, had to pass three or four hours praying in a church, as you pass them at a dance or in a cabaret, how heavily the time would press upon you! If you had to go to a great many different places in order to hear a sermon, as you go for your pastimes or to satisfy your avarice and greed, what pretexts there would be, and how many detours would be taken to avoid going at all. But nothing is too much trouble when done for the world. What is more, people are not afraid of losing either God or their souls or Heaven. With what good reason did Jesus Christ, my dear people, say that the children of this world are more zealous in serving their master, the world, than the children of light are in serving theirs, who is God. To our shame, we must admit that people fear neither expense, nor even going into debt, when it is a matter of satisfying their pleasures, but if some poor person asks them for help, they have nothing at all. This is true of so many: they have everything for the world and nothing at all for God because to them, the world is everything and God is nothing.

Follow One Master Only

What a sad life does he lead who wants both to please the world and to serve God! It is a great mistake to make, my friends. Apart from the fact that you are going to be unhappy all the time, you can never attain the stage at which you will be able to please the world and please God. It is as impossible a feat as trying to put an end to eternity. Take the advice that I am going to give you now and you will be less unhappy: give yourselves wholly to God or else wholly to the world. Do not look for and do not serve more than one master, and once you have chosen the one you are going to follow, do not leave him. You surely remember what Jesus Christ said to you in the Gospel: you cannot serve God and Mammon; that is to say, you cannot follow the world and the pleasures of the world and Jesus Christ with His Cross. Of course you would be quite willing to follow God just so far and the world just so far! Let me put it even more clearly: you would like it if your conscience, if your heart, would allow you to go to the altar in the morning and the dance in the evening; to spend part of the day in church and the remainder in the cabarets or other places of amusement; to talk of God at one moment and the next to tell obscene stories or utter calumnies about your neighbour; to do a good turn for your next-door neighbour on one occasion and on some other to do him harm; in other words, to do good and speak well when you are with good people and to do wrong when you are in bad company. 

They are for the World

One section, and perhaps it is the largest section, of people everywhere are wholly wrapped up in the things of this world. And of this large number there are those who are content to have suppressed all feeling of religion, all thought of another life, who have done everything in their power to efface the terrible thought of the judgment which one day they will have to undergo. They employ all their wiles, and often their wealth, during the course of their lives to attract to their way of life as many people as they can. They no longer believe in anything. They even take a pride in making themselves out to be more impious and incredulous than they really are in order to convince others and to make them believe, not in the verities, but in the falsehoods which they wish to take root in the hearts of those under their influence.

Voltaire, in the course of a dinner given one day for his friends -- that is, for the impious -- rejoiced that of all those present, there was not one who believed in religion. And yet he himself did believe, as he was to show at the hour of his death.

Then he demanded with great earnestness that a priest should be brought to him that he might make his peace with God.

But it was too late. God, against whom he had fought and spoken with such fury all his life, dealt with him as He had with Antiochus: He abandoned him to the fury of the devils. At that dread moment, Voltaire had only despair and the thought of eternal damnation as his lot. The Holy Ghost tells us: "The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God." But it is only the corruption of his heart which could carry man to such an excess; he does not believe it in the depths of his soul. The words "There is a God" will never entirely disappear. The greatest sinner will often utter them without even thinking of what he is saying. But let us leave these blasphemous people aside. Happily, though you may not be as good Christians as you ought to be, thanks be to God you are not of that company.

But, you will say to me, who are these people who are partly on God's side and partly on the side of the world? Well, my dear children, let me describe them. I will compare them (if I may dare to make use of the term) to dogs who will run to the first person who calls them. You may follow them from the morning to the evening, from the beginning of the year to the end. These people look upon Sunday as merely a day for rest and amusement. They stay in bed longer than on weekdays, and instead of giving themselves to God with all their hearts, they do not even think of Him. Some of them will be thinking of their amusements, others of people they expect to meet, still others of the sales they are about to make or the money they will be spending or receiving. With great difficulty they will manage the Sign of the Cross in some fashion or another. Because they will be going to church later, they will omit their prayers altogether, saying: "Oh, I'll have plenty of time to say them before Mass." They always have something to do before setting out for Mass, and although they have been planning to say their prayers before setting out, they are barely in time for the beginning of the Mass itself. If they meet a friend along the road, it is no trouble to them to bring him back home and put off the Mass until a later hour.

But since they still want to appear Christian, they will go to Mass sometime later, though it will be with infinite boredom and reluctance. The thought in their minds will be: "Oh, Lord, will this ever be over!" You will see them in church, especially during the instruction, looking around from one side to the other, asking the person next to them for the time, and so on.

More of them yawn and stretch and turn the pages of their prayer book as if they were examining it in order to see whether the printer had made any mistakes. There are others, and you can see them sleeping as soundly as if they were in a comfortable bed. The first thought that comes to them when they awake is not that they have been profaning so holy a place but: "Oh, Lord, this will never be over.... I'm not coming back any more." And finally there are those to whom the word of God (which has converted so many sinners) is actually nauseating.

They are obliged to go out, they say, to get a breath of air or else they would die. You will see them, distressed and miserable, during the services. But no sooner is the service over (and often even before the priest has actually left the altar) than they will be pressing around the door from which the first of the congregation are streaming out, and you will notice that all the joy which they had lost during the service has come back again.

They are so tired that often they have not the "strength" to come back to the evening service. If you were to ask them why they were not coming to this, they would tell you: "Ah, we would have to be all the day in the church. We have other things to do."

For such people there is no question of instruction, nor of the Rosary, nor of evening prayers. They look upon all these things as of no consequence. If you asked them what had been said during the instruction, they would say: "He did too much shouting.... He bored us to death.... I can't remember anything else about it.... If it hadn't been so long, it might have been easier to remember some of it.... That is just what keeps the world away from religious services -- they are too long."

It is quite right to say "the world" because these people belong to the camp of "the worldly," although they do not know it.

But now we shall try to make them understand things a little better (at least if they want to). But, being deaf and blind (as they are), it is very difficult to make them understand the words of life or to comprehend their own unhappy state. To begin with, they never make the Sign of the Cross before a meal or say Grace afterwards, nor do they recite the Angelus. If, as a result of some old habit or training, they still observe these practices and you should happen to see the manner in which they carry them out, you would feel sick: the women will simultaneously be getting on with their work or calling to their children or members of the household; the men will be turning a hat or a cap around in their hands as if searching for holes. They think as much about God as if they really believed that He did not exist at all and that they were doing all this for a joke. They have no scruples about buying or selling on the holy day of Sunday, even though they know, or at least they should know, that dealing on a reasonably big scale on a Sunday, when there is no necessity for it, is a mortal sin. Such people regard all such facts as trifles. They will go into a parish on a holy day to hire labourers, and if you told them they were doing wrong, they would reply: "We must go when we can find them there." They have no problem, either, about paying their taxes on a Sunday because during the week they might have to go a little further and take a few moments longer to complete the job.

"Ah," you will say to me, "we wouldn't think much of all that." You would not think much of all that, my dear people, and I am not at all surprised, because you are worldly. You would like to be followers of God and at the same time to satisfy the standards of the world. Do you realise, my children, who these people are? They are the people who have not entirely lost the faith and to whom there still remains some attachment to the service of God, the people who do not want to give up all religious practices, for indeed, they themselves find fault with those who do not go often to the services, but they have not enough courage to break with the world and to turn to God's side. They do not wish to be damned, but neither do they wish to inconvenience themselves too much. They hope that they will be saved without having to do too much violence to themselves. They have the idea that God, being so good, did not create them for perdition and that He will pardon them in spite of everything; that the time will come when they will turn over to God; that they will correct their faults and abandon all their bad habits. If, in moments of reflection, they pass their petty lives before their eyes, they will lament for their faults, and sometimes they will even weep for them....

What a very tragic life such people lead, my children, who want to follow the ways of the world without ceasing to be the children of God. Let us go on a little further and you will be able to understand this a little more clearly and to see for yourselves how stupid indeed such a life can be. At one moment you will hear the people who lead it praying or making an act of contrition, and the next moment you will hear them, if something is not going the way they want it, swearing or maybe even using the holy name of God. This morning you may have seen them at Mass, singing or listening to the praises of God, and on the very same day you will hear them giving vent to the most scandalous utterances. They will dip their hands in holy water and ask God to purify them from their sins; a little later they will be using those very hands in an impure way upon themselves or upon others. The same eyes which this morning had the great happiness of contemplating Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament will in the course of the day voluntarily rest with pleasure upon the most immodest objects. Yesterday you saw a certain man doing an act of charity or a service for a neighbour; today he will be doing his best to cheat that neighbour if he can profit thereby. A moment ago this mother desired all sorts of blessings for her children, and now, because they are annoying her, she will shower all sorts of curses upon them: she wishes she might never see them again, that she was miles away from them, and ends up by consigning them to the Devil to rid herself of them! At one moment she sends her children to Mass or Confession; at another, she will be sending them to the dance or, at least, she will pretend not to know that they are there or forbid them to go with a laugh which is tantamount to permission to go. At one time she will be telling her daughter to be reserved and not to mix with bad companions, and at another she will allow her to pass whole hours with young men without saying a word. It's no use, my poor mother, you are on the side of the world! You think yourself to be on God's side by reason of some exterior show of religion which you make.

You are mistaken; you belong to that number of whom Jesus Christ has said: "Woe to the world...."

You see these people who think they are following God but who are really living up to the maxims of the world. They have no scruples about taking from their neighbour wood or fruit or a thousand and one other things. Whenever they are flattered for what they do for religion, they derive quite a lot of pleasure from their actions. They will be quite keen then and will be delighted to give good advice to others. But let them be subjected to any contempt or calumny and you will see them become discouraged and distressed because they have been treated in this way. Yesterday they wanted only to do good to anyone who did them harm, but today they can hardly tolerate such people, and often they cannot even endure to see them or to speak to them.

Poor worldlings! How unhappy you are! Go on with your daily round; you have nothing to hope for but Hell! Some would like to go to the Sacraments at least once a year, but for that, it is necessary to find an easygoing confessor. They would like .... if only -- and there is the whole problem. If they find a confessor who sees that their dispositions are not good and he refuses them Absolution, you will then find them thundering against him, justifying themselves for all they are worth for having tried and failed to obtain the Sacrament. They will speak evil about him. They know very well why they have been refused and left in their sinful state, but, as they know, too, the confessor can do nothing to grant them what they want, so they get satisfaction by saying anything they wish.

Carry on, children of this world, carry on with your daily round; you will see a day you never wished to see! It would seem then that we must divide our hearts in two! But no, my friends, that is not the case; all for God or all for the world.

You would like to frequent the Sacraments? Very well, then, give up the dances and the cabarets and the unseemly amusements. Today you have sufficient grace to come here and present yourselves at the tribunal of Penance, to kneel before the Holy Table, to partake of the Bread of the Angels. In three or four weeks, maybe less, you will be seen passing your night among drunken men, and what is more, you will be seen indulging in the most horrible acts of impurity. Carry on, children of this world; you will soon be in Hell! They will teach you there what you should have done to get to Heaven, which you have lost entirely through your own fault....

Woe betide you, children of this world! Carry on; follow your master as you have done up to the present! Very soon you will see clearly that you have been mistaken in following his ways. But will that make you any wiser? No, my children, it will not. If someone cheats us once, we say: "We will not trust him any more -- and with good reason." The world cheats us continually and yet we love it." Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world," St. John warns us. Ah, my dear children, if we gave some thought to what the world really is, we should pass all our lives in bidding it farewell. When one reaches the age of fifteen years, one has said farewell to the pastimes of childhood; one has come to look upon them as trifling and ephemeral, as one would the actions of children building houses of cards or sand castles. At thirty, one has begun to put behind one the consuming pleasures of passionate youth. What gave such intense pleasure in younger days is already beginning to weary. Let us go further, my dear children, and say that every day we are bidding farewell to the world.

We are like travellers who enjoy the beauty of the countryside through which they are passing. No sooner do they see it than it is time for them to leave it behind. It is exactly the same with the pleasures and the good things to which we become so attached. Then we arrive at the edge of eternity, which engulfs all these things in its abyss.

It is then, my dear brethren, that the world will disappear forever from our eyes and that we shall recognise our folly in having been so attached to it. And all that has been said to us about sin! .... Then we shall say: It was all true. Alas, I lived only for the world, I sought nothing but the world in all I did, and now the pleasures and the joys of the world are not for me any longer! They are all slipping away from me -- this world which I have loved so well, these joys, these pleasures which have so fully occupied my heart and my soul! ....

Now I must return to my God! .... How consoling this thought is, my dear children, for him who has sought only God throughout his life! But what a despairing thought for him who has lost sight of God and of the salvation of his soul! (SERMONS OF THE CURE OF ARS - EXCERPTS.)

IT IS NECESSARY TO BE CONVERTED

No, my dear brethren, let us never forget that in order to receive Holy Communion it is necessary to be converted and strong in a true resolution to persevere. When Jesus Christ desired to give His Adorable Body and His Precious Blood to His Apostles, in order to teach them how pure one should be before receiving It, He even went so far as to wash their feet. By that He wishes to show us that we can never be purified enough of our sins, even our venial sins. It is true that the venial sin does not make our Communions unworthy, but it is a cause of our profiting hardly at all by such a great blessing and happiness. The proof of that is very clear when you consider how many times we have received Holy Communion during the course of our lives. And have we become any better? . . . . No, not at all, and the real cause of that is that practically all the time we are holding onto our bad habits; we do not break ourselves of any one of them more than another. We have a horror of the big sins which kill our souls, but all those little fits of impatience, those grumblings when some worries or troubles befall us, or some disappointments or setbacks-these mean nothing to us. You will admit that in spite of so many Confessions and Holy Communions, you are always the same, that your Confessions are nothing else, nor have they been for years, than a repetition of the same sins, which, although venial, are none the less damaging to the merit of your Holy Communions. You have been heard to say, with good reason, that you are no better one day than another, but who is stopping you from correcting your faults? . . . . If you are always the same, it is simply because you do not want to make even small efforts to improve yourself. You do not want to endure anything or to be opposed in anything. You would like everyone to be fond of you and to have a good opinion of you, which is a difficult enough thing.

Let us try hard, my dear brethren, to destroy all that could be in the smallest way displeasing to Jesus Christ, and we shall see ho-v our Communions will help us to make great strides towards Heaven. And the more we do this, the more we shall feel ourselves becoming detached from sin and inclining towards God. . . . This is what I desire for you.

HAVE A CLEAN FACE

I have told you that you should have neat and clean clothes. I do not mean expensive clothes, but only ones which are not soiled or torn. That is to say, the clothes should be washed and mended if one has no others. There are some who have nothing to change or who, through laziness, do not do so; they do not change their linen, that is, their shirts. For those who have no other clothes, there is nothing wrong in that.

But those who have, do wrong, for it is lacking in respect to our Lord, Who wishes to come into their hearts. Your hair should be combed and tidy and your face and hands clean. You should never come to the altar without stockings, good or bad.

One should not approve of those young people who, in going up to the altar, appear no differently at that moment than at the time when they are going to a ball or a dance. I do not know how they go to receive a God Who was humbled and despised by all, with such a parade of vanity and style. Dear Lord, what a contradiction this is! . . . .

MODEL YOUR DEATH UPON THAT OF JESUS CHRIST

If we were required to die twice, we could jettison one death. But man dies once only, and upon his death depends his eternity. Where the tree falls, there shall it lie. If, at the hour of his death, someone is living in some bad habit, his poor soul will fall on the side of Hell. If, on the other hand, he is in the state of grace, it will take the road for heaven. Oh, happy road! . . . . Generally speaking, one dies as one has lived. That is one of the great truths which Holy Scripture and the Fathers repeat in many different places. If you live as good Christians, you will be sure to die as good Christians, but if you live badly, you will be sure to die a bad death. The prophet Isaias warns us that the impious man who thinks only of doing evil is in a woeful state, for he will be treated as he deserves. At death he will receive the reward for the work he has done. It is true, however, that sometimes, by a kind of miracle, one may begin badly and finish well, but that happens so rarely that, as St. Jerome puts it, death is generally the echo of life. You think that you will return then to God? No, you will perish in sin . . . .

The Holy Ghost tells us that if we have a friend, we should do him some good before we die. Well, my dear brethren, could one have a better friend than one's soul? Let us do all the good for it that we can, for at the moment when we would like to do our souls good, we shall be able to do no more! . . . . Life is short. If you defer changing your ways until the hour of your death, you are blind, for you do not know either the time or the place where you will die, perhaps without any assistance. Who knows if you will not go this night, covered in your sins, before the tribunal of Jesus Christ? . . . .

Yes, my dear brethren, as life is, so is death. Do not hope for a miracle, which God but rarely performs. You are living in sin; very well, you will die in sin . . . .

If we desire to die a good death, we must lead a Christian life. And the way for us to prepare for a good death is to model our deaths upon the death of Jesus Christ.

Can the life of the good Christian be anything other than that of a man nailed to the Cross with Jesus Christ?

IF MAN KNEW HIS RELIGION

Neither wealth, nor honours, nor vanity can make a man happy during his life on earth, but only attachment to the service of God, when we are fortune enough to realise that and to carry it out properly. The woman who is held in contempt by her husband is not unhappy in her state because she is held in contempt but because she does not know her religion or because she does not practice what her religion tells her she should do. Teach her religion, and from the moment that you see her practice it, she will cease to complain and to consider herself unhappy. Oh! How happy man would be, even on this earth, if he knew his religion! . . . .

What power that person who is near to God possesses when he loves Him and serves Him faithfully! Alas, my dear brethren, anyone who is despised by worldly people, who appears to be unimportant and humble, look at him when he masters the very will and power of God Himself. Look at a Moses, who compels the Lord to grant pardon to three hundred thousand men who were indeed guilty. Look at Josue, who commanded the sun to stand still and the sun became immobile, a thing which never happened before and which perhaps will never happen again. Look at the Apostles: simply because they loved God, the devils fled before them, the lame walked, the blind saw, the dead arose to life. Look at St. Benedict, who commanded the rocks to stop in their course and they remained hanging in midair. Look at him who multiplied bread, who made water come out of rocks, and who disposed of the stones and the forest as easily as if they were wisps of straw. Look at a St. Francis of Paula who commands the fish to come to hear the word of God and they respond to his call with such loyalty that they applaud his words. Look at a St. John who commands the birds to keep silent and they obey him. Look at many others who walk the seas without any human aid. Very well! Now take a look at all those impious people and all those famous ones of the world with all their wit and all their knowledge for achieving everything. Alas! Of what are they really capable? Nothing at all.

And why not? Unless it is because they are not attached to the service of God. But how powerful and how happy at the same time is the person who knows his religion and who practices what it commands.

Alas, my dear brethren, the man who lives according to the direction of his passions and abandons the service of God is both unhappy and capable of so little! Put an army of one hundred thousand men around a dead man and let them employ all their power to bring him back to life. No, no, my dear children, he will not come to life again. But let someone who is despised by the world, but who enjoys the friendship of God, command this dead man to take up life again; immediately you will see him arise and walk. We have other proofs of this, too. If it were necessary to be wealthy or to be very learned to serve God, a great many people would be unable to do it. But, no, my dear children, extensive learning or great wealth are not at all necessary for the service of God. On the contrary, they are often a very big obstacle to it. Yes, my dear brethren, let us be rich or poor, in whatever state we may be, learned or otherwise, we can please God and save our souls . . . .

Listen to me for one moment and you will see that only the service of God will console us and make us happy in the midst of all the miseries of life. To accomplish it, you do not need to leave either your belongings, or your parents, or even your friends, unless they are leading you to sin. You have no need to go and spend the rest of your lives in the desert to weep there for your sins. If that were necessary for us, indeed, we should be very happy to have such a remedy for our ills. But no, a father and a mother of a family can serve God by living with their children and bringing them up in a Christian way. A servant can very easily serve God and his master, with nothing to stop him. No, my dear brethren, the way of life which means serving God changes nothing in all that we have to do. On the contrary, we simply do better all the things we must do.

THOUGHTS ON THE WAY TO CHURCH

When our duty calls us to a holy place, might not anyone say that we resemble criminals being led before their judges to be condemned to the worst possible tortures, rather than Christians whom love alone should lead to God? How very blind we are, my dear brethren, to have so little heart for the things of Heaven, while at the same time we are so taken up with the things of the world! Indeed, when it is a question of temporal matters or even of pleasures, everyone will be preoccupied with them. They will think about them in advance. They will meditate upon them.

But, unfortunately, when the question is one of the service of our God and the salvation of our poor souls the whole thing becomes a matter of routine and inconceivable indifference.

Suppose someone wants to speak to a very important or influential person and to ask him some favour. He will dwell upon the matter for a long time in advance. He will consult others whom he thinks better educated or more experienced than himself in order to find out in what way he should approach this person. He will appear before him with that modest and respectful bearing which, generally speaking, the presence of such a personage inspires. But when he comes into the house of God, ah, there is no more of that sort of thing. No one thinks then of what he is about to do or of what he is about to ask of God. Tell me, my dear brethren, who is there who, as he is going along to the church, is saying to himself: Where am I going?

Is it to the house of a man or to the palace of a king? Oh, no, it is into the house of my God, into the dwelling place of Him Who loves me more than Himself, since He died for me, Whose compassionate eyes are aware of my actions, Whose ears are attentive to my prayers, always ready to hear my prayers and to forgive. Filled with these blessed thoughts, why would we not exclaim with the holy King David: 'O my soul, rejoice that you are about to enter the house of the Lord, to give Him your homage, to show Him your needs, to listen to His divine words, to ask Him for His graces.

Oh what things I have to say to Him, what graces I have to ask of Him, what gratitude I have to pay Him! I will speak to Him of all my worries, and I know that He will console me. I will admit my faults to Him, and He will forgive me. I am going to talk to Him of my family, and He will bless it with all sorts of mercies. Yes, my God, I shall adore You in Your holy temple, and I shall return from there filled with all sorts of benedictions.

Tell me, my dear brethren, is that the sort of thought which occupies you when your religious duties call you to church?

Are those indeed the thoughts you have, after having wasted the entire morning in discussing your sales and your purchases, or at the least, some other entirely useless matters? You come along in a hurry to hear a Mass which often is half-finished.

Alas! If I dare to put into words how many go to visit the god of drunkenness before their Creator; and, coming to church full of wine, they will talk and concern themselves with temporal matters right up to the very door! Oh! Dear God! Are these Christians, who ought to be living like angels upon earth? What of you, my good woman, are your thoughts any better now that you have occupied your mind and part of your time in thinking how you were going to dress, so that you might please the people you know; and then you come to a place where you should come only to lament for your sins? Indeed, too often the priest is ascending the altar while you are still turning around and around, looking at yourself in front of a mirror. Ah, dear God! Are these really Christians who have taken You for their Model, You, Whose whole life was spent amidst scorn and tears? Listen, my dear young lady, to what St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, has to teach you. As he was in the doorway of the church one day and saw a young person approaching dressed with the greatest of care, he spoke to her. Where are you going, young woman? he asked. She told him that she was going to church. You are going to the church, the holy Bishop said to her, 'but one might rather think that you are going to the dance or to a play or a spectacle.

Go away, sinful woman, and weep for your sins in secret, and do not come to the church to insult with your frivolous adornments a crucified God.

Dear Lord! How our century has provided us with. . . . [sentence incomplete'Trans.] How many people when they are coming to the church think of nothing else except themselves and their clothes and styles.

They enter the temple of the Lord saying from the depths of their hearts: 'Have a good look at me. When we see such wrong dispositions, how can we help but shed tears?

And you, fathers and mothers, what are your dispositions when you come to church, to the Mass? Alas! We must admit it with sorrow that most frequently the fathers and mothers that we see are coming into the church when the priest is already on the altar, or even in the pulpit! Ah, you will tell me, we came as soon as we could. We have other things to do.

Undoubtedly you have other things to do. But I know very well, too, that if you did not leave until Sunday the one hundred and one things in your homes which you should have done on Saturday, and if you had got up a little earlier in the morning, you would have done them all before holy Mass, and you would have arrived at the church before the priest had ascended the altar. It can be the same thing, too, with your children and your servants: if you had not been giving them orders until the very last stroke of the Mass bell, they would have arrived at the church at the beginning. I do not know whether God will receive all these excuses easily; I hardly think so.

But why, my dear brethren, should I speak of particular cases? Surely it is the majority of you who behave in this way.

Yes, when you are called to church so that the graces of God may be administered to you, anyone may see this lack of enthusiasm in you, this indifference, this boredom which consumes you, this practically general inattention. Tell me, where will you see the majority of the general congregation when the services are beginning? Are the Vespers not half said by the time you arrive? We have work to do, you tell me.

Well, my friends, if you were to tell me that you have neither faith, nor love of God, nor the desire to save your poor souls, I would believe you much better. Alas! What can anyone think of all that? . . . . There is a great deal to lament in what is to be seen of the dispositions of the majority of Christians! A great many seem to come to church only in spite of themselves or, if I dare to put it that way, as if someone were dragging them there. From the house to the church, temporal matters only are discussed. A group of young girls together will talk about nothing except style, beauty, and all the rest of it; the young men only of games and amusements or of other matters which are more evil. The fathers or the masters of households will chat about their property or business, about buying and selling. The mothers are preoccupied only with their households and their children. No one will go so far as to deny that. Alas! Not a single thought will be given to the happiness they are about to have, not a single reflection on the needs of their poor souls or those of their children or their servants! They enter the holy temple without respect, without attention, and a great many of them as late as is possible. How many others do not even go to the trouble of coming in at all, but stay outside, in order to find better ways of distracting themselves? The word of God does not trouble their consciences: they look around at those who are coming and going. . . . Dear God! Are these really the Christians for whom You suffered so much in order to make them happy? And this is all they think of it? . . . .

With dispositions like that, how many sins must be committed during the services? How many people must commit more sins on Sunday than during all the rest of the week! . . . .

Listen to what St. Martin has to tell US. . . . While he was singing the Mass with St. Brice, his disciple, he noticed thelatter smiling. After it was all over, he asked him what had made him smile. St. Brice replied: 'Father, I saw something extraordinary while we were singing the holy Mass. Behind the altar I saw a devil and he was writing on a huge sheet of parchment the sins which were being committed in the church, and his sheet was rather full before the Mass was finished. So the devil took the sheet of parchment between his teeth and tugged it so hard that he tore it into shreds. That was what made me smile. What sins, and even mortal sins, we commit during the services by our lack of devotion and recollection! Alas! What has become of those happy times when Christians passed not only the day but even the greater part of the nights in the church, mourning for their sins and singing the praises of God? See, even in the Old Testament, see holy Anna the prophetess, who withdrew into a tribune in order to leave the service of God no more. Look at the holy old man Simeon. See again Zachary and so many others who passed the greater portion of their lives in the service of the Lord. And note, too, how marvellous and how precious were the graces which God bestowed upon them. To reward Anna, God willed that she should be the very; first to recognise our Lord.

The holy old man Simeon was also the first, after St. Joseph, to have the happiness, the very great happiness, of holding the Saviour of the world in his arms. The holy Zachary was chosen to be the father of a child destined to be the ambassador of the Eternal Father in announcing the coming of His Son into the world. What wonderful graces does God not grant to those who make it their duty to come to visit Him in His holy temple as much as they possibly can . . . .

YOU ARE SURPRISED, BUT NOT I!

Why is it, then, you are going to ask me, that we assist at so many Masses and yet we are always the same? Alas, my dear brethren, it is because we are there in body but not in spirit and that rather our coming there

completes our condemnation because of the bad dispositions with which we assist. Alas! For all those badly heard Masses which, far from insuring our salvation, harden us the more. When our Lord appeared to St. Mechtilde, He said to her: 'Know this, my child, that the saints will assist at the death of all those who have heard Mass devoutly, to help them to die well, to defend them against the temptations of the Devil, and to offer their souls to My Father. What wonderful happiness for us, my dear brethren, to be helped at this formidable moment by as many saints as we have heard Masses! . . . .

No, my dear children, we need never fear that the Mass hinders us in the fulfilment of our temporal affairs; it is altogether the other way around. We may be sure that all will go better and that even our business will succeed better than if we have the misfortune not to assist at Mass. Here is a splendid example of that. It concerns two artisans who belonged to the same trade and who lived in the same little town. One of them, who had a very large family and never missed hearing Mass every day, lived very comfortably by his trade, but the other, on the contrary, who had no family, worked all day and part of the night, and very often on the holy day of Sunday, and still had the greatest difficulty in the world in making ends meet. The latter, when he saw how well things were going for the other man, asked him one day when he met him how he managed to make enough to maintain so comfortably a family as large as his. As for himself, he said, although there were only his wife and himself and he never stopped working, he was often short of everything. The other replied that if he so wished, he would show him the following day where he made his profit. Delighted with this good news, the unsuccessful artisan could hardly wait until the following day so that he might learn how to make his fortune. True to his word, his friend called for him. So there he was, setting off in great heart and, full of confidence, following his friend who brought him to church, where they heard Mass.

When they came out the friend said, quite at his ease, 'You can go back to your work now. The same thing took place the following day, but on the third day, when the friend came to bring the unsuccessful artisan along to Mass, the latter objected.

'What is all this about? he asked. If I want to go to Mass, I know the way without your taking the trouble to come and get me. That is not what I wanted to know, but the place where you find all the money that enables you to live so comfortably. I wanted to see whether, if I did the same as you, I could get something out of it, too.

'My good friend, said the other to him, 'I do not know any other place than the church, and no other method than that of hearing Mass every day of the week. I assure you that I have never used any other means to acquire the money which surprises you. But have you yourself not seen where Jesus Christ tells us in the Gospel to seek first the kingdom of God and that all the rest will be added unto us?

Are you surprised at this story, my dear brethren? I am not. It is only what we see every day of our lives in those homes where there is some religion. Those who come often to holy Mass manage their affairs much better than those whose weak faith makes them think that they have no time for Mass. Alas, if only we put all our trust in God and relied on our own efforts for nothing, how much happier we should be than we are!

Yes, you will tell me, but if we have nothing, no one is going to give us anything.

What do you want God to give you when-as is shown by the fact that you do not give even the time to saying your morning and night prayers and that you are quite content to come to Mass once a week-you depend solely on your own efforts and not at all on Him? You have no knowledge of the resources of the providence of God for anyone who confides and trusts in Him. Do you want a more striking proof of this? It is before your eyes. Look at your pastor and examine his case in the light of God's providence.

Oh, you say, that is because people give to you.

But who gives to me, unless it is the providence of God? That is the source of my treasures and nothing else. Alas, that man should be blind enough to worry and fret so much as to damn himself and yet be quite unhappy in this world. If you have the great happiness to think a lot about your salvation and to assist at holy Mass as much as you can, you will soon see the proof of what I am telling you.

WHEN YOU GO BACK HOME

On her return to her kingdom, the queen of Sheba could never weary of relating all that she had seen in the temple of Solomon; she talked of it unceasingly, with fresh pleasure. The same thing should happen to the Christian who has assisted properly at holy Mass. When he comes back to his house, he ought to have a talk with his children and his servants and ask them what they have retained of it and what touched them most. Alas! Dear God, what am I going to say? . . . . How many fathers and mothers, masters and mistresses are there who, if someone wanted to talk to them about what they had heard at Mass, would laugh at all that and say that they were tired of it, that they knew enough about it. . . . Although generally speaking it seems that people still listen to the holy word of God, the moment they come out of church, they fall into all sorts of careless and frivolous ways. They get up with a sudden rush. They hurry. They jostle at the door. Often the priest has not even come down from the altar when they are already outside the door, and there they give themselves up to discussions upon all sorts of secular subjects.

Do you know what the result of this kind of thing is, my dear brethren? This is it. People derive no profit and gain no benefit from what they have heard and seen in the house of God. What graces have been lost! What means of salvation trodden underfoot! What a misfortune that is, to turn to our loss what should have helped so much to save us! You can see for yourselves how many of these services are a burden to the majority of Christians! For those few moments, they stay in the church as if it were some kind of prison, and as soon as they are out, you will hear them shouting at the door, like prisoners who have been given liberty. Are we not quite frequently obliged to close the door of the church in order not to be deafened by their continual noise?

Dear God, are these really Christians, who ought to leave Your holy temple with minds filled only with all kinds of good thoughts and desires? Should not they be seeking to engrave these in their memory, that they may never lose them and that they may put them into practice as soon as the opportunity presents itself? Alas! The number of those who assist at the services with attention and who try to profit from them is a little like the number of the elect: ah, how small it is!

CLEAR YOUR MINDS

If you desire the worship that you give to God to be pleasing to Him and valuable for the salvation of your soul, put it properly into practice. Begin by preparing for holy Mass as soon as you are awake, uniting yourself to all the Masses which are being said at that moment. When the bell rings to call you to the house of God, consider the fact that it is Jesus Christ Himself calling you. Start out immediately, so that you will have a moment to meditate upon the tremendous act at which you are about to assist. Do not say, like those people who have no religion, that you have plenty of time, that you will be there soon enough. But say, rather, with the Holy Prophet: 'I rejoice when I am told that we are going into the house of the Lord.

When you come out from your home, think about what you are going to do and what you are going to ask of God. Begin by clearing your mind of earthly matters so that you will be thinking of God only. Avoid all sorts of unnecessary conversations which serve no other purpose than to make you hear Mass badly. When you enter the church, recall to yourself what the holy patriarch Jacob said: How awesome is this place! How holy it is! It is truly the house of God and the gateway to heaven! When you get to your place, humble yourself profoundly as you think of your own unworthiness and the greatness of your God, Who, nevertheless, in spite of your sins, wishes to suffer you in His holy presence. Make an act of faith with all your heart. Ask God to give you the grace to lose none of the many favours which He grants to those who come here with good dispositions. Open your heart so that the word of God may enter it, take root in it, and bear fruit there for eternal life. Before leaving the church, do not fail to thank God for the graces He has just given you and go straight home, fully occupied with the thoughts of what you have seen and heard.

Yes, my dear children, if we conducted ourselves in this manner, we should never come away from the services of the Church without being filled with a fresh desire for heaven and a new disgust for ourselves and the things of this earth. Our hearts and our minds would be given over altogether to God and not at all to the world. Then the house of God would truly be for us the gateway to Heaven. That is what I desire for you.

WE ARE KEEPING A FEAST

In the early days of the church, the faithful of one province, or district, used to come together publicly on the feast day of a saint in order to have the happiness of participating in all the graces which God bestows on such days. The office of the vigil was started. The evening and night were spent in prayer at the tomb of the saint. The faithful heard the word of God. They sang hymns and canticles in honour of the saint. After passing the night so devoutly, they heard Mass, at which all those assisting had the happiness of going to Holy Communion. Then they all withdrew, praising God for the triumphs He had accorded the saint and the graces He had bestowed in response to the latter's intercession. After that, my dear brethren, who could doubt but that God pours out His graces with abundance upon such a reunion of the faithful and that the saints themselves are happy to be the patrons of such people. That was the way in which the feast days of patron saints were celebrated in olden times. What do you think of that? Is it thus that we celebrate such feasts today? Alas! If the first Christians were to come back upon this earth, would they not tell us that our feasts are no different from those that the pagans kept? Is it not the general rule that God is most seriously offended on these holy days? Does it not seem, rather, that we combine our money and our energies together to multiply sin almost to infinity?

What are we concerned with on the vigil of such feasts, and even for several days beforehand? Is it not with spending foolish and unnecessary money? And all this time poor people are dying of hunger and our sins are calling down upon us the anger of God to the point where eternity would not be sufficient to satisfy for them. You should pass the night in repentance and remorse, in considering how very little you have followed the example of your patron saint. And yet you consecrate that time to preparing everything that will flatter your gluttony! Might it not be said that this day is one for pure self-indulgence and debauchery? Do parents and friends come, as in former times, to enjoy the happiness of participating in the graces which God bestows at the intercession of a patron saint? They come, but only to pass this feast day almost wholly at the table. In former times, the religious services were much longer than they are today, and still they seemed always too short. Nowadays you will see even fathers of families who, during the performance of the offices, are at table filling themselves with food and wine. The first Christians invited each other in order to multiply their good works and their prayers. Today it seems rather as if people invite each other so that they can multiply the sins and the orgies and the excesses in which they indulge in eating and drinking. Does anyone think God will not demand an account of even a penny wrongly spent? Does it not seem that we celebrate the feast only to insult our holy Patron and to increase our ingratitude?

Let us look a little closer, my dear brethren, and we shall realise that we are far from imitating Him whom God has given us for a model. He passed His life in penance and in sorrow. He died in torments. What is more, I am sure that there are parishes where more sins are committed on those days than during all the rest of the year. The Lord told the Jews that their feasts were an abomination and that He would take the filth of their feasts and throw it in their faces. He wished to make us understand by this how greatly He is offended on those days which should be passed in weeping for our sins and in prayer. We read in the Gospel that Jesus Christ came on earth to enlighten souls with the fire of divine love. But we can believe that the Devil also roams around on earth to light an impure fire in the hearts of Christians and that w hat he promotes with the greatest frenzy are balls and dances. I have debated for a long time whether I should speak to you about a matter so difficult to get you to understand and so little thought upon by the Christians of our days, who are blinded by their passions. If your faith were not so weak that it might be extinguished in your hearts in the blink of an eye, you would understand the enormity of the abyss towards which you precipitate yourselves in giving yourselves over with such abandon to these wretched amusements. But you will tell me. For you to talk to us about dances and about the evil that takes place at them is just a waste of time. We will indulge neither more nor less in them. I firmly believe that, since Tertullian assures us that very many refused to become Christians rather than deprive themselves of such pleasures.

THE ARMED CROSSES

The sign of the cross is the most terrible weapon against the Devil. Thus the Church wishes not only that we should have it continually in front of our minds to recall to us just what our souls are worth and what they cost Jesus Christ, but also that we should make it at every juncture ourselves: when we go to bed, when we awaken during the night, when we get up, when we begin any action, and, above all, when we are tempted. We can say that a Christian who makes the Sign of the Cross with genuine religious sentiments, that is to say, when fully aware of the action which he is performing, makes all Hell tremble. But when we make the Sign of the Cross, we must make it not by habit but with respect, with attention and thinking of what we are doing. Ah, dear Lord, with what devout awe we should be filled when we make the Sign of the Cross upon ourselves and recall that we are pronouncing all that we hold holy and most sacred in our religion!

THE BELOVED CROSSES

The saints, my dear brethren, all loved the Cross and found in it their strength and their consolation. But, you will say to me, is it necessary, then, always to have something to suffer? . . . . Now sickness or poverty, or again scandal or calumny, or possibly loss of money or an infirmity?

Have you been calumniated, my friends? Have you been loaded with insults? Have you been wronged? So much the better! That is a good sign; do not worry; you are on the road that leads to Heaven. Do you know when you ought to be really upset? I do not know if you understand it, but it should be precisely for the opposite reason-when you have nothing to endure, when everyone esteems and respects you. Then you should feel envious of those who have the happiness of passing their lives in suffering, or contempt, or poverty. Are you forgetting, then, that at your Baptism you accepted the Cross, which you must never abandon until death, and that it is the key that you will use to open the door of Heaven? Are you forgetting the words of our Saviour: 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. Not for a day, not for a week, not for a year, but all our lives. The saints had a great fear of passing any time without suffering, for they looked upon it as time lost. According to St. Teresa, man is only in this world to suffer, and when he ceases to suffer, he should cease to live. St. John of the Cross asks God, with tears, to give him the grace to suffer more as a reward for all his labours. What should we conclude, my dear children, from all that? Just this: Let us make a resolution to have a great respect for all the crosses, which are blessed, and which represent to us in a small way all that our God Suffered for us. Let us recall that from the Cross flow all the graces that are bestowed upon us and that as a consequence, a cross which is blessed is a source of blessings, that we should often make the Sign of the Cross on ourselves and always with great respect, and, finally, that our houses should never remain without this symbol of salvation.

Fill your children, my dear brethren, with the greatest respect for the Cross, and always have a blessed cross on yourselves; it will protect you against the Devil, from the vengeance of Heaven, and from all danger. This is what I desire for you.

HARVEST CROSSES

Blessed crosses are put in the fields or in open spaces, in places where a crop will be harvested. The purpose of the blessing is to implore God not to turn His merciful eyes away from the fields where they are placed but to spread His blessings there. That, however, is not all there is to planting crosses. It must be done with reverence, with faith, and, above all, it must not be done in a state of sin. You may be quite sure that if you plant them with the right sentiments, God will bless your lands and preserve them from temporal harm. If your crosses do not produce the effect which you should expect from them, it is not difficult to imagine that it is because you went to plant them without faith and without religion. It is because, when you were planting them, you did not perhaps say even an Our Father or a Hail Mary on your knees. Or that, if you did say your prayers, it was possibly with one knee only on the ground. If that is the case, how do you expect God to bless your harvest? But when you find them again . . . . that is indeed another abomination! . . . . Oh, my God! In what a dreadful age do we live! . . . .

When the Church instituted this holy ceremony, everyone longed for the happiness of placing these crosses in his field and behaved with the utmost respect. When they were found, either during the reaping or the vintage, people bowed down to the earth to adore Jesus Christ, Who died on the Cross for us, and in that way they expressed their recognition of the fact that He had desired to bless and preserve their harvest. All, with tears in their eyes, kissed the sacred sign of our Redemption.

Alas, my God, that it is no longer in that way that Christians recognise You! Instead of expressing your gratitude to God for having graciously blessed and preserved the fruits of the earth, do you not, rather, offer Him an insult by laughing when you are kissing the cross? Is it not performing an act of derision, or rather of idolatry, to offer a handful of corn as if you were incensing the person who is holding the cross?

Carry on, unhappy sinners, God will punish you, either in this world or in the next! Fathers of families, have I not been telling you for the past two years that when the time comes for the reaping you should gather up all the crosses which are in your fields in order to save them from profanation? Have I not suggested to you to put them together in your barns and, when you have threshed your corn, to burn them, lest they be profaned? If you have not done that, you are very much to blame, and you must not omit to mention it in Confession. Alas! There is no counting all the horrible things which are done at the time of the harvest or of the vintage, at those very times when God, in His abundance and His love, covers the earth with the gifts of His providence! Ungrateful man seems at that time to redouble his insults and to multiply his crimes. How have you the impertinence to grumble if your harvests are short because the hail or the frost have harmed some of them? Ah, much rather should you be very surprised that, in spite of all your many sins, God still wants to give you the necessities of life and even more than is necessary too! Oh! "My God! How mean and blind man is! . . . .  ("It is Necessary to be Converted.")

In other words, Saint John Mary Vianney was the antithesis of the conciliar "popes" and their "bishops" and many of their priests/presbyters and religious, including some within various Motu communities who permit their parishioners to surrender themselves to the world and to indulge in indecent, immodest attire while believing themselves to be "good" Catholics. Saint John Mary Vianney sought to cure his people of worldliness. "Pope Francis" and most of his "bishops" and "priests" celebrate worldliness and encourage it in those entrusted to their pastoral care. 

Saint John Mary Vianney was supremely devoted to the Mother of God, working to promote the Association of the Living Rosary with its foundress, Pauline Jaricot, the patron saint of us "failures" in the world, who herself was cured of heart disease by Saint Philomena at her altar in Mugnano Italy, and then prompted Pope Gregory XVI to declare her to be a canonized saint. Saint John Mary Vianney was so tenderly devoted to Saint Philomena, being unstinting in his efforts to spread devotion to her. How fitting that he died a week before Saint Philomena's feast day, on August 4, in the year of 1859. Saint John Marie Vianney, Cure of Ars, relied upon Saint Philomena to cure him of an illness in 1843. She performed the miracle for him, who was a true miracle worker in his own right, able to read the character of some of the thousands of souls who came to him from around the world to have their sins Absolved by his own priestly ministrations in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.

The Divine Office contains the following summary of the life of the zealous Saint Jean-Marie Batiste Vianney, the patron saint of diocesan priests:

John Mary Vianney, born of pious peasants in the village of Dardilly in the diocese of Lyons, gave many signs of holiness from his infancy. When, at the age of eight, he was taking care of the sheep, he would sometimes by word and example instruct little boys, kneeling before a statue of the Mother of God, in the use of the Rosary ; and at other times, entrusting the flock to his sister or to another child, he was wont to seek out a more retired spot, that he might more readily devote himself to prayer before an image of the Virgin. Having a very great love for the poor, he would lead them in crowds to his father's house, and he took a delight in aiding them in every way. That he might be initiated into letters, he was sent to the parish priest of the village of Ecully; but as he was very slow to understand, he encountered almost unsurmountable difficulties in his studies. Fasting and praying, he entreated the divine assistance, and, with a view to begging for a facility in learning, he approached the tomb of St. Francis Regis, earnestly beseeching him for that gift. Having most laboriously passed through the course of theology, he was found to be sufficiently suitable to receive holy orders.

In the village of Ecully, under the guidance of the parish priest, whose assistant he had been appointed, he strove with all his strength to attain to the higher degrees of pastoral perfection. After three years had gone by, he was sent, like an Angel from heaven, to the small village of Ars, which not so long after was included in the diocese of Belley, and in a most brilliant manner he entirely renewed the condition of his neglected and forsaken parish. Continually engaged for many hours daily in hearing confessions and in giving spiritual direction, he introduced the frequent reception of the Eucharist, and organized pious sodalities : and in a remarkable manner he inspired into souls a tender devotion to the Immaculate Virgin. And, deeming that it is the duty of the pastor to expiate the sins of the flock accredited to him, he spared neither prayers, nor vigils, nor mortifications and continual fastings. Since Satan could not endure such great virtues in this man of God, he assailed him, first with mere annoyances, and afterwards in open combat; but John Mary patiently endured the most malevolent injuries.

He was very often asked by the neighbouring priests to labour for the salvation of souls after the manner of the Missionaries, either by preaching sermons, or by hearing confessions, and he was always at hand in every case. Burning with zeal for the glory of God, he brought it about, that the pious exercises of Missions were established in more than an hundred parishes arranged in a continuous and permanent series. Meanwhile, as God was rendering his servant famous by miracles and by graces, there began that celebrated pilgrimage, in which, throughout a period of twenty years, nearly one hundred thousand persons of every class flocked to Ars, not only from France and from Europe, but even from the distant regions of America. Worn out by labours rather than by old age, having foretold the day of his death, he went to rest in the embrace of the Lord, on the 4th day of August, in the year 1859, and of his age the seventy-third. After he became illustrious for many miracles, Pius X added him to the number of the Blessed , and Pius XI, in the holy year numbered him with the Saints in heaven and extended his feast to the universal Church, and on the fiftieth anniversary of his own priesthood, appointed him the heavenly patron of all parish priests. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint John Mary Vianney. More vignettes about the early life of Saint John Mary Vianney can be found in the appendix below)

Commending our true priests in the catacombs to the Most Sacred Heart of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through Our Lady's Immaculate Heart, especially during this month of August, we must pray to Saint John Mary Batiste Vianney so that our shepherds will remain zealous for souls and absolutely faithful to the Deposit of Faith, speaking up forcefully against the errors and sacrileges and blasphemies of the day. And we continue to pray fervently to Our Lady for those priests who have embraced Tradition in these catacombs, both those who have been involved in the battle from the first hour and those who have joined it in the eleventh hour.

May our prayers, especially by means of praying as many Rosaries each day as our states in life permit, hasten the day when every true priest of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church will profess the true Catholic Faith, not the apostate brand taught by conciliarism, and offer exclusively the Mass that begins with his addressing God, not us, and closes on most days of the year with the Gospel of the Incarnation, reminding us that the Mass itself is incarnational and that we are to make Our Lord incarnate in the world by our lived lives of fidelity to Him as our King and to His Blessed Mother as our Immaculate Queen.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Lawrence the Deacon, pray for us.

Saint Romanus, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Appendix A

Vignettes from the Early Life of Saint John Mary Vianney

Vignettes from the early life of Saint John Mary Vianney as found in Father Bartholomew O'Brien, The Cure of Ars; Patron of Parish Priests, published in 1956 by J. S. Paluch Company, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, and republished by TAN Books and Publisher in 1987 and 2007.)

Chapter One

The first saint to come to the Vianney home was St. Joseph Benedict Labre. In July, 1770, having just forsaken the life of a Trappist to embrace the spirit of a Trappist as a wandering mendicant, he had come in holy poverty to beg a night's lodging with the Vianneys. Under his arm he had a Breviary, a Gospel book, and the Imitation of Christ. He also had Our Lady's rosary. He was welcomed with the warmest charity and was given a bowl of steaming soup, together with a farmer's supper and the friendship of the whole family. During the evening, one of the Vianney boys, Matthew watched this meek and humble guest tell and retell his rosary until after family prayers, when he was shown his thick bed of straw over the bakery. St. Joseph Benedict wrote but little. But the Vianney charity so tenderly moved his heart that he later wrote the family a treasured thank-you note. Little did the good saint realize that he had been selected as a king of precursor for the coming of the saint of this story.

The second saint to come to the Vianney home was the saint of this story, John Marie. He was the son of young Matthew Vianney, who had grown up and married Marie Beluse. John Marie was born about midnight on May 8, 1786, in the family home at Dardilly, France, and was baptized almost immediately. Matthew and Marie Vianney had a family of six children, each of whom was dedicated to Our Blessed Mother while their mother was still carrying them beneath her heart: Catherine, who died shortly after her marriage; Jeanne Marie, who died at the age of five; Francis, who inherited the family home; John Marie, who became our beloved Cure of Ars; Marguerite, who died in 1877 at the age of ninety-one; and Cadet, who joined the army and never returned.

Dardilly is so small a village that it is hardly found on the map. Perhaps in the days of the Vianney family, it had a thousand souls. Some five miles to the southeast was the great city of Lyons. Around the village were farmlands where Matthew Vianney worked, where his sheep and cows grazed and where a living was made for the family. Dardilly was one of those quiet little Catholic villages of France where the Angelus bell rand, and where people were poor, and where nothing grew as abundantly as the peace in their simple hearts.

While peace blessed the village of Dardilly, the French Revolution rocked the city of Paris. 1789 marked the fall of the Bastille, the symbol of tyranny; 1791 saw the formulation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy; 1793 inaugurated the infamous Reign of Terror. But the Revolution did not stop at Paris. Its rumblings reverberated in almost every cranny and nook of France, even on to Lyons where the guillotine kept sending souls to eternity without interruption. A price was on the head of every priest. Church bells were silenced, and wayside shrines were toppled over in the grass.

Nevertheless, in Dardilly, seven year old John Marie day by day drove the donkey, the cows, and the sheep down into the valley to graze, taking with him his rosary and his small wooden statue of Our Lady. Along the stream there was an old willow tree with a hollow trunk. It was a natural altar. There John Marie place his Blessed Mother and adorned her with most, flowers and leaves, and then knelt for his prayers and his Rosaries. Maybe the churches were closed, but surely the soldiers would never find his shrine. If other children came along, he would tie two sticks together into a cross and have a procession – a few hymns would be sung, always a Rosary, and then a sermon (a short one, because his “congregation” would sometimes get restless). But of all this, the leaders of the Revolution never knew.

To strike at the very sources of such religious fervor, the radicals of the Revolution had decreed strong measures against the priests. For those who dared to harbor a priest, deportation was the punishment. Matthew Vianney harbored enough priests to have a deportation to the moon. At times, Holy Mass was celebrated in his home. At other times, young John Marie and the family would set out at night in great silence for some barn in the neighborhood where Holy Mass would be offered by a hunted priest. There in the darkness and the bareness of a barn would be found a candle, a plain table, and the necessities for the Holy Sacrifice. The mystery of everything – the whispers, the sobs, the breathing, and the sighs – so moved the boy that his soul was no doubt made most receptive to the vocational whisperings of the Holy Spirit. During those days, he experienced the fear, the mystery and the faith of the catacombs; in his memory, the days of the Terror were ever strong.

Little did the French Revolutionaries dream that they would forge in the fire of their hate, on the anvil of their persecution, a saint who would bring back to France the very God they had vowed to destroy. (Father Bartholomew O'Brien, The Cure of Ars; Patron of Parish Priests, published in 1956 by J. S. Paluch Company, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, and republished by TAN Books and Publisher in 1987 and 2007, pp. 1-4.)

Chapter Two

Boyhood

John Marie was not a dull child. Because the school in Dardilly had been closed, he had no chance to get an education. His elder sister, Catherine, tried to fill this void by teaching him to read, to write, and to spell the words of a prayer book. Fortunately, early in 1795, a school was opened and John Marie was permitted to attend – at least until the planting days of springtime. He must have done well in history, geography, and the three R's because citizen Dumas, the master of the school, used to say to the other student, “Oh! If you were like little Vianney!”

In 1797 Father Groboz, who had been concealing his identity during the Revolution by acting as a cook, stopped at the house of the Vianneys and met John Marie.

“How old are you, John?” the priest inquired.

“Eleven, Father.”

“And how long has it been since you last went to confession?”

“Father, I have never gone to confession.”

“Then, John my boy,” answered the priest without hesitation, “right here and now you will make your confession.”

There in his own home, beneath the old family clock, John Marie knelt and revealed his soul in his first confession. He had little of sin to tell the priest because in years to come he was heard to say, “I knew nothing of evil until I learned to know it in the confessional.” 

John Marie's first Holy Communion was postponed until he was thirteen years old – until Mary of 1789. For his preparation he went to Ecully, a village on the road to Lyons about three miles from Dardilly, and lived at the home of his Aunt Marguerite Humbert. In Ecully, two Sisters of St. Charles were holding classes secretly to instruct children for their first Holy Communion. These classes John Marie attended and diligently prepared to receive for the first time his Eucharistic Master.

In the private home of Madame de Pingon, John Marie, together with fifteen other children, was to receive his first Holy Communion. The memorable day arrived, classes were over, and well-planned precautions had been made to hide the event from the crafty eyes of the Revolutionaries. Very early in the morning, the children gathered together in their old clothes, except for a veil or an armlet which the mothers had hidden beneath their capes. Outside the house, the men had placed wagons of hay (which they were actually unloading) in order to block off the windows and conceal the lighted candles the little comunicants were to carry. One by one, the children were directed into a large room where the shutters were drawn and where a hunted priest was to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There, in the presence of a few and with the simplicity of the catacombs, John Marie received his first Holy Communion. “I was present,” his sister Marguerite related many years later, “and my brother felt such happiness that he was unwilling to leave the room.” John Marie was given a plain rosary in memory of the occasion, and this he still treasured fifty years later. But the day came to an end, and with the day, there also came to an end his time of boyhood and of study. He went back home with his mother and father. It was springtime, and there was work to be done.

Over the years, there was much work to be done: haying, harvesting, and gathering of the grapes and the apples and the other fruits. The stables had to be cleaned; the fields had to be ploughed; the grapes had to be pressed; and the trees had to be pruned for a better harvest. “Oh, what a beautiful thing it is,” he used to say in later years, “to offer oneself each morning as a victim to God! Oh what a beautiful thing it is to do all things in union with the good God" . . . . 

John Marie was nineteen years old when he bade farewell to the fields and his home at Dardilly. His mother went with him to Ecully, where the austere Father Balley greeted him and reassured him with these fatherly words: “Do not worry, my friend. If need be, I will sacrifice myself for your sake.” (Father Bartholomew O'Brien, The Cure of Ars; Patron of Parish Priests, published in 1956 by J. S. Paluch Company, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, and republished by TAN Books and Publisher in 1987 and 2007, pp. 5-7; p. 9) 

In the history of John Marie, the role that God chose for Father Balley in leading him to the priesthood and in forming him into a saint is most remarkable. A parishioner described Father Balley in this way: “He was a tall man, made apparently of nothing of skin and bones. One might have thought that he never ate a square meal.” His pupil set out to follow in the penitential footsteps of this holy priest, and if possible, to out-step him in the path to perfection. Father Balley felt so strongly that John Marie was called to the holy priesthood that he never once grew weary in his efforts to promote his vocation.

In 1812, Father Balley sent his pupil to study philosophy at the minor seminary of Verrieres. There John found himself older than the other students, even older than his professor. A few of his fellow students were hardly more advanced than he, so a group of seven of them was taken aside and taught philosophy in French. While in the minor seminary he dedicated himself to Our Lady as her slave according to the mind of St. Louis De Montfort. In spite of the fact that he was often made the butt of his fellow seminarians when he was in the philosophy class, he nevertheless was well-liked and considered already very close to god. In later life, he summed up his stay at Verrieres by the simple charitable remark, “I had somewhat to suffer.”

After a very pleasant summer vacation with Father Balley, John Marie entered the major seminary of St. Irenee at Lyons in October, 1813. He was looked upon as a saint – but his lack of knowledge in Latin was his stumbling block. One of his fellow students said years later: “The result of his studies was nil. The cause being his inadequate knowledge of Latin. More than once I explained things to him, but he did not seem able to grasp them. His application, nevertheless, was unfailing.” The term examinations came up. John Marie failed. The authorities considered the situation, and John Marie was asked to leave. Around Easter of 1814 he left St. Irenee and returned to his good friend, Father Balley, in order to complete his theological studies in French. Facing facts as they were, he thought perhaps God wished him to enter the Brotherhood. But Father Balley quickly put an end to such thought, and the two of them had recourse to prayer – and then to the textbooks.

Hardly three months after his dismissal from the major seminary, his good pastor sent John Marie back to the seminary to take his canonicals for Minor Orders. But he was so overawed by the venerable jury and their Latin questions that he became all confused and the verdict was, “Unsatisfactory!” The next day, Father Balley set out for Lyons and went directly to the chancery office. He spoke of his high esteem for his pupil and begged for another examination. In his great charity, the Vicar-General not only grated another examination but promised to come with the superior of the major seminary to Ecully and question John Marie at the rectory in his own familiar surroundings. As a result, John Marie gave very good and satisfactory answers to all the questions put to him.

The final decision rested with the first Vicar-General, Father Coubon, who was directing the diocese in the absence of the Cardinal. (His Eminence had to leave the diocese in a hurry following the Emperor's abdication.) Father Courbon was a simple priest and a good priest, and he asked in great sincerity:

“Is the young Vianney pious?”

“Oh yes!”

“Has he a devotion to Our Lady?”

“Oh yes!”

“Does he know how to say his Rosary?”

“Oh yes! He is a model of piety.”

“A model of piety! Repeated the Vicar-General.  “Very well, I shall summon him to come up for ordination. The grace of God will do the rest.”

On the Feast of the Visitation, July 2, 1814, in the Cathedral of St. Jean in Lyons, John Marie received Minor Orders and the subdiaconate from the hands of Bishop Simon, who had come from Grenoble for the ceremony.

Father Balley had made himself responsible for his seminarian. Consequently, John Marie was sent back to Ecully for his final year of theology. This was most fortunate, because the political spirit of France had entered the major seminary, and as a result there was much unrest and even violence among the students. From this John Marie was spared. In May 1815, he returned to the seminary to prepare for the diaconate, which he received on June 23 from Bishop Simon in the Cathedral of Lyons.

The holy priesthood was now in sight: the end of the road was near. But there was another canonical examination. It lasted over an hour. This time the result was most satisfactory, and so the date of ordination was set for August 13, 1815. As the Vicar-General put his name to the testimonial letters he remarked, “The Church is in need not only of learned priests; she wants, above all, holy priests.”

All alone, journeying on foot, John Marie set out for Grenoble some sixty miles away, where Bishop Simon was to ordain him. He carried a small parcel and an alb for his first private Mass. He arrived on Saturday night and presented himself on Sunday morning, the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, to the Bishop for ordination to the holy priesthood. He was the only candidate, alone, a stranger in a strange diocese. Excuses were made to the Bishop for troubling him with only one candidate, but the good Bishop smiled and said: “It is not too much trouble to ordain a good priest!” So at the age of twenty-nine years, in the chapel of the major seminary in Grenoble, John Marie Vianney became Father Vianney, and from that time on, never once did he forget the dignity and the glory of his priesthood. “Oh! How great is the priest,” he used to say in later years. “The priest will only be understood in Heaven. Were he understood on earth people would die, not of fear, but of love.”

The next day, in the same chapel, he offered his first private Mass. And the closest Friend he had with whom to share the joy of his first Mass was Jesus Himself. (Father Bartholomew O'Brien, The Cure of Ars; Patron of Parish Priests, published in 1956 by J. S. Paluch Company, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, and republished by TAN Books and Publisher in 1987 and 2007, pp. 17-21.)

Chapter Five

Assistant

The saintly Father Balley had trained Father Vianney as a seminarian; now Divine Providence had so arranged that he would also train him as a priest. When Father Vianney reached the rectory at Ecully, and after Father Balley had knelt down for his priestly blessing and had kissed his anointed hands, the venerable old pastor smiled at the young priest and told him the happy news: the Vicar-General had given Ecully as assistant, and the assistant was to be none other than Father John Marie himself. The people were as please as the pastor. “Father Vianney had edified us during the time he studied here,” they said to one another “What will he not do now that he is a priest?”

From the very first everyone loved Father Vianney. His sister Marguerite went over from Dardilly to hear him preach, and later remarked, “To my thinking, he did not preach well as yet, but when it was his turn to speak people flocked to the church.” He was kept busy, preparing his catechism lesson, looking after the sick (who always seemed to ask for the new assistant), writing his sermons which in the beginning were very short, studying his theology, and working out practical cases of conscience under the direction of his pastor.

Occasionally, pastor and assistant would go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Fourviere. Or, once in a while, they would visit friends in Lyons, the Loras family or the Jaricot family. It was in this way that Father Vianney met Pauline Jaricot, a young firl of about sixteen, who was destined to do monumental work for the missions. During one of the gatherings at the Jaricot home, the conversation centered on the virgin martyr whose body had recently been found in the catacombs of Rome. It was the first time that Father Vianney had ever heard of his little friend of future years, St. Philomena.

The rectory at Ecully was a kind of Trappist monastery where two priests lived in common and in great peace, praying together and edifying each other in a kind of holy rivalry. The table was simple: brown bread, potatoes, (no wine), and a piece of beef which eventually turned black from age. But when guests came things were different.

Father Balley wore a hair-shirt. So, Father Vianney wore a hair-shirt. Father Balley reported Father Vianney to the chancery for being too strict with himself. So, Father Vianney reported Father Balley. And the Vicar-General laughed at them both and sent them back to Ecully.

“How is Father Vianney?” asked one of the curate's old comrades of Father Balley.

“Oh,” remarked the pastor, “Father Vianney is always the same – he gives away all he possesses.”

It was during his stay at Ecully that Father Vianney started his lifelong practice of praying to Our Lady to free him from all sensual temptations. Under vow, he promised to say daily to Our Lady the Regina Coeli and to add six times the ejaculation: “Blessed be forever the most holy and Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Amen.” As a result, he seemed to receive special graces of heroic purity and of seeing everyone without looking at anyone. 

But these happy years were soon to end. The early days of the Terror were beginning to tell on Father Balley, although he was only sixty-five years old. In February, 1817, an ulcer formed on his leg. It gradually became gangrenous and eventually forced the doctor to consider his conditions hopeless. During the whole of 1817, Father Vianney was doing most of the parish work, beside assisting his pastor as a faithful son would assist his father. December 17, 1817 was the date God chose to call His faithful servant home. Father Balley went to confession to his assistant (whom he had chosen to be his spiritual director and father confessor as soon as faculties had been granted) and received Holy Viaticum and Extreme Unction. He whispered a few words of kindness and advice to his young friend, and then reached under his pillow for something. He wanted his discipline and hair-shirt. “Look, my poor child,” whispered the dying priest, “hide these things. If they were found after my death, people would imagine that I have sufficiently expiated my sins, and so they would leave me in Purgatory until the end of the world.” Father Vianney took them, but he did not hide them. He used them himself.

“I have seen beautiful souls, but none so beautiful!” said Father Vianney, who wept like a child at the death of his good and faithful fellow priest, Father Balley. It was always with tears that he later spoke of Father Balley. “If I were an artist, I could still paint his portrait.” And every day, his name was pronounced by Father Vianney at the memento of the Mass. On his mantlepiece, he always kept the looking glass of his good pastor because “it had reflected his face." (Father Bartholomew O'Brien, The Cure of Ars; Patron of Parish Priests, published in 1956 by J. S. Paluch Company, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, and republished by TAN Books and Publisher in 1987 and 2007, pp. 22-26.) 

Chapter 7

Beginnings

Father Vianney began his duties as the new pastor by taking a census (He kept the record of some sixty families in his head.) About noon, when children and parents were certain to be a table, Father Vianney made his visits. He stood at one side of the kitchen (never sitting down to eat) and just passed the time of day asking questions about the crops, the children, and the relatives. Always he finished his brief visit with a word about God and His Church. Day by day, he picked up not only a full acquaintance with each family, but also a full picture of the morality of his parish – and he found the picture blurred and scarred and in great need of restoration.

The new Cure realized the meaning of the words of Jesus to His Apostles: “This kind can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.” (Matt. 17, 20). Therefore, he would undertake a one-man campaign of prayer and fasting, and win for his people the graces necessary to bring them back to Sunday Mass and to the practice of their religion. He would also win for them the graces demanded to take them away from drinking, from the taverns, from excessive pleasures, blasphemy and impurity. So the campaign for souls was inaugurated by the Cure of Ars, and this personal campaign ended only with his death.

A man who lived near the church wondered what the new Cure was doing in there so very early each morning. One morning, long before dawn, when the man saw a tiny candle making its way from the rectory through the darkness across the cemetery, he sneaked over to the church and peeked in to find out for himself. There was the pastor, pouring out his heart to Jesus hidden in the Blessed Sacrament! “Ah,” said the man, “he is not like other men!” What did the Cure say to his blessed Jesus? Henri Gheon has given us his version of the Cure's prayer. Prostrate on the floor or kneeling with outstretched hands, the Cure thus prayed or groaned or wept out his heart:

“My God, my all, You see how I love You, and I do not love You enough.

“My God, You have given me all; behold the little that I give You. Give me the strength to give more.

“My God here is all – take all; but convert my parish. If You do not convert it, it will be because I have not deserved it.

“My God, I count my merits as nothing, but Yours are infinite. May they win for me the grace of suffering.

“My God, I consent to suffer all that You may wish for all my life . . . for a hundred years . . . . and the most bitter suffering, but convert them . . . (The Secret of the Cure D'Ars, Henri Gheon. p. 53) (Father Bartholomew O'Brien, The Cure of Ars; Patron of Parish Priests, published in 1956 by J. S. Paluch Company, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, and republished by TAN Books and Publisher in 1987 and 2007, pp. 32-34.)

Mother Bibost, who had come from Ecully to be housekeeper, was soon demoted to merely honorary housekeeper, and finally, her services were really not needed at all. Then Mrs. Renard took over. She was going to have at least fresh bread. But the pastor gave it to the poor. He wanted only a few pancakes and some potatoes every few days or so. No more! Other women tried to help out. One gave up with the sigh, “Oh, it is very hard to serve a saint!”

So once a week Father Vianney cooked for himself a saucepan of potatoes. When hungry, he cooked an egg or made some pancakes. His meals were never at regular intervals. He ate when necessary, but only to keep the body going. This was his manner of life until 1827, when he began to take his meals with the orphans at Providence.

In 1839, a young priest, Father Tailhades, came to spend a few weeks with the Cure of Ars and to study the apostolic work in country parishes. To him, the Cure opened up his heart and gave him these words of advice which give us a glimpse into his own soul during these early days of Ars:

“My friend, the devil is not greatly afraid of the discipline and other instruments of penance. That which beats him is the curtailment of one's food, drink, and sleep. There is nothing the devil fears more; consequently, nothing is more pleasing to God. Oh! How often have I experienced it! While I was alone – and I was alone during eight or nine years, and therefore quite free to yield to my attraction – it happened at times that I refrained from food for entire days. On those occasions I obtained both for myself and for others, whatsoever I asked of Almighty God.”

He could not recall these days without tears. But he continued:

“Now things are not quite the same. I cannot do without food for so long a time, and if I attempt it, I lose the power even of speech. But how happy I was while I lived alone! I bought from the poor the morsels of bread that were given them; I spent a good part of the night in the church; there were not so many people to confess and the good God granted me extraordinary graces."

Thus did the good Cure of Ars win the graces which were to reform the village of Ars and win souls to Christ, the number of which is recorded only in Heaven. (Father Bartholomew O'Brien, The Cure of Ars; Patron of Parish Priests, published in 1956 by J. S. Paluch Company, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, and republished by TAN Books and Publisher in 1987 and 2007, pp. 35-36.)

Appendix B

The Liturgical Year's Hagiography of Saint John Mary Vianney

Ever since the Sun of righteousness vanished from men’s view, the heaven of holy Church has been illumined through the centuries by the shining light of countless Saints; and even as the brightness of the stars increases as the night advances, so, as we recede from the blessed days of His mortal life, Our Lord sends into the world Saint after Saint whose lives seem to shine with ever-increasing lustre.

Less than a century ago a tiny village of provincial France was for many years the hub of the religious life of the whole country. Between 1818 and 1859 its name was upon the lips of countless thousands and so great was the affluence of pilgrims that the railway company serving the district had to open a special booking office at Lyons to deal with the traffic between that great city and the little hamlet of Ars. The cause of all this stir was the lowly yet incomparable priest whose story is to be briefly told in these pages.

Like so many other Saints, Jean Baptiste Vianney enjoyed the priceless advantage of being born of truly Christian parents. His father was one of those sturdy farmer-owners who constitute the backbone of a nation. His mother was a native of the small village of Ecully, which, like Dardilly, the Saint’s birthplace, lies within a few miles of the ancient city of Lyons. It would be a huge mistake were we to look upon the Vianneys as rough and ignorant country yokels. No doubt both parents and children were compelled to spend laborious days in field and vineyard, but the consciousness that for several centuries the beloved homestead had belonged to other generations of Vianneys, inspired the family with legitimate pride and they enjoyed the esteem of all who knew them. Kindness to the poor and the needy was an outstanding virtue of the Vianneys. No beggar or tramp was ever driven from their doorstep. Thus it came about that they were privileged, one day, to give hospitality to St Benedict Labre when that patron Saint of tramps passed through Dardilly on one of his pilgrimages to Rome.

He whom the whole world was to know and revere under the touching appellation of “The Curé of Ars,” a title than which none could be dearer to himself, was born on May 8th, 1786, and baptized on the same day. Jean Marie Baptiste was the fourth of a family of six children. His pious mother refused to yield to another what is a mother’s highest duty and sweetest privilege, viz., that of teaching her children to know and love God. Without exception all responded to her loving solicitude, but the keenest of them all was little Jean Baptiste. As a matter of fact, though an elder sister taught him to read and write, even then his mind was particularly responsive to religious knowledge and his memory, always his weakest point, was more retentive of such teaching than of secular learning.

Almost as soon as he was able to walk, the child accompanied his parents into the fields where he tended the sheep and the cows. Great is the charm of that part of rural France. Years later, when he had become the prisoner of the confessional, the holy cure spoke with gentle wistfulness of the verdant valley of the Chante-Merle alive, as its delightful name suggests, with the music of the blackbirds and the murmur of the babbling brook meandering through the meadows, its banks fringed with wild rose bushes and overhung with the branches of ash and elder trees. Here the youthful shepherd would often seek the shelter of some fragrant thicket and, having placed a little statue of Our Lady, which never left him, in a hollow of a big tree, he would kneel on the greensward and pray his little heart out. At other times he would gather other little shepherds and teach them what he had himself learnt at his mother’s knee, thus anticipating the wonderful “catechism” which was to be one of the daily, as it was one of the most fruitful, features of his apostolate at Ars. Even at that early age he was wont to cross himself when the clock struck the hour.

This he did without first looking round to see whether or not he was observed. A neighbour of the Vianneys having caught him in the act laughingly remarked to his father: “That little fellow of yours evidently takes me for the devil: he crosses himself when he sees me!”

All this time dark clouds, big with havoc and disaster, had been gathering over the fair land of France. On November 26th, 1790, the so-called “civil constitution” of the clergy was passed by the National Assembly. All ecclesiastics who refused the oath to this constitution within a week were to be deprived of their benefices. By a decree of the Legislative Assembly, two years later, the non-jurors were to be banished. The following year saw the outbreak of a fierce and bloody persecution. However, the prospect of the guillotine, which was working overtime in most parts of the unhappy country, held no terror for a great many priests who, by the adoption of various disguises and by frequent changes of domicile, somehow contrived to minister to the religious needs of the faithful remnant. Two such priests were M. Balley and M. Groboz. Both worked at Ecully, the one as a baker, the other as a cook, and both were destined to help Jean Baptiste towards the fulfilment of his dearest wish, that of becoming a priest.

Jean Baptiste made his first Communion at Ecully, his mother’s home. The all-important event took place in the early hours of a summer’s day, in a room carefully shuttered for fear of prying eyes. In order to disarm still further any suspicion that might have existed, haycarts had been drawn up beneath the windows and were unloaded with a great show of activity, whilst the solemn ceremony was in progress. The boy was thirteen years old. Even in his old age tears streamed down his cheeks whenever he spoke of that unforgettable day and all his life he treasured the plain rosary beads his mother gave him on the occasion.

Bonaparte’s rise to power gradually brought freedom to the Church. Priests returned from exile or cast away their disguises and, as always, the blood of so many martyrs proved the seed of a new generation of fervent Christians. For a short time Jean Baptiste had frequented a very homely village school, but now that he was growing up the labours of the fields claimed his days. It was during those long hours of toil that the conviction grew in his mind that he must be a priest: “If I were a priest I could win many souls for God,” he said to himself and to his fond mother. In her he found a ready ally, but the rugged father was not to be won over so easily—the lad could ill be spared. Two years had to go by before the head of the family fell in with his son’s aspirations. The new archbishop of Lyons, no less a person than Bonaparte’s uncle, realized only too well that his first care must be the training of recruits for the priesthood. Parish priests were instructed to look out for suitable candidates. M. Balley, now parish priest of Ecully, opened a small school for such boys in his presbytery. Here was young Vianney’s chance. He could go to M. Balley for lessons whilst receiving board and lodging at the house of his aunt. Even Matthieu Vianney saw the advantages of such a scheme. So to Ecully the lad went.

The future Cure’ of Ars was twenty years old when he entered on the studies that were to lead him to the foot of the Altar. Alas! the first steps in his scholastic career proved arduous in the extreme. Not a few writers and preachers have said, in their haste, that Jean Baptiste Vianney was dull, not to say stupid. Nothing could be further from the truth. A look at the Saint’s authentic picture still suffice to refute these assertions. Every feature of his magnificent head betokens the fine intellect glowing within. His judgment was never at fault, but his memory had lain fallow for so long that it seemed unable to hold what the hapless student strove so manfully to entrust to its keeping. He himself said that “he could not lodge a thing in his bad head.” As he pored, all in vain it seemed to him, over his Latin grammar, pictures rose before his imagination—it was always a vivid one—of the cosy fireside at Dardilly, of his gentle mother, of his beloved brothers and sisters, and the flowery meadows of the valley of Chante-Merle, so that, in an hour of despair, the poor youth almost decided to go home. Happily M. Balley sensed the peril. He bade his pupil go on foot to the shrine of St Francis Regis, at La Louvesc. The pilgrimage proved a turning point. Henceforth his progress was at least sufficient to save him from that awful feeling of discouragement which had so very nearly caused him to give up his studies.

At this very moment an even more formidable crisis arose. Napoleon was astride of Europe, but his brilliant success was paid for with torrents of French blood. More and yet more drafts had to be levied to fill the gaps made in his regiments by their very victories. In 1806 the class to which young Vianney belonged was summoned to the colours before its time. Two years went by, but in the autumn of 1809 Jean Baptiste was summoned to join up, though as a Seminarist he was in reality exempt from conscription. It would seem that the Saint’s name was not on the official list of Church students supplied by the diocesan authorities. Someone had blundered. The recruiting officer would listen neither to expostulation nor to entreaty. Young Vianney was destined for the armies in Spain. His parents tried to find a substitute. For the sum of 3,000 francs and a gratuity, a certain young man agreed to go in his stead but he withdrew at the last moment. On October 26th Jean Baptiste entered the barracks at Lyons only to fall ill. From Lyons they sent him to a hospital at Roanne where the Nuns in charge nursed him back to a semblance of health. When, on January 6th, 1810, infantryman Vianney left the hospital, he found that his draft had set out long ago. There was nothing for it but to try and catch up with it. His only equipment was a heavy bag. An icy wind chilled him to the bone, and a violent fever shook his emaciated frame. Soon he could go no further. Entering a coppice which provided some shelter from the wintry blast he sat down on his bag and began to say his rosary: “Never, perhaps, have I said it with such trust,” he used to say later on. Suddenly a stranger stood before him: “What are you doing here?” he asked. Poor Vianney explained his sorry plight. Thereupon the stranger shouldered the recruit’s bag, at the same time bidding him follow him. By devious paths, through thickets and bushes, the two made their way to the hut of a sabot-maker. Here Vianney lay low for a few days whilst recovering from his fever. As he tossed on his sick bed it suddenly flashed across his mind that, through no fault of his, he was a deserter. He deemed it best to present himself to the mayor of the commune of Les Noes, one Paul Fayot, who was at that very moment sheltering two other deserters. The worthy mayor told the recruit not to worry: it was too late to join his draft; he was now considered a deserter so that his only care must be not to be discovered by the gendarmes. The mayor himself could not keep him, so he handed him over to the care of his cousin, Claudine Fayot, a widow with four children.

Henceforth Vianney assumed the name of Jerome Vincent. Under that name he even opened a school for the village children. For a time, for the sake of greater security, he lived and slept in the byre attached to the farmhouse. During the winter months the village was almost inaccessible, but as soon as the snows melted the danger from visiting gendarmes was constant. One hot summer’s day he nearly died of asphyxiation as he lay hid in a stack of fermenting hay into which one of the gendarmes drove his sword thereby wounding the young man who, as he afterwards confessed, endured such agony that he could not have held out for many more moments. The conduct of all concerned in this affair may seem strange to us, but in those days conscription was not the cast-iron law it subsequently became. Exemptions were numerous and desertion habitual, so much so that in certain parts of France desertion was the rule, obedience to the law the exception and the woods were more densely populated than some of the villages (Cf. Trochu, Life of the Curé d’Ars, page 57). In any case young Vianney was not subject to the law. His being called to the colours was a mistake. Evidently our Saint did not carry in his pack the proverbial marshal’s baton, but even in those early days a supernatural radiance seemed to form a halo round his noble brow. In 1810 an imperial decree granted an amnesty to all deserters of the years 1806 to 1810.

Jean Baptiste was covered by this decree, so that he was free to return home and to resume his studies. Alas! his beloved mother died shortly after this happy reunion. He was now twenty-four years old and time pressed. Soon the young man returned to the Presbytery of Ecully: On May 28th, 1811, he received the Tonsure. M. Balley deeming it essential that his pupil should go through a regular course of studies, sent him to the Petit Seminaire of Verrieres. Here young Vianney suffered and toiled much but never shone as a philosopher. In October, 1813, he entered the Grand Seminaire of Lyons. His inadequate acquaintance with Latin made it impossible for him either to grasp what the lecturers said or to reply to questions put to him in that learned tongue. At the end of his first term he was asked to leave. His grief and disappointment were indescribable. For a while he toyed with the idea of joining one of the many congregations of Brothers. Once again M. Balley came to the rescue and studies were privately resumed at Ecully. But the student failed at the examination preceding ordination. A private examination at the presbytery proved more satisfactory and was deemed sufficient—his moral qualities being rightly judged to outweigh by far any deficiencies in his academic equipment.

On August 13th, 1815, Jean Baptiste Vianney was raised to the priesthood—to that ineffable dignity of which he spoke so frequently and with so much feeling: “Oh! how great is the priest!” he used to say. “The priest will only be understood in Heaven. Were he understood on earth people would die, not of fear, but of love.” He was twenty-nine years old when, on the morrow of his ordination, he said his first Mass in the chapel of the Seminary of Grenoble where the ceremony had taken place, for Cardinal Fesch had had to flee from Lyons on the fall of his imperial nephew. Two Austrian chaplains of the armies that had invaded France were saying Mass at the same hour at side altars.

On his return to Ecully the Abbe Vianney’s cup of happiness was full when he learnt that he was to be curate to his saintly friend and teacher. The diocesan authorities had decided that for the time being he who was to spend the greater part of his life in the confessional should not have faculties to hear confessions. However, M. Balley secured them for him within a few months and himself became his first penitent. Though in the opinion of his favourite sister Marguerite, who came over from Dardilly on purpose to hear him, “he did not preach well as yet, people flocked to the church when it was his turn to preach.” Between rector and curate there now sprang up a holy rivalry as to who should outdo the other in fasts and penances. Things came to such a pass that the former reported the latter to the ecclesiastical superiors “for exceeding all bounds.” The accused pleaded the example set him by his rector and the Vicar-General laughingly dismissed the two incorrigibles. On December 17th, 1817, M. Balley died in the arms of his beloved pupil who wept for him as one weeps for a father. And he, who was so detached from all things earthly, until the end of his life clung to a small hand-mirror that had belonged to his teacher and father because, he said, “it has reflected his countenance.” Not long after M. Balley’s death M. Vianney was appointed to Ars—a tiny village sleeping among the ponds and monotonous fields of La Dombes which he was destined to make famous for all time.

Even on a large map Palestine is but a narrow strip of arid, desert like land. Yet all that is really great and worth while happened in that barren hill country. The land was made for ever holy in the blessed hour when the heavens opened above it in order to send down the Light of the world.

La Dombes is an uninteresting district of the department of the Ain. The soil is clayey, ponds of stagnant water render the atmosphere moist and heavy, no large woods give colour and life to a landscape of almost unrelieved drabness. Rain is frequent and the climate is soft and enervating. The village of Ars lies in an undulating plain, a knoll rising from its centre and providing as it were a platform for the village church. A small stream, the Fontblin, meanders through the valley and traverses the village. On the west the horizon is shut in by the hills of the Beaujolais. Even today Ars is in no way remarkable, except for the new church, an hotel or two, some charitable institutions and the shops in which is displayed the usual assortment of rosaries, gaudy pictures, and postcards which seem to be the inevitable and commonplace feature of a place of pilgrimage. The inhabitants themselves, for the most part descendants of the good folk who constituted the flock of the most wonderful parish priest the world has known, are seen going about their rustic avocations just as their forefathers did; but the infinitely attractive personality of the immortal Cure seems even now to haunt the streets of the village and the rough tracks—one cannot call them roads—that divide farm from farm.

In 1815 the village consisted of some forty houses. An exceedingly dilapidated church, with no less wretched presbytery, stood on one side of the shallow valley. The only outstanding building was the family mansion of Les Garets d’Ars, but even that structure had lost its turrets and battlements and the moat that surrounded its walls in bygone days had been filled in long ago.

In clerical circles Ars was looked upon as a kind of Siberia. The district was dull, but its spiritual desolation was even greater than the material. It was in the first days of February, 1818, that the Abbe Vianney received official notification of his appointment—it could hardly be called a promotion—to Ars. ” There is not much love in that parish—you will instill some into it,” the Vicar-General told him. On February 9th, M. Vianney set out for the place that was to be, for the next forty-one years, the theatre of his astonishing and indeed unprecedented activities. He journeyed on foot, the distance between Ecully and Ars being about 38 km. A wooden bedstead, a few clothes and the books left him by M. Balley followed in a cart. A thick, dank mist lay over the fields so that he lost his way repeatedly. When he got his first glimpse of the village he commented on its smallness but with prophetic instinct added: “The parish will be unable to contain the crowds that will flock hither.”

Though religion was at a low ebb it would be wrong to imagine that none was left. The mere reopening of the churches could not undo the untold harm wrought by the Revolution. The softness of the climate reacted on the natives, making them flabby and pleasure-loving. The faith, however, was not dead and there was at least a nucleus of fervent souls, chief among whom was the lady of “the great house,” Mlle. des Garets, who divided her time between prayer and good works. In company with an old retainer, this wonderful old woman daily recited the whole of the Divine Office.

M. Vianney’s first care was to establish contact with his flock. He made a point of visiting every household in the parish. In those first days he still found time to walk in the fields, his breviary in his hand—he was hardly ever without it—and his three-cornered hat under his arm, for he scarcely ever wore it on his head. He would speak to the peasants about the state of the crops, the weather, their families, so as to win their goodwill. Above all he prayed, and to prayer he joined the most awe-inspiring austerities. He made his own instruments of penance, or at least ” improved ” them by weighting them with bits of metal or iron hooks. His bed was the bare floor, for he gave away almost at once the mattress he had brought from Ecully. Subsequently he used to speak of the terrible penances of those days as his “youthful follies.” Happy they who have none other to be sorry for or ashamed of! He would go without food for several days at a stretch. There was no housekeeper at the presbytery. Until 1827 the staple of his food was potatoes, an occasional boiled egg and a kind of tough, indigestible, flat cake made of flour, salt, and water which the people called matefaims. Subsequent to the foundation of the orphan girls’ school, to which he gave the beautiful name of ” Providence,” he used to take his meals there. At one time he tried to live on grass, but he had to confess that such a diet proved impossible. He himself reveals his mind, as regards all this, in the words he addressed to a young priest: “The devil,” he said, “is not much afraid of the discipline and hair-shirts what he really fears is the curtailing of food, drink and sleep.”

The holy Cure was gifted with a noble imagination and a keen sense of the beautiful. He enjoyed the beauty of fields and woods, but he loved even more the beauty of God’s house and the solemnities of the Church. He began by buying a new altar, with his own money, and he himself painted the woodwork with which the walls were faced. The vestments were worn to shreds. He set himself the task of replenishing what he called, in a touching phrase, “the household furniture of the good God.” Thus it came about that the goldsmiths and embroiderers of Lyons had the amazing experience of seeing a country priest, wearing a shabby cassock, rough shoes, and a battered old hat and who seemingly had not a sou in his pocket, ordering the most expensive articles in their shops. Only the best was good enough for his little village church. The pilgrim to Ars cannot fail to share the wonderment of the craftsmen of Lyons as he reverently contemplates the rows of vestments in the glass cases that line the walls of the Saint’s old presbytery.

The most disastrous sequel of the Revolution was the people’s religious ignorance. The holy Cure resolved to do his utmost to remedy so deplorable a state of affairs. However, his sermons and instructions cost him enormous pain: his memory was so unretentive! Whole nights were spent by him in the little sacristy, in the laborious composition, and in the even more toilsome memorizing of his Sunday discourse. Sometimes he worked thus for seven hours on end. The sermon was delivered with immense energy, often in a high pitched voice, so that he was utterly exhausted at its conclusion. A parishioner asked him one day why he spoke so loud when preaching and so low when praying: “Ah!” he replied, “when I preach I speak to people who are apparently deaf or asleep, but in prayer I speak to God who is not deaf.” The children excited his pity even more than their elders. He began by gathering them in the presbytery and then in the church, as early as six o’clock in the morning, for in the country the day’s work begins at dawn. He was a stern disciplinarian and demanded a word for word knowledge of the text of the catechism.

In those days profanation of the Sunday was rampant in rural France. In the morning the country folk worked in the fields; the afternoon and evening were spent at the dance or in the far too numerous taverns. The holy man inveighed against these evils with astonishing vehemence. At that time inns and taverns were definitely looked upon as places of evil resort. “The tavern,” the Saint declared in one of his sermons. “is the devil’s own shop, the market where souls are bartered, where the harmony of families is broken up, where quarrels start and murders are done.” As for the men who own or run a tavern, “the devil does not greatly trouble them; he despises them and spits on them!” So great did his influence eventually become that the time came when every tavern of Ars had to close its doors for lack of patrons. At a subsequent date modest hostels were opened for the accommodation of strangers, and to these the holy Cure did not object.

Even more strenuous, if possible, were his efforts in bringing about a suppression of dancing—an amusement to which the people were passionately addicted but which the Saint knew only too well to be a very hotbed of sin. Here he met with the most obstinate resistance, and his victory was very slow in coming. At times he himself paid the fiddler engaged for a dance as much as, or more than, the fee he would have earned by his playing, on condition that he stayed away. As a counter-attraction he revived Sunday Vespers. In his struggle against dancing, his zeal carried him to surprising lengths. In I895 an old woman told Mgr. Convert, another parish priest of Ars, that from the age of sixteen to twenty-two she did not make her Easter Communion because the Saint refused her absolution. The reason was that once a year when visiting her relatives in a neighbouring village, on the occasion of the fete of the place, she used to dance for a little while on the village green. The woman added that she went to confession on the eve of all the great feasts but the Saint never absolved her. She only received absolution when, after a resistance of six years, she at last made up her mind to forgo this annual fling.

The Saint was determined to suppress dancing as far as his authority and jurisdiction reached. His master stroke in this long-drawn campaign was to persuade the young women to stay away from these entertainments. Instead of the dance they attended some sodality meeting. The Cure’s success led to an explosion of rage on the part of his enemies: such a man was bound to make enemies! Their fury vented itself in the vilest calumnies and the grossest libels against this angel in the flesh, and no persecution was deemed too petty or too coarse where he was concerned. That he was keenly sensitive—to it all we gather from a remark he let fall towards the end of his life—had he known all he was to suffer at Ars, he said, he would have died on the day of his arrival. Yet such was his humility that he was perfectly sincere when he expected to be suspended by his bishop and even to be thrown into jail: “But,” he said, “I do not deserve such a grace.” To these external vexations was added the far more searching trial of dryness in prayer, and at times the lowering clouds of despair cast their dark shadow upon the naturally sunny fields of his spirit.

Two years had gone by when news went forth that M. Vianney was to be cure of Salles, in the Beaujolais. Ars was struck with consternation. Mlle. d’Ars, in a letter to a friend, talked of nothing less than strangling the Vicar-General. The mayor headed a deputation which went to Lyons, where it easily secured the cancelling of the appointment to Salles. To make sure of the future the good people obtained that their village should be erected into a regular parish. M. Vianney was appointed parish priest, for until then he had only been a chaplain who could be removed at a moment’s notice.

That same year the Cure initiated extensive work on the fabric of the church. A low tower was built, a chancel was added to the vane, several side-chapels were erected, particularly a Lady chapel at whose altar he said Mass every Saturday for forty years, and many statues and pictures were placed along the walls of the lowly sanctuary. All these features may still be seen, for when the new, somewhat pretentious church was erected Pius X strictly enjoined that the old church, sanctified by the holy Cure, should remain as he left it. Thus the new basilica is only a prolongation of the lowly village church so dear to the Saint, as it is to the happy pilgrim to Ars. M. Vianney was no obscurantist. He wished to have good schools in the village. To start with he opened a free school for girls, which he called “Providence.” It soon became a boarding school as well as a day school. From 1827 he received none but destitute children as boarders. For them he had to find both food and raiment. More than once God intervened miraculously, multiplying a few grains of wheat in the presbytery attic, or the dough in the kneading trough of the bake-house. The Saint loved the “Providence” above all his undertakings because it existed for the good of destitute children. For the space of twenty years he himself daily came to the establishment to receive the pittance which he dignified with the name of dinner.

In a letter dated November 1st, 1823, to the widow Fayot who had mothered him whilst he lay at Les Noes he wrote that he was in a small parish which was very good and served God with all its heart. Two and a half years had wrought this change. Sunday was now indeed the Lord’s day. The whole village attended Vespers. He found it less easy to induce the good folk to frequent the Sacraments. Jansenism, though moribund, was not yet dead. At the end of his life the Saint declared: “I have done all I could to persuade the men to communicate four times a year: if they had but listened to me they would all be saints.”

The holy priest dearly loved the ceremonies of the Church. He personally trained his altar servers. Corpus Christi was the climax of the liturgical year. On that day he went so far as to forsake his confessional for a few hours. He could be seen walking round the village, admiring and praising the decorations. He himself carried the Blessed Sacrament. No one was allowed to be a mere spectator: strangers were not suffered to line the processional route but everybody had to fall in, and walk in the procession. On his last Corpus Christi day—only forty days before his death—the mayor of the village, Comte des Garets, had secured, unknown to him, the services of a band. At the first crash of the brass and the drums the Saint trembled for sheer joy, and when all was over he could not find words with which to express his gratitude.

His tender love for Our Lady moved him to consecrate his parish to the blessed Queen of Heaven. Over the main entrance of the little church he placed a statue of Our Lady which is still in position. On the occasion of the definition by Pius IX of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he asked his people to illuminate their houses at night and the church bells were rung for hours on end. What with the blaze visible for miles and the noise of the bells, the surrounding villages imagined Ars was on fire and the fire brigades with their primitive engines were soon on the scene. To this day a silver heart hangs near the statue of Our Lady at Fourvieres containing a parchment on which are written the names of all the parishioners of Ars.

It was to be expected that so signal a triumph of religion, as well as the personal holiness of him who was instrumental in bringing it about, would rouse the fury of hell. The Scriptures tell us that Satan at times disguises himself as an angel of light. In our days he is even more cunning: he persuades people, all too successfully, that he does not exist at all. One of the most amazing features of the life of the Cure of Ars is that during a period of about thirty-five years he was frequently molested, in a physical and tangible way, by the evil one.

It should be borne in mind that all men are subject to temptation—for to tempt to sin is the devil’s ordinary occupation, so to speak—and temptation is permitted by God for our good. Infestation is an extraordinary action of the devil, when he seeks to terrify by horrible apparitions or noises. Obsession goes further: it is either external, when the devil acts on the external senses of the body; or internal, when he influences the imagination or the memory. Possession occurs when the devil seizes on and uses the whole organism. But even then mind and will remain out of his reach. Most of the Cure of Ars’ experiences belong to the first category, viz., infestation.

The powers of darkness opened the attack in the winter of 1824. In the stillness of a frosty night terrific blows were struck against the presbytery door and wild shouting could be heard coming, so it seemed, from the little yard in front of the house. For a moment the Cure suspected the presence of burglars so that he asked the village wheelwright, one Andre Verchere, to spend the following night at the presbytery. It proved an exciting night for that worthy. Shortly after midnight there suddenly came a fearful rattling and battering of the front door whilst within the house a noise was heard as if several heavy carts were being driven through the rooms. Andre seized his gun, looked out of the window but saw nothing except the pale light of the moon: “For a whole quarter of an hour the house shook—and so did my legs,” the would-be defender subsequently confessed. The following evening he received another invitation to spend the night at the presbytery but Andre had had enough.

These and similar disturbances were of almost nightly occurrence. They happened even when the Saint was away from home—in the early years when he was still able to lend a hand to his clerical neighbours. Thus on a certain night during a mission at St Trivier, the presbytery shook and a dreadful noise seemed to proceed from M. Vianney’s bedroom. Everybody was alarmed, and rushing to the Saint’s room the priests found him in his bed which invisible hands had dragged into the middle of the room. M. Vianney soon perceived that these displays of satanic humour were fiercest when some great conversion was about to take place, or, as he playfully put it, when he was about to “land a big fish.” One morning the devil set fire to his bed. The Saint had just left his Confessional to vest for Mass when the cry, “Fire! fire!” was raised. He merely handed the key of his room to those who were to put out the flames: “The villainous grappin!” (it was his nickname for the devil) “unable to catch the bird, he sets fire to the cage!” was the only comment he made. To this day the pilgrim may see, hard by the head of the bed, a picture with its glass splintered by the heat of the flames. It must be remembered that at no time was a fire lit in the hearth and there were no matches in the presbytery.

These molestations were both terrifying and ludicrous. The holy man ended by getting inured to them, so much so that he often poked fun at their author who showed himself in a very poor light indeed. With a smile the Saint once remarked: “Oh! the grappin and myself—we are almost chums.” As a sample of Satan’s sense of humour the following is characteristic of one whom somebody called “God’s ape.” The devil would go on for hours producing a noise similar to that made by striking a glass tumbler with the blade of a steel knife; or he would sing, “with a very cracked voice,” the Saint said, or whistle for hours on end; or he would produce a noise as of a horse champing and prancing in the room, so that the wonder was that the worm-eaten floor did not give way; or he would bleat like a sheep, or miaow like a cat, or shout under the Cure’s window: “Vianney! Vianney! potato-eater.” The purpose of these horrible or grotesque performances was to prevent the servant of God from getting that minimum of rest which his poor body required and thus to render him physically unfit to go on with his astonishing work in the confessional by which he snatched so many souls from the clutches of the fiend. But from 1845 these external attacks ceased almost entirely.

The Saint’s constancy amid such trials was rewarded by the extraordinary power God gave him to cast out devils from the possessed. Nevertheless, horrible as may be the condition of one whose body is possessed by the devil, it is as nothing by comparison with the wretched plight of a soul which, by mortal sin, sells itself, as it were, to Satan. The holy priest may be said to have spent the best part of his priestly career in a direct contest with sin through his unparalleled work in the confessional. The Cure’s confessional was the real miracle of Ars, one that was not merely a passing wonder, or the sensation of a few weeks. Great as were his penances, assuredly the greatest of them all was the endless hours spent by him within the narrow confinement of a rugged, comfortless, unventilated confessional. This miracle went on for forty years. The astonishing thing about M. Vianney is that he himself personally became the object of a pilgrimage, people flocking to Ars in hundreds of thousands just to get a glimpse of him, to hear him, to exchange but a few words with him, above all, to go to confession to him.

The afflux of strangers—the pilgrimage as it soon came to be called—began in 1827. From the year 1828 onward the holy Cure was utterly unable to go away, were it but for one day. Unknown to themselves Saints exercise an irresistible attraction, and however anxiously they may seek obscurity, somehow the children of the Church—and others too—have a knack of discovering them. “Oh, how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory! for the memory thereof is immortal, because it is known both with God and with men! when it is present they imitate it, and they desire it when it hath withdrawn itself.” (Wisdom 4:1-2) For all that, no man, perhaps a Saint least of all, can hope to be spared criticism. Thus the Cure’s practice and love of poverty were attributed to avarice: some peculiarly sharp-eyed critics thought they could see in him traces of hypocrisy or a secret desire of notoriety. His meekness and humility ended by winning over his very fault-finders. On one occasion, when his professional competence was questioned by some brother priests, the bishop of the diocese sent his Vicar-General to look into the matter and to report to him. The report was more than favourable. Madame des Garets once remarked in the hearing of the bishop—Mgr. Devie—that people thought M. Vianney was not very learned. The answer was remarkable: “He may or he may not be learned, but I do know that he is enlightened by the Holy Ghost.” The same prelate requested the holy Cure to send in written solutions of his most difficult cases of conscience. In ten years he sent in two hundred admirable solutions.

It may be said that the confessional was M. Vianney’s habitual abode. Even in the depth of winter he daily spent from eleven to twelve hours in that penitential box. The peak of the “pilgrimage” was reached in 1845. At that time there were, on an average, some three to four hundred visitors each day. The railway tickets issued at Lyons had to be made available for eight days, for it was well known that a visitor often had to wait all that time before he could hope to speak to the Saint. In the last year of the Cure’s life the number of pilgrims reached the amazing total of 100 to 120 thousand persons. Parties of pilgrims often camped in the open, for there were only five hostelries in the village and these self-styled hotels could only accommodate some 150 guests between them.

No priestly function is apt to become a greater weariness to the flesh and the spirit than a protracted sitting in the confessional. This arduous duty M. Vianney discharged for many hours, day by day, year in, year out, when chilled to the bone by the hard winters of central France or when all but overcome by the stifling heat of the long summer days. Even his hard-working parishioners had their days of rest—for him alone there was no repose, no respite, no holiday. At all seasons his working day consisted of twenty hours out of twenty-four. In summer he spent as much as fifteen and even sixteen hours in the confessional. Yet he loved the beauty of nature. How he would have revelled in the sunshine, the charm of mellow autumn days, the fragrance and colour of blossoming orchards and flowery meadows! But all he had to look forward to, day after day, was the same confinement in the dark, ill-ventilated wooden box which was for him what the cangue was for the martyrs of Cochin-China.

God alone knows the miracles of grace wrought within that rough confessional which stands to this day where he himself placed it in the chapel of St Catherine; or in the tiny sacristy where he usually heard the men. It was there that his prophetic intuitions and illuminations were most in evidence. In dealing with souls he was infinitely kind. His exhortations were brief and to the point. He said little, only a word or two—but coming from him it meant so much: “To Heaven!” was all he said to a certain priest and when his bishop knelt at his feet he merely said: “Be kind to your priests.”

One day he was hearing confessions in the sacristy. All of a sudden he came to the door and told one of the men who acted as ushers to call a lady at the back of the church, telling him how he could identify her. However, the man failed to find her. “Run quickly,” the Saint said “she is now in front of such a house.” The man did as he was told and found the lady who was going away, bitterly disappointed at not having spoken to the Saint. When reproached with excessive leniency, he replied that he could not be hard on people who had undergone so many hardships merely to see him. At times he came out of the confessional and summoned certain persons from among the crowd and those so selected declared that only a divine instinct could have told him of their peculiar and pressing need.

Of his gift of prophecy one instance must suffice—it is of enormous interest to us in England. On May 14th, 1854, Bishop Ullathorne called on the holy man and asked him to pray for England. The bishop of Birmingham relates that the man of God said with an accent of extraordinary conviction: “Monseigneur, I believe that the Church in England will be restored to its splendour.” May this prophecy receive a full and speedy fulfillment—not least through the prayers of him who made it!

No account of the life of the Cure of Ars would be complete without at least a passing mention of his singular devotion to St Philomena, the celebrated Virgin and Martyr of the early Church, whose tomb was found in the Roman catacombs at the beginning of the last century. Between the austere priest and the youthful Martyr there existed a friendship of extraordinary tenderness. Maybe there are across the centuries spiritual affinities between the Saints to which we have not the key. Be this as it may, the holy Cure looked upon St Philomena as his special guardian: his “agent with God,” as he used to say. He erected a chapel and a shrine in her honour when he undertook the restoration of the village church. This shrine may be seen to this day. In May, 1843, he fell so ill that the end seemed at hand. He promised to have a hundred Masses said at the Saint’s shrine. On May 12th, whilst the first of them was being said, he entered into a trance or ecstasy during which he was heard to murmur repeatedly: “Philomena!” Presently he exclaimed: “I am cured!” He attributed his recovery to St. Philomena. There can be no doubt that he used the Saint as a kind of screen for his own humility, for he attributed to the Martyr the miracles he himself performed. In his wonderful single-mindedness he imagined that the world would be as simple as himself and would not see through this pretty device of his modesty.

One temptation pursued the man of God almost all through his career at Ars, viz., a longing for solitude. There can be but little that, in sheer despair of hurting him in any other way, the devil played on this craving with his wonted astuteness. The Saint’s very humility egged him on towards a step which is almost incomprehensible. In all sincerity M. Vianney deemed himself utterly unfit for his office. The year before his death he said to a missionary: “You do not know what it is to pass from the cure of souls to the tribunal of God.” In 1851 he begged his bishop’s leave to resign. The letter was signed: “J.M.B. Vianney, the poor parish priest of Ars.” On three separate occasions he actually left the village. The first “flight,” as the attempt was called, occurred in 1840—but he returned almost before he had reached the outskirts of the village. In 1843 he had a severe illness—the result of his “youthful follies.” He seemed doomed—but he retained his sense of humour: “I am putting up a grand fight,” he said. “Against whom, M. le Curé?” “Against four doctors! If a fifth joins them I am lost.” He recovered. Again he “fled.” This time he got as far as Dardilly, but after a few days he realized that God wanted him at Ars. In 1853 he made a last attempt, this time with the intention of entering a Trappist monastery. But those on whose assistance he relied betrayed the secret! he was stopped en route. After some parleying he abruptly turned round, took the road to Ars, went straight into the church, put on his surplice and stole and entered his confessional. He realized at last, as he himself confessed, that there was something intemperate in his craving for solitude. Henceforth he was resolved to live and die as Curé of Ars.

Men of the moral stature of the Cure of Ars need no adventitious title or dignity to enhance their personality nor are they ever in danger of attaching undue value to such things. Towards the end of October, 1852, the bishop of Belley arrived unexpectedly at Ars. When his presence was made known to the Saint he issued from his usual abode—the confessional—and came to greet the prelate, in fact, he even made a little speech. Presently the bishop produced a bundle from under his cape which proved to be a Canon’s mozetta which he forthwith tried to put over the Saint’s shoulders at the same time hailing him as Canon Vianney. The poor Cure struggled desperately to shake off the ornament. Meanwhile the bishop intoned the Veni Creator [lyrics] and a procession was formed to escort the unhappy recipient of the honour to the steps of the Altar. All the time the mozetta was hanging precariously from the shoulders of the new dignitary. Not many days later he sold it for fifty francs and wrote to the bishop, thanking him for his providential gift, for just then he needed that much money to complete the sum required for a Mass foundation.

Not long after Napoleon III bestowed on him the Legion d’honneur. On being informed of it, the Saint asked: “Is there any money attached to it? Money for my poor? “When told that there was not, he requested the Comte des Garets to return the decoration to the emperor! Only by a ruse could he be induced to open the box containing the cross: he was told there might be relics in it; but he firmly refused to allow the cross to be pinned to his breast—in fact he gave it to the priest who had been deputed to invest him with it: “Take it,” he said, “my friend, and may you have as much pleasure in receiving it as I have in giving it to you!”

Forty-one years had gone by since the blessed day on which M. Vianney had come to Ars. They had been years of indescribable activity. The lowly priest had become famous not only throughout France—his name had reached the ends of the earth. Eternity alone will reveal the extent of the achievement of those years, so fruitful and blessed for others, but so laborious and exhausting for himself. The end was now in sight. After 1858 he often said: “We are going; we must die; and that soon!” There can be no doubt that he knew the end was at hand. In July, 1859, a devout lady of St Etienne came to confession to him. When she bade the Saint farewell he said: “We shall meet again within three weeks.” Both died within that time and thus met in a happier world.

The month of July of the year 1859 was extraordinarily hot, pilgrims fainted in great numbers, but the Saint remained in his confessional. Friday, July 29th, was the last day on which he appeared in his church. That morning he had entered his confessional about 1 a.m. but after several fainting fits he was compelled to rest. At 11 he gave his catechism—for the last time. That night he could scarcely crawl up to his room. One of the Christian Brothers helped him into bed but, at his request, left him alone. About an hour after midnight he summoned help: “It is my poor end,” he said; “call my confessor.” The illness progressed rapidly. In the afternoon of August 2nd he received the Last Sacraments: “How good God is,” he said; “when we can no longer go to Him, He comes to us.” Twenty priests with lighted candles escorted the Blessed Sacrament—but the heat was so suffocating that they put them out. Tears were trickling down the Saint’s cheeks: “Oh! it is sad to receive Holy Communion for the last time!” he said. On the evening of August 3rd, his bishop arrived. The Saint recognized him though he was unable to utter a word. Towards midnight the end was obviously at hand. At 2 o’clock in the morning of August 4th, 1859, whilst a fearful thunderstorm burst over Ars, and whilst M. Monnin read these words of the “Commendation of a Soul”: May the holy angels of God come to meet him and conduct him into the heavenly Jerusalem, the Cure of Ars gave up his soul to God.

The funeral of the servant of God was a triumph, though all eyes were filled with tears. More than three hundred priests walked before the coffin. So many were the visitors to Ars that provisions gave out and many pilgrims had to go without food. Miracles soon confirmed the reputation for sanctity the man of God had enjoyed during his lifetime. On January 8th, 1905, Pius X, that other lowly yet incomparably great priest, beatified the Cure of Ars. It was reserved for another Pope who bore the name Pius to set the seal upon the heroic virtues of the most wonderful parish priest the world has ever seen. On the feast of Pentecost, May 31st, 1925, amid unparalleled splendour and in the presence of an immense multitude representative of all mankind—for it was the year of Jubilee—surrounded by thirty-two Cardinals and two hundred Bishops, Pius XI pronounced the solemn sentence which amplifiers carried to the furthermost corners of the great basilica: “We declare Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney to be a Saint and inscribe him in the catalogue of the Saints.”

The words were hailed with loud applause; the Te Deum [lyrics] was sung with enthusiasm, all the bells of Rome rang a joyful peal and at nightfall the greatest church of Christendom was illumined with many thousands of lamps whose flickering light appeared to the beholder as so many symbols of the countless souls now shining in heaven, thanks to the heroic toil and self-sacrifice of the new Saint.