【圖片說明】Image of St John Maria Vianney at the Se Cathedral Church in Macau
– Miguel Augusto (*)
This year, the liturgical feast of St John Mary Vianney, known as Cure d’Ars (‘Cure’ means ‘Parish Priest’), is celebrated on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. He was a great confessor, with extraordinary gifts such as the gift of healing and prophecy, reading minds and hearts. He received physical attacks from the devil and lived a devoted life of mortification and prayer. Among the images of saints In the Sé Cathedral Church in Macau we also find that of St John Mary Vianney, on a side altar of the Cathedral.
John the Baptist Vianney was born in the small village of Dardilly (France) on May 8, 1786, to a peasant family, poor in material goods but rich in humanity and faith. He was baptized, according to the custom of the time, on the same day of his birth. As a child he confided to his mother, “If I were a priest I would like to win many souls.”
His childhood and adolescence was devoted to working in the fields and grazing animals. This is why at the age of seventeen, he was still illiterate. However, he knew by heart the prayers taught by his godly mother, Maria Belusa, thus growing up in a strong religious environment. He was often found at home, in the garden, or at the stable praying, on his knees, the prayers he had been taught: the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary… He nourished in his soul the desire to become a priest, but it was not an easy path to reach. John Vianney is one of those men to whom St Paul’s words can be applied: “God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something” (1 Corinthians 1: 27-29).
Difficulties in the Seminary and the Grace of Holiness
Having escaped Napoleon’s military service, Vianney enroll in the small Seminary of Verrières and later in the large Seminary of St Irenaeus. As a seminarian, John Vianney found it difficult to keep up with his colleagues because of his mental confusion over a single page of philosophy or theology. “It is a pity,” one of his teachers told the Vicar General, “because he is a model of piety.” “A model of piety?” exclaimed the Vicar, “then I will promote him and the grace of God will do the rest.”
John Vianney had an unusual intuition for the things of God. He came to priestly ordination, thanks to the help of wise priests such as Father M. Balley, who looked not only at his human limitations, but at his holiness. On August 13, 1815, at 29 years of age, after many uncertainties, many tears, John the Baptist Vianney was ordained a priest and he was able to go to the altar of the Lord and fulfill the dream of his life. By his ordination, John Vianney had added Mary to his name because of his great devotion to the Blessed Mother.
From the village of Ars to the world
John Mary Vianney was sent to the small village of Ars (France) as Vicar Chaplain to take over a small chapel, but without permission to confess, as they found him unable to guide consciences. After a year of learning at Ecully, under the direction of Fr Balley – who is credited with having perceived in the humble young man the hidden charisms of holiness – John Vianney became one of the most widely regarded confessors in the Church’s history.
Ars, on the plateau of Dombes, had no parish, only a small chapel. It had less than three hundred inhabitants, who lived in houses with thatched roofs. The people were totally averse to religion, and they didn’t even pay so much attention to the arrival of the new priest. In the abandoned little chapel, John Vianney cleaned, prepared his simple meals himself, and prayed incessantly. He spent long nights in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. He was penitent and pleaded God for the conversion of those poor souls.
The people then began to admire the devoted priest and John Vianney, taking this opportunity, began his catechesis, visiting the families and urged them to abandon the pagan vices: drunkenness, cabarets, Sunday work, blasphemies… He did so with immeasurable kindness and generosity, captivating the people of Ars, who gradually approached the Church and the Sacraments.
Ten years after his arrival, Ars was completely transformed, with the taverns empty and the church populated. Over time, thousands of people from around the country flocked to Ars, drawn to the sanctity of the village vicar. And little by little the confessional of the parish priest Vianney began to be full day and night, so that he could no longer eat or rest. He ate an average of three full meals a week. The “menu” was nothing but few vegetables, dry bread and water. Sleep was a rest, often only two hours. When it came to the conversion of a sinner, he intensified the fasting and his bed was replaced by the floor. Twenty times he was ill and twenty times he suddenly healed, a fact which caused the doctors great admiration.
John Mary Vianney could deprive himself of shoes and socks, and if he met a poor wretch on the road he could change even his pants if the beggar’s were worse than his own.
He died at the age of 73, August 4th, 1859. Even before Pius XI declared him a saint, Ars had already become a destination for pilgrimages. Once a pilgrim said, “I saw God in a man!”
The Lord has allowed the suffering body of St John Mary Vianney to remain uncorrupted until today as a testimony of the great holiness of the Cura d’Ars. The saint rests in the parish church of Ars.
John Mary Vianney was beatified in 1905 by Pope Pius X and canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, who proclaimed him, in 1929, as ‘patron saint of the parish priests of the world.’
A model for priests
In 1959, on the occasion of the centenary of his death, St John XXIII dedicated to him the encyclical “Sacerdotii Nostri Primordia,” presenting him as a model for priests.
Fifty years later, in 2009, for the 150th anniversary of his death, Pope Benedict XVI proposed a “Year for Priests.” At the general audience given on this occasion, Wednesday, 5 August 2009, he said: “I would like briefly to review the life of the Holy Curé of Ars. I shall stress several features that can also serve as an example for priests in our day, different of course from the time in which he lived, yet marked in many ways by the same fundamental human and spiritual challenges. Precisely yesterday was the 150th anniversary of his birth in Heaven. Indeed it was at two o’clock in the morning on 4 August 1859 that St John Baptist Mary Vianney, having come to the end of his earthly life, went to meet the heavenly Father to inherit the Kingdom, prepared since the world’s creation for those who faithfully follow his teachings (Mt 25:34). What great festivities there must have been in Heaven at the entry of such a zealous pastor! What a welcome he must have been given by the multitude of sons and daughters reconciled with the Father through his work as parish priest and confessor! I wanted to use this anniversary as an inspiration to inaugurate the Year for Priests, whose theme, as is well known, is ‘Faithfulness of Christ, Faithfulness of Priests.’ The credibility of witness depends on holiness and, once and for all, on the actual effectiveness of the mission of every priest.
The Holy Curé of Ars always expressed the highest esteem for the gift he had received. He would say: ‘Oh! How great is the Priesthood! It can be properly understood only in Heaven… if one were to understand it on this earth one would die, not of fright but of love!’
St John Mary Vianney, pray for us!
(*) with Felipe Aquino, Father J. B. Lehmann and Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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