Saint John Vianney

While Jean-Marie grew in age and virtue before God and men, impiety had just triumphed in France and launched bloody edicts of proscription against religion and its ministers. Taken to Écully by his parents, Jean-Marie mad e his first confession there and prepared to receive his God in the sacrament of His love: which took place in 1799. The venerable Curé was only translating into words the precious operations of grace that he experienced on that fortunate day, when later he expressed himself thus: "When one makes holy communion, one feels something extraordinary, a well-being that runs through the whole body and spreads to the extremities. What is this well-being? It is Our Lord who communicates Himself to all parts of our body and makes them thrill. We are obliged to say like Saint Paul: It is the Lord!" — "One knows," he also said, "when a soul has worthily received the sacrament of the Eucharist. It is so drowned in love, penetrated and changed, that one no longer recognizes it in its actions and words... It is humble, gentle, mortified, modest, charitable; it gets along with everyone. It is a soul capable of the greatest sacrifices!" After his first communion, he returned to Dardilly where he devoted himself to work in the fields. Jean-Marie always had his personal sanctification in view, and he made all his works contribute to it. He gave himself to work with ardor, but it was in such a way that he was even more applied to cultivating his soul than his father's field. He himself revealed to us, in a moment of extraordinary expansion, the sublime thoughts with which he nourished his mind while his arms grew weary at work: "With every stroke of the pickaxe I gave," he said, "I said to myself: This is how one must cultivate one's soul." The servant of God was then so free to pray that he regretted this time even in his extreme old age. "When I was alone in the fields," he said, "with my shovel or my pickaxe in my hand, I prayed out loud; but when I was in company, I prayed in a low voice. If, now that I cultivate souls, I had the time to think of my own as when I cultivated my father's lands, how happy I would be! There was at least some respite during that time, one rested after dinner before getting back to work. I would lie on the ground like the others, I would pretend to sleep, and I would pray to God with all my heart. Ah! those were the good times!" Upon his return in the evening to the domestic hearth, he would take a book of piety and try to nourish his soul, by becoming penetrated with the great truths of religion. His heart was so filled with God that he knew how to speak only of Him alone, and he could find rest and pleasure only in Him. From then on he began to exclaim: "To be loved by God, to be united to God, to live in the presence of God, to live for God: oh beautiful life!... oh beautiful death!"

In 1803, he received the sacrament of Confirmation at Écully from the hands of Cardinal Fesch, Archbishop of Lyon; and as the parish priest of Écully had transformed his rectory into a seminary for aspirants to the priesthood, he had the happiness of being admitted among his students. The cross being the gift that God gives to his friends, the servant of God encountered it early on the road of life, accompanied by a procession of cruel sorrows. He was nineteen years old when he began his studies. To make matters worse, he was far from compensating for the disadvantage of his age with superior talent. His intelligence was slow to grasp, and his memory unfaithful. More than once, a painful feeling of discouragement gripped his heart and led him to despair of success. However, determined to overcome all obstacles and to walk resolutely, at any cost, in the path where the Lord was calling him, he turned to God to obtain what nature had denied him. He took Saint Francis Regis as an intercesso r and made a vow to go on a pilgrimage to his tomb, on foot and begging for alms. After having accomplished his pilgrimage, the Lord blessed the faith of his servant in a tangible way by allowing him to taste the fruit of knowledge without experiencing too much bitterness.

One of the virtues of the servant of God, during this first stay in Écully, was his attraction to mortification. Voluntary penance had more sweetness than bitterness for this generous soul. Thus, the Lord wished to put his fidelity to the crucible of a much more painful trial. The diocesan authority having omitted to register him on the list of candidates for the priesthood, a formality which was sufficient to exempt him from military service, he was called to the colors with orders to leave immediately for the borders of Spain. A thousand overwhelming thoughts stirred in his mind; the regret of the priesthood tore his heart; the prospect of combat filled him with horror. In this confusion of thought and feeling, he took his rosary and began to recite it on the way to combat the sadness that was invading him. While he was giving himself courage through prayer, a young man, full of courtesy and gentleness, approached, and, after inquiring about the cause of his sorrow, said to him: "Come with me, and fear nothing." He thus led him to a small house isolated in the middle of a wood, and, the very next day, his host led him to the village of Noës, located on the edge of the forest of La Madeleine, on the borders of the two departments of the Loire and the Allier. Presented to the mayor, this magistrate willingly took charge of him and finished reassuring the fugitive; then he led him to the home of a pious woman, named Mrs. Fayot, who admitt ed him am ong her children and changed his name to that of Jérôme. The servant of God did not take long to become the object of general veneration, and the inhabitants of Noës were all ready to give him marks of their complete devotion. They pushed their affection to the point of forming a sort of guard for his safety. As soon as any patrol searching for deserters was discovered from afar, they would notify him, so that he would have the leisure to escape the searches. Full of gratitude for so many testimonies of devotion, the servant of God offered to the mayor of Noës to open a school for the instruction of the children of the commune. This proposal filled the magistrate and all his constituents with joy. The success he obtained with the children is hardly credible: he taught them with extreme care the elements of reading and writing; but he sought above all to make them know God and to fill them with love for him.

When everything seemed to portend a prolongation of Jean-Marie's exile, divine Providence suddenly put an end to it. François Vianney, his brother, having been called up by the conscription of 1810, left immediately and thus restored freedom to Jean-Marie, who was able to return to the bosom of his family. Scarcely back, he went to resume his studies with the parish priest of Écully, which he continued until 1812. At that time, he entered philosophy at the minor seminary of Verrière. The directors soon realized that they possessed a treasure in their establishment, and they did not fear to show, by their conduct and their words, the high regard they had for him. On July 2, 1814, he received the subdiaconate; the following year, he was ordained a deacon, and on August 9, 1815, he received the priestly anointing at the hands of Mgr Simon, Bishop of Grenoble.

The servant of God had scarcely received the priestly anointing when he was sent as vicar to Écully. From the beginning of his ministry, he showed himself to be the model of all devotion. At whatever hour of the day or night his zeal was called upon, he was equally disposed to do good. He made himself all things to all men without distinction of persons, and if he showed any preference, it was always toward the infirm, the elderly, and the poor. The sight of the unfortunate tore his heart, and it was much less painful for him to deprive himself of the necessities than to see them suffer. His boundless generosity did not even allow him to procure suitable clothing. After the death of the parish priest of Écully, which occurred on December 17, 1817, the venerable servant of God was appointed to the pa ris h of Ars, a less significant village, but one that he would later raise to the rank of European celebrity. M. Courbon, vicar general, said to him upon sending him there: "There is not much love of God in this parish, you will put some there yourself." The man of God took possession of it on February 9, 1818. The admirable way of life he immediately embraced contributed not a little to confirming the population in the high opinion they had conceived of him. He made the church his habitual dwelling; he entered it before dawn, and he did not leave it until late in the evening.

Knowing how powerful the word of God is to touch and convert hearts, he neglected no means in his power to proclaim it with dignity and in a manner salutary for souls. After laborious preparation and a long conversation with God, he would appear in the pulpit of truth. Then his face was on fire, and one would have thought to see a prophet who had come to announce the oracles of the Lord. "He converts souls by the thousands with his word," says Canon Gastaldi. "There are in his discourses thoughts, reflections, and images quite apt to make the most vivid impression on hearts, and which one would hardly encounter in the greatest orators. Ecclesiastics who dedicate themselves to the ministry of preaching should walk in the footsteps of such a perfect model, and, while they devote themselves to the study of sacred science, apply themselves to inflaming their hearts with the love of God and illuminating their minds at the feet of the most holy Sacrament. True Christian eloquence can spring from no other source than an ardent charity for God and neighbor."

The success of his preaching was fostered by the love he bore for his parishioners. He had for them the affection of a father for his children, and took advantage of every opportunity to show it to them. He was the first to give them signs of regard and kindness; he anticipated their greeting, and always addressed a few kind words to them. He visited them in their homes, and he did so with such tact and delicacy that his manners delighted them. He excepted no one from the testimonies of his benevolence, because the affection of his heart extended to everyone. Poor and rich, they were all his children, and he treated them with such affability that each of them could flatter himself to be the favorite. Through these procedures full of delicacy, he insinuated himself so deeply into the heart of the population that soon he was master of their wills. From then on, he undertook the reform of his parish. Persuaded that the most effective means of reviving the almost extinguished piety was devotion to the divine Eucharist, the center of all graces and the unique hearth of Christian life, he made every effort to inspire the love of Our Lord in the most holy Sacrament. He preached on the necessity of approaching the Sacraments, and on the favors with which Our Lord fills those who love to feed on his adorable flesh. "All beings of creation," he said, "need to feed themselves to live; that is why God made trees and plants grow: it is a well-served table, where all animals come to take each the food that suits them. When God wanted to give food to our soul to sustain it in the pilgrimage of life, he cast his gaze over creation, and found nothing that was worthy of it. Then he turned back upon himself, and resolved to give himself. O my soul, how great you are, since only God can sustain you! What does Our Lord do in the sacrament of his love? He has taken his good heart to love us. There comes out of this heart a perspiration of tenderness and mercy to drown the sins of the world. When one has communicated, the soul rolls itself in the balm of love, like the bee in the flowers."

To encourage his parishioners to show themselves docile to his call, he declared to them that, by night and by day, he was always ready to reconcile them with God and to hear them in confession. These pressing invitations were accompanied by grace, and soon the parish of Ars presented the most edifying aspect: holy Mass was more frequented on weekdays than formerly on the holy day of Sunday, and almost all the people who attended the holy sacrifice made their holy communion there. At the sight of such a happy result, the servant of God thrilled with joy and conceived the hope of obtaining more important ones. The thought that Our Lord was in solitude, and that whole days passed without him receiving the homage of a single adorer, caused him vivid pain. He tried to remedy an evil that his great faith made intolerable to him by founding the Work of Perpetual Adoration. God blessed this holy enterprise. After having provided for the honor of the Son, he turned to the side of the Mother, and sought to revive devotion toward her by implanting in his parish the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary. He then undertook something similar in favor of young people and men: he enrolled them under the banner of the most holy Sacrament. Having thus become master of the hearts of the healthiest part of the population, he attacked with vigor three great abuses that reigned in his parish, namely: the profanation of the holy day of Sunday, an unbridled love for dancing, and the frequenting of taverns. Success crowned his efforts, and the parish of Ars contracted from then on habits of piety, and became an image of the fervor of the first Christians.

The venerable Curé of Ars, knowing that the people like to receive religious instruction through the eyes, a genre of preaching that takes place especially through the brilliance and pomp of external worship, forgot nothing of all that could enhance its splendor and magnificence. To this effect, he had a tabernacle made worthy of the God who resides there and a rich altar, had the woodwork of the choir restored, and raised four chapels which all became famous for the wonders that were worked there. The first was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist; the second to Saint Philomena, whom he called his little Saint; the third in honor of the Ecce Homo; and the fourth in honor of the holy Angels. The news of all that took place at Ars reached the ears of the diocesan authority, which, seeing that the han d of God was wit h the holy Curé, resolved to provide a vaster field for his zeal and to transfer him to a more important parish; but heaven declared itself against this project, and the venerable Curé remained at Ars.

The heart of the servant of God, entirely animated by divine charity, could not find itself in the presence of any kind of misfortune without suffering cruelly from it. Having noticed that a certain number of young girls, some orphans, others almost abandoned by their families, were exposed to great danger due to their poverty and isolation, he conceived the generous thought of adopting them as his children and founding a 'Providence' to take them in. To this end, h e sold all his patrimony and bought a house, the direction of which he entrusted to some pious young women. The staff of this establishment grew rapidly, and to satisfy so many needs, heaven sometimes had to intervene through true wonders. One day, when bread had run out, the venerable Curé said to one of the mistresses: 'Put the leaven into the little flour you have, close your kneading trough, and tomorrow act as if nothing had happened.' This order was carried out to the letter, and the next day, when the kneader set to work, this handful of flour multiplied in her hands in a marvelous way. This miraculous kneading trough has been preserved, and the directors of the little Providence show it to pilgrims. In other circumstances, wheat and wine multiplied in a miraculous way. But this work was too much after the heart of God not to excite the fury of hell against it. While God approved it through striking miracles, men pursued it with an ardor and relentlessness that were barely understandable. In the end, the holy Curé had to yield to the storm and consent to transfer the establishment in 1847 to the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Bourg. But they annihilated the work by suppressing the orphanage to substitut e it with a boarding school an d a school for the children of the village. This was perhaps the hardest trial of the life of the venerable Curé of Ars. It took all the magnanimity of his great heart to endure such a painful blow. Seeing that this establishment no longer met the views of God, he carried his zeal elsewhere, and it was then that he undertook the incomparable work of the Missions, and he secured for more than two hundred parishes of the diocese of Belley the resources necessary to enjoy the benefit of a mission every ten years.

The Venerable had an insatiable ardor for mortification and penance. He became so familiar with austerities that they became as if natural to him, and eventually entered as a necessary element into the requirements of his life. He gave everything into the hands of the poor, keeping nothing for himself. He eventually gave away even the mattress and cushions of his bed, thinking that a straw pallet was a sufficient bed for him, and even then, he did not cease to pull out the straw and throw it into the fire, to feel the hardness of his floorboards more. As people insisted on replacing it, he decided to abandon his bedroom and go sleep on the floor of his attic. The type of food he had adopted was in harmony with the other austerities of his life. During the first years of his ministry, he ate only pieces of black bread that had lingered for a long time in the beggars' bag, and which he bought at a high price. "Let us be happy," he said, "to eat the bread of the poor: they are the friends of Jesus Christ. It seems to me that I am there at the table of Our Lord." One or two potatoes boiled in water completed the meal. As he said himself, he sometimes spent a week with three meals. He even tried to get used to living only on raw herbs; but he could not resist the severity of such a diet. He practiced these frightening austerities especially when he wanted to obtain some extraordinary grace, or to come to the aid of some notable sinner. He was asked one day what conduct should be held regarding certain sinners to whom one cannot order considerable penances without exposing them to abandoning the sacraments altogether. "Listen," he replied, "here is a good recipe: give them a small penance, and do the rest in their place." He also had great confidence in the merit of fasting. "The demon," he said, "mocks the discipline and other instruments of penance; at least, if he does not mock them, he makes little of them, and still finds a way to get along with those who use them; but what puts him to rout is deprivation in food and sleep. There is nothing that the demon fears so much, and which is more pleasing to the good God. How many times have I experienced it, when I was alone for five or six years, able to give myself to my attraction, quite at my ease, without being noticed by anyone! Oh! how many graces Our Lord granted me in those days!... I obtained from him what I wanted!" The clothing of the holy priest was in harmony with the austerity of his life. He never had more than one cassock, and only took it off when it fell into rags. He allowed it to be mended, but never for another to be substituted for it, as long as it could be worn. It was the same with his hat and his shoes. His whole exterior was so poor that he could not go anywhere without drawing all eyes upon him.

The venerable Curé of Ars was chosen by divine Providence as an instrument of grace and mercy to awaken France from its religious lethargy, to bring the unbelievers back to the faith and the sinners to virtue; thus there are no torments that Satan, that spirit of hatred, did not seek to make him endure, no persecutions that he did not stir up against him, no evils of all kinds with which he did not afflict him. The venerable Curé willingly told the pious directresses of Providence about the diabolical vexations of which he was the object: "I do not know if they are demons, but they come in large bands. One would say a flock of sheep. I can hardly sleep." Some time later he told them: "Last night, when I was on the point of falling asleep, the grappin (that is what he called the demon) began to make noise like someone binding a barrel with iron hoops." — Another time: "The grappin paid me a visit; he was blowing so hard that I thought he wanted to sniff me. He seemed to be vomiting gravel, or I do not know what, in my room." He made no difficulty in recounting even in his catechisms the vexations of which he was the object on the part of the spirits of malice. "The demon," he said one day, "is very cunning, but he is not strong; a sign of the cross puts him to flight. Look, it has not even been three days since he was making a great racket above my head. One would have said that all the carriages of Lyon were rolling on the floor... No further back than last night, there were troops of demons shaking my door; they were speaking like an army of Austrians. I did not understand a word of their jargon. I made the sign of the cross, they all left." — "One night, I woke up with a start, and I felt myself lifted into the air. Little by little I was losing my bed; I quickly armed myself with the sign of the cross, and the grappin left me." But here is a fact even more striking than those one has just read. The venerable Curé of Ars having gone to the mission of Saint-Trivier, precisely at the time when these diabolical manifestations were making the most noise, his confreres began one evening to tease him: "Come, come, dear Curé, do like the others, eat better: it is the way to finish with these devilries." The servant of God, after having listened to them with his ordinary kindness, replied to them: "Well! Gentlemen, do not be surprised if you hear noise tonight." Indeed, around midnight, a horrible crash is heard: the rectory is upside down, the doors are banging, the windows are trembling, the walls are shaking, sinister creaks make one fear they will collapse. In an instant all the laughers of the day before are standing, and rush into the room of the servant of God, shouting: "Get up, the rectory is going to fall." — "Oh! I know well what it is," he replies calmly. "You must go to bed, there is nothing to fear." Such calm words brought peace to all minds; the noise ceased, and everyone was reassured. It is difficult to conceive the excess of fury that Satan nurtured against the servant of God. He said to him one day, through the mouth of a possessed woman: "How you make me suffer!... If there were three like you on earth, my kingdom would be destroyed... You have taken from me more than eighty thousand souls..." He took all forms to torment him, and he was always inventing some new means. He was not content with knocking at his door and disturbing his rest with frightening noises: he hid under his bed, under his headboard, and made, all night long, resound in his ear, sometimes sharp cries, sometimes lugubrious groans, muffled complaints, faint sighs.

Toward the end of his life, the persecutions of Satan became less frequent and less violent. The enemy felt defeated, and he no longer dared to wage open battles against his conqueror. He was content to disturb his sleep. Then he would make a charivari at his door, mimicking in turn the growl of a bear, the howl of a wolf, the bark of a dog; other times he called him in his rough and insolent voice: Vianney! Vianney! come then, come then! He also hailed him in the middle of the courtyard, and, after having shouted for a long time, he imitated a cavalry charge or the sound of an army on the march; sometimes he drove nails into the floor with great hammer blows, sometimes he split wood, planed boards, sawed paneling like a carpenter busy inside the house: or else he would drill all night. He would beat the charge on the table, on the fireplace, and mainly on the water pitcher, seeking by preference the most resonant objects. Sometimes he would leap like an escaped horse, which would rise to the ceiling and fall back heavily. The servant of God had ended up getting used to all these infernal attacks which changed, in the end, into a source of consolation and happiness. He noticed that after the most terrible struggles, the Lord usually brought him some repentant sinner, or procured him some considerable alms. From then on he was full of joy when the demon redoubled his fury: "He is angry," he said, "it is a good sign; money and sinners are going to come to us."

The success that the venerable Curé of Ars obtained in the exercise of the holy ministry, far from edifying his brethren in the priesthood, became for them an occasion of scandal which they believed they had to remedy by all means in their power. There were those who forbade their parishioners, under pain of refusal of absolution, from going to confess at Ars; others went further, and denounced from the height of the Christian pulpit the abuses of the nascent pilgrimage; others finally denounced him to the diocesan authority. But the humility and greatness of soul of the holy Curé triumphed over everything. When he was asked if so many contradictions had never made him lose the peace of his heart, he replied: "The cross, to make one lose peace? It is the cross that gave peace to the world; it is the cross that must carry it into our hearts. All our miseries come from the fact that we do not love it. It is the fear of crosses that increases crosses. A cross, carried simply, and without those returns of self-love, which exaggerate the pains, is not a cross. A peaceful suffering is no longer a suffering. We complain about suffering! We would have much more reason to complain about not suffering, since nothing makes us more like Our Lord than carrying His cross. Oh, beautiful union of the soul with Our Lord through the love and virtue of His cross!... I do not understand how a Christian can not love the cross and flee from it! Is it not fleeing at the same time from Him who was willing to be attached to it and die there for us?"

The man of God led a life so laborious that it was impossible to understand how he could resist such extreme fatigue. He was not without experiencing serious indispositions; but in him the vigor of the spirit compensated for the weakness of the body, and at the moment when the latter seemed near to succumbing, the soul came to its aid, and revived it by communicating to it the superabundance of its life. However, on May 3, 1843, his strength disappeared, and his extreme weakness made one fear a near death. But the servant of God had the premonition that his hour had not come, and that he still had to bear the burden of the day and the heat for a long time. Indeed, the convalescence made rapid progress, and on June 6 he was able to resume the exercise of his ministry. In this illness, he glimpsed the judgments of God from close by, and from then on he wanted to devote the rest of his days to penance and prayer. Persuaded that he could only give himself to this holy exercise in solitude, he took flight on the night of September 13, 1843, and went to bury himself in a small room of the paternal house, in Dardilly. The rumor of his presence having spread in all the surroundings, people came in crowds to find him. Deceived thus in his hopes and pursued by the multitude he was fleeing, he hastened to return to Ars and to resume there the ministry of souls.

The origin of the pilgri mage of Ars date s back to the year 1823. From that moment, several people conceived the desire to address themselves to him and to take him as the director of their consciences. But the movement did not take on a well-marked character until 1826, and it is as a confessor that the servant of God made himself known. By 1835, the influx was such that the holy Curé had to take the determination to no longer move away from his post. He bore alone the weight of this prodigious influx until 1843, the time at which Mgr Devie gave him a curate; for ten years, he had no other cooperator. It was only in 1853 that the diocesan authority, seeing that the pilgrimage was always taking on greater proportions, placed missionaries near him to serve as his auxiliaries. A service of public carriages had been organized for the use of pious visitors, which traveled from Lyon to Ars, the distance of which is seven to eight leagues. Eight or ten large carriages were not enough per day for the influx of pilgrims; the administration had had to deal with this competition, and paths that were impassable in the beginning had been transformed into main roads. In the last years, the Lyon railway company also thought it necessary to take an interest in Ars, and offered special conditions to pilgrims. At the end of their journey, they found a poor church and a poor hamlet of which almost all the houses were transformed into inns or shops for objects of piety. Behind the church reigns a fairly vast square where a few recent constructions for the use of the pilgrims stand out, but most of the buildings are hovels inhabited by farmers. The small landscape that extends beyond, without great horizons and without singular accidents, all filled with the fields and hedges of the Dombes, has nothing either that could flatter or charm the curious. What, then, were these crowds seeking that flocked to this sort of desert? A new John the Baptist preaching penance by his words and even more by his examples. Indeed, he spent the greater part of his time in the holy tribunal: it was, so to speak, his home. He entered it before daybreak, as early as three or four o'clock in the morning; he often did not leave it until eleven o'clock at night. Of the twenty hours that thus made up his day, he took the time for his Mass and his thanksgiving: the rest, which cannot truly count for anything, when he was not using it to serve his neighbor, was devoted more to mortifications than to rest. To confess and to suffer, that is to say, always to preach penance, that is about his whole life. He therefore spent only a few hours in the miserable rectory that witnessed so many mortifications and virtues. He wanted to be alone there, in order to attend more perfectly to prayer and contemplation; he wanted God alone to be the spectator of his austerities and his struggles. Thus, the door of the rectory remained closed to the public. The faculty to enter it, when necessity demanded it, was reserved for a religious and his collaborators in the parish ministry. A few priests who came from outside alone shared this privilege: "We were fortunate enough," said one of them, "to share the favor of the small number of the elect, and we sincerely thank Divine Providence for it. The visit to the dwelling of the Curé of Ars is worth more than a sermon, even more than a long retreat. It speaks to the heart much more eloquently than the most eloquent speeches. These old smoke-stained walls, these two or three rustic chairs half-broken, this Christ, this plaster Virgin, which receive so many supplications and loving aspirations, this poor pallet on which the bones of the old man rest, this pavement damp with the tears and blood of penance, everything astonishes you, softens you, confuses you, and inspires in you the most serious reflections."

After the few hours of rest he had taken, he went to the church. As early as he rose, the pilgrims had preceded him and were waiting for him at the door. Many spent the night there to be sure of reaching him. A certain rule had been established. The Curé had hours devoted particularly to men. He usually heard them in his sacristy, and they filled the choir of the church while waiting for their turn to come. Everything was done with order, and the arrival of each determined his rank. Ordinarily, and unless there was an unusual influx of pilgrims, a man, at the end of forty-eight hours, was assured of speaking to the Curé of Ars. But there were privileged ones: sometimes the Curé distinguished them in the midst of the crowd and called them himself. The people, who always love wonders, claimed that the discernment of the holy Curé made him recognize those whom some obstacles might have prevented from waiting, and who had particular reasons to address themselves to him. One saw many ecclesiastics in the crowd, eager to receive the advice of the holy priest; one saw learned religious, bishops, cardinals come to consult the man of God, and it was never in vain: the highest dignitaries of the Church recognized that he had received from heaven the gift of easily penetrating into the secret of hearts, and of dictating, consequently, the most salutary advice and the best proportioned to the needs of each.

The venerable servant of God left the confessional to say his Mass; he returned to it immediately after his thanksgiving. At eleven o'clock in the morning, he left it and climbed into a small pulpit to do what he called the catechism for the pilgrims. From this pulpit, he addressed, in effect, to the crowd, the simplest teachings, contenting himself almost always with commenting on and following the letter of the catechism, as one does for small children. But these catechisms were nonetheless sublime instructions, where did not shine, without doubt, as a pilgrim said, the poor splendors of human eloquence, but which well compensated the listeners by the floods of divine light and heat that they spread upon them. To love God above all, to throw oneself full of confidence and love into the abyss of love of the Heart of Jesus Christ, to mortify oneself, to renounce the vain enjoyments of the world, to strip oneself constantly of all affection for creatures and for oneself, to arrive at the perfect enjoyment of the Creator, such is the summary of the most ordinary discourses of the venerable Curé of Ars and the fundamental studies to which he liked to return most frequently. But he spoke with so much unction and strength at the same time, that tears often came to veil his prophetic eye, and that his audience could not help but weep too. Often, during his seraphic exhortations, plunging into heaven a gaze of eagle and fire, he seemed for an instant to leave the earth and contemplate all the wonders of the other world!... Then he descended and revealed to his children (that is the name he gave to his listeners) what he had heard in the abode of the blessed. But he recounted these ineffable things in a way to captivate, to ravish, to move deeply, and to make all those who crowded around his modest pulpit tremble with admiration and love. One did not listen to him as a man, but as a deputy of the heavenly court, as a new Saint John, sent to men to unveil to them the secrets of eternity.

After the catechism, he returned home to take his meal: he said his office, then visited the sick of the parish, and returned to his confessional.

The most brilliant gift that the Lord granted to the venerable Curé of Ars was that of converting sinners. His soul appeared as a vast reservoir from which he could, so to speak, draw at will the waters of grace to soften and convert the most hardened hearts. He had offered himself to God as a victim for the sins of the world, and he made atonement for them through cruel macerations practiced upon his own body. He did not hesitate to make his blood flow, in union with that of the divine Savior, under the redoubled blows of a discipline of rope and iron, and he shed abundant tears day and night on behalf of men. He did not strive to triumph over wills rebellious against God through the elevation of thoughts or the prestige of language: he fought only with the double power of tears and love. Raised over France and the world as a standard of pardon and mercy, to draw to himself souls afflicted by the thousand evils that sin entails, the venerable Jean-Marie Vianney was not to be deprived of a sign so characteristic of his divine mission. Thus, he was endowed with a thaumaturgical gift so powerful that bodies were modified in his hands like clay or soft wax. A word sufficed for him to make the most incurable infirmities disappear. A gendarme, who had only a six-year-old son whose thighs were knotted, had the idea of making a pilgrimage to Ars. A man of faith, he went with his child in his arms to the venerable Curé and told him of his misfortunes. "My dear friend," the man of God said to him, "your son will be healed." This sentence was not yet finished when a slight cracking sound was heard: the infirm leg straightened, and the child began to walk.

Sometimes he made the healing long-desired, in order to test the faith of the one who was soliciting it. In 1838, a young man from the Puy-de-Dôme, who walked only with the help of crutches, presented himself to the servant of God, saying: "My Father, do you believe that I can leave my crutches here?" — "Hey! there! my friend, you have great need of them," replied the holy Curé. The poor invalid was not discouraged. Each time he had the opportunity, he renewed his request. Finally, on the day of the Assumption, at the hour when the crowd was gathering for the evening exercise, he seized the venerable Vianney again as he passed from the sacristy to the pulpit and asked him his eternal question: "My Father, must I leave my crutches?" — "Well! yes, my friend; yes, if you have faith..." Instantly, the young man began to walk, to the great astonishment of everyone; he went to deposit his crutches at the foot of the altar of Saint Philomena, and he never had need of them again. In gratitude, he has since made pro fession at Belley, in the Institute of the Holy Family.

The sweet voice of the servant of God was no less powerful in dissipating the afflictions of the heart than in healing the infirmities of the body. He had received a gift so marvelous for consoling desolate souls that it often sufficed for him to speak a single word to drive away the most stinging pains, heal the most venomous wounds, and soften the most cruel sorrows. The conduct he maintained toward broken hearts differed according to the quality of the persons who appealed to his charity. To souls still weak in virtue, he let only the accents of the liveliest sympathy and the tenderest compassion be heard; but to those who were stronger and more perfect, he spoke the language of faith and made them generously embrace the cross. What he could not do through the efficacy of his word and the tenderness of his heart, he obtained through the power of his prayer. He said one day: "One cannot understand the power that a pure soul has over the good God. It is not she who does the will of God, it is God who does her will."

We would not have sufficiently made known the virtue of the servant of God if we did not attempt to highlight his faith, his hope, and his love for God and neighbor.

He was so penetrated by the lights of faith that he no longer saw except through it. The events and things of this lower world were, in his eyes, only shadows, and he found reality only in the truths of the supernatural order. He spoke of our august mysteries with such great conviction that those who heard him were almost seized with a holy dread: it seemed that he had just contemplated the mysteries of which he was entertaining his listeners, and that for him faith had neither obscurity nor veils. He did not tire of speaking of heaven, and it was with a sentiment so sweet that he seemed to have already tasted its delights. "The heart," he said, "is drawn toward what it loves most: the proud toward honors, the miser toward riches; the vindictive thinks of vengeance, the unchaste of his evil pleasures. But the good Christian, what does he think of? toward which side will his heart turn? toward the side of heaven, where his God is, who is his treasure." The great servant of God was truly the just man who lives only by faith; he was entirely plunged in God, he conversed with Him as a friend with his friend, and, so to speak, face to face. A person having said to him: "By what can one recognize that one has the spirit of faith?" At this question, the face of the holy old man illuminated, his eyes cast sweet flashes, and he replied: "It is when one speaks to God as to a man!" A sublime word, which contains a whole revelation of the interior of the holy man, and makes us know what his relations were with his God. This great love of the servant of God for the faith made him bitterly deplore the misfortune of those who are deprived of it. "Those who do not have faith," he said, "have a soul much blinder than those who do not have eyes. We are in this world as in a fog; but faith is the wind that dissipates this fog, and that makes a beautiful sun shine upon our soul... See among the Protestants, how everything is sad and cold! It is a long winter: among us everything is gay, joyful, and consoling."

Hope has its foundation in faith and grows with it in the same proportions. Thus, it is impossible to express to what degree of firmness the virtue of hope had arrived in the holy Curé of Ars. The two wings upon which this virtue takes its flight toward heaven are contemplation and prayer. The man of God had an attraction so vivid for the contemplation of divine things that he would have liked to isolate himself from men and the world to give himself to it entirely. Prayer was so familiar to him that he never interrupted it. He, so to speak, came into the world with prayer on his lips, and as long as he was not absorbed by the multitude of pilgrims, he had made the house of God his home, in order to be more within reach of praying. When he was overwhelmed by the excess of fatigue, he had only to pray to find relief and recover his strength. His hope rested above all in the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and, in order to appropriate them, he recited the holy office in union with the principal mysteries of his sorrowful passion. He meditated at Matins on the agony in the Garden of Olives; at Lauds, the sweat of blood and water; at Prime, the condemnation to death; at Terce, the carrying of the Cross; at Sext, the crucifixion; at None, the death; at Vespers, the deposition from the Cross; and at Compline, the burial of the adorable Savior. In order to always have present in his mind some motive to pray with fervor, he had determined, for each day of the week, a particular intention. Sunday was consecrated to the most holy Trinity, Monday to the Holy Spirit, whom he invoked in order to obtain his lights for all the rest of the week; he also prayed on that day for all the holy souls in purgatory. Tuesday, he honored the holy Guardian Angels; Wednesday, the whole celestial court; Thursday, the most holy Sacrament; Friday, the Passion; and Saturday, the most holy Virgin.

Faith discovers to the soul its God, hope lends it wings to fly toward him, and charity plunges it into his bosom and puts it in possession of his chaste embraces. The venerable Curé of Ars, with the help of the first two virtues, had so lost himself in God that it was no longer he who lived, but God who lived in him. His intelligence thought only in God; his imagination was entirely preoccupied with God, and his heart was so inflamed with the love of God that it was no longer accessible to any other love. He could not speak of the love that God the Father showed us by giving us his Son without shedding a torrent of tears. He loved the Holy Spirit so much that he spoke of him in terms unknown and capable of enrapturing the highest intelligences. The Rev. Fr. Lacordaire, having heard him treat this subject, followed him into the sacristy and said to him: "Monsieur le Curé, you have made me know the Holy Spirit." He became incomparable when he spoke of the guidance of souls by this divine Person: "The good God," he said, "in sending us the Holy Spirit, acted toward us like a great king who would charge his minis ter to accompany one of his subjects, saying: You will accompany this man everywhere, and you will bring him back to me safe and sound." The love of God was the subject he treated with predilection. One day, a person testifying in his presence to the happiness she had experienced in hearing him speak on this matter, the holy Curé replied naively: "It is that the love of God, that is my part!..." He liked to finish his catechism with this sentence: "To be loved by God, to be united to God, to live in the presence of God, to live for God, oh! beautiful life!... and beautiful death!..." When he spoke of the love of Jesus, his word became a river that no longer dried up. "O Jesus!" he often exclaimed, his eyes filled with tears: "to know you is to love you. If we knew how Our Lord loves us, we would die of pleasure! I do not believe that there are hearts hard enough not to love, upon seeing themselves so loved... It is so beautiful, charity! It is an outflowing of the heart of Jesus, which is all love..."

The venerable servant of God recommended three devotions: devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and devotion to the souls in Purgatory. "The Passion of Our Lord," he said, "is like a great river that descends from a mountain and never exhausts itself." He spoke of the divine Mother with accents that penetrated and softened all hearts. He loved above all to entertain his audience with the ravishing amiabilities of her immaculate heart. "The heart of this good Mother," he said, "is only love and mercy; she desires only to see us happy. It suffices only to turn toward her to be heard... The most holy Virgin stands between her Son and us. The more we are sinners, the more she has tenderness and compassion for us. The child who has cost his mother the most tears is the dearest to her heart. The heart of Mary is so tender for us that those of all mothers united are only a piece of ice beside hers." He also had a tender devotion to Saint Joseph, and loved to consider, in this great patriarch, the relations of his ministry with that of the priest.

The prodigious love of the venerable Curé for God poured out upon his neighbor and inspired in him for his brothers a charity that one can say was without limits. Never was he seen disgusted with anyone whatsoever; his heart was always above the faults of those who approached him; he lavished upon everyone the most touching marks of benevolence and friendship, and that without effort and without study. He had above all an incomparable tenderness for sinners; it was to them that he had consecrated his entire life. He could not think of their sad fate without shedding bitter tears. He often exhorted his audience to pray for them. "Nothing so afflicts the heart of Our Lord," he said, "than to see his sufferings lost for so great a number... Let us pray then for the conversion of sinners: it is the most beautiful and the most useful of prayers. The just are on the road to heaven, the souls in purgatory are sure to enter it... But the poor sinners! the poor sinners... there are some who are in suspense. A Pater and an Ave would suffice to tip the balance... How many souls we can convert by our prayers! He who pulls a soul from hell saves that soul and his own. All devotions are good, but there is none better than that one." A Curé complaining to him of not having been able to change the heart of his parishioners, the holy man replied to him: "You have prayed, you have wept, you have groaned, you have sighed. But have you fasted, have you kept vigil, have you slept on the hard ground, have you given yourself the discipline? As long as you have not come to that, do not believe you have done everything." The poor alone could dispute with sinners, with some hope of success, the place of honor in the heart of the holy Curé. The poor were his privileged friends, his tenderly loved brothers. He was at the height of joy when he found himself with them; he pushed his regard for them to the point of politeness, to the point of courtesy. "How happy we are," he said, "that the poor come thus to ask us! if they did not come, one would have to go look for them, and one does not always have the time." He did not want them to be rebuffed or insulted.

The Lord had given him the gift of the virtue of humility to such a degree that he did not even suspect he was for anything in the homages that were lavished every day upon his holiness. The sight of the great good that was being accomplished at Ars, far from making him proud, made him enter more deeply into his nothingness. "The good God," he said, "chose me to be the instrument of the graces that he grants to sinners, because I am the most ignorant and the most miserable of men. If there had been in the diocese a priest more miserable than me, God would have taken him in preference." He had crossed all the degrees of the virtue of humility, and he had arrived at the culminating point, which consists in sincerely hating oneself. He liked, in his catechisms, to repeat this sentence, of which he had made the motto of all his conduct: "They speak ill of you, they say what is true; they pay you compliments, they are mocking you... Which is worth more, that one warns you or that one deceives you? that one takes you seriously or that one mocks you?" Among the virtues that he sought to inculcate in others, he insisted above all on that of humility. He used all sorts of comparisons in order to make this virtue loved and tasted. He said: "Humility is like a balance: the more one lowers oneself on one side, the more one is raised on the other"; and again: "Pride is the chain of the rosary of all vices, humility the chain of the rosary of all virtues."

He possessed the spirit of penance to a degree that makes nature shudder. He professed an extreme contempt for his body, which he called his *poor corpse*. But of all the penances that he practiced, the most intolerable consisted in the sixteen to twenty hours that he spent each day locked in the confessional, motionless on the bare board that served as his seat, frozen by the cold during the winter, suffocated by an excessive heat during the summer. When he came out of this place of torment, he was prey to such sufferings that even the rest of the night became a torment. When he stretched his poor panting body on his wretched straw bed, he suffered like a wretch; he did nothing but cough. He was bathed in sweat, he contracted, he folded in on himself, seeking a good spot and finding none; he got up as many as four or five times per hour; he was so weak and so dejected that he could not stand upright. It happened to him to fall several times while going from his room to the church. This state of prostration never stopped him, and he ended by triumphing over it. He confirmed one day the truth of these details by saying: "In the morning, I am obliged to give myself two or three blows of the discipline to make my corpse walk; that wakes up the fibers." He preferred, however, to all bodily austerities, the abnegation of oneself, the renunciation of one's own will. "We have," he said, "nothing of our own but our will; it is the only thing that we can draw from our depths to make an homage of it to the good God. Thus it is assured that a single act of renunciation of the will is more pleasing to him than thirty days of fasting. Every time that we can renounce our will to do that of others, when it is not against the will of God, we acquire great merits, which are known only to God alone. What is it that makes the religious life so meritorious? it is the renunciation of every instant to the will, this continuous death to what is most alive in us."

The Holy Spirit had not made the servant of God die so perfectly to himself, except to communicate to him the life of grace and fill him with his most precious gifts. Among these infused gifts, the most manifest was the gift of tears, provoked sometimes by a sentiment of divine joy, and sometimes by the effect of an ineffable sorrow. They were one of the most powerful weapons with which the Lord had equipped him to touch sinners and triumph over their insensibility.

For a long time, the servant of God had, so to speak, only a breath of life left; at every moment, his weak voice faltered on his lips and seemed on the point of fading away. Everything announced his imminent departure for heaven, but no one wanted to believe it. People were so accustomed to seeing him live by miracle that it seemed the wonder would never end. Finally, on July 29, 1859, the servant of God remained, according to his custom, sixteen to seventeen hours in the confessional, gave his catechism as usual, and ended the fatigues of the day with evening prayer. But, upon returning to his room, he found himself so exhausted that he collapsed into a chair, saying: "I can do no more!" The next day, at one hour past midnight, he made long efforts to drag himself out of bed and crawl to the church once more, but he could not manage it. He called for help, and people arrived. "Are you tired, Father?" — "Yes, I believe this is my poor end." — "I will go look for help." — "No, do not disturb anyone, it is not worth it." — However, he sent for his confessor, the parish priest of Jassans, a parish about three-quarters of an hour away from Ars. When the day came, he did not speak of celebrating Holy Mass and began to yield to all the care he had hitherto rejected. This double symptom was serious. — "You are suffering greatly," he was told. — A resigned nod of the head was his answer. It would be hard to imagine the consternation caused by his absence when, in the morning, he was not seen leaving his confessional at the usual hour. A profound sorrow spread from place to place.

For three days, all the means that piety can inspire were put into action to move heaven. Mgr de Langalerie, Bishop of Belley, warned by frequent messages of the progress of the illness, had arrived breathless, moved, praying aloud, parting the kneeling crowd in his path; he was a witness to the ardent prayers addressed to God for the preservation of such a precious existence. "We were," he said, "as if carried by the flood of the faithful in tears to the foot of the altar; there, we assisted at the public prayers; there, we heard one of his beloved sons, one of our missionaries who remained with him, ask for a miracle for the return of this venerated father to life and health, and since, despite ourselves, we could not associate ourselves with this prayer, we contented ourselves with abandoning ourselves and uniting ourselves to the will of God. What! we said, he has worked so much! He would undoubtedly say like Saint Martin to his weeping disciples: Non recuso laborem; — "I do not refuse to work still." He, so good, seeing our tears, would have consented to live; but we, truly, could we really ask for it? He is tired, exhausted, he seemed to sustain himself only by a miracle; has God not left him to us long enough? We need him; but he, he needs rest, he has a right to the reward; let him enter, then, let him enter at last into the joys of his God; Intra in gaudium Domini tui. And besides, will he be so lost in the joys of heaven that he can no longer think of us, pray for us, and serve us? Heaven is so close to the earth, since it is God who unites them..."

The holy will of the Lord was, in fact, that His servant should go to receive his reward. On Tuesday, the servant of God himself asked for the Sacraments. Providence had brought for this hour, so that they might be witnesses to this great spectacle, a considerable number of priests who had come from the most distant dioceses; the entire parish was present... One saw silent tears flow from the eyes of the holy sick man when the bell announced the supreme visit of the Master he had so adored. A few hours later, he shed more, these were the last, tears of joy... They fell on his bishop's cross. The worthy prelate had arrived just in time, for the very night that followed the interview he had with the holy sick man, at two o'clock in the morning, on Thursday the 4th, without shaking, without agony, without violence, Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, after more than fifty years spent in the service of souls, fell asleep in the Lord, while the priest charged with reciting the prayers for the commendation of the soul pronounced these words: Veniant illi obviam sancti Angeli Dei et perducant eum in Civitatem cælestem Jerusalem!

Hardly had the news spread when the rectory was invaded for two days and two nights; without end or respite, an incessantly renewed and ever-growing crowd rushed from all parts of France. Care had been taken to place under sequestration all the objects that had belonged to the Saint, and this precaution was very necessary, for there is reason to believe that, if full satisfaction had been given to the desire of the multitude who besieged its walls, not one stone would remain upon another of this rectory which is now a treasure of rich memories!

Two Brothers of the Holy Family stood by the bed of state, protected by a strong barrier against too immediate contact, and their arms grew tired of presenting to his hands, accustomed to blessing, the objects that people wanted to touch. To say what was applied to these venerated remains—crosses, rosaries, books, and images, and, when the numerous shops of the village were almost exhausted, linen, jewelry, etc.—would be impossible. Despite the excessive heat, the body could be kept uncovered until the night that preceded the funeral, without it offering the slightest trace of decomposition. The Saint seemed to be sleeping, his features had their usual expression of sweetness, calm, and goodness; one would even have said that they were undergoing a luminous transformation little by little. His funeral took place on Saturday, August 6, with the greatest pomp and in the midst of an immense gathering. The remains of the servant of God were deposited in the chapel of Saint John the Baptist, near that confessional which had been the theater of his martyrdom and his glorious triumphs. The Lord did not delay in glorifying His servant through striking miracles. The Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX, after the favorable opinion of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, signed, on October 3, 1872, the commission for the introduction of the cause of the venerable servant of God.

We have used, to compose this biography, the Life of the venerable Curé of Ars, by M. Jean Durche; the Annals of Holiness in the 19th Century; and the Summary of the Process made by the diocesan authority.