Saint John Mary Vianney, Priest – Readings

Commentary on Ezekiel 3:17-21; Matthew 9:35—10:1

The Gospel reading describes the mission work of Jesus. It tells us that Jesus moved from town to town, teaching in synagogues and proclaiming the coming of the Reign of God in his person and, as a sign of that Reign, the healing of all kinds of diseases and sicknesses.

Crowds gathered to listen to him and to be touched by his healing powers. Jesus, for his part, was moved to the depths of his Heart with compassion for them. The word ‘compassion’ means to share in the feelings and sufferings of others. Not just to feel sorry for them, but to show that he knows what they are experiencing in himself. He saw them as lost sheep needing the guidance and support of a shepherd. Jesus, of course, is that shepherd. He is, in his own words, the Good Shepherd.

He then turned to his disciples, inviting them to take part in this work and, after he has left them, to continue it. The harvest, the numbers of people in need, are huge. Not only were his disciples to take part in the work of Jesus, they were to pray for others to join them in this work. He then called them together and passed on to them the power to drive out evil forces and to heal every kind of disease.

One of those who clearly aligned himself with the work of the Good Shepherd was John Vianney. Truly he was an extraordinarily devoted shepherd, not only to the people in his own parish, but literally to thousands of others who came to him, in search of healing of body and spirit. His life was one of total commitment in the service of others. A life of utter simplicity with long hours spent in prayer.

The First Reading is a passage from the prophet Ezekiel and was apparently inserted at this point in the text by a later editor. But it points out one of the prophet’s most characteristic qualities. It is a passage which is both a warning and a reassurance, and its relevance to today’s feast is very clear.

“The Lord” (God) is presented as speaking to Ezekiel, his prophet and messenger. Ezekiel’s responsibility is to hand on the word of God as he has received it. So, if the prophet fails to pass on God’s warnings to the wicked person and dissuade him from his behaviour, that person will die in his sin, but Ezekiel will be held responsible for his fate. On the other hand, if the wicked person, in spite of being given clear warnings about God’s will, perseveres in his evil behaviour, then he will be punished, but the prophet will not be held responsible.

And if a good person yields to a temptation to do something evil, that person, too, will die in sin. His former good deeds will not be remembered, but if the prophet had failed to give warning, then the prophet will be held responsible for the person’s death. If a good person has been given warning about not falling into sin and does not sin, he will live, and the prophet too will have saved his own life.

This passage tells us something important. Namely, that God sees us as we are in the here and now, and does not really take our past into account. God is not an accountant. There is not a book with a list of our good deeds in black and our sins in red which, at the end, are totted up. If we are in the ‘black’, well and good; if we are in the ‘red’, too bad.

Again and again in the Gospel we see Jesus bringing forgiveness and reconciliation into the lives of people who had seriously sinned. The two most striking examples are the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-49) or the criminal who died on the cross with Jesus (“today you will be with me in paradise.”; Luke 23:43). We might remember, too, that the Sacrament of Penance is less concerned with our past (about which we can do little) than with the new directions in which God wants our lives to go.

The passage is very relevant to John Vianney. We know he spent hours every day—sometimes as many as 16 hours—reconciling people to God through the sacrament of Reconciliation. He had a very deep horror of sin, and expressed it clearly. Hearing these confessions deeply pained him, but there was also in him the compassion of Jesus for people to change their ways and be reconciled. The vast numbers of outsiders who made the journey to Ars just for John to hear their expressions of repentance speaks volumes for the comfort and consolation they must have received from their experience with him.

It is not surprising that John Vianney should be the patron of diocesan priests, but the whole pattern of his life carries a message for all priests and religious and indeed for every single person.

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Saint John Mary Vianney, Priest

John Baptist (Jean-Baptiste) Vianney was born at Dardilly, near Lyons, in 1786. He was the son of a farmer, and spent his early life as a shepherd boy. He got little formal schooling. The anti-religious violence of the French Revolution, with the outlawing of priests who remained faithful to their calling, also may have affected his opportunities for education. At the age of 20 he did begin studies for the priesthood, but they were interrupted by his being conscripted for military service.

However, like many others, he soon became a deserter and continued his seminary studies in secret until there was an amnesty in 1810. At this time he received the tonsure, the first step in becoming a cleric, and was accepted by the seminary at Verrieres. After three years he transferred to the seminary at Lyons in 1813. Studies did not come easily to him, especially the mastery of Latin which would have been the medium of instruction in philosophy and theology. He failed in his final oral examination, but was admitted to major orders (subdiaconate, diaconate and priesthood) in 1815.

Although he had the reputation of being the least capable student at Lyons, he was also regarded as the most devout. In accepting him for the priesthood, the vicar general said that the diocese needed not only learned priests, but also holy ones. For his first appointment, he became curate at Ecully for two years until his parish priest, who was very austere and deeply appreciative of Vianney, died in 1817.

Vianney was then appointed parish priest of Ars-en-Dombes, a remote and insignificant village with only about 250 inhabitants. From now on he would be known as the Curé d’Ars (the pastor of Ars). This would be his home for the rest of his life. He lived a very austere and penitential life, living mainly on potatoes. He strongly attacked all blasphemous language and obscenities. He was the cause of village inns closing down because of a lack of custom. He attacked all forms of sexual abuse, dancing and immodesty. But all was not negative.

He excelled at preaching and spiritual direction, both inside and outside the confessional. He seems to have had supernatural gifts of looking into people’s hearts, of knowing of events which had taken place far away and an ability to see into the future. There is well-established evidence that he was persecuted by poltergeists, which he attributed to Satan. These included loud noises, personal violence and even the burning of his bed.

More positively, he was responsible for the unexplained multiplication of food, especially for the orphanage which he had founded. His fame began to spread. Vianney himself attributed these happenings to St Philomena, to whom he had a special devotion and for whom he set up a shrine. But the people believed that Vianney himself was the source of all that happened. Between 1830 and 1845, as many as 300 people a day arrived by train from Lyons to see him. A special booking office had to be opened in Ars to deal with them.

Every day at 11 o’clock he preached at Mass and then spent long hours in the confessional. He could spend up to 12 hours a day hearing confessions and, in the years preceding his death, when the number of visitors reached 20,000 a year, he sometimes spent as many as 16 hours a day in the confessional. With the passing of the years and his deepening and more compassionate understanding of people, he became less severe and more understanding of human weaknesses, although listening to lists of sinful behaviour pained him deeply. He also began to insist more and more on the love of God and the power of the Church’s liturgical prayer.

Three times he left Ars with the intention of entering monastic life, but each time he returned to his parish. He turned down all ecclesiastical promotions, but with reluctance, accepted his being made a canon. But the canon’s robes he sold and gave the money to the poor. A rather surprising honour was the government’s recognising his work by the conferring of the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour. However, he declined to attend the investiture and never wore the decoration.

Worn out by the austerity of his life and the endless numbers of people coming to him for direction, he finally succumbed on 4 August 1859 at the age of 73. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI on 31 May, 1925, and named patron of diocesan priests.

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