St. John Vianney
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St John Vianney was a blockhead and so am I.
St. John Vianney was born into a peasant family in the small town of Dardilly on 8 May 1786.
His family was poor in material possessions but rich in humanity and in faith. He spent so many years of his childhood and as a teenager in the fields and tending the flocks that at the age of 17 he was still illiterate.
He desperately wanted to be a priest. But soon after he entered the seminary, they asked him to leave mid-semester because he could not keep up with the academic work.
At that point an old pastor from Ecully took him in and personally prepared him and the Bishop of Grenoble ordained him when he was 29.
Before long, 1000s of people came from all over France to hear his wisdom and were converted.
It was not by virtue of his own human gifts that he succeeded in moving peoples' hearts; he won over even the most rebellious souls by communicating to them what he himself lived deeply, namely, his friendship with Christ.
We all have family and friends we want to help become committed to Jesus. St. John Vianney shows us you don’t have to be a theologian. We just need to develop a deep friendship with Jesus in prayer and then just be yourself.
That is the beauty of the Rosary, Mary helps us develop that friendship with Christ.
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St. John Vianney emphasized three things and his parish exploded with faith: Living Sundays well, the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and Confession
When Vianney got to his parish in Ars France, a rural farming community, there was a big problem, the people were not against religion, they were just totally lukewarm and indifferent. During the busy seasons these farmers worked all day on Sundays. During the winter they stayed up all hours at dances on Saturday night and then spent all day Sunday in the bars and taverns and wouldn’t go to Church.
I took eight years for St. John Vianney to win the people over
three - Confession
The first gift Jesus gave the Church after his Resurrection was the Sacrament of Confession. He came to the Apostles locked in the Upper Room and said to them, “As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.” After saying this he breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.”
Our sin is the only thing that blocks us from perfect happiness. Jesus gave us the remedy. Confession. If each day we would do a brief examination of our life, and then go to confession at least once a month, Jesus would set us free from our sins and we could reach the happiness we long for.
This is what St. John Vianney taught the people. 300 people a day and 100,000 a year would come to him for confession. Why? Because he could read souls. God gave him the gift of reading souls, of knowing the true state souls were in, that many were dead in sin and needed to be brought back to life by confession so that they would not tragically end in hell. It was love for souls that led him to spend 16-17 hours a day in the confessional.
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The real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist
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Here is where the lives of three saints intersect.
In 1815, when Vianney was only newly ordained, a missionary of the order of St. John of God was preaching in Lyon and stayed at the home of Pauline Jaricot, then only 17. This missionary gave Pauline a relic of St. Philomena. She then gave part of the relic to St. John Vianney.
St. Philomena appeared to Vianney numerous times and he made a partnership with her. Whenever someone would ask Vianney for healing or other needs, he would advise them to make a novena to St. Philomena. That is when 1000s of miracles began to occur.