Each August we celebrate the memorial of St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars. He is the patron saint of parish priests. His story is a fascinating one and lets us know once again that God’s ways are not our ways.
John Baptist Vianney was born in 1786 in France and was raised as a shepherd on his father’s farm. He was attracted to the priesthood and began studying with a local priest. Abbe Balley. He struggled with Latin and was a slow learner. He was drafted into the Napoleonic Army, but deserted. The following year Napoleon declared an amnesty for deserters and John entered the seminary at Lyon. He continued to struggle with his studies, but the decision was made to ordain him in 1815 for he was clearly a holy man, although considered not very bright. He spent the first two years after ordination in the parish of his old mentor and then was sent to the village of Ars to become the pastor. Few in the village went to church, and morality was not the strong point of village life.
Over the next nearly 35 years, he brought people back to church, called people to repentance, and established a school for girls and a house for orphans. Though many of the clergy in his diocese looked down on him as rather slow, God’s grace made John such a good and insightful confessor that his reputation spread and people would travel miles from Paris to go to confession to him. At times he would celebrate the morning Mass and then spend up to 16 hours in the confessional. God gave him the gift of wisdom to see into people’s hearts, so that he could bring them God’s forgiveness, mercy and healing.
The Gospel for his Mass says “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few, so ask the harvest master to send out laborers for his harvest.” At the beginning of the 19th century, France certainly had few laborers. The French Revolution in the 1790s was a time of great persecution for the Church.
Because of its close links to the royalty and the aristocracy, the Catholic Church was attacked, priests and nuns were killed, cloisters were sacked, and even Notre Dame Cathedral was turned into a “temple of reason.” By Napolean’s time, the average French priest was in his early 60s, and this in an age where, if you survived the childhood diseases like mumps, rheumatic fever and smallpox, you might live into your early 60s.
But God is faithful. After the fall of Napoleon, there was a revival of vocations so that by the middle of the 19th century, France sent thousands of men and women to the missions in Africa and Asia.
Today we face a worldwide pandemic in a time where there are few vocations in the West. It is also clear that racism and injustice are still festering sins in our country. Are we coming to realize how dependent we are on people to pick our crops, prepare our meat and fish, staff and clean our hospitals and nursing homes? Do we realize that few Americans can live on the present minimum wage or even $10 or $12 an hour? Will facing these realities and our own mortality, as well as a need to foster the common good of all persons, help us to truly be pro-life – a dignified life for all people, of every race, nation, age or occupation? Will younger persons hear God’s call to labor for the harvest in the priesthood, diaconate and religious life?
Let us pray that we might all turn to God in a deeper way so that the harvest, which God so longs for, might be brought in.
Jesuit Father John Michalowski is parochial vicar of St. Peter Church in Charlotte.