Tuesday, 8/4/15
Today the Church honors St. John Vianney, the patron saint
of parish priests. The fourth of six children in a very religious French family,
John was born in 1786.
In 1792 the French Revolution, in its third year, ordered
all priests to take an oath, pledging to honor the government, rather than the
pope, as the head of the Church.
Even though it meant the loss of their income, three fourths
of the priests took the oath, coming to being known as the Recusant Clergy. Many
of them settled in America’s Midwest; while others stayed in hiding,
ministering to devout Catholics; and some of them were guillotined as enemies
of the State.
John was sixteen in 1802 when France, under Napoleon,
recognized the Church. John was nourishing a strong desire to be a priest, however,
he was twenty in 1806 before his father freed him from working on the farm. He was
two years into his preliminary studies when he was called up by the army. Then,
somehow missing the time for his recruitment, he found his way into a hiddent
seminary where at twenty-nine, in 1815 he was ordained a priest.
In 1818, at thirty-two, John Vianney was appointed the Cure’of
Ars, a village of 230 souls. In ten year’s time, every week saw hundreds
of people coming to Ars to confess to the Cure’. Later that number was in the thousands; and the Cure’ was spending over ten hours a day in
the confessional. While he had never been much of a student, he drew people
with his appreciation of their worth, and with a honest understanding of
their difficulties.
John died in 1859 at age seventy-two; and three hundred
priests attended his funeral.
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