SAINT JOHN VIANNEY

The patron saint of parish priests - Saint John Vianney - is known to have spent entire days in the confessional. I don't mean to be irreverent, but as one who spends entire days agonizing over parish administration I sometimes say, “Would that I lived in 18th century France!"

I'm joking, of course. No saint lived in easy times, because it's never been easy to be alive. And though he may not have had to suffer YouTube gladly, Saint John Vianney knew what it meant to live in that strange paradox of going viral while at the same time being abused in the comment section.

The French Revolution had just claimed the lives of hundreds of priests put to death in the name of The Enlightenment, and he himself had to be confirmed secretly when he was a teenager for fear of meeting the same fate. Nor did his trials end there. Once ordained, he was persecuted by the malice of his fellow priests who thought him a simpleton.

The devil was also personally after the good Cure of Ars. He attacked him openly and regularly in the same way that he would Saint Padre Pio in the 20th century - violently, at night, in his room, and in the dark.

But Saint John Vianney was humble. And his humility secured his victory over both torments. When his brother priests began a petition to have him defrocked by the bishop, Vianney was happy to sign it himself. And as for the devil, well, he was so exhausted from his futile efforts to discourage the Saint that he said to him, “If there were three such priests as you, my kingdom would be ruined."

Humility. And from this virtue came power. As our own Monsignor McDonald of blessed memory said about the Cure, “He was sent to a parish that was considered a dump." But from there, the Lord himself sent word of his holiness to all the people of France. And this is why there was always a line outside of his confessional.

It gives me pause. And well it should. I share the same vocation as this holy man - the privilege of being a parish priest. “A priest," he said, “is a man who would die to be one." The lesson is in remembering that he did not become a saint by administration. His holiness was something greater than parking lot projects. Rather, he was a lion in the pulpit and a lamb in the confessional, entirely available to his people. He was love.

The very last request of the English convert and scholar, Saint John Henry Newman, who died in August of 1890, was for the biography of Saint John Vianney. Those who witnessed this saw one of history's most intelligent men preparing himself for heaven in the best way possible, to become, at last, very simple about the whole thing. +