On August 4, we celebrate our Pastors’ Day in memory of none other than St John Marie Vianney, who was also a slow learner or a person having learning disability. So how did he become the patron Saint of Diocesan Clergy?
Born on May 8, 1786, to a small farmers family in Dardely about eight miles from Lyons, till the age of 16, Vianney was helping his father in farming. At 18 he expressed his desire to join the seminary but it was only at 19 did his father allow him to leave the farm to be tutored by M Bailey the Cure of Ecully. In the autumn of 1812, he went to the preparatory seminary of Verrieres. There the academic debacle began due to his slow nature of learning and lack of preparatory education. He could not even pick up a bit of Latin and soon his dullness became a matter of the community’s joke. A shocking moment came when he was midway in theology. Vianney was asked to leave the seminary. But M Bailey again undertook to coach him privately. Bailey requested Vianney’s superiors to conduct his exams in his native language French. Finally Vianney passed his exams and his Vicar General decided that if not for Vianney’s studies, atleast for his holiness he should get a chance.
On August 13, 1815, Vianney was finally ordained a priest and was appointed as assistant to his curator and benefactor Bailey. Apart from helping in church work he was also to complete his studies. Due to Vianney’s lack of knowledge of moral theology, the faculty of hearing confessions was withheld from him. But see the irony. Fr John Marie Vianney went on to become one of the churches, ‘greatest confessors’. The most decisive part of Vianney’s life came in the month of February 1818, when the Vicar General appointed him the Cure of Ars. A far away parish where there was no much love of God amidst the villagers. Vianney took the order seriously. At that time, Vianney hardly knew that he would spend the rest of his life there, instilling the love of God in the hearts of villagers.
Ars was soaked in all evil practices of that time. It proved difficult place even for a holy priest such as Vianney, just like what is happening now in some of our Goan parishes. Initially Vianney had to meet with much resistance, verbal abuses and threats. The parishioners did not like their curator to go on talking about their vices openly from the pulpit. But blessed that he was with God’s hand, Vianney was nonchalant. If there was a scandal in the parish, he would talk about it even if there was a threat to him after that. Just as some of our pastors do and face the wrath of the rowdy characters and at times even the educated parishioners.
Vianney was convinced that there were only two ways for converting the villagers. Either by exhortation or by he himself doing penance for the sake of his parishioners. He did the later vigorously by fasting, scanty sleep and by long hours of prayer. Step by step the villagers started getting converted by giving up booze, dance, animal fights and even clandestine Sunday work which Vianney condemned as evil. So obvious was the change in the parishioners that on a pastoral visit to the parish of Ars, the Bishop remarked that this was one of the most instructed church in his diocese. Vianney’s ministry as a confessor and what he could do for the people at the confessional are well-known.
John Marie Vianney was declared a Saint by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and he is the Patron Saint of Diocesan Clergy. So by keeping his teachings in our minds, let us now take a vow to be faithful to the word of God by re-dedicating ourselves to the teachings of the church and our pastors.
