October 28, 2009

St. John Vianney

By Samuel Morehead

The best description of a saint perhaps once came from a young girl whose experience of the Church’s holiest had been colored by her parish’s stained glass windows: “A saint is somebody the light shines through.”

Father George Rutler offered this anecdote to set the theme of his Oct. 21 lecture to an overflowing crowd in Bonfils Hall at the John Paul II Center. Speaking on the life, times and holiness of John Vianney, the well-known priest, author and television personality highlighted that particular light which emanated from this patron saint of priests.

As a seminarian aspiring, in my own right, to be a saintly priest like he who is my vocational exemplar and for whom our very own archdiocesan seminary is named, Rutler’s humorous—yet historically and spiritually comprehensive—account of Vianney represents yet another extraordinary fruit of this Year for Priests.

The first fruit came this summer as I was blessed to be in Rome with Pope Benedict XVI as he inaugurated this year of the priesthood. In honoring the beautiful and vital vocation of the priest, the Holy Father has called the Church to reconsider the virtue, service and sacrifice which made Vianney such an illumining window to Christ the High Priest.

In the context of the brutal years of the French Revolution, during which the Church was persecuted, parishes were closed, and the government even sought to promote pagan worship, Vianney found his priestly vocation. Only after struggling in the seminary and requiring personalized direction, he managed to be ordained.

Sent to the village of Ars, Father Vianney had to do battle both with an uncatechized people hostile to the faith as well as with demonic powers, whose menacing activity many witnessed on numerous occasions throughout Vianney’s life. According to Rutler, one priest reported overhearing a conversation between Vianney and the devil, who asserted, “If there were two more of you, my days would be numbered.”

To an eager seminarian, there is a compelling challenge in the acknowledgment that three truly saintly priests would be the devil’s undoing. Yet, the project of holiness is God’s work. The only thing, ultimately, any of us can do is generously to offer our talents, our abilities, our lives, our very selves to the providential will of God—and not be afraid of where he will lead us.

Eating but one boiled potato a day, sleeping but two or three hours a night, spending the day tending to the needs of his parishioners, and returning to Ars after three times seeking to flee to a monastery, Vianney’s sanctity took the form of earnest penance for his people, unparalleled pastoral availability to his people, and a sacrificial love of his people.

Besides his other good works, Rutler maintains Vianney is best remembered for his tireless work in the confessional. With persons coming from around Europe and waiting nearly a week to meet with him, he would hear confessions for 10 to 15 hours every day.

Personally challenged by Rutler’s vivid description of the sanctity of such a priest, one can take heart in knowing that John Vianney’s times are not dissimilar to our own and that God similarly calls for saintly priests in this time and place, with all our own crises of faith.

The question is: Will the priests of today and tomorrow, each in his own way, respond to such a radical, counter-cultural, and decisive call to holiness? How will I respond to the One who also called St. John Vianney?

When asked what a future priest is to take from the example of John Vianney, Rutler suggested, “Make yourselves available, and give God permission to lead you to true union with himself.”

Though God had a singular plan of holiness for the life and priesthood of St. John Vianney, he nonetheless calls all priests to share that ardor which enflamed the heart of this saint, who once said, “The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.”

Thus, it becomes the seminarian’s prayer that he also might be led to the very heart of Christ and, from a transforming union with the Lord, reflect God’s true light to all whom he is called to serve.

Samuel Morehead is a seminarian at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver.