Saint John Vianney

Life and historical context

Jean-Marie Vianney was born on 8 May 1786 in Dardilly, a small village a few miles north of Lyon, France, the fourth of six children in a family of devout Catholic farmers. His childhood coincided with the violent dechristianization of the French Revolution, in which Catholic worship was driven underground and the priesthood was outlawed. The family kept the faith secretly, sheltering refractory priests who refused to swear the constitutional oath, and the young Jean-Marie made his First Communion clandestinely at the age of thirteen, in a barn, by candlelight, with a hidden priest officiating.¹

His vocation to the priesthood emerged gradually. After serving briefly in the Napoleonic army during the Russian campaign of 1809 (he was forced into conscription, fell ill, and inadvertently became a deserter when he was unable to rejoin his regiment), he received a general amnesty in 1810 and resumed his preparation for the seminary. His academic difficulties were serious. He was a slow learner of Latin, of which he never gained more than a working knowledge, and he was nearly dismissed from the seminary at Lyon for academic deficiency. He was ordained a priest on 13 August 1815, partly through the personal intervention of his teacher Father Charles Balley, who recognized in the young candidate a depth of holiness more important than scholarly attainment.²

In 1818, after three years as a curate at Écully, Father Vianney was appointed parish priest of Ars-sur-Formans, a remote and largely irreligious village of around 230 inhabitants in the Diocese of Belley. The bishop is said to have warned him: "There is not much love of God in that parish; you will have to put it there." Vianney remained the parish priest of Ars for the next forty-one years, until his death in 1859. He transformed the parish entirely. Within a generation Ars had become one of the most fervent Catholic parishes in France, and within two generations it had become the principal pilgrimage destination of the French Catholic world after Lourdes.

The transformation came principally through his ministry of confession. By the 1840s, pilgrims were coming to Ars from across France and increasingly from other countries to confess to the Curé. He spent up to eighteen hours per day in the confessional, hearing the confessions of an estimated 100,000 penitents per year. The French railway authorities established a special discount fare to Ars to accommodate the volume of pilgrims. He continued this ministry, with brief interruptions for his own attempts at flight (he tried three times to retire to a Carthusian monastery, each time being prevented by the appeals of his bishop and the demands of his penitents), until his final illness in the summer of 1859. He died on 4 August 1859, exhausted and beloved, at the age of seventy-three.³

Theological and spiritual significance

The Curé of Ars is the principal model in modern Catholic spirituality of the parish priest. His significance is not in any theological writing or institutional founding (he was not a theologian, founded no order, and wrote no books) but in the holiness of his ordinary diocesan ministry. The Catholic priesthood is, after the example of Christ, ordered to the service of the people of God in the daily round of the sacraments, the preaching of the Word, and the pastoral care of souls. Vianney did all of this in one small French village for forty-one years and showed in his person what the parish priesthood at full sanctity looks like.

His preaching was simple, direct, and saturated with the love of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The most-cited example is his exchange with the old farmer who would visit the church each day and sit silently before the tabernacle. When Vianney asked him what he did during these visits, the farmer answered: "I look at Him and He looks at me." The exchange has become a Catholic shorthand for the contemplative simplicity that the Curé both lived and inspired in his parishioners.⁴

He suffered considerably under what he and his contemporaries understood as direct demonic oppression, particularly in the years 1824 to 1858. The phenomena (described by Vianney himself and corroborated by reliable witnesses including the local doctor and lay parishioners) included nighttime disturbances, the throwing of furniture, and what the Curé called the grappin (the grappling-iron, his nickname for the devil who he believed was harassing his work). The Catholic Church has consistently treated these accounts as serious testimony of authentic spiritual combat in a saint's life, but neither he nor the magisterium has used them as the primary index of his sanctity. The principal index is the transformation of Ars itself.

He was canonized by Pope Pius XI on 31 May 1925. Pope Pius XI declared him Patron of Parish Priests of the universal Roman Rite in his encyclical Anni Sacri (1929), and Pope Saint John Paul II reaffirmed and extended the patronage to all parish priests across the universal Church in 1986.⁵

Devotion and liturgical observance

The feast of Saint John Vianney is celebrated on 4 August in the universal Roman Calendar with the rank of memorial. Among parish priests and in seminaries, the feast is observed with particular solemnity, often as the patronal feast of the diocesan presbyterate. Pope Benedict XVI declared a Year for Priests from June 2009 to June 2010 in the 150th anniversary of the saint's death, with Vianney as the patron of the year and the model proposed for priestly renewal.

The principal pilgrimage destination associated with Saint John Vianney is the Sanctuary of the Curé of Ars in Ars-sur-Formans, France, on the grounds of the parish where he served. The sanctuary preserves his tomb, the original confessional in which he heard the confessions of generations of pilgrims, and his small presbytery. His incorrupt body, vested in priestly cassock and stole, is exposed in the side chapel of the basilica for veneration. The sanctuary draws several hundred thousand pilgrims annually.

The traditional iconography of Saint John Vianney shows him in a black cassock and surplice with violet stole (the color of confessional ministry), often seated in his confessional or holding a crucifix. He is frequently depicted with his characteristic biretta and his rosary. His liturgical color on the feast is white.

Prayers and novenas associated with Saint John Vianney

The principal devotion to Saint John Vianney is the Novena to Saint John Vianney, prayed for the renewal of the parish priesthood, the conversion of sinners, and the increase of priestly vocations. The novena is most commonly prayed in the nine days leading up to his feast on 4 August.

The Curé's own most-quoted prayer is brief and may be prayed at any time: "My God, I love Thee." He recommended frequent recourse to the Pater Noster, the Angelic Salutation, and especially to the prayer of silent eucharistic adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.

Catholics commonly pair Saint John Vianney devotions with the Holy Rosary, the Marian prayer of entrustment, and the Anima Christi. For the broader theological context, see Catholic doctrine of the Communion of Saints and the Sacrament of Penance.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Francis Trochu, The Curé d'Ars: St. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (1927, English translation 1927; the standard biography). Catholic Encyclopedia (1907 entry on Saint John Vianney, predating his canonization), available at newadvent.org. ↩

2. Trochu, op. cit., on the seminary period and the Latin difficulties. The records of the Diocese of Lyon preserve the documents of his ordination on 13 August 1815. ↩

3. The pilgrimage records of Ars-sur-Formans (preserved in the diocesan archive of Belley-Ars) document the volume of confessions and the social-religious phenomenon of the mid-nineteenth-century French Catholic revival in Ars. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) entry, predating canonization, documents the substantive elements of his life and reputation. ↩

4. The story of the old farmer is preserved in Trochu, op. cit., and in the testimony of contemporaries gathered for the canonization process. ↩

5. Pope Pius XI, Anni Sacri (apostolic letter, 12 March 1929). Pope Saint John Paul II, Letter to Priests of Holy Thursday 1986, on Saint John Vianney as patron of all parish priests. Pope Benedict XVI, declaration of the Year for Priests (June 2009 to June 2010), available at vatican.va. ↩