Cure d'Ars

Cure d'Ars

"Saints get used up very quickly in the eyes of the world, which is why God Who knows all about it--since it is He Who is acting through them--unceasingly reveals new ones."

Thus writes Henri Gheon, pious French Roman Catholic, in the recently published Secret of the Cure d'Ars.* Far from used up is the Cure of Ars: he was canonized only 14 years ago as St. Jean Baptiste Vianney. During most of his lifetime (1786-1859) the priest of an obscure village near Lyon, the Cure of Ars is today by papal command a model for parish priests the world over. Since it takes more than mere goodness to make a saint, M. Vianney (as Hagiographer Gheon for brevity calls him) is easier to admire than imitate.

He mortified his flesh with scourges and a hair shirt, ate mostly boiled potatoes, in general mistreated his body so that his doctor said "science could not explain how he remained alive." For 35 years, according to his account and those of his associates, he was visited, tormented and in fact "infested" by the Devil. The Cure read people's minds in the confessional, performed small miracles such as causing grain to multiply during famine, large ones such as curing illness. His medical miracles M. Vianney modestly attributed to another saint, with whom he said he held periodic converse: a First-Century martyr named St. Philomena.

By the time he was 60, M. Vianney had transformed the life of his village, had converted 100,000 people outside it. At 67 he came as near to backsliding as a saint might: he was on the point of defying his bishop and entering a monastery.

Writes Hagiographer Gheon: "The Devil had managed to slide into his conscience the monstrous sophism that a priest of the Church can obey God while disobeying the Church; it was the one vulnerable spot--and the devil put his finger on it." M. Vianney cheated his old enemy, however, and remained at Ars.

* Sheed & Ward ($1).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.