ST. JOHN VIANNEY--ICON FOR YEAR OF THE PRIEST
Today we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the death of the Cure of Ars--St. John Vianney. This anniversary is one of the reasons why the Pope chose this year to kick off the Year of the Priest. St. John Vianney is a curiously modern saint whose relevance to our era challenges the prevailing Zeitgeist of godlessness and atheism and ambivalent angst that afflicts both young and old alike.
Here are five good reasons to venerate this great saint:
- He loved God. His evident learning disability nearly disqualified him from the priesthood, but his passionate faith and love of Christ made his superiors take a second look at him. He never let the pundits and intelligentsia of the day cloud his vision of the Lord.
- He preached the Catholic faith clearly and with enthusiasm. One of the things we have to be careful of is to judge saints by the times we live in. If we did so, we would find St. John Vianney touched by Jansenism--a Catholic puritanism that in its extreme forms was a heresy. Moderns might say, "He was against dancing" and we might think him a prude, but actually, what he was against was the lack of moral boundaries present in that kind of "fun". He saw a people living without God, and it scared him. He wanted souls for Christ.
- He understood evil and stood up to it. Wrestling with the devil, fighting evil in the hearts of humanity, St. John Vianney showed a courage that touched his parishioners. They never confused his condemnation of sin with a condemnation of themselves. They knew this saint loved them. He realized that life was a battle of good against evil. In his little parish battles as fierce as STAR WARS were fought and won for the side of good.
- He could read people's hearts. He heard confessions for most of the day because people came to him for his understanding of their lives. Did people love him? Absolutely! So much so that they trusted their hearts to him.
- He made sanctity something cool and worth striving for. He was a hero and seen as such by the people of his day.
In my own life, he has always been important since I was a little kid. He made me want to be a priest. He showed that holiness is made up of everyday heroic actions. He's a great model for the priesthood. St. John Marie Vianney--pray for us!
I just want to thank you for today's DVD premier. It was EXCELLENT!!! I wanted to stand up and raise my hand wildly & ask if I could buy a billion copies to pass out, but I'm probably the newest CRE and didn't want to cause a commotion yet. KV
*****You are welcome. That DVD on the Catholic theology of sexuality should be put up on Youtube. I'm going to work on that.
Posted by: kv | September 01, 2009 at 05:06 PM