Author: Saint John Vianney

Publisher:

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9781980207474

Jean-Baptiste Marie Vianney (known in English as John Vianney), was a French priest that lived from 1786-1859, afterwards to become famous as the Curé of Ars. He was a man that overcame his meager education and was ordained priest. His work as a confessor is John Vianney's most remarkable accomplishment; because of the remarkable spiritual conversion of the people of his community and its surroundings, he spent 11 to 12 hours daily reconciling people. Besides reconciling sinners with God the indefatigable cure was frequently engaged in the important work of directing souls to the knowledge and attainment of their vocation and in giving other counsel valuable in their spiritual life. This book "The Spirit of the Curé of Ars" gathers some of his catechisms, homilies, exhortations and his thoughts when directing the souls of people; in this work the Spirit of God which was in him gave an incomparable fitness and simplicity to all his words, which were animated by the extreme tenderness of his heart. In his homilies he was accustomed to recall the scenes of his early life as a farmer boy, and he employed the analogies and arguments drawn from external nature and according to his own statements, it was evident that there was nothing in the visible world that had not reminded him of God and of eternity. Besides these expressive comparisons, Father Vianney's sermons frequently described incidents drawn from his personal experience. His intellectual and moral perfection of the human faculties, refined by grace, was very striking in M. Vianney. He had no variety or extent of human sciences. But he had what supplies the place of knowledge, and even of experience -the faith which knows and foresees all things. He had great practical wisdom, a profound knowledge of the ways of God and of the miseries of man, an admirable sagacity, a prompt and accurate judgment, an acute, judicious, and penetrating mind. He was endowed, besides, with a supernatural memory, an exquisite tact, and a power of observation which would have made him formidable to those who approached him, if his great and indulgent charity had not softened all his judgments. Jean-Baptiste Marie Vianney was placed by Providence in an unknown corner of a little town and made him shone under a bushel rather than on a candlestick, he shone before the world with incomparable brilliancy; he was a triple representation of our Lord, setting before men the light of truth, with an example of captivating goodness, and edifying virtue.