How the Cure of Ars became a Saintby Abbe Alfred Monnin, 1865
http://catholicharboroffaithandmorals.com/St.%20John%20Vianney.htmlThe sufferings He Inflicted on HimselfIt is from the period of the foundation of the Providence that M. Monnin dates the commencement of the heroic life of the Cur of Ars. "Those," says he, "who did not approach him till the later years of his life, when the habit of sanctity had become a second nature to him; when the practice of the most heroic virtues had become so familiar as no longer to cost him an effort; when, united with, and transformed into, Him, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he had become one with Him, loving what He loves, hating what He hates, never changing tone or look, whatever might befall him; following every movement of that Divine Master, with Whose Heart and will his own were inseparably united; those who knew him in those days admired a work finished and perfected. But they would have much mistaken had they imagined that the Cure of Ars had become a saint without the toil and effort by which alone saints are made.
"'Who are these,' says one of the ancients in the Apocalypse, 'who are around the Throne before the face of the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and having palms in their hands? Who are they, and whence come they?' And he is answered, 'These are they who are come out of great tribulation.' This is the law of sanctity; and it was not given to our saint to escape it, or to unite himself by any other means to Him who is the Saint of saints.
"Through how many tribulations, conflicts, and trials did he pass before he reached the lofty summit on which we have seen him so tranquilly reposing! So true are the words of St. Catherine, that never from the beginning to the end of the world has our Lord willed, or shall He will, that anything great should be accomplished but through much suffering. "Sanctity is the fruit of sacrifice. It is a death, and a new birth; the death of the old man, the birth of the new. There is no death without its suffering, no childbirth without its pangs."
Of the sufferings of our holy cure, some were inflicted by himself, some by the devil, some by good and some by evil men; some, and those the most intense of all, by the hand of God Himself. And first of those which were self-imposed. There are few, even among the saints, whose lives bear the marks of a more systematic and unflinching crucifixion of the whole man, a more uniform practice both of exterior and interior mortification, than we find in the portrait traced of him by those familiar with the details of his daily life.
Claudine Renard, the pious widow who had the charge of washing his linen, and rendering him such other little services as he could not refuse to receive at her hands, could rarely obtain admittance into the presbytery. On the few occasions when she contrived to effect an entrance, after doing her best to put the poor furniture in order, she sometimes proceeded to make the good Cur's bed. She thus discovered that, one by one, he had cast aside all the bedding he had brought with him from Ecully, till nothing remained but the straw palliasse; and that finding even this too luxurious, he had put a board on the top of it.
"And besides," said Catherine, when relating these particulars, "there is hardly any straw left now in that poor bed. He takes it out by degrees, till at last there will be nothing left but the wood. Then he will be satisfied. We have tried sometimes secretly to put in a few handfuls, but it only made him take out more; for if he felt his bed a little less hard, he would pull out the straw, and throw it into the fire. We discovered this by finding the ashes in the fireplace."
It was accidentally found out afterwards, that, to satisfy his increasing thirst for suffering, M. Vianney was in the habit of discarding his bed altogether, and sleeping on the bare floor of the granary with a stone for his pillow.
His favorite food consisted of some pieces of the coarsest black bread bought out of the basket of some poor man. The Abbe Renard, in a memoir drawn up by him of the early days of the holy Cur's ministry, tell us that he had often witnessed the joy with which he ate this most distasteful food. If he perceived the disgust which his companion felt at the sight of it, he would laugh and invite him to share his dinner, saying, "It is a blessing, dear friend, to be permitted to eat the bread of the poor; they are the friends of Jesus Christ. I feel as if I were sitting at His table."
When these delicacies were not to be procured, his ordinary meal consisted of potatoes, which he boiled himself once a week. Sometimes, when his own stock of potatoes had come to an end, he has been seen, with his basket in his hand, begging his week's provision from door to door. He took our Lord at His word, and left the whole care of his life, and all that belonged to it, to the pledged care of His Providence. He never withheld an alms because it would leave him without provision for the morrow, or even for the day.
A neighbor one day brought him a loaf of fine flour, which she had made on purpose for him. She went back to fetch some milk; and believing that he had been long fasting, she wished him to eat the bread and milk in her presence. No persuasions could induce him to consent. At last an idea struck her, which would account for his pertinacious refusal.
"I see, M. le Cure," said she, "you have no bread left." True, indeed; a beggar had passed while she was gone, and the whole loaf of bread had been deposited in his wallet. M. Vianney seemed determined, in those days, to try how long human nature could be supported without food. He sometimes reduced himself to such a state of weakness, as to be obliged to lean against the forms or walls of the church for support. When, after long days of fasting, he could hold out no longer, he would take a handful of flour, and, moistening it with a little water, make a few matafaims (A thin cake so called in the Dombes), which served him for his single meal.
Catherine tells us that she had often heard him say: "Oh! how happy I was in those days! I had not the whole world on my hands; I was all alone. When I wanted my dinner, I did not lose much time over it. Three matefaims did the business. I ate the first while I was baking the second; and while I was eating the second, I baked the third. As I finished my dinner, I arranged my fire and my stove, drank a little water, and that was enough for two or three days."
It has, in fact, been ascertained that the Cure of Ars often passed several days together without taking any nourishment whatever, when he desired to obtain some special grace for himself or his parishioners, to make reparation for some scandal which had wrung his heart, or to do penance for some grievous sinner, whom he judged too weak in courage, or in contrition, to perform it for himself. When asked how a confessor was to act in order to exact due reparation for sin, and at the same time show necessary consideration for the weakness of sinners, he said, "I will tell you my recipe. I give them a light penance, and do the rest in their place."
He had great confidence in the efficacy of fasting as a means of appeasing Divine justice, and a weapon against the evil one.
''The devil," said he, "laughs at disciplines and other instruments of penance; or, at least, if he does not laugh at them, he cares little for them; but what puts him effectually to flight is the privation of food and sleep. There is nothing which the devil dreads so much, and nothing which is more pleasing to God. I experienced this during the five or six years when I was alone, and could follow my attrait without being remarked. Oh, what graces did the Lord vouchsafe to me at that time! I obtained everything. I wanted from Him." His assistant priest once said to him: "M. le Cur, it is said that at one time you could easily pass a whole week without eating."
"Oh, no, my friend," replied he; "that is an exaggeration. The utmost I ever did was to go through a week upon three meals."
He has acknowledged on other occasions having abstained from all nourishment for whole days together, and sometimes for forty-eight hours. The habitual rigid abstinence which he practiced appears from a remark which escaped him one day, when a batch of baking at the Providence had been very successful: "Well, for once I must be greedy, and eat as much as I want." It is positively affirmed by Catherine that he has passed a whole Lent without consuming two pounds of bread. He even tried to live without bread altogether. Claudine Renard caught him one day eating a handful of grass.
"What, M. le Cur," said she in amazement, "are you eating grass?"
"Yes, my good mother Renard," answered he with a smile; "it is an experiment which I am trying; but it does not answer."
"It is very plain," said he, long afterwards, in a moment of affectionate familiarity, to his assistant priest, "that we are differently formed from the beasts. I once tried to live like them, upon grass; but I lost all my strength. It seems that bread is necessary to man."
Bishop Devie once asked him: "Did you ever try to live upon roots and grass, like your predecessors, the fathers of the desert?"
"Monseigneur," replied he, "I did try it once for a week; but I could not go on. I am not a saint like them."
"One day," says Catherine, "I tried to persuade M. le Cure to take a little more nourishment. I said, 'You will never hold out, if you go on living in this way.' 'Oh, yes,' replied he gaily. 'What says our Lord? I have another food to eat; which is, to do the will of My Father, who hath sent Me.' Then he added, 'I have a good carcass. I am tough. As soon as I have eaten something, no matter what, or slept a couple of hours, I can begin again. When you have given something to a good horse, he sets off upon the trot again, as if nothing ailed him; and a horse hardly ever lies down.'"
The best horse, however, may be overridden, and M. Vianney was sometimes forced to acknowledge that he could do no more.
"There are days when I can really hardly speak; especially about seven in the morning, and seven in the evening; but I always find strength to speak of the good God."
At evening prayers his voice was sometimes scarcely audible. He was asked once, why he spoke so loud when he preached, and so low when he prayed.
"Because, when I am preaching," said he, "I have to deal with those who are deaf or sleeping; but when I pray, I have to deal with the good God, and He is not deaf."
In fact, he always went to the very limit of his powers. "My good cure," said M. d'Ars, "do take a little more care of yourself, if you would not give me continual distractions. When I hear you recite the Rosary in that feeble, worn-out tone, I find myself saying, instead of Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us,' 'My God, have pity on him, and give him grace to go on to the end.'"
Sometimes the good lady got fairly angry with him, and threatened to complain of him to the Archbishop; and, indeed, M. Courbon, the Vicar-General, who looked upon him as in some sort a child of his own, remonstrated with him, though without effect.
The only occasions on which M. Vianney relaxed, in any degree, the habitual austerity of his life, were when he was called upon to exercise hospitality to a brother priest. On these rare occasions, he would send to Mdlle. d'Ars; or, if there was not time to reach the castle, Mdlle. Pignaut, or Claudine Renard, would provide a dinner, simple indeed, but very different from his ordinary fare, which he would make a show of sharing with his guests, while, in the words of one who enjoyed his hospitality on one of these occasions, "he ceased not to discourse of heavenly things, like a man absorbed in God." It is an instance of what has been before observed, of the strength and tenderness of his home affections, that he showed the same consideration for any of his relatives who came to see him. When his nephew and niece from Dardilly paid him a visit, some little addition was always made. He sat down to dinner with them, whereas he always took his solitary meals standing; carved for them, and courteously did all the honors of the table, encouraging them to eat, and eating with them of whatever was before them. But as these good people said, "When we were at Ars, we felt neither hunger nor thirst; it was always like the day of our first Communion."
Then M. Vianney would ask kindly after all his old friends at Dardilly, and dwell upon his childish reminiscences, asking particularly after the old apple-tree, under the shadows of which the reapers had been accustomed to dine and sleep.
We are told of a very characteristic banquet, to which the good cure invited Mdlle. Pignaut and the widow Renard, who, to satisfy a little womanly curiosity, often teased him to give them an entertainment in return for the many repasts they had provided for his guests. He could do no less, they said, than invite them in return.
"One evening, then," says Catherine, "when M. le Cure had laid in a fresh stock of his favorite black bread, he went to visit his neighbor.
"'Claudine,' said he, in a livelier tone than usual, 'you are to come to my house at once, with your daughter and Mdlle. Pignaut. I want you all three.'
"Exceedingly pleased, and above all exceedingly curious to know what M. le Cure wanted with them, the three women arrived at the presbytery.
"'What do I want with you?' said he, as soon as they came in; 'I want you to sup with me. Are you not pleased? Take chairs, and sit down. What a feast we are going to have! We will eat the bread of the poor--the friends of Jesus Christ--and we will drink the good water of the good God. So much for the body. And then we will-read out of the lives of those holy Saints who were so penitent and so mortified. So much for the soul. And so now let us set to work.'"
The good Cure had arranged his table, and spread his feast: in the middle was a basket filled with the bread of the poor; on the right, a large folio volume of the Lives of the Saints; on the left, a pitcher of water, with a wooden cup.
At the sight of this grand preparation, Claudine Renard,who was in the secret, exchanged a look with M. le Cur, and smiled; the other two were a little disconcerted. Without seeming to notice their confusion, M. Vianney blessed the table, and offered a piece of bread to each.
"I dared not refuse," said Anne Renard, when she related the story. "I got to the end of my piece of bread, and so did my mother; but poor Mdlle. Pignaut, do what she would, could not manage to swallow hers. She was on thorns the whole time the visit lasted, having never been invited to such a feast before. She never tried to get another invitation."
M. Vianney would certainly have wanted the necessaries of life but for the watchful care of Divine Providence in commissioning one pious hand after another to supply his wants. On the death of the good widow Renard, her place was 'filled by a pious woman, who went by the name of Soeur Lacon. She carried on a perpetual warfare with the holy cure to induce him to mitigate in some degree the inflexible austerity of his life. She would slip unawares into the presbytery, and leave with-inside the provisions which M. Vianney had refused to receive from her. Great was her self-gratulation on such occasions, until, on the following morning, she would recognize her gift in the wallet of the first beggar who came to ask alms at her door.
Catherine's journal contains an amusing account of one of these skirmishes between Soeur Lacon and her incorrigible pastor:
"She had made a beautiful pie for M. le Cure, which, when baked to perfection, she took out of the oven, and hid in an old cupboard in the presbytery kitchen, thinking it would be sure to be safe in that deserted corner of the house. She impatiently awaited M. Vianney's return in the evening; and as soon as she heard him come in, she said to him, in the most insinuating tone in the world, 'M. le Cure, will you have a little piece of pie?'
"'Certainly,' replied he, immediately; 'I should like it very much!
"Delighted with so unusual an acquiescence, she flew to her hiding-place, when, alas, no pie was to be found! What could have become of it? Had M. le Cure found it out, and given it to some poor man? This was really too much. She went up stairs in great indignation.
"'M. le Cure, this is too bad. My pie was my own; I did not give it to you.'
"'Why did you put it in the presbytery, then?' replied he, very quietly. 'I conclude that what I find in my house is my own, and that I have a right to dispose of it.'"
Poor Mdlle. Lacon, as Catherine tells us, had taken a great deal of trouble to give M. Vianney this surprise; and was the more to be pitied, as she was upwards of seventy, had one leg shorter than the other, and had great difficulty in moving about, on account of her rheumatism.
"M. le Cure, however," adds she, "only did it to try her; for he knew that she was a good soul, and that the more sacrifices he led her to make, the more would she advance in the ways of God."
That she was a good soul, free from malice and guile, appears from her proposing, a few days afterwards, to M. Vianney to make him some matefaims. He consented with a readiness which might have led her to suspect mischief. But in the innocence of her heart she set to work to mix her flour; and, being doubtful of her own skill, called in Mdlle. Pignaut to counsel. M. Vianney watched all these preparations with a malicious eye. When they were finished, the dish was solemnly placed before him. He joined his hands, and raised his eyes to heaven, as if about to say the Benedicite; and then, while all around were devoutly making the sign of the Cross, he took up the dish, ran down stairs with it, and distributed the contents to the poor.
M. Vianney was often to be met hurrying along with something concealed under his cassock. He would go about, knocking at one door after another, till he found some one to receive his alms, which it was his great object to bestow with the greatest possible secrecy, and unknown, if possible, even to the objects of his bounty. An old blind woman, who lived near the church, was on this account a special favorite. He would enter her cottage softly, and deposit his gift in her apron without speaking a word. She would feel with her hand what he had given her, and, supposing she owed it to the kindness of some of her poor neighbors, would answer, " Many thanks, good woman; many thanks;" to the great delight of M. le Curl, who would go away laughing heartily.
M. Vianney, after some of his long fasts, often came home from the church so utterly exhausted, that he was unable to stand. On these occasions he would laugh merrily, and seem as much delighted with himself as a schoolboy who has succeeded in some mischievous frolic.
One day, as Catherine tells us, he felt so faint in the confessional, that he said to himself, "You had better come out while you can, or they will be obliged to carry you." So he dragged himself, as best he could, to the Providence, when he arrived panting for breath, and as pale as a corpse. He asked for a little eau de Cologne.
"Well, Monsieur," said Catherine, as she brought it to him, "you must be quite happy this time; you have carried things far enough to-day." And indeed, said she, "under his pale and sunken features we could perceive the radiance of an exceeding interior joy." It was the joy of victory over a vanquished enemy; and that enemy whom he thus triumphed over and laughed to scorn was himself. He would take nothing but a little eau de Cologne; and as soon as he could stand, hastened into the next room to catechize the children.
"When the catechizing is over," says Catherine, "he finds his little earthen pipkin by the fire containing some milk just colored with chocolate. He generally takes his meal, if meal it can be called, standing by the chimney corner, and often drinks his milk without putting any bread into it at all; the whole is concluded in the course of five minutes. When he is in a hurry, he returns to the presbytery with his pipkin in his hand; so that any one who met him going through the streets would take him for a beggar who had just received an alms. He is never better pleased, nor in a merrier mood, than on these occasions."
It was thus that he contrived to add humiliation to mortification. An ecclesiastic, who had come to Ars on purpose to see him, met him thus eating his dinner as he went along. "Are you the Cur of Ars, of whom every one speaks " said he, in great astonishment and disgust.
"Yes, my good friend; I am indeed the poor Cur of Ars."
"This is a little too much," said the priest; "I had expected to see something dignified and striking. This little Cure has no presence or dignity, and eats in the street like a beggar. It is a mystery altogether."
The words were repeated to M. Vianney, who delighted to tell the story. "The poor good gentleman," said he, "was fairly caught; he came to Ars to see something, and found nothing."
A second interview, however, brought this contemptuous visitor under the power of the singular fascination which the little Cure exercised over all who came within its sphere. He made a good retreat under his direction, and no longer wondered what men came out into the wilderness to see.
The dress of M. Vianney corresponded with his fare. Though a great lover of order and cleanliness, he never allowed himself more than one cassock at a time. It was washed and mended till it would no longer hold together, and not till then would he consent to replace it by a new one. It was the same with his hat, which was worn till it was perfectly shapeless; and with his shoes, which were never approached by brush or blacking. Thus arrayed, he would present himself at the ecclesiastical conferences or other meetings of the clergy, which he made a point of attending, meeting all the raillery of his brethren by the invariable reply, "It is quite good enough for the Cure of Ars. Who do you think would take scandal at it? When you have said, It is the Cure of Ars, you have said all there is to say."
"Thus was it," says M. Monnin, "that he became a Saint,--by sparing himself in nothing, little or great; by applying fire and steel to the most sensitive parts of his being. Such, at the period of his history at which we have arrived, was the Cure of Ars. Having overcome the slavery of self, he was free to follow every impulse of the Holy Ghost. He had removed all the hindrances, and broken all the bonds, which could attach his heart to anything below the Supreme Good. His will soared above this world, in union with the will of God. His views, his desires, his affections, were, so to speak, deified; his expanded heart included all creatures in its wide and fraternal embrace. He had but one wish,--that God's name should be hallowed : His kingdom come; His will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." With him, as with St. Paul, to live was Christ; and it was manifest to all who saw him, that Christ lived in him.
Topic: St. Jean Marie Vianny Cure d r Ars (Read 2111 times)